How to host a stress-free dinner party

It’s party season, people! Where summer is the time for barbecues, salads and sipping cocktails in the sun, autumn and winter usher you indoors for a festive feast.

But hosting your friends and family doesn’t neeed to be stressful or complicated.

Drawing on her experience catering for weddings and events over the years – and learning from her own dinner party faux pas – food writer and cook Kate Young shares her secrets for a smooth sailing soiree.

From feasts and canapes for a crowd, to barbecues, tea parties and house parties (not to mention that all important morning-after tonic), these tips are worth bearing in mind for any occasion.

And if you’re stuck on the main event – the food! – scroll down for three sensational and foolproof recipes for entertaining. You can’t go wrong.

There’s a reason that Bridget Jones’s birthday dinner party goes so horribly wrong – she’s chosen to cook three slightly fussy Marco Pierre White recipes she’s never made before. Frankly, it’s a miracle there’s soup at all, even if it is blue. Instead, make sure you’re doing at least a couple of things you’ve done before. You don’t want to be surprised by something needing more time on the hob than you anticipate, or ingredients you can’t get hold of in your supermarket. A dinner party doesn’t have to be complicated.

Whether you’re hosting a house party, a dinner party, or a wedding, it’s inevitable that you’ll have some food that needs a little last-minute attention. Knowing that’s the case, aim for at least a few things that can be done entirely (or mostly) in advance; sausage rolls prepped the day before and served at room temperature, a tart that can be baked hours before, a salad that can live happily in the fridge for a bit until you need it.

I spent my twenties as one of life’s great hosting martyrs. I refused offers of help, wanting desperately to give my pals a nice relaxed evening in my flat. In reality, my friends watched me from their seat on the sofa, as I flapped about, trying to do 12 things at once. Nowadays, I’m far less precious. I take the help, and invite people into the kitchen with me to chop, stir and pour. My top tip? Let people be useful. They love to help.

Above all else, hosting should be fun. You’ve won the jackpot – you’re the person who doesn’t have to navigate the journey home! Figure out which bits of hosting you get a kick out of: trying out different cocktails, making canapes, fussing about with candles and decorations, and commit a good chunk of your time and energy there. It sounds flippant, but the key really is making a party you want to be at and I promise your guests will too.

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I have written recipes for sausage rolls before. There was one in the Midnight Feasts chapter of my first book – the version my granny makes, laced with Worcestershire sauce and hot English mustard. There’s a mushroom, leek and miso version in the Cocktail Parties chapter of my Christmas book. And here we are again, with more sausage rolls – this time made sweet and salty with mango chutney and soy sauce.

The truth is, I couldn’t very well write a book about parties in which they were absent, an impulse reinforced by the books on my shelves. Our titular heroine in Jilly Cooper’s Prudence joins Mrs Braddock to make them for Lucasta’s birthday party. They’re part of the complicated “beige feast” at the Christmas Eve party in Juno Dawson’s Stay Another Day. In Once, Twice, Three Times an Aisling, a list of Mandy’s favourite canapés has sausage rolls on top (naturally). Neville takes a sausage roll off a platter during a big party that brings the Cazalets together in Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Casting Off. Sausage rolls are part of the spread when Adrian Mole and his neighbours celebrate the royal wedding with a street party. They’re ubiquitous, they’re delicious. They’re perfect.

Makes: around 64 little rolls

Ingredients:

2 brown onions, finely diced

1 carrot, grated

2 crisp eating apples, grated

500g (1lb 2oz) sausage meat*

500g (1lb 2oz) minced (ground) pork, at least 10 per cent fat

125g (4½oz) soft white breadcrumbs

6 tbsp mango chutney

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp cider vinegar

Lots of freshly ground black pepper

A large pinch of flaky sea salt

1 egg

4 sheets ready-rolled puff pastry

1 tbsp sesame seeds

*I squeeze the meat from a packet of good sausages – the texture and seasoning give your sausage rolls a good kickstart.

Method:

1. In a mixing bowl, bring together the onions, carrot, apples, meat, breadcrumbs, mango chutney, soy sauce, vinegar, and seasoning. Squidge everything together with your hands.

2. Whisk the egg in a small bowl and set aside. Preheat your oven to 200C/400F/gas 6. Lay out a sheet of pastry, with the narrower end parallel to the edge of your work surface. Slice in half, again parallel to the edge of the work surface. On each half, place ⅛ of the filling in a line along the longer edge. The line of filling should be a generous 2cm (¾in) high.

3. Roll the pastry tightly over the meat. Paint some of the beaten egg along the top edge of the pastry, then roll the meat over it to seal. Paint the roll with more beaten egg, then slice each roll into eight pieces (a bread knife or serrated knife is the best one to use here) and transfer to a lined baking sheet. They will puff up, so give them a little space. Sprinkle the tops with sesame seeds. Repeat with the remaining pastry and filling.

4. Bake to a deep golden colour; 25-30 minutes should do it. Allow to cool slightly before serving, or serve at room temperature if you prefer.

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Nora Ephron’s Heartburn (and the Meryl Streep film) reads as much like a menu of things I want to eat as it does a novel. Buttery mashed potato, key lime pie, bread pudding, bacon hash, perfect vinaigrette – heartbroken food writer Rachel cooks for others, for lovers, but, primarily, for herself.

Some of the recipes detaild within the narrative work better than others. But one of her casually impressive dinner-party dishes has made its way into my general culinary rotation: linguine alla cecca. Described by Ephron/Rachel as “so light and delicate that it’s almost like eating a salad”, it’s my go-to for summer evenings when the thought of serving a hot meal makes me want to cry.

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

1kg (2lb 4oz) ripe tomatoes*

Ice

100g (3½oz) basil, leaves picked

1 garlic clove, squashed with the side of a knife

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

¼ tsp chilli flakes

600g (1lb 5oz) dried linguine

Flakey sea salt and black pepper

* When I’m making this for one, I use lovely cherry tomatoes. But slipping the skins from a kilogram of cherry tomatoes is a bit too masochistic for a simple midweek dinner. Plum tomatoes (really fresh ones) will work too.

Method:

1. Fill your pan with water, and put it on to boil. Half fill a bowl with iced water. Slice a cross in the base of each tomato.

2. Once the pan of water is boiling, drop the tomatoes into it and leave them to bob along for a minute. Scoop them out and plunge them into the bowl of water to cool. Bring the pan of water back to a rolling boil, and salt it generously.

3. Drain the tomatoes then peel their skins off. I know – it’s a faff. But it’s the whole point here; you want the tender flesh of the tomato to soak up all the oil and flavour. Cut them open, scoop out the seeds and remove the core. Roughly chop them or pull them apart (once deseeded, cherry tomatoes can be left as they are), and add them back to the bowl. Add the basil leaves, garlic, olive oil, chilli and a generous pinch of salt and black pepper. Mix together with your hands and allow to sit. Add the pasta to the now boiling cooking water.

4. When the pasta is al dente, reserve a mug of the cooking water, then drain the pasta and add it to the bowl. Toss everything together, lubricating with a splash of the pasta water if necessary, and more olive oil if you like. Remove the garlic clove. Serve immediately.

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Since reading The Light Years I have made countless versions of Mrs Cripps’ plum tart – there’s one that’s still online on my blog, a deep frangipane in a buttery shortcrust with plums baked into it. But here, in a chapter about dinner parties, I wanted something simple, something free-form, something that doesn’t demand a loose-bottomed tart pan or anything beyond a baking sheet. I’ve rolled this pastry out with a bottle of wine in the absence of a rolling pin; you truly don’t need anything fancy. It’s not a classic English plum tart – it’s unlikely to be exactly the one that Mrs Cripps would have made. But it’s frankly so delicious that I hope she’ll forgive me.

I feel that Mrs Cripps would be happy for me to suggest some seasonal alternatives too, for when the plums are yet to ripen on the trees at Home Place. Try the tart with sliced apple, ground almonds and nutmeg in autumn; with batons of rhubarb, ground ginger and ground pistachios in spring; and with whole seedless red grapes, cinnamon and walnuts in winter.

Serves: 6-8

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

200g (1½ cups) plain (all-purpose) flour, plus extra for dusting

A pinch of salt

1 tsp ground cardamom

1 tbsp caster (superfine) sugar

120g (4½oz) cold butter, cubed

1-2 tbsp iced water

For the filling:

400g (14oz) plums

75g (generous ½ cup) hazelnuts

45g (¼ cup) caster (superfine) sugar

2 tbsp melted butter

1 tbsp granulated sugar

Method:

1. First, make the pastry; it will need half an hour to rest in the fridge while you pit the plums. Tip the flour, salt, cardamom and sugar into a bowl, and add the chunks of butter. You can blitz this in a food processor if you have one, or you can rub it with your fingertips, until the butter is in very small but visible flecks. Bring the pastry together by hand, adding the water as needed. Shape into a disc and transfer to the fridge to rest.

2. Cut the plums in half and pull out their stones. If you have small plums, this is a time-consuming and fiddly job, but it’s a worthwhile one – biting into a stone in your tart is less than ideal. If the stones are particularly tricky to dislodge, I find cutting through the equator of the fruit, instead of the poles, gives you more purchase: twist the top half off, and then twist the stone free.

3. Blitz or bash the hazelnuts until finely ground. This will be the work of moments in a food processor or spice grinder, but if you don’t have one, a rolling pin will do the trick (or just buy ground hazelnuts, if you can find them). Mix with the caster sugar.

4. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4. Roll the disc of pastry out on a floured baking sheet, until around 35cm (14in) in diameter. The pastry should be 3mm (⅛in) thick. Sprinkle with the hazelnut and sugar mixture, leaving a 3cm (1¼in) border clear. Top with the plums, skin-side up, in a single layer (small ones can overlap a little if you can’t fit them in).

5. Fold the clean edges up and over the fruit all the way around the tart, to form a makeshift crust. You’ll need to pleat in various places; just ensure there are no points around the tart where plum juice could flow out.

6. Brush the crust and fruit with the melted butter, and sprinkle the crust with granulated sugar. Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, until the crust is golden brown, and the plums have collpased. Serve warm or at room temperature with creme fraiche or ice cream.

‘The Little Library Parties’ by Kate Young (published by Head of Zeus, £15) is available13 October.