Tuesday night between friends
Meet four food-lovers who have been cooking together once a week for two years
They call it “Tuesday dinner” or sometimes simply “Tuesday” (as in “What do we need to pick up for Tuesday?”).
It’s the one night of the week that Natisha Patel, Anthony Hello, Grant Dyer and Mark Chopping reserve to make dinner together.
The four friends might chat in advance to work out a menu that “matches.” Or they might just spring something on the group.
Tonight, Patel is going all out to make a Gordon Ramsay beef Wellington and a Martha Stewart chocolate soufflé. Dyer will do a simple salad and stuffed mushroom caps. Chopping — who doesn’t “really cook” — is contributing corn bread muffins and home fries. And Hello cheated and made brussels sprout slaw with mustard dressing and maple-glazed pecans at home. Ditto with his mom Marsha’s famous Mars Bar Squares.
It’s an ambitious menu for a work night. But it’s not atypical for these food-loving friends who’ve been cooking together on Tuesdays for almost two years. “We’ll be having a multi-phased dinner tonight,” promises Hello.
The foursome has gathered at Dyer and Chopping’s house near Danforth and Warden Aves. in Scarborough.
Dyer, 28, is human resources manager for an Internet provider in Liberty Village. Chopping, also 28, is a “domestic executive.” They fled the high-priced downtown core to renovate this 1950s bungalow.
Patel, 32, is self-employed and works in marketing. Hello, 31, works in advertising. They both live downtown.
One quirk about this quartet is that they all worked at Mcdonald’s as teenagers growing up in different cities. Dyer and Hello each logged four years, Patel three years, and Chopping one week.
“It was my second high school,” reminisces Dyer.
“Time to lean, time to clean,” he adds, as he compulsively cleans as he cooks.
Apparently Mcdonald’s Corp. founder Ray Kroc famously told employees “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean,” and the mantra was dutifully relayed through the chain.
While the friends prep at the kitchen island, talk meanders from how often everyone runs their dishwashers, to Hello’s love of quinoa and Dyer’s love of Dairy Queen, to their recent trips to Las Vegas and New Orleans.
Dyer goes to the basement and brings up a huge bag of wild Alaskan salmon pieces for Hello.
“We paid $90 for this and this is half,” he says. He buys frozen, bulk meat and fish through group-buying websites but otherwise shops at Loblaws and doesn’t keep track of his food budget.
“We don’t eat out much so it can’t be that much,” Dyer muses, admitting he has a weakness for kitchen appliances. An Omega juicer, bread maker, toaster oven, coffee maker and T-fal Actifry are in heavy rotation. Patel brings things to juice every Tuesday.
She’s the one who offered her friends up for this What’s for Dinner series exploring how ordinary people (who don’t work in the food industry) really eat on weeknights.
“This night has bonded us beyond belief,” Patel wrote. “Each and every one of us truly relies on this night 1x a week for a regular dose of life-` relief!’ ” They used to gather on Tuesdays to watch Lost. After the TV series ended in May 2010 they decided to make meals together and then watch TV.
Tonight’s cooking begins at 7 p.m. At 8 p.m. the mushrooms are ready and quickly devoured. “Oh my God, those are so good,” says Hello. Dyer and Chopping bring out their four dogs — Piper, Ben, Kyra and Abner — for introductions. Dyer balances a mushroom on Piper’s nose. “Stay. Stay. Stay. Don’t let me down Piper,” he tells the golden retriever. “Ready. Don’t cheat. Stay. Stay. Stay. One. Two. Go!” With a flick of the head, Piper magically moves the mushroom to his mouth. At 9 p.m., the Beef Wellington (beef tenderloin wrapped with prosciutto and puff pastry) is finally ready. The friends fill their plates and decamp to the TV room. “By now we’ve talked about everything we want to talk about and now we watch TV,” says Chopping. “I love that we are gorging while watching The Biggest Loser,” quips Hello of the show where overweight contestants vie to lose the most weight. By the end of the night, they expect to be playing Nintendo and yelling at each other. Patel is the first to rave about tonight’s meal, saying: “Awesome guys.” She ditches her plan to make chocolate soufflés. “That’s another problem. We con- stantly make too many things.” Nobody complains about the soufflé cancellation.
As Patel observed in her email: “None of us are professional chefs, just self-taught, but we produce fantastic food and through the process we teach each other a lot about techniques and produce, but most important we teach each other to be a family.” What’s for Dinner is a monthly series exploring what ordinary people really eat on a weeknight. This is the 17th instalment. jbain@thestar.ca www.twitter.com/thesaucylady