Sorry, Nigella – if people are coming to my house for dinner, it’s going to be a party

The cost of living may be high at the moment, but bringing people around a table to rub shoulders with each other and gossip all night is still very much on my agenda, writes celebrity chef Gizzi Erskine

My mother’s dinner parties always stayed true to that French way of eating (Gizzi Erskine)

In an interview with the Sunday Times this week Nigella Lawson revealed that she doesn’t really “do” dinner parties anymore. Instead, she said, she tends to opt for a more chilled-out soiree.

Gone are the elaborate entrees, replaced instead by a bowl of Twiglets (which Nigella says she serves in order to show them off to bemused American friends, who have never encountered the polarising treat before). She follows that up with a simple dinner – something that contains less meat to support her vegan friends.

The response to this revelation was a loud “you’ve changed!”, as readers claimed that the How To Cook host has turned her back on the thing that made us fall in love with her.

In another Times article, Nigella confesses she is also an advocate for what the kids are calling a “picky tea”, or serving up “picky bits” – a term coined by British mums, but has been popularised on the internet by Gen Z-ers and is currently making waves on our social media. It’s a kind of British charcuterie – a pastry and salad smorgasbord hybrid, though without the pretence.

The word is as puke-inducing and as grim an idea as those who still say, “nom, nom, nom” and mean it. The New York Times had to give an explanation, describing them as “snack plates made by one person for the consumption and enjoyment of one person” – which speaks volumes about it! Really, I think what Nigella is saying is that the way we used to eat a buffet serves more of a purpose, these days.

And I’d be lying if I said I never eat like this. In my Christmas book Season’s Eatings I dedicate a whole chapter to the idea of bringing back the buffet at big gatherings. There’s real joy to be had in raiding the fridge and then building a plate from leftover roast meat, charcuterie, pork pies or sausage rolls, cheeses, olives, piccalilli, humous, salads and crackers.

I will do this with my boyfriend and maybe once in a while with guests, but if people are coming round my house for dinner, it’s going to be an event. I’m going to make sure they eat in a sophisticated and effortless way, and I’m going to make a minimum of three solid courses. We’re going to sit side by side, drink, serve each other, laugh and maybe even dance. I see no signs of me ever wanting to give this up.

The reason I cook this way is because my mother, Maria, would host the most extravagant dinner parties. As a single parent of three young girls, the kitchen became a place where she trained her little brigade of helpers. My mother is of Scottish/Polish descent, and she moved to Paris very young to marry a French man. She talks often about falling deeply in love with the French produce markets, and the way she explains breaking down a bib or frisée lettuce is pure poetry.

My mother’s dinner parties always stayed true to that French way of eating. She’d start by making a couple of canapes; white toast croutes, spread with chicken liver parfait and a grape, or some cream cheese and smoked salmon or cucumber. Everybody would drink gin and tonics – which in those days was far trendier than champagne.

Then everyone would be seated. I remember being absolutely mortified one dinner party, when my mother insisted on serving “fruit soup” – a velvety pink soup, similar to a gazpacho, dotted with fruit salad and finished with fine sherry vinegar and punchy extra virgin olive oil. It was a nineties take on the seventies trend of serving tinned fruit, and seemed to me very gauche. As an adult I see how cool that is and have even had a couple of fruit soup recipes of my own (a watermelon gazpacho and a Cantaloupe melon soup with crevettes).

The typical night would also see perfectly cooked (warm) asparagus with hot butter or vinaigrette, and for the main course, she would bake a whole fish – a cod or a hake – and serve that with hollandaise, or perhaps instead serve quail with a muscatel sauce. For pudding, a big bowl of proper foamy milk chocolate mousse with a lick of double cream.

The adults would be drinking, and it would get more and more raucous as the night went on. I used to sit at the top of the stairs and listen to them all roaring away after my chores were done. One day Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee came and did magic tricks for me and my sisters. I would fantasise about having my own dinner parties, one day.

When I first moved out of home, I really went for it. I was the only 17-year-old I had heard of pulling stunts like my mum, and people really did love them – I got cocky when I went to catering school and started working in restaurants. I began serving amuse bouchée’s and petite fours too.

I decided to make the sort of food people wanted to eat – where they could sit shoulder to shoulder and serve each other big dishes, like slow-roasted lamb with orzo, or pork carnitas with freshly pressed soft corn tacos. The older and busier I got, the more inclined I was to have a smaller, simpler menu. I’d go for basics and bring out a shepherd’s pie and some petit pois.

During Covid, when the bans were being lifted, if I wanted to see my friends I had to have them over. Dinner parties and Sunday lunches were how we did it, as we tried to recreate a “dining out” experience in our own homes. I was the most popular person I knew during that time!

I never want to stop entertaining. I asked my mother why she loves it so much, and she said that it’s just always been a key part of her social life. That her dinner parties became sought after, like some exclusive club. They made her feel wanted and important, and she was good at them.

The cost of living may be high at the moment, but bringing people around a table to rub shoulders with each other and gossip all night is still very much on my agenda. While I see Nigella’s new view as very current, and she’s certainly entitled to it, I couldn’t disagree with her more. The dinner party is not dead, and long may it reign!