JANUARY

Supper Club News

 
Buon anno nuovo, friends!

If you’re a new subscriber, read about us and what TXA TXA CLUB (like “cha cha”) is all about.

There’s a lot of pressure on what to say for a New Year’s newsletter. To deliver some epiphanic moment, or a profound and moving reflection on what we’ve gleaned from the year prior. I could reflect maybe on how for many of us, 2021 was a year full of surprises, unimaginable hurdles and momentous milestones whose significance will continue to be realized as we keep moving forward through the ongoing wake of the pandemic.

Or more personally, what it takes to jumpstart a Supper Club in that wake — how to navigate not only the challenges and rewards of collaboration, or the stakes of compromise, but also the gratifying sense of pride at creating a platform to express our creative freedoms through food and hospitality, or even rehearse the mundanities of hours spent over spreadsheets, grocery store car rides, or receipt tallying.

But somehow I can’t help but feel that the year, for many, failed to bring that great revelation, rebirth, or turning point of sublimity we kept so tightly crossfingered for.

And so I guess I’ll say this instead:

I remember once sitting caked in clay in a dank and musty ceramics studio that was built into a 16th century convent in Italy, sitting there hunched over the potter’s wheel, frustrated and defeated with every mound of clay I’d throw. Defeated because despite how well I’d pull the beginnings of a vessel from that mix of water and dirt, every time it was almost there, the whole thing would suddenly wobble off the wheel like a deflated basketball. I’d try so hard to force that lump back into shape, and pull it up through some centrifugal miracle into something recognizable. A bowl, a cup, a vahz.

Let go lightly, someone kindly instructed. (Was it Sunku? Chris? Mojo? I can’t remember.) 

To let go lightly. To let the clay and the momentum of the wheel do the work that I was so stubbornly trying to force. 

During a time of such uncertainty yet desiring to move boldly forward into the new year, I keep thinking about this—letting go lightly—and rather than attempting to force a diamond to emerge from the year behind us, to enter 2022 with grace, and with kindness, and with hope.

December brought its fair share of scaries. As we all shuttered with the spike of Omicron, many curbed their holiday plans of travel and festivities to instead take precautionary measures to keep themselves and their loved ones safe and healthy.

We sadly but safely canceled our NYE dinner, most folks moving into January slots (which are quickly filling up, btw). But we did, however, have a cautious Tuesday dinner, with everyone attending testing negative before arrival. It was a smaller crowd of 11, remarkably all first-time guests, 10 of whom were strangers before setting foot in our home. 

We served a cheeky play on a holiday cheese ball—goat cheese whipped with a version of the cranberry relish my mother makes every year; mussel toast—mussels en escabeche with persimmon, pickled fresno aioli, pink peppercorn, and bitter greens (RECIPE BELOW); roasted brussels sprouts soup with green goddess, green grape, anchovy, and sesame seed. We prepared a fresh pasta dish, for which I initially wanted to do a riff on carbonara. What we ended up with was an egg yolk raviolo with lavender ricotta, dehydrated scallop chips, salmon roe, and a Cambodian black pepper gastrique. Next was a ras el hanout-roasted duck tagine with black mission figs, meyer lemon, cerignola olives, and hungarian wax peppers, topped with a cooling dollop of seasoned yogurt and a dukkah of pistachio, dried orange peel coriander, and cumin. And finally, some golden and almost gravity-defying profiteroles with butternut squash pastry cream, thai chili-chocolate ganache, and crushed hazelnuts that would’ve made Ina Garten blush. 

I’m not entirely sure how or why we landed on this menu to close out the year, but I keep thinking the egg in the center of the raviolo (as well as the caviar) has something to do with it. Perhaps because, most simply, the egg is a representation of coming into being-ness. The egg as a garden. An inception. A space of possibility. 

I once reviewed a book that had a section called “zerogarden.” I wrote that it’s hard not to think of a Zerogarden as the site of the post-postlapsarian, where, after the Fall of Man brought about a new kind of knowledge, there was the inevitable collapse of language, which brought about a new kind of knowing. A total ontological shift. Is it presumptuous to take literally the zero as 0, and this then to mean nothingness? Or perhaps the zero (0) could be a symbol for unity, for wholeness, for circularity, with no discernable beginning or end. And the garden? Jardin, from the Old French for enclosure: concealed, protected, yet a jurisdiction for growth, renewal, arrival, and, like a New Year, an opening?

And here we are, now, caught in that in-between of meaning, of healing, of rebirth. Caught in what seems like a perpetual grey area, waiting to be reborn. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. It’s a tendency I have.

Within the grey area is art, I have scribbled in my notebook from a few years back. And right next two it, presumably its source: Jurassic World. Lol. 

I just looked it up. The line is delivered by Dr. Henry Wu. But what I find even more interesting is the line that precedes it: You have to understand, this is all uncharted territory. A wolf, genetically, is barely distinguishable from a bulldog, but within that grey area…is art. 

That grey area, the in-between, the gap between t/here. It is January, named for Janus, after all, the god of doorways, most commonly depicted as having two faces, one in the direction of the past, the other toward the future. 

There is still much territory to be charted indeed, even as we move into the new year. As humans, as citizens, and for Txa Txa Club, as we continue to grow and evolve in our efforts to reframe the meaning of hospitality in these uncertain times. But there is one thing for certain, and that’s that we’re extremely grateful and humbled by what all we’ve been able to share in the last six months, none of which would’ve been possible without you and your trust and support.

So, graciously, we thank you.

dsp + liz

Up Next:

We’re moving forward cautiously and optimistically regarding the uptick in COVID cases, as we ourselves are taking care to keep our social distance, don our KN-95s, and test regularly throughout the coming weeks. With that said, we will still plan on January Supper Club dinners the last week of the month, once again asking all who are planning to attend to bring your vax cards and to test within a day prior to joining us for dinner. 

We’ll be dedicating this month’s dinners to celebrating one of winter’s finest offerings: citrus. With some artistic inspiration from some of our favorite authors and thinkers, we will explore this fruit’s sweet flesh, tart rind, and bitter mesocarp in all its glory. 

The menu will feature dishes like a savory steamed custard with yuzu dashi and charred pomelo, braised cabbage stuffed with Thai Isan-style sour sausage with orange lentils, meyer lemon and sunflower seeds, and a ricotta salata ice cream punctuated by the super fragrant Buddha’s Hand citron.

And get this: for February Supper Club, we’ll be doing an entirely VEGAN dinner. So keep an eye on Instagram for the menu post!

txa txa shop

some more —>