Whether you’re hosting a New Year’s dinner party or it’s the two of you date-night-style celebrating after the kids have gone to bed, it’s extremely nice to make an effort and serve a fine meal.
Fine doesn't mean cooking for hours and dash to the table bearing platters of food just off the hob. The host (or the chef of the house) should take it as easy as possible. For that, let me throw a handful of excellent recipes your way, all perfectly easy and feasible to prep ahead, with just the finishing touches added on the night. No fancy ingredients needed to procure either – except for champagne, of course. Happy New Year!
After the heaviness of Christmas food, this will be a blissfully welcome, refreshing starter, with the citrus spot on in season. Mixed citrus and radicchio salad is bursting with vibrant flavours. Peeled and sliced blood and regular oranges, grapefruits, and zesty radicchio, this bitter sweet symphony is perfect for the occasion.
Citrus and radicchio salad
RECIPE
Alternatively, serve a twist on Brussels sprouts, in a dish refreshingly different as well as easy to prepare. Shaved Brussels sprout salad with toasted walnuts and Manchego cheese: the sprouts are raw, the walnuts are toasted and the cheese is mashed into a dressing.
Shaved Brussels sprout salad
RECIPE
Slightly more substantial, cream cheese and Cheddar stuffed jalapeno peppers, baked in the oven for a delicious appetiser. Prep and fill them on the day before and just slip into the oven for fifteen minutes before serving.
Stuffed jalapeno peppers
RECIPE
For the main, a lighter shade of pork will do well. Pork fillet aka tenderloin is so easy to work with, it’s the dream dinner party material. This recipe presents it stuffed with medjool dates and drizzled with hot honey glaze. Plain buttered pasta on the side or crushed new potatoes will go well.
Pork fillet with dates and hot honey
RECIPE
An alternative, fishy, and one-tray dish of salmon and potato bake can also be assembled ahead and baked before serving. With crème fraiche and Parmesan topping, it requires only a green salad on the side.
My favourite, easy and a crowd pleasing recipe: chicken saltimbocca, thin escalopes of chicken fillet layered with sage leaves, Parmesan and Parma ham. Saltimbocca is classically made with veal but the chicken version is easier and delicious.
And a veggie option: oven baked rice with a layer of charred and blistered flat green beans and cherry tomatoes in chunky sauce, with crispy cheesy topping. It requires several stages of prep, but all can be done in advance and assembled, waiting to be baked. And it’s beyond delicious.
Rice with beans and tomatoes
RECIPE
As a universal side to a main course, you can’t beat the light version of a coleslaw: my spring cabbage salad. It’s much more exciting than limp lettuce, and it’s authentically even nicer on the next day so make-ahead – tick.
For pudding, it’s lemon or blood orange posset for me, always. Boil cream with lemon juice and this is what happens, as they say on TikTok. But seriously, the traditional and delicious English dessert, lemon posset, involves barely more than that and is unfailingly popular with guests.
Or take inspo from a South African Christmas pudding, malva. Warm and a little like sticky toffee, it’s perfect for those who like proper, warm pudding that goes with ice cream or custard – and for everybody else too.