In the age of MasterChef, The Great British Bake Off and Nigella Lawson, the reluctant home cook faces a very high bar. Throw social media showoffs into the mix and it’s enough to deter all but the most supremely confident from inviting friends over for a dinner party.
No one talks about the dark side of dinner parties: the disparate dietary requirements; the culinary carnage.
Where are the disaster pictures? The curdled mayonnaise, the little cheese souffle that couldn’t, the rocket birthday cake held together by invisible knitting needles that didn’t survive its maiden flight from kitchen bench to table?
As a (recovering) hospitality veteran of 25 years, I have seen it all. These are the seven deadly dinner party sins gleaned from half a lifetime of cooking for others.
1. Overconfidence
The most common cause of large-scale calamities is the very human failure to recognise one’s limitations. Unwarranted self-belief has no place in the kitchen.
The same goes for performing for an audience. The layout of your kitchen and dining area has major implications for the success of your dinner party. Open plan living ensures you won’t miss any of the gossip and your guests won’t miss any of the preparation. I hope that sets alarm bells ringing.
I would recommend a hermetically sealed preparation area with an electric fence to deter guests from straying in “for a chat”. Even after decades as a professional caterer I need to be left to my own devices in the kitchen. Socialising is for the dining table, not the work bench.
2. Inexperience
The second sin of the novice home entertainer: a lack of kitchen smarts. A dinner party menu is no place for firsts. For all except the most accomplished cooks, it should be a béarnaise-, lemon meringue- and spun toffee-free zone. Be assured your first attempt at béarnaise will curdle. Ditto your lemon curd. And yes – you will melt the fingerprint off at least one finger courtesy of the toffee (and it will be excruciating).
Further “do not attempts” include open flames in inexperienced hands and experimenting with gelatine for the first time.
Stick to what you know and only test out new recipes on your nearest and dearest.
3. Carelessness
Many a dinner party has failed either because of a lack of attention to detail, or a failure to plan. Timing is everything: time to prepare, to set the table and arrange the flowers. Pacing yourself is one of the main ways you can reduce pre-dinner stress.
Care must also be taken to research optimal cook times in advance. Undercooked meat can go back in the oven, but there is no remedy for overcooked meat. I know someone who manages to turn fillet of beef into old boot. Every time. It’s a rare talent. Invest in a meat thermometer and save yourself a whole lot of stress.
Lack of planning can lead to extended pre-dinner cocktail consumption and associated complications. A timetable can help: decide when you want to serve the main course and work backwards. Twenty years ago I wrote a booklet for my cooking-phobic mother titled How to Enjoy Your Own Dinner Party, with detailed timetables for every menu. It worked.
4. Overreach
When I was in the throes of my love affair with cooking I was aghast to learn that my best friend eschewed recipes with too many ingredients or too many steps. Spurned them! I saw it as some kind of moral failing on her part. A quarter century on, I have come around to her way of thinking.
If you’re more cooking to live than living to cook, choose recipes with fewer than 10 ingredients and half a dozen steps.
There was a time when the ingredient-laden moist fruit cake from the Gas and Fuel Cookbook featured heavily in my culinary repertoire. The ingredients included a wide selection of sherry-infused glaçé fruits, three kinds of nuts, flour, spices, sugar and eggs. It was inevitable that one day I would forget the eggs. It transformed the cake from show-stopper to door-stopper.
5. Vanity
Reading glasses are not always a flattering accessory when you have dressed to impress your guests. But a word of caution: reading a recipe or a label sans spectacles can have disastrous consequences, such as poisoning allergic guests.
Inadvertently substituting ingredients as a result of misreading a label or recipe is another no-no. Using Italian bay leaves in place of Indian bay leaves does not lead to culinary disaster, but adding a tablespoon of chilli instead of a teaspoon can detract from the enjoyment of all.
6. Overreliance
It is unwise to accept offers of help with the preparation and service of a dinner party in the belief they will actually materialise. In my catering days, a red flag went up every time a client responded to my estimate of staff numbers with an “Auntie Jean can help hand around the savouries” or a “Little Johnny can help behind the bar”. In my experience, Auntie Jean and her tray of devils on horseback don’t make it past the first group of guests, and Little Johnny ends up under the bar rather than behind it.
7. Lack of judgment
Choosing our friends is one thing. Compiling a successful guest list is another. I know people who have a laissez-faire approach towards such things. They have provided food, wine and a venue; the company can sort itself out. In my experience, such hosts are dinner party veterans who quite enjoy the occasional biffo between guests. I am not one of them. Playing referee or peacemaker is not my idea of a fun evening.
When putting together your guest list, ask yourself why you’re having the dinner party. Is it driven by the need to repay hospitality? The desire to introduce friends to each other or to reunite old friends? Or is it to catch up with people you love in the comfort of your own home? Your answer will largely dictate the composition, number of guests and complexity of the menu. If the objective is to impress, reconsider the wisdom of staging it at all.
Whatever your motives, work within your means and your capacity. The myth that we can be whatever we want to be – which is especially unhelpful in the dinner party context – has been largely superseded by a belief in the importance of working hard and exercising self-control.
Underestimate your abilities, and your chances of success will increase proportionately. Aim low. Practise often. Then one day you will earn the right to serve up fillet of sole with hollandaise sauce to 40 of your closest friends. Because sometimes, just sometimes, it’s OK to show off.
