Fashionably early must be the new fashionably late.
Designer Mark Fast, his creative director Amanda May and publicist Tatiana Read are all 30 minutes early tonight.
I might recognize Fast from this month's issues of Vogue, Elle, Glamour, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar or i-D, if I read those magazines. He and his knitwear designs have been upper-case "In" since a September runway show, when Fast squeezed some size 12 models into his very tight dresses.
The Star's fashion writer Derick Chetty comes 20 minutes late. Alexandra Palmer, curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, seems positively Victorian by arriving on time.
Fortunately, I've learned a little lesson from the boy scouts (not the actual Boy Scouts, the Bruce Willis movie). Be prepared.
At T-minus-30, I am in position, relaxing with a drink, doing anything but cooking.
Sweet potato gnocchi, cut into wee half-inch squares, rest snugly in the freezer. A pot of veal cheek ragù bubbles away on the stovetop. Stuffed zucchinis, caponata, brisket, jus and chestnuts line the kitchen counter like soldiers standing at attention.
Fast, though he has lived in London for eight years, is billed as a farm boy from Winnipeg who likes Italian food. May is eight months pregnant and can't have shellfish, rare/raw meats, sprouts or unpasteurized cheeses.
So the hearty ragù feels like a good match. The cheeks are what my butcher sold me when I asked him for an inexpensive cut. I've never cooked cheeks before, but I find the small pouches of protein and collagen behave properly. Popped into a pot of basic tomato sauce, they eventually braise away, the filaments of meat sliding off each other.
It has been forever since I've made gnocchi. Several recipes in old notebooks contradict each other with volumes and weights. But gnocchi are like a bicycle. After a nervous few minutes of kneading dough that felt too wet, I had produced dumplings that were respectable, if not exemplary.
With everyone and everything in place, I plant myself at the stove. The Christmas tree is giving off warmth, imagined or not.
Fast, who designs with wool, angora and Lycra, is intrigued by my crude sketches for dinner. I usually draw the dishes in advance. It helps to visualize how they will be plated and it keeps things in order during a long meal. It's during the drawing process that you notice things like too many courses served in pools of sauce.
Read has cheekily brought a bottle of 2001 Il Borro, made by luxury shoe maestros Ferragamo. It's the only fashion reference I get all night.
I have to rewind the group several times as they discuss fashion issues such as the shifting ground of intellectual-property ownership. One thing I don't get is the desirability of who is to be seen in your clothes. As they chat about dresses requested for a Rihanna photo shoot, I ask who they would not loan clothing to. Lady Gaga and Lily Allen, say Fast and May. But Brtiney Spears? No problem.
Fast projects two personas simultaneously. One runs a company and isn't shy with his opinions. He's a world traveller with a masters degree from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design. The other is a homesick kid from the Prairies who still doesn't feel comfortable in London.
In his quiet tone, he talks about yearning for a dachshund, suggesting that the dog might give him a sense of stability. Talking one-on-one, he's very comfortable. Addressing the group, voicing his opinions, his tempo slows, a little less certain or perhaps just shy.
The cattiest thing I can say about him is that he doesn't finish his vegetables.
He does, however, help himself to plenty of the veal cheek ragù. That's a benefit of blueprinting the meal on paper first.
Usually, I serve composed plates. To break it up visually, I put the gnocchi, buttered, in little bowls, placing a larger bowl of ragù in the table's centre. The activity of guests reaching to ladle more ragù jogs the meal's pace.
Midway through cooking the third course, while warming up the brisket in the jus with chestnuts, I realize my fly is undone.
Maybe that will be in fashion next season. Probably not.
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