Imperative Cooking: they also serve
THEY started at Watford North: three personalities, on the car radio, Woman's Hour, going on about dinner parties. They talked frothily for 13 minutes without once mentioning food. I lie. When one, an Irish lady, was gabbling, a gentleman from Punch muttered 'starter'. With their noise and that outside, it was not easy to make out what they did think about dinner parties but I recall they liked going to other people's rather than giving them (most good cooks have exactly the opposite opinion) because giving dinner parties was difficult: there was so much to do what with the cooking and the serving. The serving in particular was a problem: it interfered with socialising. One of them had been impressed by a gentleman who declined her invitation to dinner because he wanted to be her 'friend' and what with her serving, there wouldn't be adequate opportunity to be friendly. And alarm was expressed about the quantity of cutlery and crockery.
What is this serving business that's so difficult? What extraordinary dinner party serving ritual is it that terrifies them and takes up so much time? It can't be laying the table: that can be done before the would-be 'friend' arrives. It can't be carv- ing: most of the chickens served by Woman's Hour people collapse like Jericho when threatened by so much as a matchstick — and such people now approach the tougher challenges of over- done, underhung roast beef with the aid of an electric hedge trimmer. It can't be bringing in a few dishes from the kitchen nor completing last minute cooking these people would surely choose to serve dishes which do not demand last minute work, leaving them free to froth. It might be that they run their dinner parties like a works canteen, insisting on dolloping out everything to everyone (in which case they shouldn't). Whatever it is, I bet it is not what should worry them — the provision of the basic necessities, so often absent from dinner party tables.
First, a table of good size — none of this intimate nonsense: a chap likes to stretch during his three hours — and a comfort- able chair too. Next, one plate each prefer- ably white and round. It should be deep enough to take sauces. One knife per chap, one which cuts and with a blade long enough to distance the cuff from the hollandaise. A fork with four prongs. Why this meanness with prongs? Either there aren't enough or they're thin as needles. In both cases there is lots of space between the prongs: just as one is about to put a consignment of spinach purée in the mouth, it slips through the void, back onto the plate splashing all one's 'friends'. Everyone needs a glass, not a thimble nor a swimming pool, and it should not stand on a picture of Salisbury Cathedral. Napkins — huge, white, plain and starched. There is nothing to be gained from stuffing them in the glasses. Indeed, if both are right, the one would not fit in the other.
No side plates. They encourage the revolting practice of dishing out individual exploding rolls and the worse habit of spreading the rolls with butter. We are not at high tea. The bread is to accompany the dishes, not be eaten to fill up ready for the night shift. So no butter either unless with its traditional Parma ham, radishes . . • • A pepper grinder which works and has pepper in but not one of those huge things beloved of interfering homosexual Italian waiters. Try keeping one plate throughout, possibly changing after the fish, not to save the washing up, but to embarrass people who leave things. They will not be able to spirit away the evidence of their poor taste and incompetent filleting in instalments: the olives they don't like, the pheasant leg they can't debone and the chevre they mistakenly took for tasteless Brie will accumulate like an individual winter of discontent — you remember, there's no side plate whereon they can hide their shame under the shattered but carefully deployed fragments of the exploding roll. It's time to expose and stop the Anglo- Saxon habit of leaving things.
Fish knives? If you wish. But much more important, a proper serving fish knife for filleting and serving large whole bass and salmon. A good carving knife: that means one that can be sharpened. The hedge trimmer is better employed in the garden and it is pathetic to see a grown man rooting round a duck's armpit with a pair of scissors, even if glorified as 'poultry secateurs'. Use them for the roses.
By all means add finger bowls, knife rests and extra plates and glasses if it doesn't interfere with making 'friends' but do see we simple chaps are given the basic equipment to eat our dinner.
Digby Anderson
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