Dinner,  Lifestyle,  Nutrition,  Recipes

What to cook for friends?!

I am a passionate dinner party host 💃🏻 I love nothing more than cooking for people I love and cracking open a good bottle of wine. But…⁣

The dinny p dilemma:⁣
• how the hell do you decide what to cook⁣
• are you not just stuck in the kitchen the whole time⁣
• ‘it’s so expensive hosting!’⁣


So here’s a lil 101 on dinner parties from moi⁣

🍴Sharing dishes! Make dishes that your guests can just serve themselves. And make ones you can make ahead or just shove in the oven. All of the dishes in these photos (apart from the salad) were made ahead and then just popped into the oven when we were ready⁣
🍴Go all out on veggies! Veg is cheaper than meat or fish let’s face it. So make your veg dishes big and colourful. Have 1 meat or fish dish and fill the meal up with roasted veg, salads, potatoes, rice/grain dishes⁣
🍴Unless you’re Olly the Octopus chances are you don’t have 8 arms so don’t give yourself so much work for when your guests are there. Do some fancy chips and dips for a starter, the dips can be made ahead and that gives you time to grab a glass of wine and sit with your friends. The whole point in the party is to spend time with each other not the kitchen.⁣
🍴Have enough booze in the house and always have an emergency extra bag of kettle crisps – if something goes wrong or your timing goes off ply your friends with more booze and crisps and chances are they won’t even realise⁣
🍴 get your pal to bring dessert. Or make an Affogato coz that’s pretty much 3,2,1 done and you look dead fancy and Italian 🇮🇹 ⁣
🍴always buy enough ice. No one wants a warm wine (this needed to be said)⁣
🍴don’t push yourself too much with your menu. It doesn’t all have to be fancy pants, just choose what your comfortable with⁣
🍴’ITS ALL GONE WRONG IT LOOKS LIKE SHITE’ – throw some pomegranate leaves or scatter a shed load of parsley on top and no one will see. Honestly, pomegranate seeds are the saviour of most of my dinner p’s⁣
🍴find some good recipe books and stick with them. My go to’s:

– Persiana by @sabrinaghayour ⁣
– Nothing Fancy by @alisoneroman
– Simple by @ottolenghi
– Mexico by Margarita Carrillo Arronte