Dear Laura
Don’t panic! You’ve got more than a week to prepare for it. Every wife has to face her first dinner party for her in-laws, and the vast majority survive! It was a good idea to invite another couple to help keep the conversation going if you get stuck in the kitchen. You’ll manage! The trick is to keep things as simple as possible so that you can be the charming hostess rather than the frazzled cook.
Enlist Mike’s help. Put him in charge of the drinks. If he doesn’t know that the white wine is supposed to be cold and the red has to air at room temperature, tell him. Don’t worry too much about the shape of the glasses in which you serve it – there are rules about this, but nobody (not even mother-in-law) can reasonably expect newly-weds to have complete sets of both hock and claret glasses. As long as they have stems, hold the requisite amount and are sparkling clean, they’re fine! If they match each other, so much the better!
Pre-prandial booze can be a problem when your cocktail cabinet is empty, or – as in your case – doesn’t exist. Beware of asking: “Can I get you a drink?”The reply might be: “I’ll have a Scotch and Soda, please.” Then you’re stymied! The southern States’ habit of offering ‘a cocktail’ could well be your answer. Buy a bottle of cheap vodka and squeeze lots of oranges. Crush ice by putting it in a clean cloth and bashing the hell out of it with a hammer. Serve in proportions appropriate to the recipient, and call it ‘Frozen Screwdriver’. If you use white rum and and pink grapefruit, the result is a ‘Frozen Daiquiri’. Either way, you can drink plain fruit juice yourself, and it will look exactly like the guests’ cocktails!
Now to the food. If you are planning on serving several courses, make sure all but one of them are cold and can be prepared in advance. You can even get round the starter by serving hors d’oeuvres with the drinks before you sit down to the main course. After all, you don’t really want them to stuff themselves with crisps and peanuts before the meal. Give them a dip or two – the ones you buy in packets are jolly good – and lots of interesting things on savoury biscuits. If you are reckoning on having a cheese board to finish with, don’t use mousetrap on the biscuits at this stage of the meal, but slices of hard-boiled egg are so cheap that you could probably stretch your budget to include a tinsy-winsy pot of caviar for the topping! Anchovy should be served in pretty small quantities – especially to me – but you can do all sorts of things with a tin of sardines! One thing you must remember is that, if you’re putting wet stuff on biscuits, you have to butter them well to stop the juice from soaking in. The pundits have even changed their minds about lots of butter being bad for your health and it’s awfully good for the biscuits!
Something suddenly occurred to me. If you’re serving hors d’oeuvres you can avoid the cocktail problem by serving a dryish white wine and not offering any option!
The first time I gave a dinner party, I was only sixteen, and still at school. My mother gave me free run of her kitchen, free use of the family silver, the crystal glasses, the Wedgewood dinner service and the Buckinghamshire lace tablecloth and napkins. I had to provide the ingredients – out of my pocket money – and do all the cooking. My guests were all quite a bit older than I was, from rich families, in good jobs and used to the best. In England at that time, wine was expensive and I couldn’t afford to offer it to my guests. So I served up gammon poached in cider as the main course and offered only cider as the correct accompaniment to it.
It was one of the best parties I have ever given!
Love Mom
