You’ve read the books, and you’ve tried many different
recipes, you’ve found your skill level and have an idea of what you can cook,
but when preparing a recipe for your next dinner party, you felt a bit, well,
bored. You’re confident enough in your abilities not to be concerned about
making something that people won’t enjoy, but you’ve been making the same
dishes for a while now and want to spice things up figuratively. Adding some
theater to your cooking can be a great way to stick to the flavors you love
while stunning frequent dinner party guests or new friends. You’ll be happy to
hear that doing this doesn’t have to be too complicated or expensive!
Design
Your eye for food design may be improved simply by
being a fan of Masterchef Australia, but a lot of people may find Michelin-Esque
simplicity a bit boring or restrictive. If this is you, don’t worry, there are
many ways of working with the design of your food and eating environment that can
give your dinner parties a highly personal touch.
The
Opportunity of Theme
Try theming your meals. You don’t have to go as far as
The Fat Duck in the UK assembling
a miniature forest with scented dry ice, but
considering a color scheme for dishes can help give the dinner a congruence.
Using your eye for arts and crafts can come in handy here. Try to create a
table design that matches your color scheme. This can be as simple as napkins
and tablecloth colors, but if your theme is a bit more complicated, it could be
enjoyable to go to a pottery café and personally paint a serving dish. You
could go as far as creating a 3D section of the table with paper-mâché. For
example, if you’re having a traditional Italian dinner, you could create some
undulating hills on one side of the table for your green tablecloth to
transform into the Umbrian countryside.
If you’re a keen baker, you can make your dessert
incredibly special by making your own silicone cake moulds. Silicone is great
as it doesn’t emit any fumes or react with any ingredients. It’s also fantastic
as it allows you to create cake castings and mouldings yourself. With liquid
rubber castings
and mouldings from Rowe
Trading, you can create a highly-personal cake shape, be it
for cupcakes or bigger loaves.
Napkin rings are another great opportunity to impress
your guests. You can make rustic napkin rings easily with just toilet
paper roll and jute string; but with burlap, lace or
wire, you can fit your rings with your theme and create a multi-faceted
experience.
Place names are an obvious candidate for personalization,
but many people do this. To stand out, you could take advantage of the fact
that they’re much more fun when they’re interactive. This could be in the form
of a certain game, for example, getting guests to guess the codeword that
represents them on the table.
However, you want to excite your dinner party guests,
focus on presentation and taste. You can create an exciting dinner without
being too complex, but the trick is to make each feature complement the others.
If every element is simple, your meal can still have a powerful effect as long
as nothing feels out of place.
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