A warm room, a gathering of friends over dinner – perfect entertaining for chilly evenings. A dinner party can be seven courses that see the last one consumed after midnight, or three, all prepared ahead with only the serving left to do. Both can be very successful occasions.
The secret is to choose a menu that you can cope with; seven perfectly cooked courses can constitute a dud dinner party if the hosts are stressed and harried and mostly absent from the table. If three dishes is your limit, three dishes it is, and make them dishes you are familiar with (or have at least attempted already).
Set your date and compile your guest list. It is just as boring to be at a table of people talking shop as to be in a room of people who have little in common. Make sure your guests have not all known each other for ten years, and that they are not a group where nobody knows another person – mix your guest list, some old friends, some new faces and not all from the same walk in life.
Send out written invitations, or make phone calls a couple of weeks ahead of the event.
As much as possible, prepare ahead, but it is always welcoming to have the aroma of something cooking. Our menu from Karen Goodwin-Roberts has the chicken nibbles cooking right at the start.
As a general rule, 15 minutes is the absolute maximum of time you want to be absent from the table getting the next course ready.
In his book Entertaining With Style (see below) Paul Burrell has three rules:
- Relax and have fun.
- Resist anything too adventurous, extravagant or expensive.
- Keep it simple, because simplicity is often the most stylish principle.
As you are going to start cooking one day ahead of the dinner party, you should have your house ready for guests two days ahead of the party. Make sure any area that is going to be on show – the bathroom, the bedroom where guests put their coats, the dining room are tidy with nothing on show that you don’t want to be seen. Have guest towels ready, have the flowers done, and have what you want to wear sorted and laid out.
Time all the food preparation to be finished at least an hour before guests are due to arrive and use that hour to get yourself, dressed, made-up, and calm. Take Karen Goodwin-Roberts’s tip and have the table laid early on the day of the dinner party. Organisation is everything if you are not to get into a flap – a situation to be avoided at all costs. Even if the food is not ready to the last detail, have yourself and your house ready – the appearance of calm and organisation will help you to appear to be in command, which will inspire confidence, even if there are still things to be attended to.
Stack the dishes as each course is finished, but do not start washing up as you go along or before the guests have left – don’t give anyone the opportunity to help with the washing up.
Attending a dinner party
- RSVP to your invitation promptly, and when you do say if you are a vegetarian, lactose intolerant, have coeliac disease or any other condition that requires special attention.
- Do not arrive early or more than 10 minutes late.
- Do bring your hosts flowers, chocolates or wine by, but do not be affronted if they are not opened/displayed on the evening.
- Do say thank you afterwards – in a card, note or phone call.
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