The Royal Chef At Home: Easy Seasonal Entertaining

frequently, often with great style and always with food everyone loved. Not a few could even turn the most ordinary ingredients into wonderful tasting fare. I remember my grandfather coming home from the factory, putting on his old clothes and heading out to his allotment. Maybe it was the way he nurtured his rhubarb, carrots, onions, leeks and potatoes, but his yield from that tiny plot was astonishing. The whole family respected the produce he brought to the kitchen. Fresh, local and organic. Not to mention, economical, resourceful and creative too. That’s a good thing to remember. Entertaining doesn’t have to be fancy. Stiff, ritualized dinner parties with elaborate cutlery are for the most part long gone, and thank goodness for that. When I first moved to the States, I wanted to impress some new friends and sent out invitations to a dinner party at my house. Everyone accepted and I spentweeks fine tuning the menu, polishing my crystal, silver dipping my flatware, deciding which china would best suit the menu, even making sure I had the right soup bowls for the soup course. After all, one simply can’t serve a veloute soup in a consommé cup, I reasoned. My guests loved the food, the evening too, but it wasn’t until later I realized how uncomfortable they must have been sitting through six courses, wondering whether this was a fish knife or salad knife course and so on. I resolved never to do that to guests again. Today we are free to express ourselves, be creative and entertain in a way that builds upon our strengths. I love the way some of my friends entertain. One is a committed gardener, and we start dinner by picking it first (most of it anyway). It’s actually a lot of

fun. I understand now why Queen Elizabeth and her sister used to spend time bent over the raspberry canes at Balmoral Castle picking berries for dinner. Another friend of mine loves dessert and indulges her love of all things sweet by hosting summer teas. Then there are the wine lovers, and those parties seem to last way into the night… I hope the menus in this book inspire you to create memorable evenings of your own. The recipes are delicious, relatively simple and include plenty of “work ahead” strategies to calm the fearful chef inside you and allow you to bring impressive meals to the table without wishing you had a professional line cook in the kitchen pinch hitting for the evening. Even the most formal parties at my house seem to always start with guests standing in the kitchen chatting. Also, nothing here is fixed in stone and you should feel free to substitute a dish or ingredient that you prefer. I’ve organized the books in a seasonal format. It’s meant to be helpful in two ways; the seasonal menus should make shopping a little easier (and cheaper), and it can provide a simple illustration of how I like to put a meal together. Of course, use that as a general guide, not a commandment, and feel free to range as far and wide as your creative juices allow. From brunch to lunch to tea to dinner and beyond, these menus can provide a solid base from which you can begin exploring and enjoying all of life’s momentous, and not so momentous, occasions.

INTRODUCTION 11