Corey Mintz has hosted over 180 dinner parties in his home as part of his regular Toronto Star column, "Fed."

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of being one of Corey's guests. An illustration from the meal he prepared appears in his new book How to Host a Dinner Party (House of Anansi Press), which took me back to that evening, second helpings, and an effortless conversation that lasted late into the night.

If you fancy yourself a host, or would like to become one, How to Host a Dinner Party is an indispensable ingredient.  An excerpt appears after the below interview.

Julie Wilson: How key an ingredient is the host to any dinner party?

Corey Mintz: The character of the host is the most important ingredient and the one thing you can’t change without years of therapy. The whole evening—choice of guests, food, music—is an extension of the host’s personality.

JW: You have the menu planned and the guest list secured. On the day, someone cancels. Do you fill the extra seat? If so, do you invite a trusted friend, or do you open it to the remaining guests to invite a replacement?

CM: There’s no perfect number of guests. For me and my table, it’s between five and eight. So if I dip below five, I’m eager to fill the seat. The choice of replacement would have to do, not just with the availability of friends, with the type of person that I’d lost. You can’t replace a Talker with a Turtle.

JW: Further to this, a guest asks if they can bring a plus one. Is this appropriate?

CM: For me it’s only about numbers. If I have space at the table, I let anyone bring a plus one. If not, I won’t. I don’t like overcrowding the table, so if we’re already full I just tell them that. Nothing personal.

JW: A conversation has gone south. Perhaps a couple is fighting, or four of the six guests all loved The Wire and insist upon recapping their favourite episodes. How should a host proceed?

CM: It’s a different bag for friends and acquaintances. But at a good dinner party, acquaintances become friends. I don’t think that kibitzing over a television show is so divisive. But if the conversation is going in the wrong direction, or if a topic is alienating one guest, it’s the host’s job to redirect, which must be done with subtlety. 

I’ll just jump in with an off-topic story or question. It’ll seem like an abuse of my authority, because there’s a bit of an unwritten rule that as host, people have to humour me a bit by listening. So I’ll wedge in, probably with an anecdotal question that’s personally embarrassing to me. Soon people are asking me questions and we’ll hop on one of those topics as a digression, leaving the unsavoury conversation in the dust.

JW: I expect it's a myth that potlucks take less work for the host. What considerations should guests take into account when bringing a dish to a potluck? And when does a potluck just become a poorly organized dinner party?

CM: Yeah, I think that a potluck is too much work for an organizer, considering what you get. You’ve got to assign dishes, or at least control things to prevent having six chips and dips. There’s the anxiety of everyone contributing. And you’ve still got to take responsibility for every other social part of hosting. To me it seems less work to cook dinner.

If you’re attending a potluck, ask the host what sort of dish they need, rather than cooking something that you think is cool or that shows off your skills. And make it something that can arrive ready to be served. Multiple guests needing to chop and plate complicated foods in the hosts’ kitchen should be left to their own foolish gridlock.

JW: It feels like shows such as Iron Chef have popularized the idea that cooking is part of the show. Are there any dishes that can be prepared in front of your guests, or should they get thee to a TV if they want entertainment?
 
CM: An unfortunate effect of these shows is the idea that cooking is a competition. I don’t like that.

But the presentation of cooking in front of people can be wonderful. My home has an open kitchen/living room. So guests can, and do, come over to watch me at the stove. But usually I’m just plating, as I try to serve dishes that require the least amount of last-minute work.

A little thing you can do for showmanship is to plate food at the table. So if you’re doing a salmorejo soup (Spanish cold soup of bread and tomatoes) like I made this week, bring the bowls to the table with just the soup. Then move around the table topping guest’s bowls with each garnish, one at a time: bread crumbs, grated egg, Serrano ham, chervil.

There’s no reason you can’t do it all in the kitchen. But there’s something engaging about evening the simplest cooking, when it happens in front of you.

But the goal of dinner is to spend time with people. So don’t spend the majority of your time cooking.

JW: Are we past the point of finding food restrictions, allergies, and/or diets bothersome?
 
CM: I accommodate and all food requests or restrictions. I take allergies very seriously.

I try to pair the personalities of guests. But if I’ve got a couple vegetarian guests, I’m likely to make it all vegetarian and invite my vegetarian friends. In 184 dinner party columns, I’ve never had to tell a guest to bring their own food. But I can imagine that someone might have severe enough allergies that it could be a safety concern.


JW: How much should the host drink/not drink?


CM: Just enough. Don’t be drunker than the drunkest guest.

JW: Under what circumstance would you, as a host, play matchmaker?

CM: In a way we’re always matchmaking. Just not necessarily in a romantic way. We’re putting together people because we believe they’ll like each other. I take it as a great compliment when my dinner guests become friends or (and this has happened) lovers. But I’ve never put people together for an intentional set-up.

Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with a little matchmaking so long as you feel that everyone else will enjoy these two individuals. They can’t be two misanthropes that you’re throwing together at the end of the table. Also they shouldn’t be made to feel like outsiders, under the microscope of the World of Married Couples.

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Corey Mintz writes the popular Toronto Star column “Fed,” in which he documents the weekly dinner parties he hosts for friends and featured guests.

Follow him on Twitter as @coreymintz and visit his website at www.porkosity.blogspot.ca.

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From How to Host a Dinner Party:

Wine

I once hosted a dinner (at which I was not cooking) for a group of chefs. About half of them were very into wine and the other half were not, several saying that they’d just as soon have beer with this meal. The chefs who weren’t interested in or didn’t know about wine were proud of this, professing a belief common among young chefs that they need not understand anything outside of a kitchen.

During the main course, a slow-roasted saddle of lamb, one of the chefs, a Frenchman, poured us a wine he’d brought. We all agreed that the wine was good and that the lamb tasted even better with the pairing. Then he poured us a drink from another bottle of the same wine, one that he’d opened an hour earlier. The effect dumbfounded many of the chefs at the table, all of whom agreed that what had been a very good dish was now a great dish.

There are two lessons in this story:

1. Chefs, even good ones, can be ignorant about wine, and that’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

2. The most basic understanding of wine pairing can dramatically elevate a meal. If you are a wine person, wine snob, wine collector, sommelier, wine steward, wine captain, or wine lieutenant, skip this sidebar. You already have separate glasses for Pinot Noir. You have a wine collection that you store at 54°F (12°C), possibly in your basement cellar, a temperature-controlled cabinet in the kitchen, or a storage locker you rent because you’re very wealthy. You know which wines to serve with which foods and how to pour them.

For the rest of us, let’s simplify things.

When choosing a wine to drink with dinner, most of us have no idea what we’re doing. We take refuge in that old refrain, “I may not know art, but I know what I like.” Pleased with a particular wine we’ve enjoyed, we remain loyal.

When eating in restaurants, I defer to the good sense of sommeliers. That’s their job. When eating at home, I defer to the tastes of my friends, who bring most of the wine. But I keep a few things on hand, versatile wines that pair well with groups of flavours. We don’t need to become masters at pairing wine and food, but some basic education can go a long way.

The common mistake people make with wine pairing, promoted by the axiom of white wine with fish, red with meat, is thinking that these basic food elements are natural partners with some wines. The marketers who write the pairing suggestions on wine labels capitalize on that. According to those labels, just about every wine goes great with chicken or fish.

But it’s the flavours and characteristics of the dish—sweet, sour, spicy, bitter, salty, umami—with which we are balancing the wine. Why would we expect the same wine to go as well with chicken Kiev as with jerk chicken? Also, other than a 1960s hotel chef or a first-year culinary student, who is serving chicken Kiev?

I’ve always got a couple bottles of Riesling chilled in the fridge. These off-dry wines will balance well with acidic or spicy foods. Whereas a fiery curry would just demolish the subtleties of a Cabernet Sauvignon, the red wine would go well with the richness of a rare piece of red meat.

A good wine shop has someone on hand who knows the product. If it’s really important to find a wine that pairs well with a particular dish, ask for help. Read newspaper columns by local wine writers, who know what’s in stock where you live. Contact them for advice. People who love wine want other people to love wine and are often eager to share their knowledge.

And we don’t have to drink wine. There are lots of foods that just go better with beer—the briny vitality of oysters or mussels; the heat of pozole; the gummy smoke of a deli sandwich—not to mention that some foods, such as barbecue, just don’t fit with wine, practically or aesthetically. No one feels right gripping a sticky pork rib in one hand and tearing at the flesh while daintily holding a wineglass by the stem in the other.

I would caution against adding a pre-dinner cocktail to the evening. A well-made cocktail demands great care and precision. It’s not the best thing to be doing when you should be paying that attention and care to your guests. If you really like the idea of having a cocktail before dinner, and it’s a very classy prelude that I endorse, stick with punch. You can make it in advance and serve it from a bowl as guests arrive.

Excerpted from How to Host A Dinner Party, by Corey Mintz, reprinted with permission from www.houseofanansi.com.