How to ensure every dinner party is a great success without being a great cook
· Make your guests wait—the food will taste delicious when they’re very hungry, whatever the quality of the cooking.
· Change your guests, not your menu.
· Invite only people who cannot cook at all, or who cannot cook the type of cuisine you’re serving or don’t know much or anything about it.
· Give them placebos rather than give yourself more work providing variations of the same dish. I once invited people round to a S.E.Asian chicken curry (called kari ayam / "curry chicken" in Malay / Indonesian) meal. Some of them said beforehand they couldn’t eat very spicy food, and I said I’d make a separate milder one. On the day, I served those who could eat spicy food from a pot I said contained the spicy version, and then I brought in another pot which I said contained the mild version. Everyone was happy with their food.
