Too Hot to Cook

One summer when record-high temperatures were roasting Seattle, my fiancé and I decided to host our very first dinner party. After having avoided being dinner party hosts for the first seven years of our relationship, we succumbed to the temptation of the ceremonial rite and invited two couples over for food and booze.

My fiancé is a master at making crab soufflé cakes with corn and sweet pepper relish. They give me a food orgasm. We had both also just perfected making gazpacho. Unfortunately, both of these dishes require chopping twenty-five ingredients—which, for someone who doesn’t have their own show on Food Network (or a kitchen staff of five working full-time), takes an entire day. Nevertheless, since this was our very first dinner party, we were determined to make a good impression. So…the menu was crab cakes, a leafy green salad with golden beets and feta, gazpacho, and a cold, crispy pinot blanc—a menu right out of Food and Wine magazine. Perfect.

Dinner was scheduled for 8 p.m. Our guests were to arrive at 7 p.m. for drinks. The temperature outside was a balmy 85 degrees. In many other parts of the country, this would be normal summer weather. In Seattle, where the mercury rarely rises above 75 or below 32, we were freaking out. No one in Seattle has air-conditioning, so we had the front door open and the fans blowing on high. We were hot. Nervous. Tense. Sweating. And (because we didn’t think naked cooking in a kitchen full of windows was a good idea) we were fully clothed.

We worked together as chef and sous-chef in a focused effort to create the most perfect dinner party ever thrown. For hours, my dear, sweet fiancé chef chopped intensely, with beads of sweat trickling down the side of his face. I wiped his brow with a hand towel, told him what an incredible cook he was, and remarked on the symmetry with which he was chopping all the vegetables. Why did the hottest day of the year have to be the day of