Dinner Parties for Beginners

Dinner Parties for Beginners.

Catering for friends at home is one of the nicest ways to spend an evening. There are pitfalls, of course, but Cutlery and Catering have come up with a few catering tips to help.

 1. Choosing guests

 Don’t invite too many people, remember you will be doing the catering! Remember they will all need a place at the table and a chair. They will all need tableware ie. cutlery and crockery and glasses. They will all need food and drink.

Choose your guests carefully. You do not want to put people together who will not get on well.

Avoid:

• Those who seem to wake up and come alive in the early hours and don’t know when to go home whilst you are dead on your feet!
• Couples on the brink of divorce or separation who will spend the whole evening sniping at each other!
• Anyone you know will have too much to drink and be difficult or embarrassing!
• Anyone who is likely to dominate the conversation and be a bore.

Such people can ruin the best planned dinner party. Choose good friends, nice people and interesting people. It doesn’t matter if they already know one another or not. It is your job to help them get on well together.

 2. Type of Dinner Party

Decide whether you dinner party will be formal or informal. This will depend on who you want to invite and whether you are trying to impress or help them feel at ease and comfortable. My view is that if you do the latter, that is, if you aim to make your guests feel they are welcome and you aim to make them feel at ease and comfortable then they will be impressed as well.

Whoever your guests are, they will feel all the more welcomed if you show you have made a special effort for them. Setting the table so that it looks beautiful, cooking food they will enjoy, taking care to make sure they have plenty to eat and drink, introducing topics they are interested in into the conversation; all this makes people feel special.

3. Decide when to hold your dinner party.

 First, decide when would be a convenient time for you. You will need time to plan, shop, prepare and cook. Then think about your guests. If they are working, would they prefer weekends or if you had your dinner party fairly early in the evening might they welcome an evening when someone else did the cooking after work? How far will they have to travel? When can they get a baby sitter etc?

4. Decide on your menu

This will depend on many factors including:

• Your budget
• Your level of expertise
• Availability of ingredients
• Guests’ (and your own) likes and dislikes. If in doubt, ask!
• Time available
•  Special diets, health considerations, religious constraints, allergies etc (again, if in doubt, ask!)
• The weather (you wouldn’t give anyone steak and kidney pudding on a hot day, would you?)
• Your serving items, crockery etc. It is no good cooking something extra if you have no suitable dish to serve it in or no extra plates to eat it on.
• Your choices of menu are endless.

You could have, for instance, an Italian menu, or a Chinese or an Indian, but if you do, will your meal be better than one from your local takeaway? You could cook something really elaborate but do your guests really want you to be fiddling in the kitchen rather than sitting and enjoying their company.? Wouldn’t you rather do something fairly simple and be relaxed than do something which is going to turn you into a twitching , nervous wreck? And just because you absolutely love brawn or something in aspic does that mean your guests are bound to like it?

My own view is that you should play safe. Go for something simple, or something you can cook in advance so that you can enjoy the evening too. Have a trial run where you can test the main course at least on your immediate family or an old friend who will give their honest opinion. Play really safe and either opt for a cold starter, hot main course, cold dessert Or A warm starter, such as soup, cold main course and a warm pudding. Or You can, for example cook the whole main course in one pot. That would leave you free to enjoy the evening. Or You could do as many things as possible in advance.

Choosing Wine

People are a lot less stuffy about wine than they used to be. We are a lot less formal these days and the rules about having white wine with poultry and fish and red wine with red meats are more relaxed and people just tend to drink what they, personally, prefer. The best thing to do is to serve both and leave the choice of which they drink to your guests. (If you want to be really formal, however, have a look at our wines for dinner parties section. We have included lots of little extra tips here too!)

A very sweet wine is best served with dessert. Be sure to cool the white wine in the fridge and to uncork the red in advance. Try to find a way to keep the white wine cool when it is on the table;for instance a wine bottle cooler or with a wine-cooler sleeve.

If you are on a tight budget serve your best wine at the beginning of the meal and follow it with your cheaper wine. Your guests will be more receptive to good wine at the start of the evening than at the end.

If your guests bring a bottle as a gift that is great! Put the white in the fridge immediately, just in case. Make sure you have a soft drink for anyone who is driving or doesn’t want alcohol. A favourite is often apple juice and always have a jug of iced water on the table as well.

You can buy beautiful crystal glassware from Clear Cut Crystal Company to make your table look really special.

If you decide to serve port, liqueurs or brandy, make sure you have the correct glasses. Otherwise, don’t bother. Coffee on its own will be fine!

 The Cheese Course

For some people the cheese course is one of the most important parts of the meal. Make sure you have at least one plain cheese, one strong cheese and one soft cheese. Serve with crackers or savoury biscuits.You need a cheese knife. Have butter in a dish with a butter knife. Fresh fruit can be served with the cheese either sliced on a separate platter or on the cheese board e.g. grapes, apple etc.

Coffee

Serve at the table with the cheese. Remake a coffee jug full and retire to the sitting room if you have one. Fire lit, lights low, soft music. Serve your chocolate mints with this coffee. Your guests will be reluctant to leave.

 5. Make lists

Having decided on when to have your dinner party, who to invite, what to eat and what to drink, you now need to make the following lists:

1.  A shopping list- check your store cupboard and see what you already have. Try to buy really fresh fruit and vegetables and meat from a good butcher etc. Some of the items can be bought immediately and others will need to wait until a couple of days before your dinner party.
2.  A check list so you can make sure you have all the items you need.

 a.Crockery. Bear in mind you will need serving dishes, plates and dishes for all your courses. You can include condiment sets and pickle serving dishes, jugs, gravy boats and so on in this list.

b. Glasses. Wine glasses, glasses for water or soft drinks and small glasses for liqueurs if you are serving them.

c. A list of cutlery you will need. Check that you have serving items such as tablespoons, plenty of teaspoons (because somehow these always get lost), pie servers, a cheese knife etc.

d Table linen and / or mats. You may want to put a heat proof cover under your table cloth rather than mats. You will need napkins.

      3. A timetable.

Look to see if there is anything you can do the day before. Some dishes can be cooked in advance. Some will even improve with keeping. It is often possible to prepare a meal so far and then just finish it off or heat it up on the day. It may be possible, for instance to make a cold dessert the day before or prepare a casserole ready for cooking.

Work out what time your guests will be arriving and how long you want to chat and have drinks etc. before you serve. Usually allow about 20-30 minutes. Work backwards. Allow time for them to eat the starter and work out what time you want the main course to be ready to dish up. What time you will need to put the vegetables on . What time the meat has to go in etc. Check and double check.. On the evening of your dinner party You will feel confident if you have made your lists and timetables and set your table well in advance.

Details on the way to set the table for a dinner party can be found by clicking here. Do this before you start cooking. Put your wine to cool. Lay out the drinks, corkscrew, wine bottle cooler, ice cubes and have another person, (either your other half or a close friend) to help you serve drinks before the meal. Lay out the coffee things in the kitchen, prepare the cheese board and cover it with cling film , make sure the butter is soft. Have a drink of wine whilst you cook and ENJOY YOUR DINNER PARTY!!!