Food and friends: Top tips for a perfect dinner party

Fashion designer Ben de Lisi, TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson, comedy actress Helen Lederer, scriptwriter David Quantick and pop diva Mica Paris spent the week planning their own special menu, tidying their designer apartments or houses, choosing the right music to create an ambience and generally worrying about how to get it “just right.”

It seems the great middle class institution of “the dinner party” is just as important today as it was in the days when wits such as Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw were in demand by society hostesses, along with writers such as Virginia Woolf and Somerset Maugham.

Although the heyday of the dinner party was the 50 years between the 1880s and the 1920s, social needs and rules means it is still going strong today. Although some dinner parties are relaxed and pleasant gatherings of a group of friends, many have earned the nickname “the dinner party from hell.” You know, the ones where the host didn’t realize that two people who used to be best friends have since fallen out: Inviting them both causes at best an awkward icy atmosphere, at worst fireworks round the dinner table. Or where the hostess just seems to have invited everyone round to listen to her retelling all of the minute details about the foreign holiday she has just come back from.

Or where the pretext is only very thinly veiled. Hostess: “I really hope we can get young Tristram into Chauncy Park School next year.” Guest: “I am on the board there.” Hostess:” Oh really, how fascinating, I never knew. What a coincidence. Perhaps you could give me some tips...” And so the evening interminably wears on, on the same subject, with everyone itching for the moment when it is not too early to say, “Is that the time? I really must be going. We have had such a delightful evening.”

There seem to be so many things to get right in order to have a successful dinner party. The food. The guest list. The music. The table decorations. The table decorations? Yes, if you take the advice out there on the Internet seriously, even the table decorations can be a pitfall for the unwary hostess: “not too fussy,” “not too plain,” “make sure the centerpiece is not so tall that guests cannot see each other over it” and “if having candles, make sure your other decorations are fireproof and that the wax will not drip onto an expensive tablecloth.”

To be honest, the Internet advice ranges from the pretentious to the practical. One magazine seems determined to make you so worried that your dinner party will not be “just perfect” that, your confidence undermined, you have no option but to rely on them for advice. “Serve your guests in style with exclusive entertainment ideas. Check out entertaining tips from designers and learn how the experts do home entertaining in style. Make [us] the leading resource for all your dinner party and entertaining needs, from recipes to decor.”

Against an Internet babble demanding, in general, that you impress your guests, one site, the Humble Gourmand, seems to bring a dose of sanity to the issue: “To put together a memorable dinner party, it’s essential to ensure presentation is well-planned. It’s not about pretension -- the most expensive serving platter, a high-priced wine, or even whether you serve filet mignon or skirt steaks. It’s more about the way you offer the meal that can ease guests, giving them everything they need in an aesthetically pleasing way.” I can hear every dinner party guest across the land give a cheer to that one!

Politicians can get into all sorts of trouble over dinner parties, too. Currently the UK political news is dominated by the choice of a new leader for the Labour Party. Front-runner David Miliband served his opponents a wonderful opportunity to ridicule him when he posted on his website a six-page guide to hosting a dinner party to help him in his campaign. The press is having a field day with excerpts from the advice such as: “No one can resist a delicious spread of food!”

If you want to host a dinner party to help David get elected, here are some of the things you have to do: “5:30pm: get in from work, give the place a quick vacuum and general tidy (or not, if you’re not that type),” “Put the oven on and get the nibbles in. If there are drinks, get them chilling. Pick some music,” “7pm: People are arriving, take their coats, get them a drink, all that good stuff” and “7:50pm: Show David’s leadership House Party video.”

At 8:40pm, hosts can read out some more stock paragraphs, beginning: “I hope you have enjoyed this evening, it’s been really interesting hearing your stories... Whatever our different perspectives on the issues discussed tonight, one thing is clear that we can achieve more together than we can on our own.”  Cringe-making, but will it be party-leader-making? The British press’s vote on this dinner party guide is a resounding “no”!

The only thing not explained is a menu and how to cook it. But here Dolores Freely comes to the rescue in a new book published by Çitlembik: “International Menus for the Globetrotter.” Dolores has decades of experience as a successful dinner party hostess in Turkey and overseas. Her husband, John Freely, is better known as professor of physics at Bosporus University and a leading expert on Byzantine and Ottoman history. Her daughter is Orhan Pamuk’s translator. Just those few snippets of information are enough to let your imagination wander as to the likely guests and exciting topics of conversation around Dolores’s dinner table of an evening.

Forget a guide on how to throw a perfect party, from pretzels to plates, from politicians to professors, from pesto to patios. Dolores just focuses on the heart of the matter: the food. She writes: “I never imagined I would write a cookbook, though I had written down quite a few of my recipes to give to my children. Then one day a friend pointed out to me that I might inspire and encourage others just embarking on their cooking adventures. What follows is my life in food. Each recipe brings back memories of family reunions and dinner parties full of laughter. I hope they will go on to do the same for you.”

What follows are 20 complete menus for the aspiring host. They are grouped together by geographical area: French menus, Central European menus and Italian menus. Russian, Moroccan, Chinese, Indian and Japanese are also well represented, backing this cookbook’s claim to be international.

For Turkey, a wide range of meze are described: walnut cheese spread, Ali’s mashed potato salad, piyaz, fried zucchini Aegean style, romaine lettuce salad, shrimp salad, baked mücver, İzmir köfte and menemen. All of the recipes are clearly presented, with good instructions. An extra bonus for Turkish readers is that the book is also available separately published in Turkish.

Criticisms? Sadly, as with many of Çitlembik’s recipe books, there are no pictures of the finished product. This not only fails to help you see what the dish should look like but also makes the task of choosing what to cook less enjoyable: Often we allow our taste buds to choose from the pictures, rather than our brains to choose from the titles. There is also no assessment for each recipe indicating whether it is a dish fit for a novice to tackle or only for the really accomplished dinner party cook. Focusing on the food and on friends, as Dolores does, your dinner party cannot fail to be a success!