Tuesday Night Dinner Party: a delicious clam pasta with a few cut corners.

If I’m going to make good on this plan to host a dinner party every Tuesday, I’m going to have to make sacrifices. For starters: the family table, which I know is very much in vogue as a Good Parenting Technique. With few exceptions, I haven’t found a way to feed toddlers—especially someone else’s toddler—and adults at the same time with any degree of pleasure for everyone. It seems more practical to get the kiddos at the kitchen table, have one adult sit with them, and then finish up cooking the grown-up dinner across the counter. Then while we’re eating they can run around and play, or in17-month-old Adele’s case, get handed around the table and mooch more food. As this project continues, I’ll noodle around with the kid part of the equation—is there a way to make them more part of the meal while still letting them have their own space and allowing the grownups to have some grown up conversation?

Our most recent guests were old exercise friends who we can no longer count on running into at the gym since none of us go all that often anymore. Though I have been very excited to have more guests over here, I’m not so sure about my 4-year old son, Gus. When my friend arrived with her 2-year-old, Gus barricaded himself in his room for 10 minutes. But once he realized he had a young mind to corrupt with Star Wars hearsay (he’s never seen it ...), he was pretty friendly. There is nothing like having an adoring protégé around. We crouched around the Thomas the Tank engine play table for some serious parent-chat, then migrated to the kitchen to feed the kids and wait for our respective husbands to make it home. It all felt a little Mad Men, without crinolines or cigarettes, as parental life sometimes does. But then my friend, a non-profit consultant, started asking those precise questions of hers and as I started talking about upcoming writing projects, I wasn’t feeling so Betty Draper after all. Also, she never would have served dinner with a pile of house-painting crap in the corner of the dining room, as I did.

Another thing the Tuesday night entertainer must be willing to yield on, I think, is piping hot food. If you’ve got three children in a house under the age of 5, someone will need to hop up as soon as dinner is served to catch a falling child or to mediate toy sharing. Eventually, we sat down as quickly as we could, we, and steered away from child supervision to talk about medical information technology, and our mutual love of Washington’s Methow Valley. And though the temperature of the clam pasta I put together for a couple of old friends and their son wouldn’t cut it in a restaurant, it was rather delicious. (Added un-restaurant bonus: The pasta had a few moments to relax into its sauce and get clammier.) It’s hard not to love pasta with clams anyway, but I’d decided to increase the vegetation (and the flavor) in the sauce by adding a mound of shaved fennel, which also worked to sponge up the clam’s good juices. I didn’t bother plucking the clams out of their shells—they look cuter that way. Plus, making your guests do a little pleasant work—pluck clams out of their shells, crack nuts, etc.—gives them a sense of ease in one’s home. Or I’d like to think it does. Maybe my friends left muttering about my lack of wet-naps. I also served a beet salad I’d made hundreds of in my days as a line cook at the Harvest Vine, Seattle’s only Basque restaurant… it’s a simple way to put a fancy looking salad together, and unlike pasta, just perfect if ignored for a while before serving.

Clam pasta with fennel

1 ½-2 pounds manila clams, washed and checked over (I squeeze any open clams and toss them if they don’t pull themselves shut immediately.)
2 tablespoons chopped guanciale, pancetta, or not-too-smoky bacon
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 fennel bulbs, shaved thin latitudinally (I use a mandolin, but you can use a knife or food processor, too)
½ teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons fennel seeds, crushed
½-1 teaspoon chili flakes
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup white wine
Pasta for four—a half pound or so, cooked and tossed with a little olive oil and salt

Tags: food, pasta, tuesday night dinner party

Sara Dickerman has written about food for Slate, the New York Times Magazine, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, and Seattle magazine.

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