Karen Goodwin-Roberts recently switched from heading up the cookery team at Drysdale to being team leader for hospitality. As Goodwin-Roberts Catering she will cook for a party of 150, and she likes to entertain at home for ten or so, and so she is admirably qualified to provide a dinner party menu that is organised to leave the host-cook free to enjoy the party.
This is a winter menu of four courses plus an appetiser for six people. Karen says she prefers to serve smaller courses, the soup, for instance, is just a few mouthfuls in a coffee cup, but concedes she has had lots of practice. If four courses seems too much to manage you might want to cut back to three courses and leave out the salmon stacks (on the basis that they are trickier than soup). The chicken with pancetta can be served with pre-dinner drinks or as a first course.
Everything can be prepared ahead, so that the cook hardly needs to leave the group around the table.
Karen says when she recently had a dinner party for ten she set the table at 11am. “As long as people see you are organised, they relax,†she said.
Here are the recipes, with Peter Althaus’s suggestions for wine with each course, and afterwards we give you a suggested plan of attack.
- Recipe: Celeriac and parsnip soup
- Recipe: Braised oxtail pies
- Recipe: Bread and butter pudding with apricot whisky glaze
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