This month in The Atlantic, the writer Ellen Cushing made a compelling argument under a provocative headline: “Americans Need to Party More.”
“We are obligated to create the social world we want,” she writes. “Intimacy, togetherness — the opposite of the crushing loneliness so many people seem to feel — are what parties alchemize.”
There is no better time to make such a case: The unmistakable malaise that is January swiftly replaced any end-of-year euphoria. And while I cannot wait for this dreadful month to end, what peeks over the horizon — February — is hardly a bastion of bliss.
So be your own euphoria. Throw a party! You needn’t an occasion. (Though, if you really do, just look to yesterday’s Lunar New Year or the forthcoming Super Bowl or Valentine’s Day for inspiration.) By Cushing’s logic, 10 people a party makes. By my own logic, there must be food. And at least one dish must include puff pastry.
You could make Ali Slagle’s baked Brie puffs with chile crisp or ginger-scallion squiggles, or Tejal Rao’s aptly named party wreath. Stuffed with well-spiced potatoes and peas, it invokes aloo samosas, without you needing to fold individual pastries.
Or lean into the folding and pleating of a full-scale dumpling party. Eric Kim’s kimchi napjak mandu (use a vegan kimchi), Genevieve Ko’s sweet chocolate sesame dumplings or Hetty Lui McKinnon’s vegetarian gok jai are reason enough to invite over your most dexterous friends. Hetty’s vegetable crystal dumplings pack a lot of veg into tiny, translucent packages: You’ll get a little shiitake and wood ear mushroom, carrot, celery, water chestnut and pickled mustard stem, as well as tofu, in each bite.
Gok Jai (Vegetable Crystal Dumplings)
Like dumplings, the best party dishes are one-to-two biters, poppable, snackable morsels. Think: Stuff stuffed with other stuff, like Melissa Clark’s halloumi-stuffed sweet peppers, or her crispy stuffed mushrooms with harissa and apricots. Spicy, sweet and savory, the cremini or button mushrooms are filled with a mixture of chile, harissa and tomato pastes, bread crumbs, alliums, herbs, citrus zest and dried fruit. But, really, you can stuff a mushroom with anything, as simple or as festive as you like.
And I can’t have a party without a platter of something fresh, even if it is just a heap of sliced and salted Persian cucumbers. Lidey Heuck’s easy crudités takes that only a bit further, with her mix of blanched and raw vegetables. A dip to serve alongside is up to you. This new avocado, edamame and yuzu dip with furikake, from the chef Ravinder Bhogal, will be making an appearance at my next shindig. (Note that you’ll want to pick up a fish-free furikake.)
Throwing a party can be as involved or as understated as you wish. You just need intent and an invitation. “Warm rooms on cold nights, so many people you love thumbtacked down in the same place, the musical clank of bottles in the recycling, someone staying late to help with the dishes,” Cushing writes, “these are things anyone can have, but like everything worth having, they require effort.”
