Dining In... In Style

Gone are those first-year dinners at John Jay, students lingering for hours over damp chicken piccata and plutonium bread pudding. It wasn’t the gruel or the Gothic décor that kept us there until closing. No, it was bonding with new friends, arguing about St. Augustine and dorm life, confiding about friends at home or new crushes at school, something deeper than lamenting about the Freshman 15. It was a way of replacing the family dinners we missed.

Eventually, we shed those pesky meal plans, but gorging alone in the gloom of McBain was not terribly appetizing. So, more from loneliness than laziness, we began to eat out. The Mill, Strokos, even Pinnacle in a pinch, hosted thousands of intellectual debates and budding romances. It certainly meant good business for the neighborhood eateries.

For those swamped with classes and jobs, mealtime is the only time we have to socialize regularly, but all that eating out can be murder on a student budget. The solution? Why not stay home for dinner and invite a couple of friends over to share the bounty? It sounds daunting, but consider that few can do anything more advanced than boil water, and most will be impressed with any culinary effort no matter the complexity. Feed them a home-cooked meal, sans food poisoning, and they will be charmed and eternally grateful. It’s quality time with the peeps without breaking the bank. Here are some tips for getting started:

1. Don’t be a show-off. If the guests are picky eaters, or you don’t cook often, make something fool-proof and familiar like roast chicken. But if you’re a budding chef and your friends are game, branch out with something more adventurous, such as a Thai curry. Leave the truffles and caviar off the menu until you pay off your student loans.

2. Work with what you have. Space is notoriously tight around Manhattan, but you can make it work for you. If the table is too small (assuming there is a table at all), consider a picnic on the floor. If an RA shows up, remember that wine is “grape juice” and beer is “hops and barley soda.”

3. Share the burden. Ask the guests to bring drinks or dessert. Give them a general idea of what’s for dinner so they can bring something complimentary. For instance, for beef stew suggest a red wine. For Pad Thai, hint at coconut sorbet.

4. Improvise. Don’t feel obliged to follow a recipe as written. If it calls for a spice or piece of equipment that you don’t have, use your noodle. It’s amazing what you can do without a food processor, cardamom pods, etc.--, and still approximate the same effect. You might even stumble upon an innovation you like better than the original recipe.

5. Relax. Cooking for yourself can be terrifying—cooking for others even more so. The best part of serving dinner to friends is that, even if you under-cook the rice and scorch the fried plantains, you are not going to end up blacklisted. Give it a try. Worse comes to worse, there is always pizza.