ILLUSTRATION: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
When I was in my early 20s, I threw a dinner party to which I had invited some older, much grander people. I made a wedding’s worth of canapés so elaborate they would have looked a little too try-hard at The Ritz, and a main course that demanded all kinds of sweaty, last-minute faff. I’d more or less survived the death-by-showing-off trial of the first two courses, when I returned to the kitchen to get the pudding.
Thanks to my ancient, creaky oven, one half of the pie was as pale as a Victorian heroine and the other half, charcoal dark. I responded to this with all the composure of an overtired toddler with kitchen privileges, which is to say I kicked the oven hard and crumpled to the floor in a heap of angry sobs. So that was a lovely evening for everyone.
What I learned from this endurance test of an evening is to not get in your own way (so many lessons I’ve learned in the kitchen apply, more broadly, to life in general, too). When you invite people to dinner, the truth is that unless the food is actively foul, most people hardly remember what they ate.