You know the whole “Things I want to do before xxxx” bucket list? Well one of my desires is to (wait for it…) throw a fancy dinner party. I know, I know, I feel equal parts shallow and boring that one of my lifelong passions is to be the hostess with the most-est rather than say climb Kilimanjaro, but I can’t help it – I think it would be fun. And excellent experience cooking-wise whilst potentially improving my um… time management skills?
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Seriously though, James loves eating food, I enjoy making new dishes and, what with this whole “we never spend enough time together” conundrum we are currently facing, I thought this is something we could plan and work on as a twosome. It’s not that I haven’t ever had friends over for dinner before, I have, plenty of times. It’s just I’ve never prepared any more than two courses and it’s always been very casual and, in typical O’Shea fashion, always rather last minute and disorganised.
When I say I want to throw a fancy dinner party I mean cocktails upon arrival, at least three courses, some kind of pretty floral centrepiece arrangements and definitely sexy table linen. I have some French place mats and napkins that I have never really put to good use. I also invested in some lovely champagne flutes in the Laura Ashley sale that I want to fill with something that involves bubbles. (As I write this I realise just how excited I am about glassware, what the hell happened to me?!).
The point of this feature is actually to ask your advice as, apart from the aforementioned new purchases that will make my affair aesthetically pleasing from a pre-dinner perspective, everything else is all a bit un-confirmed. What with my new “clean eating” regime I need to choose a menu that is not only relatively simple to make and universally enjoyed, but all the dishes need to be dairy and gluten free with no refined sugar. Oh and I don’t like fish. And I’m allergic to coriander.
I’m planning on starting small and hosting an affair for just three couples (including James and I) and, as our kitchen is essentially our dining room we are hoping to host the party outside. We’ll have to invest in a small cover thingy for the patio area as obviously it could potentially rain.
As per Miranda’s recent Healthy Haul post my Hemsley and Hemsley The Art Of Eating Well
My list of advice requirements is in the grey box to the right, please feel free to answer as many questions as you have time for – it would be much appreciated!
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{The Perfect Hostess?}
- Have you ever hosted a dinner party before? Did you enjoy it?
- How much time did you leave between courses?
- Did you prep everything before so you are essentially just adding dishes to the oven?
- What dishes would you recommend I cook?!
- From your own personal experience what should I definitely avoid cooking in terms of potential disasters? (I have no intention of attempting a soufflé…)
- What was the most enjoyable dinner party you’ve attended and why?
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I love doing dinner parties but I like them to be relaxed too. I always try and make as much in advance or an all in one dish. There’s a Mary Berry book which is meant to be brill for advance menu planning, I’ve still not bought it. I always do name places and nice napkins and blooms on the table. My between courses timing sort of depends on the next course (like if its ready) and if everyone’s happy chatting away there’s no rush. My mistake is always to try out a new recipe and risk it on a dinner party which is sometimes stressful but generally works out ok!
I was just excitedly going to recommend the Mary Berry book! The Berry is brilliant and this book is too 🙂
Thanks both! I will take a look, I’m like on a recipe book buying mission at the moment, I’ve asked James to put up a special shelf thing in the kitchen so I can keep them all somewhere accessible x
OOh Victoria so glad you do name places! I was thinking that but then wondered if it might be a bit much (worried I might be getting into “wedding” territory ha ha!)
I’ve done the new recipe thing with friends round for dinner before, only had one (epic) disaster but I still think I might do a trial run before hand x
Definitely do place names – you when a hostess is trying to make you sit down coz the food is going cold and everyone is umming and aaring over where to sit, standing around and generally getting in the way plus they don’t know the other couples or don’t want to sit next to their husband/wife so don’t know where to sit…? It avoids all that! 🙂
oops. typing too quickly…meant to say ” – you KNOW when… “
PS where are the invitations from in the picture?
Paper Chase Ann-Marie, I got them in the sale – only last week though x
Definitely best do make things you can mostly do in advance. Once I made the mistake of making something that was all about the last minute cooking/prep and I just ended up in a massive fluster and VERY hot. A nice main I made the other day was beef fillet rolled in chopped rosemary and salt and pepper then wrapped in parma ham. I then oven roast. dauphinoise/potato gratin are also pretty easy but people seem impressed by. Slice potatoes thinly with onions + dairy free cream salt pepper and over. Prep is all up front and all you have to do is whip it out of the oven. As veg on the side I like something quite light I flash fry shredded spring greens in butter (dairy free) then added a chopped chilli and lemon juice. Sauce perhaps a salsa verde as its summer. This is also dead easy to make and you can make in advance
ooops I fear I’ve gone a bit Jamie olive on you there. But this meal is all dairy free – not sure on sugar front though?
Clare don’t apologise for a “Jamie Oliver” (my husband loves him and his shows) this sounds lush, especially the shredded greens. I’ve made Gratin a few times but always loads of cream, delicious but super bad for you – is the dairy free version still tasty? x
I love hosting dinner parties – my best friends and I all take turns in hosting each other so cooking for 6 is a regular occurrence in our house. My number one tip HAS to be: preparation! All the prep that you can do in advance will pay dividends when party time arrives and will leave you free to spend time with your guests, rather than running in and out of the kitchen like a banshee. Another great way of sharing the stress is to ask your other guests to bring a starter or dessert in lieu of the usual bottle of wine – I’m really awful at desserts so that’s usually my get out clause!
One of my friends is actually a coeliac so all food we make is gluten free – have found that anything involving chickpeas and/or quinoa always goes down a treat. One-pot dinners always work well for large crowds. Chicken thighs marinated in harissa paste and cooked with onions and garlic in stock with chickpeas and spinach is a nice easy crowd pleaser! Risotto is another personal favourite of mine as you can make a large batch and customise with all sorts of yummy ingredients depending on the time of year – at the moment I’m loving peas, spinach, courgette (a sprinkle of goats cheese optional). If I’m doing something like that then I’d always do a light starter – a salad of some sort. Also love sharing starters that you can put on a platter in the middle of the table and let everyone help themselves. Another thing that works really well is a large cut/joint of meat… you could roast a chicken (either on the BBQ or in the oven) and serve with a lush green salad. Lamb leg and shoulder is also amazing slow cooked for the whole day with garlic and rosemary and then carved in slices served with a quinoa and pomegranate salad.
For those champagne flutes of yours, we recently found ourselves with a gorgeous bottle of St Germain elderflower liqueur which is so lovely added to a glass of prosecco for a light summery twist.
The most important advice though – just relax and enjoy it! The best dinner parties are where the hosts are relaxed and you just have a great night with great friends, great food and wine! xx
Thanks so much for all the tips Ashley! the one pot options sounds like a great idea. I also really like sharing platters, it’s a good way to get the party started! I think I could definitely make title bits and pieces for this well in advance too.
I actually really love making desserts – it’s the main course I struggle with keeping everything warm enough, salad sounds like the perfect choice in that case!
The elderflower liqueur sounds amazing (elderflower and gin with soda water is my favourite) and I’ve never added it to Prosecco before so will give it a go.
I also apologise for the lack of proper English above. It’s very early and I obviously got carried away :S.
As long as you season well and add lots of garlic and herbs its pretty good. The husband who is not dairy free loves it. Just make sure you buy the fresh alpro soya cream not the stuff in the food cupboard isle. I find that I can only get it in Tesco.x
Super thanks for the tip – we have a Tesco just down the road x
oo for dessert I also made the most AMAZING baked chocolate cheesecake with cherry topping. Ill see if I can find the recipe. Dairy free cream cheese wise I use the toffutti stuff x
My mum and dad used to host epic dinner parties all the time, I just remember lots of laughing and also that was always lots of chocolates left over the next day so when we woke up my brother and I would go down and scoff loads of After Eights. Epic. They were too hungover to tell us off.
Anyway. I digress. When I decided to host my first dinner party I asked my Mum what to do as she always seemed to host really good ones. Her tips were:
1. Create a simple cocktail for when everyone arrives – e.g peach bellini.
2. Prep everything beforehand and serve it in a big dish so it looks really fancy but doesn’t. She always made some delicious kind of cous-cous and then marinated individual poussins for everyone. You then just put the poussins on a big dish of cous cous, create a simple salad and plonk put in the middle of the table and you’re done. I now do this for every dinner party I have (when I say ‘every’ I mean the total of 3 I’ve done). Gets loads of ‘ooh’s’ and ‘aah’s’ but is really very, very simple.
3. Serve loads of wine. Everyone gets a bit drunk and doesn’t care when the food turns up / what it tastes like.
I’ve supplemented those 3 rules for success with my own:
4. Always, always play Articulate. Everyone gets SO into it, they can’t remember anything about the food and it guarantees a really fun night. I love that game!
I also generally do platters for starters. I’ve got some of those Jamie Oliver ‘planks’ and I put nibbles and things on them and again plonk them down on the table and let everyone dig in. Lots of ‘plonking’ going on. Not sure where that came from.
Enjoy your dinner party Charlotte! Let us know what you cook x
Oh and also, what kind of cover are you going to get for your patio? I’m on the lookout for something similar. xx
Oooooh Agreed about Articulate. It always ends in fits of laughter – we always play it at dinner parties! 🙂
I actually love After Eights, I could consume a whole box in one sitting – not good for my “clean eating” regime.
Peach Bellini is an excellent idea – LOVE peach. Also your comment on wine, if everyone is intoxicated hopefully they will think my cooking is amazing, even if crap!
Why have I never heard of Articulate?! Actually off to google it now, I have clearly not been invited to enough dinner parties?! x
I have no recommendations for anything grown up and posh. I just saw the pretty invitations and wondered if your thought process had been ‘ooh these are pretty… ahh, but I’m not having a dinner party… they are cheap though… yes but I don’t need them… but they are very pretty and I don’t really want to put them back… I suppose there is no reason why I COULDN’T plan a dinner party – and then I WOULD need some invitations… I’d better buy these then, and quickly before someone else sees them and has a better dinner party than me.
Amanda this is hilarious. I properly laughed out loud. x
Ohhhh good on you – I’d take time creating an atmosphere/experience a little too, make it smell nice with candles as well as flowers, and you could choose some classical/chill out music to have on, and consider the lighting in the room to make it nice and soft/relaxing.
Other than that I made Madeleine Shaws’s healthy shepherds pie last week and it was the bomb! Not traditionally ‘fancy’ but you could make it so with well thought out accompaniments, some pretty grilled asparagus or stuffed peppers etc, or serve in individual mini pie dishes…
http://madeleineshaw.com/index.php/healthy-shepards-pie/
Good luck cant wait to see the results x
ps – I could only find celeriac in Waitrose, but it was well worth the adventure, whiz it with a whizzy thing to make it smooth, rather than mash, and it tastes great.
Oh Lizzie this looks yum! I like the idea of individual pie dishes….this also gives me the excuse to buy some individual pie dishes…..which I now obviously need.
We don’t have a Waitrose which is near here, but I’m thinking it might be worth the adventure as you said! x
Glassware IS exciting!! 🙂
There is nothing more exciting than a new set of pretty, shiny new glasses! I have soooo many champagne coups from the wedding that I REFUSE to get rid of! They are just toooooo pretty! And everytime I go into a shop with pretty glasses the OH has to drag me away! haha
As for diner parties, sadly never hosted one – but it is also on my bucket list!
I have cooked for friends and had a few successes and some disasters!
One time I was making a huge mexican beef chilli and managed to get locked out of the house while it was still on the hob. OH was in london on training course! All I could do was walk to friend’s house (luckily they lived close by) and get them to babysit me until the OH got home! Luckily the hob was down low and the food was in one of those ‘le cruset’ style casserole dishes that are designed for long periods on the hob! BUT the food inside wasn’t so durable! Managed to scrap together a little plate of dinner for everyone & they were very polite!
One successful dish was BBQ pulled pork with sweet potato mash – it was lush!
Good luck lovely, am sure it’ll be a beautiful affair! 🙂 xx
Rebecca I fear I may go into every antique shop there is in every town we visit trying to pick up fancy bowls and the like – purely for RMS instagram pics!!
I do love pulled pork, and we are using sweet potato for so much these days – massively better for you than standard potatoes! x
My fiance, Rob, is the cook among the two of us and, before we moved in together, his flatmate and he used to host some pretty impressive fancy dinner parties. They carefully picked who they should invite (always a max of two other couples). I had no idea how fancy it was going to be when I turned up at the first one I was invited to, only to find everyone else had dressed up (I hadn’t received the emailed invite so wasn’t aware – thanks fiance!). We were greeted by cocktails as we walked in and then three course sit-down meal. It was really fun.
A particular nice touch – they had gone down to a nearby Waitrose and discussed what they were serving so that the Waitrose wine guy (I’m sure he’s got a proper job title) could match up the best wines for each course. That was v cute and got everyone talking.
If you’re cooking/preparing a simple first dish, then I’d recommend getting some slate plates things – something like this (http://derwentslate.co.uk/products-page/personalised-slate-range/personalised-place-mat-40cm-x-22cm/) although they’re quite pricey compared to what we bought! They’re very cute for serving simple dishes but look great and people always comment on them.
Adding on to that comment about Waitrose, they also have cheese and meat specialists as well as the wine specialists. Great if you want advice about what cheese/meat/wine to serve with your fish/beef/chicken etc etc…
The wine matching sounds like a super idea, as frankly I wouldn’t have a clue!
Laura Ashley also did lovely wine glasses to match my champagne flutes….x
I second/third/fourth the prep ahead ideas but don’t forget, that doesn’t just mean food. get James to lay the table and make the house look nice well in advance (if you’re sitting outside, this means the garden too – lights etc, also where are people entering the house? if you’re going fancy, put some flowers and a scented candle in your hallway).
Think about what crockery you’ve got and get it out ready – what if you haven’t got enough plates for side plates AND a cheese course? How much cutlery do you need? You don’t want to be washing stuff between courses.
Have at least 1 and possibly 2 of your courses prepared ahead (eg a cold dessert and pre-assembled starters). Accept the fact that you will be in the kitchen for some of the time and decide whether you mind folks hanging out with you in there or if you need 5 minutes of peace to get your veg on etc.
Oh, and get Cards Against Humanity to play after dinner (and definitely after the wine!), its chuffing hilarious
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cards-Against-Humanity-UK-edition/dp/B00DTXYCOU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404916964&sr=8-1&keywords=cards+against+humanity+uk
Oooh Claire yes! must get some candle action involved! I hear you on cutlery, I bought some yesterday from John Lewis (I realise I must sound like a shopaholic but it’s got to that stage in life where all of our stuff is so old and needs replacing, I’m not just on a frivolous bender – promise!) so we will definitely have enough of that. Crockery wise we have 6 of everything, although I do worry if we break something, mis-matched certainly does have it’s uses doesn’t it? i.e. something can so easily be “replaced” as it were.
I am definitely going to prepare as much as I can ahead of guests arrival x
I actually like mismatched/co-ordinated crockery better than matched, I think you can have more fun that way 🙂
I have never hosted a dinner party as such (although I have cooked for others, just not really gone all out on the planning!) Doesn’t help that we don’t have much space in our kitchen for food prep or a table for people to sit at…
That aside, my parents are always having dinner parties and what I’ve learnt from them is practice makes perfect! Whenever I visit them and they’ve got a dinner party planned in the weeks following, I’m always the guinea pig – it’s fab for me (lots of yummy food!) but they get to test out new recipes and the timings and so on. Maybe get your parents/in-laws round for a run-through beforehand if you’re not sure what will/won’t work?
Also, you can’t go wrong with a good post-dinner game – Articulate, Pictionary – all hilarious after a few glasses of vino!
I have no advice. But this sounds like a wonderful idea. X
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