A summer supper at East Hampton

Franey has a house near the water and cooks there the way he cooks on the page: fast, clean, and without fuss. Craig Claiborne, his old collaborator, has come out from the city with a case of wine, and Laurie Colwin, who writes about home cooking with an entirely different temperament, has come because she wants to see him work.

The sole meunière takes minutes, the fried chicken and scalloped potatoes are pure Colwin, and the chocolate cake is hers too. Franey and Claiborne fall into the shorthand of twenty years of column-writing; Colwin watches and takes notes, more interested in the ordinary parts of the evening than the professional ones. The table stays long after the plates are cleared.