The Sensuous Hors d’Oeuvre

          “…Evan and Judith Jones defy the taboo on cheese as an hors d’oeuvre. Evan pairs cheese and wine from the same region…”

          An hors d’oeuvre may be a perfect macadamia nut or 1,000 sturgeon eggs. But hors d’oeuvres can also be a meal before the meal, a clever patchwork of tastes and textures to provoke the appetite. And for our peripatetic urban nightworks, we need the hors d’oeuvre bounty that becomes dinner—sensuous fueling for evenings of hit-and-run kultur, peopleizing, winding up or down, scoring, living our astonishing New York lives.

The Joneses:

          Secure in their personal taste—after all, he is the author of The World of Cheese, she is editor of Knopf’s food-world immortals, Julia and Simca—Evan and Judith Jones defy the classic taboo on cheese as hors d’oeuvre. Evan pairs cheese and wine from the same region—dry, aged jack with a Mirrasou Burgundy from Monterey or a ’69 Arbois with cantal from Jura. Judith does fish mousse, pork terrine with real country ham, pepper cheese boats, and tartlets stuffed with a fluff of cheese, egg, and cream. “People come in two waves,” she says. “Some just for a drink. Others hang on and have to be fed. That’s when we do the spiedini,” garlicky layers of meat, mozzarella, and prosciutto batter-dipped and sautéed to a runny deliciousness.

Stanley Landsman: Knish and Tell

          “…He doesn’t have time to sit around stuffing canapés…”

          It’s movie night for 30 friends at sculptor Stanley Landsman’s spectacular house in what was once a parking garage for 53 cars. Landsman’s living room—and 85-by-30-foot sweep of awesome space—sports the side bar from Sammy’s Bowery Follies, a pool table, studio art, and the lifetime gleanings of an incurable collector. The kitchen is an island framed by a marble-topped counter from a Chinese apothecary—the angel was stolen from a cemetery, but not by Stanley. Hors d’oeuvres are “take-out…I don’t mind cooking a meal. Then we sit and talk. But when people are milling about or watching a movie, all they want is a nosh. I don’t have time to sit around all day stuffing white-bread canapés. I’d rather work on a drawing or sculpture.” (His current project is a commission for architect Minoru Yamasaki’s Performing Arts Center in Tulsa.) So Landsman makes a fruitful shopping tour of Bleecker Street. “You need variety. Some people will have eaten. Some won’t. There will be two Galitzianers who want stuffed cabbage, five mad people who won’t eat meat, and a few hypoglycemics like me who must have eclairs or go into a sugar fit.” So there are peppery meatballs, knishes, pastry-wrapped hot dogs, and the obligatory cabbage from Yonah Schimmel, cheese from Murray’s, beautiful breads, wicked pastries, and miniature egg rolls in a handsome Chinese tea tin—“Everything here was bought within a three-block area. It’s like living in Paris,” says Landsman.

Cecilia Yen Woo: The Aspiring Dumpling

          “…She swept through Chinatown buying up bamboo steamers…”

          Cecilia Yen Woo grew up rich and old-fashioned in Hong Kong. There were eight chefs in the kitchen—father’s five wives, and seven sisters-in-law—but it was Cecilia who had to taste each dish cooked for father by her vegetarian mother. “I was so spoiled,” she says. Later, as the fourth wife of a dynamic journalist (“an exciting and complicated man”), Cecilia Yen Woo traveled everywhere, was famous for her splendid table, and finally grew bored with being an ornament. Cheered on by pals of her jewelry-designer son, Willie, Cecilia Yen Woo began catering parties, hopes soon to open a restaurant (everyone tells her she could be another Pearl), though she’s discouraged because nine in help brought to this country have already disappeared. Madame Woo finds New Yorkers want Chinese finger foods. For Susan Shiva’s fashion press party, she swept through Chinatown buying up tiny bamboo steamers to use as hors d’oeuvre plates. Guests coming for drinks here in her daughter’s apartment will find shrimp dumplings pinned to cabbage leaves, Shanghai spring rolls in a lettuce “flower,” omelet rounds and bean curd arranged on a leek, peppery fried shrimp, four-happiness dumplings, and scarlet quail eggs, all set out on stepped lacquered tables. “For our Chinese friends, hors d’oeuvres, by tradition, must be sweet,” she says, tumbling watermelon seeds, pistachios, dried apricots, and sesame cakes into steamer bottoms on the coffee table.

The Batterberrys: Best Revenge

          “… ‘Passing hors d’oeuvres interrupts good talk,’ says Michael…”

          A stylish couple, the Batterberrys, And perfect complements: Micahel the artist; Ariane, the cheerleader. Michael cooks. Ariane handles social communications, cleanups, endless last-minute errands. Ariane starts a sentence. Michael finishes it. Their accents are cultivated. The décor is brilliant clutter. As might be expected of the authors of Bloomingdale’s Book of Entertaining, the Batterberrys have a keenly defined style. Tonight is typical: Guests from Europe greeting old friends, most on the way to opera or ballet. Vaguely Middle Easter hors d’oeuvres with some other ethnic variations are handsomely mounted on an old patchwork quilt. “People are responding to the unusual,” observes Michael. It’s all self-serve: “Passing hors d’oeuvres interrupts good talk.” There is tarama mousse inside a mousse, gingered melon, shrimp in a zesty green marinade, Oriental puff pastries, Italian sausage “gilded in butter,” baba ganouj to scoop up in oven-warmed pita, and “the world’s most garlicky humus,” which one prompted Marya Manes to say, “You’ve ruined my evening but it was worth it.” “We love a meal of many tastes,” says Michael. “And those who stay on will sit down for a peaceful pasta salad with fruit,” which is heaped on a Thai alter-offering dish. “We collect dishes from everywhere,” says Ariane. “Especially footed dishes.” There is also an antique Indian plate, “possibly a leper’s,” she likes to say. “Sterilized, of course.”