The Perfect Dinner.

This week's homework; write about an anniversary or birthday.

Life is all about milestones. Celebrating the big days. We live from day to day, and the small things make up the whole. But even though I’m lax at remembering birthdays and cards, I’ll never cease to make a huge fuss once every 10 years for those ‘big’ birthdays.

I adore my mum. She is the mainstay of my life, my rock, my closest friend. Of course I love all my family, but Mum well, she’s my Mum.

I have always taken charge of her big birthday celebrations, as soon as I was old enough to organize a party. Her 40^th, 50^th, and most memorably her 60th and then the 70^th lately have been my pleasure to organize.

I think I nearly over did it at her 70^th, by keeping secret a friend who came all the way from Australia for the occasion. I actually think I saw mum come close to a heart attack when she saw Jenny walk through the door- and made a mental note not to do any such ‘big’ surprises again, in case she didn’t make it to her 80^th. Every single one of her big birthdays has a story attached, but I think that we will start with the first I was old enough to organize, at the grown up age of 17.

This was back in the 1970’s when ‘dinner parties’ were very formal occasions, and entertaining was a social standard by which you were judged. Nowadays, people stand around my kitchen, watching me prepare food, and might get a spud and peeler thrust into their hand if I’m running behind. Back then, the cook/wife was kept hidden in the kitchen, and the guests were ushered into the drawing room while she shot upstairs to change and appear the perfect hostess. Like a swan, looking graceful, but paddling like fury under the water.

Her first big birthday I can remember was when she turned forty, and I was seventeen. I asked her to invite 6 couples to dinner. I told her to relax, and that I would take care of everything. I was well practiced at laying the table for dinner parties that was my ‘job’ when the parents had guests over. So laying the table with the family silver was no problem. Start with the first course, and work your way from the outside of the cutlery into the middle. The dining room table looked stunning.

So, the dinner guests were organized, and met at a local hostelry  in town. Mum was in an upbeat mood, but Dad was decidedly twitchy. He didn’t want to look a fool among his friends, but mum was having a fine time of it. Surrounded by friends, and high on birthday gifts and determined to enjoy herself. Dad was in charge of keeping things smooth running, so as the guests got hungrier, he rang the house and asked if they could come home yet?

I asked for a time extension, and told him ‘just a few more minuets, please?’ Things weren’t going as smoothly as they did when I watched Mum cook. My helper was the then boyfriend, who was a clueless as I was. We had steak au poive for main, and this is where I was wrestling. I’d never cooked steak before, and with an ancient Aga was not quite sure where to start. I never occurred to me to use a cookery book. I always made it up as I went along, then as now.

Another phone call. I was Dad, “how are you getting along?”

“Fine, Dad, just fine, won’t be long now”

It takes an experienced cook years to work out the vagaries of a one hundred year old Aga. The poor steaks were not looking good, their stint in the top oven had not agreed with them, and the charcoal consigned to the bin.

A frantic scrabble in the freezer revealed some forgotten pork chops in the recesses. This being in days before microwaves, we had to stick them in the top oven to wait for them to defrost before being able to even think about feeding them to guests.

The phone went again; “No, Dad, really it’s all fine, just one more drink, and you can come home”

Finally a packet of bisto was applied and some veg pressed into service, it just wasn’t going to get any better than this.

A rather bad tempered, and hungry Dad on the phone again “WE ARE COMING HOME NOW!”

The guests arrived at the house at 10.00pm, mink coats left in the hall, they had all driven home after two hours in the pub and fell eagerly up on the feast.

Prawn cocktails were up first, frozen prawn on a bed of lettuce, looking stunning in the wine glasses. Prawn Marie-rose sauce, mixed with tomato sauce and mayo to make the lurid pink topping.

Time for champagne, “Happy Birthday, Monica!”

White wine was served with the ‘fish’ course and the hungry guests tucked into the prawn cocktails like Oliver Twist and a bowl of porridge. They were starving, it was along time since they had eaten as the  guests had abstained from eating anything much during the day, with the promise of ‘dinner’ in the evening.

Next up the pork chops. Now dried to a texture resembling shoe leather, but cleverly disguised with bisto gravy. It looked ‘OK’ on the plate, but digging in with the silver knives and forks revealed the truth. Never mind, the crunchy, under cooked potatoes and limp green beans were easier to eat. With a side of orange mush, what had they been, ah yes, the carrots!

 Red wine, anyone?

Boyfriend and I were hot and sweaty in the kitchen, with some good teamwork as evidence.

Then the piece de resistance, the black forest gateaux! This was the whole reason I’d suggested to Mum that I’d cook her birthday dinner, because I knew I was on safe ground with this one. Tinned black cherries applied in a loving patterns between the ever so slightly over cooked sponge rounds. The whole thing was addled with kirsch and whipped cream. By the time they had broken their teeth on the chops, and picked out the lumps of gravy, the cake was a winner.

My  lovely mum was bawling with emotion after so much wine and waiting, ‘my lovely daughter’ she cried, and hugged me. Out came coffee, instant, in mugs.

Then the liquors and cheese. And finally, with groaning tummies, and alcohol running through their veins, the guests got into their cars and drove off into the night.

The evening had been a resounding success!