The stress of Bring A Plate dinner parties

As a thirty-something who is friends with other thirty-somethings, dinner parties have become one of my life’s greatest joys. There’s wine, a curated playlist and, on weeknights, a 9pm cut-off time.

These events also bring with them the potential for one of the all-time best feelings: bringing the one dish that flies off the table.

I’m not proud to admit it, but my entire Easter weekend hinges on how many people compliment my roasted cauliflower and pine nut salad. Credit: Michael Howard

No matter how full your life is in other areas – you may be rich and beautiful, with perfect children and a rewarding career – true contentment is an offhand compliment about your chickpea salad. “It’s honestly so easy,” you’ll say in mock surprise. “I’ll have to send you the recipe!”

For the remainder of the day, you will be untouchable, high on the knowledge that people love your food and, by extension, they love you.

Conversely, there is no more crushing sight than seeing your untouched plate, largely ignored amid a sea of demolished dishes. Who among us hasn’t anxiously hovered near the serving area, death-staring everyone who passes by our obviously disgusting roasted cauliflower and pine nut salad without stopping to load up?

This was the dire situation I faced when attending a recent birthday dinner at a friend’s house. As is often the case for these kinds of events, food planning was carried out via a WhatsApp thread. The host offered to take care of the meat before everyone else chimed in with a chorus of “Let us know what we can bring!”

This is usually the moment when an invisible clock begins to tick as the crowd competes to nab either the most preferred or the least laborious options.

My laziest friend got in first with Greek salad, which is fine in theory, even though everyone knows it requires little to no effort. Next up was a guy who unashamedly hated cooking, so instead offered to “put together a cheese board.” Again, this is a necessary element of any get-together, but it is also an admission that their contribution will be primarily financial.

Short on time and lacking motivation, I intended to bring an easy-to-make but hard-to-resist favourite of mine: potato bake. Unfortunately, before I could post my reply, the host beat me to the punch: “Thomas, I assume you’ll bring your famous potato bake.”

My initial response was to laugh it off – If being famous for potato bake is a crime then lock me up! – but rather than see it as a cheap shot, I took it as a challenge. Despite the fact potato bake features universally loved ingredients (potato, cheese, cream!), I would make something new, something daring, something without cheese!

“Haha, no, not this time,” I replied, trying to hide the hurt. “Going to surprise you!”

Determined to serve a dish that would both restore my pride and wow the other guests, I frantically started researching, poring over Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking and making notes in the margins of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Having promised a surprise, a salad wouldn’t cut it (too underwhelming), nor a dessert (too much of an afterthought).

Eventually, I settled on Ottolenghi’s chilli fish with tahini, a simple but impressive dish featuring a delicate halibut poached in an aromatic tomato sauce flavoured with ancho chilli. Given the dinner party demographic (middle-class Millennials), this felt like a smart move; no one in their mid-30s would dare criticise Ottolenghi or tahini.

Thank you, culinary king Yotam Ottolenghi, the patron saint of Millennial cooking.

It also didn’t hurt that the cookbook described the dish as an “in-your-face crowd pleaser”, which is precisely how I describe myself, even if PotatoBakeGate had left me feeling as delicate as the halibut.

Armed with my redemption dish and two bottles of decent wine, I waltzed into the party and started tossing out compliments, such was my confidence. Is that a goat’s cheese tart? How lovely! Broccoli with burnt butter and nduja? Inspired. And who made the leek risotto? Fantastic.

Aware that no self-respecting dinner party can begin until someone gets a photo of the spread for social media, I placed my chilli fish with tahini in the middle of the table and stood back to admire my handiwork.

A stock image of a dinner party from the 1970s, a time when the humble potato bake was respected.

At this point, my wife rightly assumed I was losing my mind and said something about lunch “not being a competition” before her voice was drowned out by the distinct sound of people clapping.

It turns out one of my friends had run out of time, so rather than cooking, he ordered hundreds of dollars worth of KFC. Met with a hero’s welcome, he laid out the spread on the table – wings, chips, chicken, and, most devastatingly, potato and gravy.

Searching for more room to accommodate the Colonel, the birthday girl pointed at my dish: “Can someone move this weird chicken soup?”

“It’s not chicken,” I said, mostly to myself. “It’s chilli fish with tahini.” But no one was really listening. Potato bake may be over, but potato and gravy is forever.

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at [e-mail] or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.

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