Friends for dinner? No need to get stressed - The Jewish Chronicle

I’m trying to remember the last time we hosted a proper, formal dinner party, but I can’t. We certainly used to hold them, with eight to ten people in the dining-room, embroidered antique napkins (fiddly to iron), the posh wine-glasses (very annoying – too tall to go in the dishwasher). They necessitated military-level planning – the menu, the food shopping, the wine selection, the seating plan. I’m a perfectionist and I’d be kicking myself if I messed up some small detail, such as discovering at the end of the evening the garnish of chopped parsley I’d forgotten to use.

I wouldn’t quite measure the distance between place-settings, as they do at Buckingham Palace, but the level of planning wasn’t far off that, as if I were expecting the guests to hold up score-cards in judgment – CATERING: 8.4 (marked down due to absence of parsley garnish), CONVERSATION: 9.1 (hostess kept bobbing up and down to go and check things in the kitchen), ARTISTIC IMPRESSION: 9.7 (I don’t have many skills but I can arrange wafer-thin slivers of cucumber on a salmon in a scale pattern, and those napkins have to be worth a couple of points).

In a way, little had changed since the 1970s, the heyday of the dinner party, when hosts spent hours presenting food in elaborate ways: think melon boats with the pieces pushed out on alternating sides and adorned with twisted orange slices, cheese and pineapple on sticks speared into a half-pineapple to form a sort of hedgehog, or the height of sophistication, the fondue set.

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My mother was an excellent hostess; the food wasn’t lavish, but she was very good at making guests feel welcome. In our modest two-bedroom flat, she hosted regular parties for her divorced and separated club called “Clan”. The sitting room became a throng of middle-aged people talking earnestly about art and books in a thick fug of cigarette smoke (aah, the 1970s when no one thought about not poisoning the children with second-hand smoke). She served simple appetisers, such as Scandi-style savouries on pumpernickel or Swedish crispbread, and inexpensive wine decanted into green glass carafes.

If a friend came to play after school, Mum would always press them to stay for supper, even if what we were having wouldn’t easily stretch to an extra person. Now, looking back, I realise she must have given her own portion to our impromptu guest and eaten something else later.

As an adult hostess myself, for large family meals, at Rosh Hashanah, Pesach etc, we used to place everyone at the table with a seating plan, and set all the vegetables and salads along the centre of the table.

Our serving dishes are heavy and cumbersome (the salad bowl needs one person to bear the weight of it, and another to manoeuvre the awkwardly long servers); guests would struggle to manhandle them from person to person or end up trying to pass dripping spoonsful of food across the table.

But, at some point in the past couple of years, we seem to have come to our senses and have now adopted a much less formal approach. Unless we are serving soup (admittedly quite often, the Jewish adoration of soup being a tribal characteristic that shows no sign of waning), we now serve starters canapé style while relaxing beforehand with drinks. This has several advantages – if one guest is late, the others can still have something to eat and drink without it appearing rude. Everyone can mingle and chat much more easily than if confined to a designated seat at the table. We offer three or four appetisers so there should be something to please all tastes, and we pass round cocktail napkins so there is no need for plates. My current favourites, all a doddle to prepare, are:

smoked salmon and sour-cream cocktail blinis, garnished with dill or chives.

small crostini, usually with a vegetarian topping, such as an intense tomato reduction with grated or shaved parmesan on the top like a tiny pizza.

mini tomato and mozzarella sticks with fresh basil.

CBWH1M CBWH1M Smoked salmon sour cream dill bliniAlamy Stock Photo

After that, we serve buffet-style from the kitchen counter: guests come in to help themselves then take their plate through to the dining room to eat. No need to heft heavy veg bowls to and fro, and everyone can choose what they want. It’s less work for us and feels much more relaxed. I don’t worry if I served the same dish last time – I’ve culled my repertoire so that I don’t cook anything that demands a lot of last-minute attention or that will shrivel to a desiccated clump if guests are held up.

It’s taken me an age to realise what clearly my mother had worked out all those decades ago – that the success of the occasion depends more on the guests and the happy warp and weft of conversation than on the perfection of the catering. And, if I get marked down for using paper napkins, at least I don’t spend the whole of the next day clearing up, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s worth it.

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Food