Photographer and stylist Karen Mordechai first made her splash in the culinary world as the host of Sunday Suppers, a Brooklyn-based community dinner series that soon became global. It spawned a blog and a cookbook of the same name. And over the years, Mordechai found herself fussing less about small details—and instead, focusing on the beauty in connection. “As both a person and a host, I learned to let go quite a bit,” Mordechai says. “If you looked back to some of the earlier dinners, they were probably much more produced, much more detailed, very perfectionist.”

Here, Mordechai shares an unfussy yet impressive menu that relies on one important centerpiece: great olive oil. You can use what you have on hand, but she cooks with hand-harvested organic EVOO from a small family farm in Sicily. It’s the first product her brand Le Marké perfected in late 2022—the reusable glass bottles are beautiful enough to admire on a dinner table, but what we really love are the refillable pouches, which are recyclable and designed for easy decanting.