what’s cooking?

by haywardhelen

There are lots of reasons why big dinners have become an exception rather than the rule these days. It takes courage to ask people you don’t that well to sit around a table to share food and chat to people they don’t know that well, if at all. Covid has made us all wary of social intimacy – and just perhaps, it’s made us know each other a little less well. On top of this, most of us have seen through or become weary of or grown out of status-seeking dinner parties. Also, we’re just not that impressed by hectic cooking shows to aspire to that kind of mastery. And we’re loathe to put each other under the kind of pressure that cooking for any number tends to be.

Yet I still I happen to think that big dinners are worth giving. Inviting friends for dinner, in my experience, is akin to lighting a wood fire. For this, I start with 6 pieces of scrunched up newspaper in the grate. Then comes pinecones and broken sticks from the garden. Above that I balance, like Jenga blocks, a couple of chopped up fence palings. Only then, when I’m lucky and after opening the flue, do the logs above catch fire. And it’s similar when I invite friends for dinner. It helps, for the evening to catch alight, if a few of the people I’ve invited already know each other (I might tell them this in advance). It also helps, when I bring guests into the house, if the fire is burning and music is playing and my dog isn’t growling or generally drawing attention to himself. Even more, it helps if I can accept a short period of awkwardness in which people stand round in a big group making small talk, before breaking off into smaller, more relaxed groups. It helps too if I’m not nervous. Although recently I’ve come to accept that I just do feel nervous in these early minutes. I have to wait for the chatter in my head to quieten down enough that I can hear what is actually happening in the room, rather than what my inner voice thinks/fears/hopes might be happening.

None of this has anything to do with what is or isn’t cooking in the kitchen. However, it has a lot to do with my experience of having more than three people for dinner.

All the time that I was married, having friends for dinner was something that Paul and I agreed about. When we first started living together in London, we had weekend lunches on a trestle in the living room. We didn’t always agree on the details of how we entertained. Paul liked lots of wine and smoking breaks on the balcony with a select few, while I like super simple food and enough people around the table that the conversation naturally broke up into twos or threes. Even so, throughout our years together, we kept our love of hospitality alive. It was an important part of who we were as a couple.

Bringing back big dinners has been an important part of my healing, of stepping back into the river and of not feeling awkward about being single at a point in my life that I never expected to be. I’ve found a real freedom in being able to entertain in my own way. I can play music I like, invite a mix of people, and cook food which doesn’t stress me out in the kitchen. I’ve never cooked to impress, but rather to satisfy in a way that allows people to focus on what interests them more than what’s on their fork. I cook food that I like and hope guests will like too – though with an increase in food intolerances this has been more challenging.

Paul used to like it when a dinner stretched past midnight. For him it was proof that the people round the table had connected and the evening had gone well. Perhaps because I don’t drink alcohol and expend a lot of energy just before friends arrive, I usually tire before midnight. Still, I do enjoy late-night conversations when the lights are low and people start to reveal more, risk more, trust more.

We don’t talk about hospitality much these days (apart from in relation to the food industry). However, in my mind being generous at home is an important of part of who I am. Besides, I sometimes wonder, what is the point of having a lovely home if I don’t share it? Cooking for friends is a way of giving back, of flagging my appreciation of others. Everyone I know works hard at being themselves and at keeping their lives afloat. Like me, they don’t always feel worthy of their good fortune. And like me, they’re relatively powerless to right the wrongs of the world. Moreover, I get something valuable from being able to extend to others a generosity that has been extended to me, over and over, across the years. Love, hope, friendship – whatever it’s called, it’s the over and above that lights up a room.

I have no expectation of being invited back by the friends who come to my place for dinner. I hate the idea that my gesture might be viewed as some kind of pot-latch or covert repayment system. I wouldn’t want anyone who comes to my place for dinner to feel under that kind of pressure. I cook for friends in order to create the kind of world that I want to live in, and to suspend external demands on everyone in the room for a while. All of us spend our days doing our best, and occasionally it seems right to salute this.