In 2023, emerging from the isolation of the pandemic, the Australian-born food writer Hetty Lui McKinnon committed to hosting a monthly meal for friends at her Brooklyn home for an entire year. The only problem: “I’m the anti-dinner party person,” she said. “I don’t love formality and, when I have people over, I don’t want to be just a witness to what’s going on — I want to be a part of it.”
Consequently, McKinnon, 50, who contributes to New York Times Cooking, created casual vegetarian menus consisting solely of salads and desserts. The recipes, for food that’s easy to prep ahead of time and serve at room temperature, allowed her to be fully present with her guests and became the basis of her latest cookbook, “Linger,” which came out earlier this month. On a hot evening in September, the author celebrated its imminent publication by putting together another salad-centered meal, this one at the Sunset Park pottery production studio run by her friend Stiliani Moulinos, 40, the owner of Noble Plateware, a line of handmade pieces popular with New York City chefs.
Moulinos transformed the space with fairy lights and tapers that, when the first guests arrived at 6 p.m., sat flickering in ceramic holders. Extra candles were placed in fresh hunks of raw clay that Moulinos sat forming while her wife, Ruth Edgar, 39, a vice president of accounting, poured drinks and McKinnon greeted her friends.
Gathering around a table that Moulinos had fashioned by throwing a tablecloth over a glazing counter, a wire cart, cinder blocks and a wooden plank, the crowd then enjoyed what the novelist and bookstore owner Emma Straub, 45, described as a “vegetable extravaganza.” McKinnon, who, once again keeping things cool and casual, wore a T-shirt, a black kilt and Gucci loafers, thanked everyone for coming, and Moulinos toasted her friend, as well as the Noble Plateware founder Wynne Noble, who died in 2019. (Moulinos took over in 2020.) Too caught up in enjoying the moment, the pair only remembered midmeal to announce a forthcoming offering from the brand that will be available next month: an updated version of a salad bowl modeled after a gently curved, easy-to-hold one that McKinnon bought from Wynne Noble a decade ago and has treasured ever since.
During dessert, the mood grew even more relaxed. When McKinnon ran out of spoons, the cheesecake became finger food and, at one point, the gourd centerpiece was transformed into a wearable prop for an impromptu photo shoot. While some guests trickled out around 10 p.m., several insisted on staying to wash dishes. By the end of the night, “everyone was just on top of each other, hugging, taking photos,” said Moulinos, who, though she isn’t normally the touchy-feely type, added, “it was magical.”
The attendees: Eating family style “encourages you to engage with other people, which is the whole point, really,” said McKinnon, who wanted the night to serve as an opportunity for friends from different realms to get to know one another. In addition to Straub, the baker and author Stacey Mei Yan Fong, 37, the writer Doris Hồ-Kane, 44, and the cookbook author Abi Balingit, 30, were in attendance, as were the book publicist Sarah New, 32; the marketing executive Anna Lai, 31; and Lorraine Abela, 54, the founder of the floral design studio Fresh Cut Fridays, who made the centerpieces. Moulinos invited not only Edgar but also the lighting designer Farrah Sit, 43, and the illustrator Jordan Sondler, 35.
The table: In covering the makeshift dining table with a thickly woven white cloth, Moulinos provided a crisp backdrop for Abela’s vegetable-heavy arrangements, for which the floral designer took cues from the menu’s key ingredients. A serpentine gourd was adorned with brussels sprouts whose reflexed leaves evoked rose petals, and a cauliflower was dressed, said Abela, with a “little petticoat of dahlias to make its bottom look pretty.” Noble Plateware serving vessels in shades of off-white, blush and dark sage glowed under a chandelier that Moulinos found years ago on the street and transformed with cocoon-like porcelain shades. McKinnon, an amateur watercolorist, painted the vegetables that featured in the evening’s dishes on a series of cards displayed on the table and, on the back of them, hand-wrote the menu.
The food: The mix of seasonable recipes from the book that McKinnon chose was determined by what was available at Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Coop, which included rainbow beets, delicata squash and particularly delicious grapes. “My God, the grapes!” said McKinnon, who roasted them with feta for a kale-and-grain salad. She also served a salad of shaved brussels sprouts with pan-fried tofu crumbles and shiitakes and a tahini-chile crisp dressing; a whole roasted cauliflower topped with a mound of dill; and a noodle salad inspired by tom kha, a Thai hot-and-sour soup made with coconut milk. For dessert, there were two vegan Basque-style tofu cheesecakes, one flavored with black sesame and the other infused with ube, which rendered it a gorgeous shade of violet.
The drinks: Moulinos filled her slip-casting sink with ice, and then she and McKinnon added cans of La Croix and premixed nonalcoholic cocktails, as well as bottles of natural wine: a golden-hued Champagne, a French clairet, an Austrian sparkling option, a fresh skin-contact white from the Basque Country and a South African pét-nat that McKinnon had been saving for a special occasion.
The music: McKinnon’s 19-year-old daughter, Scout McKinnon, created a playlist for each of her 2023 gatherings. All 12 are linked in the book via QR codes. Abela, Moulinos and McKinnon queued them up while preparing the food and space for this event, and kept them going throughout the party. There was “lots of Lou Reed, some Elliot Smith and much less George Michael than I expected,” said Moulinos, who, like McKinnon, is a lifelong fan of the English singer. McKinnon kept the tunes at such a low volume that no one noticed the music until dessert, when the sound of sleigh bells broke through the conversation. They’d reached the December soundtrack.
The conversation: In addition to the food, Straub’s new book, which she’d just announced on Instagram, proved to be a perfect conversation starter. The novel takes place on a cruise ship filled with a ’90s boy band and 3,000 women who’ve idolized them for decades, and this prompted the guests to confess their childhood obsessions. McKinnon admitted to having had a George Michael shrine in her childhood bedroom, which her mother has kept intact.
An entertaining tip: Though McKinnon prefers to serve the main course family style and at the table, she likes to portion out the dessert and lay the plates elsewhere, so that guests have to get up and help themselves. “People always change where they sit when they come back to the table,” she said, which offers new opportunities for connection.
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