The Perfect Dinner Party Menu: Cocktails, Roast Chicken, and Cake
For all the time we spend thinking about food, talking about food, and scrolling through food, the question that dominates most of our lives remains stubbornly mundane: what's for dinner?
It's the daily puzzle that underpins everything else. The meal squeezed in between work and washing up, eaten around crowded tables or in front of the television, shared with friends, partners, children, or simply ourselves.
Yet despite being one of the most important rituals of everyday life, dinner is rarely afforded the same attention as restaurant openings, viral recipes, or elaborate weekend cooking projects.
In But First, Dinner: Food for Our Real Lives, food writer Eleanor Steafel turns her attention to those ordinary meals and the lives built around them. Part cookbook, part memoir, and part meditation on modern eating, it celebrates the dishes that reliably feed us, comfort us, and bring people together.
These are recipes designed not for performance but for real life – the sort of food that earns a permanent place in your repertoire because it works.
The recipes below capture that spirit perfectly. There's a gloriously indulgent roast chicken au poivre with chips for when friends come round, a crisp fennel and cucumber salad that seems to improve almost any meal, a tray of Old Fashioneds built for sharing, and a strawberry and lime skillet cake made for long summer evenings.
Together, they offer a reminder that some of the best food isn't reserved for special occasions at all – it's what happens when we gather around a table on an ordinary day and decide to make dinner worth looking forward to.
Roast Chicken Au Poivre (and Chips)
"Ideally, I would like it if more things came 'au poivre'. I love the slight sharpness, the just-enough-but-not-too-much cream, and the way the pepper dances on your tongue but doesn't overpower like mustard might. I love how it'll almost stay where it is if you swipe a piece of bread through it on your plate.
When it’s good (and actually even if it’s only OK) I could eat really quite a lot of it. The best pepper sauce I’ve ever had was at a restaurant called Paul Bert in Paris, where the aloyau de boeuf and fried potatoes are as legendary as the white bistro plates with red writing. It’s one of those meals where you eat the first couple of mouthfuls in slightly stunned silence while your brain computes just how good it is.
I cook steak occasionally, and only when I’m really craving it and can justify forking out for it. When there are people coming for dinner, a chicken feels like the more rational choice. A spatchcocked chicken can cope with having a very luscious sauce poured all over it and still give you golden skin. In fact, a pepper sauce is actually improved by being introduced to a roasting chicken. The schmaltz and juices muddle with the sauce, turning it into something honestly a bit ridiculous. Chicken au poivre it is, then.
You could serve this very chicly with just a simple salad and bread. Or, you could make twice-cooked chips. Just a thought. Imagine telling your friends to come round for dinner and then telling them they’re having chicken and chips and pepper sauce?"
Serves: 4
Ingredients:
For the chicken:
1 large chicken, spatchcocked
8 garlic cloves, skin on, left whole
A little olive oil
For the chips:
Plenty of vegetable or sunflower oil, for deep-frying
1.2kg potatoes (preferably Maris Pipers), skin on, cut into chips
Fine salt
For the sauce:
2 tbsp olive oil, for frying
20g butter, plus another 20g in the fridge
2 banana shallots, finely diced
2 tbsp black peppercorns
100ml white wine
300ml double cream
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tsp white wine vinegar
A handful of parsley, finely chopped
Method:
To make the chicken:
- Preheat the oven to 240C/220C fan/gas 9.
- Sit the chicken, skin-side up, in a roasting tin with the garlic. Drizzle a little olive oil over the skin and rub it into all the crevices. Sprinkle liberally with salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Put in the oven for 10 minutes, then turn the heat down to 200C/180C fan/gas 6 and roast for 25 minutes.
... (rest of the recipe follows the same format)
‘Goes with Everything’ Fennel, Cucumber, and Chilli Salad
... (rest of the recipe follows the same format)
A Tray of Old Fashioneds (with Frozen Baby Onions)
... (rest of the recipe follows the same format)
Strawberry Lime Skillet Cake
... (rest of the recipe follows the same format)
‘But First, Dinner: Food for Our Real Lives’ by Eleanor Steafel (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20).
