I come to your house mid week for a dinner party

[JuliaPargetter]

What do you cook?

Looking for ideas! No chilli hot food and not too meaty, please!

Either lasagne with salad or roast chicken with Greek salad, roasted new potatoes and houmous/tzatziki.

Although mid week you'd not be getting through the door

This thread feels very 1980s. Not a criticism!

I'd go Greek. Or more specifically, Cretan.

Dakos to start (basically bruschetta). Cretan aubergines with a Greek salad. And probably something ready made for dessert from M&S.

If I am working in the office - take away

When I wfh - Marry Me Chicken, Chicken parmigiana or a pork fillet traybake.

You’d be handed the takeaway menu!

I have lots of veggie friends so maybe spinach and ricotta cannelloni or a pasta with green sauce and garlic bread.

I’m very intrigued by sausage Chinese curry - do you have a recipe please?

Individual chicken pot pies with veg

Crab linguine takes 10 mins start to finish and is quite elegant. Otherwise something like coq au vin that can be done in advance and just put in some mashed potatoes or bread. Pudding, I just order from a nice patisserie and starter is just something picked up from Brindisa or our local deli

Fresh spaghetti with a dressing of crab, mussels, parsley,. Garlic and olive oil. (crab from a tin, mussels from a jar)

GU pot for pudding.

Intrigued to know about the sausage curry lol

Depending on formality of occasion!
Dinner : a roast with a good pudding and nice wines
Supper : a spread of selection of sausages with baked potatoes or mash, salads, breads, veggies and a shop-bought lemon tart for pud

Unexpectedly a look of panic and whatever we were having stretched with garlic bread/salad/lentils/tinned beans as appropriate.
If I knew, some kind of casserole or tray bake
Greek lamb stew (Nigella)
Beef stew mash and veg
Lincolnshire sausage and lentil simmer (BBC Good Food)
Chicken and Chorizo risotto (Pampered chef)
Bought pud or crumble
Lots of wine or GnT as required

Unless it’s just family, a dinner party is very rare thing here now, but at the last, very recent one, it was baked gammon (Waitrose best) with lots of mashed potato, proper parsley sauce and tender stem broccoli.

Followed by apple and mincemeat (a third of a jar left from Christmas) crumble, with cream or custard.

All went down very well, lots of seconds.

In stock - halomi and mushroom burgers or halomi kebabs on the grill with side salad or Mexican refriend beans ( these can be mild ) with cheese and salad

trip to shop - perhaps some decent fish with a parsley sauce, mash and veggies

Shop-bought nibbles or if I have time smoked salmon pate & sourdough - just wizz smoked salmon with cream cheese, lemon zest & juice and some dill

Chicken thigh traybake of some description or something from one of the Rukmini Iyer Roasting Tin books - throw it all in and leave the oven to do the work

Eton mess courtesy of some shop-bought meringues

Something I'd made the night before and only needed heating up. So a chicken stew with salad. Or chicken thighs marinated and put in the oven when I got home from work with couscous and salad or roasted veg. And a bought pudding. And lots of ostentatious yawning by 9 o'clock.

A casserole of some kind.

this week you’d get lamb ragu, venison chilli or beef short ribs (because that’s what i am batch cooking)

frozen pizza and cheap white wine

We are friends, not Meghan Markle, so don't need to show off to each other and pretend we are culinary marvels. Pizza and wine, probably.

spaghetti bolognese and garlic bread, nice bottle of red

Lasagna, salad, antipasti. In reality choose your option from take away, quick chat then please leave I have to take to bed before 8pm.

Pancetta Carbonara

Soup made with whatever is lying around, a lentil lasagne or risotto and salad, and something with blood oranges for dessert.

Probably depends on numbers, though. Tuesday night for eight is going to be lot more low-effort and informal than four on Saturday.

Fish Pie
Green veg

Lemon tart