Firstly, delusional thinking transcends class. You do not have to be in the striving middle class to entertain. The beginning of any dinner party is making an unrealistic budget that you’ll definitely overshoot. You can do this at any price point.
There must always be too much food. This isn’t right but it’s true.
Adjust the lighting. Nobody wants to eat under The Big Light. And besides, how else will people know it’s a dinner party? Candles are cute, and fairy lights are even better.
Everybody will be happy to see you bring out a tray of hot sausage rolls, and even happier if you haven’t made them yourself.
Better to turn to novels and films for inspiration than to cookbooks. Cooks get caught up in practicalities, but novelists live in a dreamier state, and this is exactly how you want your guests to feel. It’s this contempt for practicality that makes Martha so mesmerising. She cites D. H. Lawrence as an influence – the magic of the picnics in Women in Love, with that ‘large broad-faced cut ham, eggs and cresses and red beetroot, and medlars and apple tart and tea’. To this end, I can also vouch for Brian Jacques’ Redwall books.
Dress up.
Entertaining is an invented and avoidable problem.
Nobody is making you do this. If you’re not enjoying it, almost nobody else will, and you’ll hate the one person who does.
The easiest way to get visual contrast is simply to cook things very slightly too high, and for very slightly less time than you think. (With the help of a meat thermometer, please.) This way the outsides get crisp and conditions are met for chiaroscuro skins and deep tan crusts, and saves you the trouble of scattered herbs.
You can’t do ‘natural cornucopia’ without money. I’m sorry. Platters of strawberries and fresh whipped cream are romantic when the Instagram girls do them, but if you’re working with Teflon strawberries and Elmlea, an ice cream sundae is a smarter way to go.
Nora Ephron wrote about the rule of four. Often dinners are organised around a trinity – meat, starch and veg. But you should add a fourth thing, she said, something fun, something to unbalance the composition. This makes things interesting. ‘A shallow dish filled with tiny baked apples,’ she suggests. ‘Peaches with cayenne pepper.’ Later, she went on to concede that better than the rule of four is the rule of five, or even six. She is right. These unnecessary additions should be weird. A jellied tureen. Clam bake for thirty. A simple croquembouche. Of utmost importance: this thing, whatever it is, contributes nothing to the menu as a whole.
Condensed and extracted from All Consuming: Why We Eat The Way We Eat Now by Ruby Tandoh (Serpent’s Tail, £18.99).
For more from Glamour UK’s Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.