Dinner and a Movie Party: The Holdovers
A post-Christmas Christmas feast.
Just before the new year, I hosted a Dinner and a Movie party, where I’m gathering friends to enjoy a good meal and watch some of the most acclaimed movies of 2023. This piece will get a bit into the weeds of the logistics, which is an underreported aspect of throwing a good dinner party. Hey, maybe it’ll be an inspiration to have your own Holdovers feast!
I’ve got at least a few more of these planned in the lead up to my annual Oscars dinner party, for which brainstorming has already begun…
With all the trimmings
The Holdovers, a new Christmas classic in my eyes, isn’t really a “food movie.” While many scenes feature people eating, as Elissa Suh points out in her own newsletter, they mainly serve as “a backdrop that accentuates the characters' isolation (i.e. sad cafeteria meals)... [that feels] more like conversation-prioritizing coverage.” It’s true that many screenplays, including the one for this movie, gather people around a dinner table simply as a pretext to move the story forward. But the food that we do see lends itself easily to hosting a themed dinner, especially if the dinner is held during that liminal time window between Christmas and New Year’s. I was fairly confident that this movie would work well in a group setting; it’s pretty easy for The Holdovers to win you over, thanks to its throwback nature that, somewhat paradoxically, makes it feel timeless.
In the movie, Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who’s all but pencilled in for an Oscar), the school’s head cook, makes a Christmas dinner for Paul (Paul Giamatti) and Angus (newcomer Dominic Sessa), a professor and student who end up the last men standing at their Massachusetts boarding school during the winter break. It’s a traditional Christmas meal that Angus has never had before: “family style, out of the oven, all the trimmings.” His mom would usually order takeout from Delmonico’s. In a brief shot, we can see a glazed ham, mashed potatoes, string beans, dinner rolls. It’s a pretty obvious inspiration for a menu, but I’d never put together such a feast before, and it fits in with the holiday season. It didn’t hurt that, since I was doing this after Christmas, hams would be steeply discounted at the supermarket. I put a menu together, sent out Partiful invites, did a bunch of shopping, and then spent the entirety of my Saturday preparing for a post-Christmas Christmas dinner.
This all remains entre nous
I’m terrible at taking pictures of things while I host so these are all cell phone pics from myself and a friend who sent me her photos… I need a dedicated party photographer.
The scent of mulled wine enticed my guests as they trickled in for an apéritif hour. Funnily enough, one of my friends brought a bottle of the same wine that I was using in the mulled wine, so interested parties were able to try a Côtes du Rhône two ways, épicé et sans épice. To ease everyone into the time period of The Holdovers, I put together a pre-show compilation of movie trailers, musical performances, and news footage from December 1970. I popped some popcorn, dusted it with Old Bay, and got everyone settled in for the feature presentation. During the movie, I was passing around drinks at opportune moments: pouring out some Miller High Life when the Champagne of Beers is discussed, popping champagne during a New Year’s scene.
After the movie was over and a couple people had dried their tears, we converted the living room into a dining room (thank heavens for folding tables and folding chairs) and I pulled everything out of the oven and set up the spread. As usually happens when I host, I sort of floated over everyone as I did some cleaning and scarfed down my plate. No one talked about the film too much, besides everyone saying they really loved or liked it. My friends, who generally didn’t know most of the other attendees at the beginning of the night, settled into various discussions: about New Year’s plans, how to prep for a marathon, reminiscences about how once upon a time it would snow in New York at the end of December and wouldn’t it be nice if it happened again. Everything I made turned out very well; it was peak comfort food. But like the food scenes of this movie, this dinner was really just a conduit for conversation. It was a microcosm of The Holdovers: people from different walks of life, brought together by circumstance (me, I’m the circumstance), connecting with each other over a good dinner.
The Menu
Apéritif Hour
Mulled wine with Côtes du Rhône "Rive Droite, Rive Gauche" 2021
infused with spices based off of the New York Times recipe and Astor Wines’ staff notes for the wine
La Soif, Kientzler 2021 (white wine)
For the popcorn, I used a bag of Rancho Gordo’s Crimson Popping Corn. I had never actually made popcorn from kernels before, so I got a little bit of guidance from more experienced friends. After popping, I tossed it in melted butter and Old Bay. There were still a lot of unpopped kernels; I’m pretty sure I overcrowded the pan.
Movie Drinks
This was easy because two of the main characters in this movie are lowkey alcoholics. There’s a bar scene where the Champagne of Beers is briefly discussed1. Paul’s drink of choice is bourbon, and we distinctly see bottles of Jim Bean and Old Forester. Although Jim Bean is viewed as bargain bourbon these days, back in the seventies it would have been quite good! The liquor store I went to didn’t stock Old Forester, and I wanted to get something better than Jim Bean, so I got a bottle of single barrel bourbon from Fort Hamilton, a Brooklyn-based distillery that I’m a big fan of. During the New Year’s scene, I poured some really good champagne, though I was too slow to pop the bottle in sync with Da’Vine Joy Randolph.
Early in the movie, the school’s headmaster shows off a bottle of Remy Martin, Louis XIII, a generous “Christmas gift from the Board of Trustees.” Today, that can cost you nearly $4,400, so I was… not going to buy that for this party.
Dinner
Maple-Glazed City Ham with all the trimmings:
Oyster mushroom & truffle stuffing (email me if you want the recipe, it’s terrific)
Roasted String Beans & Scallions with pine nut vinaigrette (from Six Seasons. Email me for the recipe.)
My sourdough!
Plus wine:
When I hosted similar nights earlier in the year, for Cocaine Bear and the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, it was easiest if I would cook first, have everyone eat and drink, then settle in to watch the film. It worked well for those two movies, since a considerable amount of inebriation enhanced the experience. And, as I hadn’t actually seen either movie before hosting a themed dinner for them, the menus were only tangentially related. For Cocaine Bear my logic was “what do bears like to eat?” and I dusted some brownies with powdered sugar. For Mario I made Italian-American classics (with homemade Dino Nugget Chicken Parm, thanks to a tip from a co-worker that dinosaurs were key to the plot).
But The Holdovers is actually a good movie, and the ideas I had for the dinner menu would make more sense after having seen it. Fortunately, it turned out that none of the dishes at that Christmas dinner scene required much to be done à la minute. The hardest part was coordinating oven timinigs, as the ham sits in the oven for a few hours at a low heat. Mashed potatoes were easily made ahead of time and reheated. Roasted vegetables had to happen right before service, but being organized with timings kept that from being a problem. Bread, I’d bake in the morning. To round out the menu, and accommodate a vegetarian guest, I added a mushroom-truffle stuffing that I could bake and then keep warm for a couple hours. The only dish that absolutely had to be made before serving it was dessert, which, of course, can be made as people were winding down on the savory dishes.
Dessert
No Holdovers dinner would have been complete without ending it with cherries jubilee (if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know). Originated by Auguste Escoffier, you make a sauce with the syrup from a jar of sour cherries, orange juice, and sugar. After tossing in the sour cherries and cooking off some of the liquid, you dunk in some liquor and light it on fire! This was my first time flambéeing something, which was a little worrying but also fun. No one’s eyebrows were singed in the making of this dessert.
After the cherries are finished cooking, it’s poured on some vanilla ice cream and ladyfingers, but I forgot to add the ladyfingers. There was a lot of uneaten ice cream at the end of the night, so I ended up slurping down a lot of semi-melted cherry-vanilla ice cream mixture. Not that I’m complaining!
My Checklist
If anyone’s curious, this is the planning list that I wrote for the dinner party. We ended up starting the movie roughly twenty minutes after the scheduled time.
Dinner timings:
Ham
Warm: OVEN 250, 2.5 hours/120F in the center
Glaze: OVEN 400, glaze 15 minutes
Rest: 15 mins
Stuffing
Make ahead: mushroom puree
Day of: Toast brioche, saute mushrooms/veggies
Bake: OVEN 350, 25-30 minutes
Bread rolls
Dough in mixer 6 mins
Ferment 1-2 hours
Shape, proof 1 hour
Bake: OVEN 350 20-22 minutes
Checklist:
Make ahead
Stuffing: Mushroom puree
Pine nut vinaigrette (substitute the fish sauce w soy sauce and maggi)
Day of
Mix bread rolls (2-3 hours of ferment/proofing)
Bake bread rolls (OVEN 350 20-22 mins)
Toast brioche (OVEN 400 15 mins)
Stuffing: make mushrooms/veggies mix
Make pommes purees (cover with plastic and lid, reheat with more cream when it’s time)
Ham glaze
Cherries jubilee: cherry syrup
String beans prep
4 PM: Mulled wine (stovetop, roughly one hour)
4-4:30 PM: bake stuffing OVEN 350
4:30 PM: ham in oven OVEN 250
5 PM: Aperitif hour
Melt butter, Pop popcorn, add Old Bay?
5:45 PM or so: start Movie (2h15m)
715 PM: glaze ham when reaches 120F. OVEN 400
7:30 PM: ham out of oven. Veggies in OVEN 425.
8 PM: Veggies out of oven.
8 PM or so: movie ends. Dinner.
Stuffing and ham go in oven to rewarm.
Bread goes in warming tray.
Mashed potatoes reheat on stovetop.
Dessert: rewarm syrup on medium low. Add cherries, bring to boil. Flambe!
Bonus KitKat
I wanted to get bottles of Miller High Life for the vintage vibes, but I checked like eight different places and they only had cans. I wound up getting tallboys at 7/11 out of desperation. If anyone knows where I can reliably get bottled High Life in Brooklyn, drop me a line.