Giving dinner parties
Turn on the television any time of day. Very likely you will find a cookery programme on one of the channels. Of course there is Chinese, Indian, Italian, and French. There are cookery races, cookery quizzes, and many programmes on healthy cooking. Most popular however is the series on unhealthy cooking, called 'Two Fat Ladies'. The pair waddle around Britain making belt-busting recipes from cream, brandy, lard and lots of fatty meat. 'Cooking is the new rock and roll', it is claimed.
Why the interest in food in Britain in the last ten years? The reason is not culinary, but social.
Meeting people is easy. Making friends is more difficult. You might be able to chat to a work colleague or a neighbour, but how can you get to know them better? In Europe you would invite them to a bar or bistro for a coffee, a bottle of wine, or an inexpensive meal. You could sit outside and chat, or just watch the world go by.
In England it is different. The weather is unreliable, pavement cafes few. Pubs can be noisy inside, restaurants expensive, cafes uncomfortable.
So instead, we invite people to our home for dinner. This can be a cheap, enjoyable and easy way to make friends. Or it can be a quick way to make enemies. Here is a short guide on how to give a good dinner party.
The invite
We English have reserve. If there is someone we would like to ask to dinner, we will first ask the question very generally. We'd say, 'You must come round for dinner sometime', without saying a time or place, and gauge the reaction. Then, maybe the next week, we'd ask the specific: 'how about dinner next Wednesday evening?'. They will react one of three ways:
a) Say yes (=they want to come)
b) Say not next Wednesday, but how about the Wednesday after? (=they want to come)
c) Give a very specific excuse: they have to mend the roof of the shed, or feed next door's pet rabbit, or watch 'Two Fat Ladies' on TV (=they don't want to come)
Saturdays are usually for close friends, weekdays for newer friends. Few men will miss the soccer highlights on TV on Saturday night just for the sake of casual acquaintances.
Which food to give them?
Always ask if they have food preferences or allergies. Allergies are very fashionable right now. In the old days, before even rock and roll was rock and roll, people just said, 'I don't like beetroot'. Now, they say, 'I'm allergic to cooked beetroot, especially with white wine, but not South African white wine if there's also fish.'
If they are 'vegetarian', check which type. They could be the type which refuse all meat, eggs and cheese. Or which eat fish but not meat. Or which eat white meat but not red meat. Or which eat meat, wear leather trousers and go on fox-hunts, but just like the attention.
Choose your recipe
The easy part. Bookshop shelves bulge with recipe books; supermarkets give out free recipe cards. When they taste your food, your guests will ask about the recipe. Don't tell them you just found it on a free card in the supermarket that morning. Tell them it is an old family recipe. Or perhaps a dish you once ate in a tiny restaurant in rural Spain that cost £1 for four people. That will sound much more impressive.
The wine
Be generous with wine. Buy the cheapest white and the cheapest red from the supermarket. Few English people can tell a cheap white from an expensive one if it is chilled in the fridge for an hour, or a cheap red from an expensive one if it is opened two hours in advance.
If you don't have time to chill or open your next bottle, or the wine brought by your guests, don't worry. After two glasses, few English people can tell a cheap wine from an expensive one after two glasses.
If you have a little too much to drink yourself, don't worry. After two glasses, few English people can tell a drunk host from a sober one.
Conversation
The same rules as in the rest of the world. The men talk about sport, or work, or cars, or computers. The women talk about the men.
Music
Other people will always dislike the music you like. The best thing is to let them choose from your collection of CDs. However, classical guitar music is always OK.
Keep a Wagner CD handy. This will help persuade your guests that it is time to go home if they are staying too late.
Mistakes to avoid
* Don't show dinner guests any photos, unless they ask. We cannot imagine anything less interesting than looking at other people's photos. In a country that invented cricket, this is clearly a serious allegation. In our imagination, the worst dinner party host shows us hundreds of holiday slides, saying, 'And this is me in front of the Eiffel Tower... and this is me next to the Eiffel Tower...' etc.
* Matchmaking. If you know a single woman and a single man, it is very tempting to invite them both, hoping that they will hit it off together. But however well it seems to go, the next day they will pretend it was a disaster. The woman will tell everyone of her nightmare dinner with this man who kept talking about himself and made stupid jokes. The man will tell everyone of his nightmare dinner with this woman who didn't say a word all evening and had no sense of humour.
* Traditionally, politics has been a subject to avoid over dinner. Nowadays though, English political parties all have the same policies, so there is less chance of a disagreement.
At last, your guests leave in their midnight taxi home. Now you can do your washing up to the sound of Wagner.
Going Native