Sunday Lunch, and Why I Stopped Hosting Dinner

For years I hosted dinner. This meant cooking all afternoon, serving at nine because that was when the last person arrived, and watching everybody flag somewhere in the middle of the second course. I would go to bed at one in the morning having barely spoken to anyone, in a kitchen that looked like a crime scene.

I have not done it in two years. Everything now goes in the oven at eleven in the morning, people arrive at one, and I have never enjoyed having people over more. Here is the case, in case it is useful to anybody else who has been quietly dreading their own dinner parties.

The case for lunch

You cook in daylight, which sounds trivial and is not. Chopping something at ten in the morning with coffee and the radio on is a completely different activity from doing it at six after a full day, and the food is better for it because you are not rushing the part that cannot be rushed.

People arrive hungry rather than exhausted. Nobody has had a whole working day happen to them first. The conversation at a table at two in the afternoon is not the conversation at a table at ten at night, and I will take the first one nearly every time.

And it ends when it ends. Usually around six, at which point everybody goes home feeling like they got a whole day, and I have an entire evening left over. That last part turned out to be worth more to me than anything else about the switch.

One thing in the oven, one thing on the table, and a very long time to sit at it. That is the entire method.

The food gets simpler, and better

Nobody wants four courses at midday, which removes the temptation to perform. What is left is one large thing that cooks unattended — a braise, a whole roasted shoulder, a big tray of beans with too much oil — plus bread and something sharp and green to cut it.

This is what I wanted to cook anyway. The braise is the ideal hosting dish because it is better made the day before, it does not care if you are an hour late to the table, and it improves while you ignore it. Nothing about it requires you to be standing at the stove when your friends arrive, which is the actual failure mode of hosting.

The rule I hold to is one hot thing. Everything else on the table is room temperature and was finished before anyone knocked — a salad, something pickled, cheese, a bowl of good olives, bread. If you have two hot things you have to time two hot things, and now you are working instead of eating.

What I actually put out

In the oven at eleven: whatever is cheap and takes four hours. Lamb shoulder, pork shoulder, beef shin, a tray of chicken thighs on potatoes if it is a smaller group. Salted the night before, in a low oven, lid on for most of it and off at the end.

On the table at one: bread I did not make, butter, something sharp — usually chicory and lemon, sometimes just tomatoes when they are worth it. A jug of water and a jug of something else. Then the pot, in the middle, with a spoon in it, and nobody serving anybody.

Afterwards: fruit and a hard cheese, or a cake somebody else brought. I stopped making dessert entirely and no one has ever once mentioned it.

The only rule that matters

Be sitting down when people arrive. If you are still cooking, everyone stands in the kitchen holding a drink and asking whether they can help, and you spend the first hour hosting the room instead of being in it. If the food is already in the oven and you are at the table, they sit down at the table, and the day starts properly.

That is the whole thing. Cook one thing slowly, start early, and be finished before it begins. It took me an embarrassingly long time to work out that the goal of having people over is to be at the table with them.