What happens when the doorbell rings and suddenly you have people to feed? Maybe your husband is bringing colleagues home, relatives appear unexpectedly, or friends are coming over and you’d really like the evening to feel special. You start wondering what you can possibly put on the table, which bottle of wine to open, whether you have the right glasses, and how you’re going to pull everything together without spending hours in the kitchen.
This is exactly when Megan Recce wants you to call your food and wine big sister.
That’s how Megan describes the role she hopes to play for anyone who has questions about food and wine entertaining. No question is too basic, and there’s no requirement that you know the difference between Gamay and Sangiovese or own twelve different kinds of wine glasses. Her approach is practical, knowledgeable and, above all, reassuring: food and wine are supposed to bring people together, not make us anxious about whether we’re doing everything correctly.
That philosophy was at the heart of my recent Flavor of Italy podcast conversation with Megan. We talked about everything from opening a bottle of wine and choosing the right glass to assembling a last-minute cheese board, making a simple pasta impressive, setting a beautiful table, choosing wine for a sweltering summer evening, and why you should actually say yes when a dinner guest asks, “What can I bring?”
You Don’t Have to Be a Wine Expert
Megan may want wine to feel approachable, but she has serious credentials behind that easygoing attitude. She studied at Cornell University, where she began taking wine courses as a freshman through the university’s viticulture and enology program. She became a teaching assistant for Cornell’s well-known wine course and eventually won a scholarship trip that took her to California, France and Italy for eight weeks of visits with producers and winemakers.
But one of the most important things she learned about wine had nothing to do with memorizing appellations or identifying aromas. Her professor, Cheryl Stanley, told her class something Megan still believes strongly: you don’t need to be an expert in wine to enjoy it. You need to become an expert in what you like.
I love that idea because wine can become unnecessarily intimidating. You walk into a wine shop and find yourself surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bottles. Suddenly you’re supposed to know which grape, region, vintage and producer you want, and somehow a drink that’s meant to be pleasurable starts feeling like an exam.
Megan’s advice is to begin with what you enjoy and use that as a jumping-off point. Wine pairing can give you useful guidelines, but those guidelines aren’t rules. That’s very much how I approach the wine pairings in my own recipes. A pairing can point you toward a grape, style or region that works beautifully with a dish, but nobody is going to come to your table and tell you that you’ve chosen the “wrong” bottle.
Lambrusco and S’mores? Why Not? Food and Wine Entertaining also includes camping!
Perhaps my favorite example of Megan’s approach is one of her wine pairings: Lambrusco with s’mores.
Yes, Lambrusco, the sparkling red wine from Emilia-Romagna, paired with that quintessentially American combination of toasted marshmallow, chocolate and graham crackers around a campfire.
It works for Megan precisely because it’s fun. There’s something playful about bringing together an Italian sparkling red with an American childhood dessert, and that’s the point. Wine pairing doesn’t always have to be solemn or impressive. Sometimes the setting and the people you’re sharing it with matter every bit as much as the technical pairing.
That sense of permission runs throughout Megan’s approach to food and wine entertaining. Drink what you like. Try something unexpected. If you enjoy a wine with an ice cube in it on a hot day, don’t worry about whether someone else thinks you should be drinking it differently. Pleasure matters.
The Best Wine Opener May Also Be the Simplest
One of Megan’s first Instagram videos took off almost immediately, reaching around 50,000 views. The subject wasn’t an obscure wine region or an expensive bottle. It was something far more useful: how to use a basic wine opener.
I’ve owned my share of elaborate wine-opening contraptions over the years, and many of them eventually break or become more trouble than they’re worth. Megan agrees that you don’t need anything fancy. Her favorite is the inexpensive double-hinged waiter’s wine key, and she likes them so much that she buys them in packs and keeps them in her bags.
The second hinge gives you extra leverage and helps pull the cork straight out rather than at an angle. Her other advice is wonderfully simple: slow down. Put the point of the corkscrew in the center of the cork, guide it carefully, and don’t treat opening a bottle as a race.
There’s also no shame in not knowing how to do it. That may sound obvious, but it’s part of Megan’s larger message. Nobody was born knowing how to open a bottle properly, choose a wine or arrange a cheese board. You learn by doing it.
Do You Really Need All Those Wine Glasses for your Food and Wine Entertaining?
Wine glasses are another area where it’s easy to become overwhelmed. There are glasses supposedly designed for different grape varieties, others for red or white wine, champagne flutes, coupes and an endless selection of shapes and sizes.
Megan owns more than 50 wine glasses, but she says you really only need about six good all-purpose glasses.
She particularly likes a tulip-shaped glass with a reasonably generous bowl and a narrower opening. The wider bowl gives the wine room for its aromatic compounds to develop as you swirl, while the tapered top helps concentrate those aromas toward your nose. She even prefers this kind of glass for sparkling wine rather than the traditional narrow champagne flute.
And if you’re entertaining a large group, this is probably not the moment to bring out your most precious crystal. Once the evening becomes lively and people are passing dishes and bottles around the table, you want everyone enjoying themselves rather than worrying about breaking a wine glass.
Have a question or want to leave your own tips and recommendations? Click here to leave a comment:
Food and Wine Entertaining When Guests Arrive Unexpectedly
Now we get to the question that inspired the whole food and wine big sister idea: what do you do when you suddenly have people coming over and haven’t planned anything?
Megan’s first answer is a cheese and charcuterie platter. The secret isn’t necessarily buying expensive ingredients. It’s taking a little extra care with the presentation. Remove the salami from its package and fold the individual slices. Arrange the prosciutto rather than dropping it onto a plate. Take hummus out of its plastic container, spoon it into a pretty bowl and surround it with crackers. Those few extra minutes can make supermarket ingredients look as though you planned the whole thing hours ago.
For dinner, Megan loves pasta. You might make a long-simmered Bolognese or braise a piece of meat and serve it with pasta, allowing one more expensive ingredient to make an otherwise economical meal feel special. For vegetarians, mushrooms can provide the same depth and richness. The point isn’t complexity. It’s taking care with a few ingredients and making something comforting and welcoming.
That immediately resonated with me because it’s so close to the way I cook. I often open the refrigerator, see what’s there and build a meal from it. Not long before our conversation I’d made an extraordinarily simple pasta for friends using sage from the garden, butter, Gorgonzola and cream. Toss it with spaghetti, put it into a beautiful serving dish, and you have something that feels special without having spent the day preparing it.
Less really can be more. Each ingredient should have a reason for being there, and good food doesn’t have to be complicated to impress people.
Your Pantry and Freezer Are Part of the Plan
Spontaneous entertaining becomes much easier when you have a few things ready to go. I talked with Megan about making a large batch of gnocchi rather than just enough for one dinner. Freeze the extras on a tray, transfer them to a bag once they’re frozen, and suddenly you have the beginning of another meal waiting for you.
Megan always keeps bread in her freezer for much the same reason. Pull it out, slice and toast it, and you have crostini ready for almost anything. She remembered a camping meal when her uncle topped toasted bread with braised short rib and Parmigiano Reggiano. Three ingredients, and you have something delicious.
This is where good food and wine entertaining has less to do with elaborate planning than with making life easier for yourself. A useful pantry, a few things tucked into the freezer, cheese in the refrigerator and a bottle or two of wine you genuinely enjoy can take much of the anxiety out of an unexpected gathering.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask the Person in the Wine Shop
If you’re standing in front of a wall of wine and have absolutely no idea what to choose, Megan has another wonderfully uncomplicated suggestion: ask.
The people who work in a good wine shop taste the wines, know their inventory and can often point you toward bottles you’d never discover on your own. Tell them what you’re cooking, what kinds of wines you generally enjoy and what you’d like to spend. Those are useful pieces of information, and you don’t need a sophisticated wine vocabulary to provide them.
I’ve found the same thing when I travel in the United States. Rather than searching endlessly for a particular Italian wine I already know, I’ll look at what’s local, talk to someone who knows the wines and try something new. It has led me to some wonderful discoveries.
There’s also that useful old wine-pairing idea that what grows together often goes together. If you’re cooking a dish associated with a particular region, look at the wines from that same place. It isn’t an inflexible rule, but it’s a very good place to begin.
What Should You Drink When It’s Really Hot?
Our conversation took place in the middle of an intensely hot Italian summer, when temperatures were hovering around 100°F and the thought of opening a heavy red wine wasn’t particularly appealing.
Megan suggested Portugal’s Vinho Verde as a wonderful summer option: refreshing, often lower in alcohol and sometimes slightly effervescent. For people who still want red wine, she recommends experimenting with lighter-bodied reds served with a slight chill. Gamay and Pinot Noir are possibilities, along with many lighter Italian reds. The idea isn’t to serve them refrigerator-cold but to cool them enough to temper the sensation of alcohol while preserving their fruit character.
And what about wine for camping? Megan’s answer is delightfully consistent with everything else she believes: almost any wine can be a camping wine if it’s a wine you enjoy. Perhaps don’t take the precious reserve bottle you’ve been saving for ten years on a backpacking trip, but there’s no reason your everyday favorite can’t come along. A wine with smoky or savory characteristics might be particularly fun around a fire and alongside grilled food.
Let the Food Decorate the Table
I also asked Megan about making a table look beautiful, especially when you haven’t had days to plan it. Her approach is refreshingly unfussy.
She prefers table runners to full tablecloths because they draw the eye toward the center, but her more important point is that the food itself can be the decoration. Instead of spending money on elaborate flowers, chargers and centerpieces, put beautiful serving dishes filled with food on the table and let them become the centerpiece.
There’s a social benefit as well. When the food is on the table, people pass dishes to one another. They ask for another helping. Someone who wasn’t sure about trying something sees everybody else enjoying it and decides to take a little. The table becomes interactive.
We talked about the pool and paella party I was planning for Ferragosto as a perfect example. A huge paella pan filled with saffron-colored rice, seafood and chicken doesn’t need much decoration around it. The food is spectacular enough on its own, and part of the pleasure is having people gather around and participate in making it.
When Someone Asks What They Can Bring, Tell Them
This may be one of Megan’s simplest and most useful entertaining tips.
When someone says, “What can I bring?” don’t automatically answer, “Nothing! Just bring yourself.”
Give them something to bring.
Ask for dessert. Ask them to bring an appetizer, their favorite bottle of wine or a recipe they’ve been wanting to try. Most people genuinely want to contribute, and letting them do so makes the gathering more communal. It also gives that guest a moment of pleasure when everyone tastes the dessert or opens the wine they brought.
That idea gets to the heart of both Megan’s philosophy and something I love about Italian entertaining. Having people around your table doesn’t have to be a performance in which the host does absolutely everything while the guests sit back and admire the results. Cooking, pouring wine, passing dishes and contributing something to the meal can all be part of the pleasure.
Food and Wine Entertaining Is Really About Letting People In
Perhaps the most important thing Megan said during our conversation had very little to do with wine.
She wants people to stop being afraid of inviting others into their homes. Opening your home can feel vulnerable because people see how you actually live, including the eclectic things on your shelves and all the imperfections that make your home yours. But that’s also what makes entertaining at home more intimate than simply meeting somewhere else. Inviting someone into your home is, in a small way, inviting that person into your life.
That’s why food and wine entertaining doesn’t have to mean a perfectly styled table, an expensive bottle or a complicated menu. A bowl of pasta can be enough. So can a cheese board assembled at the last minute, a loaf of bread pulled from the freezer or a bottle of Lambrusco opened beside a campfire.
The important part is that you opened the door.
And if you’re standing in the kitchen five minutes before everyone arrives wondering what on earth to serve, Megan Recce would like you to remember that you now have a food and wine big sister. She welcomes questions about food, menus, wine and entertaining, and, as she told me, there’s no bad question.
In this week’s Flavor of Italy podcast episode, Megan and I talk about all of this and much more: approachable wine, easy entertaining, spontaneous meals, summer bottles, beautiful tables and the pleasure of bringing people together around food. Because ultimately, the best food and wine entertaining isn’t about impressing people.
It’s about making them feel welcome.
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