The Dinner Date Guide! part 4

Welcome to part 4 of the Dinner Date Guide, aka The Maxim-type Dude's Guide to Getting Laid By Convincing Girl To Come Over For Dinner Even Though Dude Can't Cook Worth Shit! By now we've covered the basics, the Meat and Potatoes girl, the Vegetarian, and the Atkins girl.  Now we move on to the girl nearest and dearest to my heart...

But first, I want to tell you a little morality tale.  A few years ago, I was back in San Francisco doing a gig with the band I was with.  We played at a little club in the Mission, and I sent out the e-mail missive alerting all of my S.F. cronies about the show.  An ex-fling of mine (let's call him Moto) came to the show and we flirted (as exes do) after the gig was over.  He invited me to come to his house for dinner and I accepted.

It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together -- I was going over to his house anticipating a little action outside of the kitchen.  I figure, I'm in town for a second, neither of us has to worry that there are any strings attached, and dinner is only a preliminary, a formality before the main course.  Now I know that I can be an asshole when it comes to food, asserting my opinion when it is sometimes not necessary or solicited.  But I wasn't under any illusions that our little get-together would be about the food.

I arrived dinner time the next day at an apartment building on one of S.F.'s proverbial hills just outside the Tenderloin, wondering what was on the menu for the evening.  We said our hellos and Moto let me know that we were going to cook dinner together. 

Me:  What are we having?

Moto:  I don't know, I have this broccoli, and we could have some pasta alfredo.

Me:  (gulping)  Okay.  Let's get started.

He opened his bare-shelved refrigerator and pulled out the lone fresh resident, some sad, stumpy broccoli with florets that had opened and gone yellow. 

Me:  Um, do you have butter?

Moto:  No, but I have some olive oil.

He pulled a lilliputian bottle of olive oil down from the naked shelves of his cabinet.  It was obvious to me that dinner was not going to be an elaborate affair.  I told him that I would do the broccoli and he could do the pasta. 

In a 2-quart sized pot, he boiled a small amount of water and managed to push the entire box of spaghetti into the few cups of water.  I didn't want to tell Moto that pasta like to swim like free fish in an ocean, not like striped bass in the Chinese restaurant tank.  I didn't want to be rude.  But I was feeling very sorry for that pasta.  In the meantime, I trimmed the broccoli of its (many) inedible bits, found a jar of pre-minced garlic of indeterminate age in the underused refrigerator, and got to work on a saute in the thin steel pan. 

I watched as he grated the shrink-wrapped, perfectly triangular chunk of Sargento "parmesan," heated up some heavy cream in another pan, and nonchalantly threw the cheese into the white pool.  I watched as the cheese melted in clumps that swam around the cream.  He drained the pasta in a tiny plastic colander and poured the pasta into the sauce.

We sat down to eat our dinner of long-dead broccoli and spaghetti in chunky milk.  Now maybe it was the disappointing dinner, and maybe it was the boring slide-show of Moto's cross-country motorcycle travels, but I lost my appetite and went back to the apartment I was staying at, unsated in every way.

Needless to say, he's just the kind of guy who could have used a little Dinner Date Guide help.  We've already established that I am not the kind of girl you are trying to date anyway, but we food snobs come in all kinds of packages, including lovely shapely ones you Maxim men may desire.  Still, there are a couple of lessons you should learn from this story, should you still want to woo an epicurean asshole like me:

1.  Every meal counts with the epicure, and she has decided to spend a meal with you, despite the fact that you don't seem like the kind of guy who enjoys cooking.  She must like you or she wouldn't have agreed to come over in the first place.  It's almost in the bag, buddy.  Sure, she may have eaten a little something before your date, just in case dinner turned out to be a disaster, but she showed up in spite of her low expectations.  She probably wants it as much as you do.

2.  Even though she agreed to come over, not for the food but for the dessert, it is still possible for you to fuck it up.  Clumpy cheese and rotting veggies are not sexy.  You don't have to be (dreamy) Eric Ripert.  You just need to show her that you cared enough to put the TINIEST bit of effort into the food. 

And so, here we go with contestant #4:

The Girl: The Epicure.  She knows her romanesco from her romesco sauce.  She lives to eat and doesn't understand people who only eat to live.  She's probably orally fixated and good at you-know-what, so if you play your cards right, this could be your lucky night.

The Menu: Braised short ribs.  Roasted Parsnips.  Salad.  Cheese.

Now, we've established that you are not Jacques Pepin, and that's okay.  So we are going to thwart disaster by getting you started with the best ingredients and giving you recipes that are very very difficult to fuck up.

The short ribs:  Okay, I'm going to cheat a little here and refer you to a couple of recipes.  There's one in the Chez Panisse Cafe cookbook and one in the French Laundry cookbook.  They are both easy to follow and incredibly impressive.  Besides, Alice Waters and Thomas Keller can explain the techniques better than I can.  The reason I have chosen this recipe for you is that short ribs are difficult to mess up.  If you forget it's in the oven, no problem -- the longer it cooks, the better it gets.  You should cook them the day before your date -- this way, the flavors will really penetrate the meat and you can strain and de-fat the sauce for reheating the day of.  Also, the fact that you own one of these cookbooks will go a long way with your potential paramour, so make sure that it's lying out conspicuously, maybe with a nice, small smudge of grease and a smattering of flour between the pages.

The parsnips:  They look like carrots but they taste like a cross between a carrot and a sweet potato.  They're wonderful and super easy to prepare.  Peel them, chunk them, toss them in a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast at 375 degrees for 40 minutes or until they are tender.  (Originally I thought that roasted jerusalem artichokes would be very impressive and delicious -- but then I remembered that they purportedly cause major gas problems in many diners.  You see how much I care about your welfare?  The only thing worse than having to pass gas in bed is having to pretend your sexy partner didn't just pass gas in bed.  Or is it the other way around?)  Anyway, when she's got you on ball and chain and you have no problem with involuntary bodily functions around each other, you can try the jerusalem artichokes prepared the same way.  Until then, stick to parsnips.

The Salad:  Salad is so easy.  Good lettuces are the key to a good salad.  I personally don't enjoy the standard baby mesclun that's so widely available these days.  There's too much bitter frisee and not enough crispness for my taste.  I like to start with what I once heard chef Peter of Savoy restaurant call "teenage lettuce": lettuce that's bigger than baby, but smaller than headed lettuce.  This way you get the delicate flavor of mesclun and a bit more of a textural crunch, but not the fibrous crudeness of the large heads of lettuce.  Windfall Farms at the Union Square Greenmarket has a nice mix of lettuces that are my absolute favorite -- large, not bitter, but still crisp.  While you're there, you can pick up a variety of greens to add -- silky mache, savory sunflower sprouts,  sexy burgundy amaranth.  You don't drown these living greens in buttermilk ranch or canola oil and dehydrated onion bottled salad dressings.  Just take a dollop of dijon mustard, 2 glugs of good quality extra virgin olive oil, 1 glug of good white wine vinegar, a 1/2 spoon of honey, salt, pepper and some minced chives, whisk, and toss with the greens.  Use your clean hands to toss the salad -- it's very easy, distributes the dressing best, and you won't get lots of unsightly dents in your greens.  You can choose to serve the salad with the meal or after the ribs and parsnips.  I just can't get used to eating salad at the end of the meal.  (I saw an episode of Oprah where some "teen expert" who seemed to be neither a "teen" nor an "expert" said that "tossing the salad" is a euphemism for fellatio.  But the metaphor doesn't work for me so I'm not going to proliferate it.)

The Cheese:  You are serving cheese for dessert.  I know your brain is reeling from the concept, but it's a perfectly acceptable practice in many parts of the world.  This is the easy part.  Go down to Murray's Cheese shop, or an equivalent excellent cheese shop in your part of the world, and tell the orangey-blond haired Latino guy with the lisp behind the counter (or your local equivalent) that you want three cheeses for an after dinner cheese plate.  Also ask him to get you the sides, like maybe quince paste, date and almond cake, roasted marcona almonds, etc.  He will hook you up.  That guy is a psychic cheese genius.

Amendment, 12/13/04 -- My friend Donna pointed out that cheese breath stinks and may foul the otherwise romantic ambience you have created thus far. I stubbornly protested and said that I didn't think it was a problem (more because I didn't want to admit I was wrong and besides, I was in no mood to re-post). After a cheddar sample at the Greenmarket on Saturday left me tasting fermented milk on my tongue for hours afterwards, I decided she was right and wanted to take this time to give you the alternate anti-halitosis dessert option. Chocolate: My friends, do not underestimate the power of a well-made truffle. Chocolate=seratonin=sex. There are several excellent chocolate shops around town. My current favorite is Vosges Chocolate, with their artful array of inventive chocolates. I love the complex Naga Curry truffle and the caramel dream Sale de Mare truffle. Champagne truffles from Teuscher are classic winners. (I like to think that the first time my dear friend Dottie took a liking to me was when I declared Teuscher the best chocolates ever, to which she looked at me with surprise and replied, "You are a classy lady." -- and that might just be the best compliment I've ever received, considering the very classy source.)

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And there you have it folks, your guide to cooking and serving ladies of the night.  I didn't discuss alcohol because I don't drink and I don't know the first thing about what to serve with what.  Go to a good wine shop and ask them for help.  To those of you who are sorry/angry/disappointed that the guide has come to a close, I know there are other types of women out there, and that we womyn are not so homogenized that we only fall into four limited categories and blah blah blah.  But if this guide saves one girl from a night of gastronomic disgust, or provides one lonely Maxim dude and one hungry woman with a little warm companionship for an evening, then I'm proud to have helped make it happen. 

And now, I'm tired of you Maxim dude.  Get out of my bed.  But leave the cheese.  And the date and almond cake.