I cooked for people thirty-one times last year, which is roughly every other weekend, and I can tell you with some confidence that nobody remembered the food.
The experiment I did not mean to run
Early in the year the cooking was ambitious. Three courses, things that needed timing, a dish I had practised. By autumn it was one pot, bread, and a salad, put on the table at whatever temperature it happened to be.
The autumn evenings were better. Not slightly — obviously, every time. I was at the table instead of at the hob, and that turned out to be the whole variable.
Nobody remembers what you cooked. They remember that you asked them round.
The format I settled on
- One thing in the oven that is finished before anyone arrives and does not mind waiting.
- Bread you did not make. Nobody has ever commented on this.
- A salad assembled in four minutes while people are already in the kitchen.
Total attention required once guests arrive: about five minutes. That is the figure to optimise, and it took me most of a year to notice it was the figure.
The part that is harder
Asking. Thirty-one evenings meant roughly forty invitations, and sending the message is genuinely the difficult step, not the cooking. Most of them said yes. Most people are waiting to be asked.
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