Hosts With The Modern Most
The Age
Monday October 20, 1997
WHAT'S for dinner tonight? Today's hosts are learning from their favorite chefs and serving up good, simple food from an array of cultures.
They're starting with platters of antipasto instead of prawn cocktails and finishing with fruit platters rather than fiddly bombe Alaskas or crepes suzette flamed at the table.
In between, they're serving couscous, paella, lentils, risottos, curries and laksas. And salmon, ocean trout, and foie gras have found their way into the kitchen.
Truffle oil and balsamic vinegar are added to just about everything.
Lamb is making a resurgence, and duck confit is in. Veal knuckles, ham hocks and rib eye are popular - any slow-cooked meals are great for a Sunday spread.
Ross Honeywill, who runs a research company and often entertains at home, serves his guests champagne when they arrive as well as something to nibble, such as smoked trout pate, pickled walnuts and ciabatta bread that they slice themselves and drizzle with virgin olive oil.
For the main meal, he sets down three or four dishes in the middle of the table - perhaps a pasta with spicy prawns in brodo, char-grilled marinated squab, a platter of polenta with char-grilled Mediterranean vegetables, and what he calls a "horizontal salad" or flat platter featuring tuna or blue-eye.
Dessert is simply fresh fruit with maybe a washed-rind cheese, like a Milawa Gold. Guests help themselves to coffee.
"It's moved for me from lots of preparation in the kitchen and waiting on the table to minimum preparation in the kitchen and people waiting on themselves," Honeywill says.
© 1997 The Age