The art of Friday night dinners

A year since her weekly recipe column began, Eleanor Steafel reflects on the lessons she’s learnt

Iwas eight when I held my first Friday night dinner party. (You are forgiven for thinking that the most precocious sentence you’ve ever read.) The guests were my parents, siblings and our neighbours, the menu – proudly handwritten – mini pizzas, penne with tomato sauce, and chocolate ice cream.

I absolutely stand by this as a cracking line up that I would serve today in a heartbeat… possibly minus the mini pizzas. I can still remember the sheer pride of presenting a meal I’d cooked myself. It’s a high I’ve been chasing ever since.

I like to think I love hosting because I am a natural feeder, who loves getting her nearest and dearest together over good food. This is all true – there is nothing I love more than the sound of friends howling with laughter over clattering plates and clinking glasses.

But if I’m really honest? It’s because I am a huge control freak, and the kitchen is the perfect place for my guilty secret to breed. I host because it puts me in charge of the evening. I get to decide the menu, curate the company, the candlelight and the music. I’ve always been this way.

As a teenager, when my friends wanted to spend Friday nights trying to get served at the local pub or using our fake IDS to sneak into clubs on the King’s Road, I would hope the plan flopped so I could casually suggest we all decamp to my parents’ house and raid their wine supply while I cooked everyone spaghetti carbonara.

These days, it doesn’t take much persuading to get my friends round for a lengthy, meandering meal on a Friday night. And after a year of writing this column, I still think it is, unequivocally, the best night of the week.

Don’t cook more than one course

This is honestly the key to enjoying your own dinner party. Don’t slave over three perfect plates, just pick a great main and let everything else be an assembly job.

I don’t like to seat everyone for a three-course sit-down. Instead, I cleave more towards a meal that lets people stand, chat and graze with a drink in their hand before sitting down to something hearty.

I like to load the table with nice bits to munch on while guests sink the first couple of drinks – the most I’ll do is assemble a salad for people to pile onto hunks of good bread and eat with their fingers; sliced oranges, with torn mint and mozzarella, dressed with good oil, is lovely. Crisp radishes with butter and smoked salt. A few pickles and some nice tinned anchovies. A hunk of Parmesan for people to hack away at.

Remember people appreciate you thoughtfully picking out delicious things just as much as if you’d cooked every element yourself. And, by the

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT HOSTING FROM A YEAR OF FRIDAY NIGHT DINNERS…