Come Dine With Me: frantic thirds

By Charlotte Allen

Photography by Alice Gwynne

The third host: Charlotte Allen, English student and food editor, hopeless mess-maker

The Menu:

Wild mushroom risotto with roasted Portobello mushrooms

Slow cooked lamb shoulder with Dauphinoise potatoes and Asian style greens. Roasted pepper stuffed with roasted vegetables and goat’s cheese for the vegetarian.

A trio of desserts – London style cheesecake, double chocolate brownie and mixed berry sorbet

Homemade bread and cheese board

The moment I wobble away from Greg’s flat, it dawns upon me: I’m next.

When cooking for my 6 housemates, something I do fairly often (although whether this is due to skill or pure bossiness, I am never sure) I prepare plenty of hearty student food, presented terribly (probably still in the saucepan) and into which I encourage my fellows to dive, usually without serving spoons and probably upon paper plates. It is at one of these feeding frenzies, at around 8pm on the Sunday before my day of judgement, that one of my housemates pipes up, “So what are you doing for your Come Dine?” I lower my plastic yellow fork with the realisation that my usual methods are really not going to cut it. To be honest, I had known it the instant Greg’s succulent pheasant hit my lips – I was going to have to up my game.

My response to the question is to painstakingly write out a schedule for the entire affair. In the middle of my page I decisively write the one certainty in bright red pen – “7.30 – Guests arrive”. In truth, I must acknowledge that my menu has been haunting me for weeks; the possibilities are frighteningly endless. In the back of my mind rest Cesca’s beautifully decorated table and Greg’s immaculately clean house, and I place the word, ‘CLEAN’ decisively at the top of the page.

An hour later, my paper is a mass of scrawls, scribbles, diagrams and numbers, all carefully wedged between the ominous concepts of ‘clean’ and ‘guests arrive’. I attempt to blag a lift to the biggest Tesco known to Durham – the aptly named Dragonville Tesco. My kind driver courteously informs me that I will need a shopping list before I launch my attack, but comforted by my smug organisational blanket I affirm that I need no such thing.

Well, pride comes before a fall, this time a large, Tesco shaped fall. I am face to face with aisle upon aisle of goods, and a brain desperately computing what I will need; and of course, I forget three key items. I am punished by raised eyebrows from my aforementioned driver, and a frenzied cycle back to Tesco; an excellent start.

The following morning I wake to my alarm, carefully programmed the night before to ensure I stick to my plan. I knock the phone on the floor, the battery falls out and alas – I miss my very first foodie deadline.

When I eventually raise myself I consign myself to failure. On reflection, cheesecake by 8.30 in the morning sounds unnatural, and I tut at my ambitious planning. I wander downstairs to get my ingredients out, under the assumption that if I get them out, I can’t forget anything, and I find another set back,  looming in the form of a monstrous tower of washing on the only available counter in the small kitchen. I eye the dishwasher, and finding it gapingly empty, consider myself the victim of my housemates’ collective apathy, something I am sure all students are familiar with.  In the progress of shunting the extensive selection of washing up into the dishwasher, some undetected muesli splatters down my front, and a dribble of milk runs down my sleeve. Another excellent start.

The next morning I set about the house armed with hoover, spongecloth and Dettol, the holy trinity of hosting. I decide that academic commitments will only inhibit my chefly inspiration, and settle myself in the kitchen.

Amazingly, things go to plan. I even have the spare time to chop my onion and garlic for the risotto and stash them in a ziplock bag, something I persistently tell myself is not a little bit sad. By the time my guests arrive, I am ready, if a little flustered; my hair is not straightened and my dress is looking dilapidated, but I prophesy that these can only get worse. I don a comfy cardi to obscure a persistent smear of chocolate.

My guests are their usual charming selves, commenting on my bright yellow tablecloth and paper napkins (complete with ‘thanksgiving’ and a large turkey printed on the front… a last minute grab) and settling themselves into the sofa. I spend the meal living up previous meals’ wine pouring standards, breaking out a bottle of Cava mid way to a mumble of, “excellent bubbly darling” from Greg’s direction. I find that as usual, I have a predilection for over feeding people, and so it is this in which I excel during the meal. Characteristically I have made far too much of anything, and I ply my guests with serving upon serving of food.

I have only one major hiccup, in which I accidentally place a hot tray of vegetables upon a chopped lettuce – there is simply not another surface free – and swiftly moving the tray a couple of minutes later, spray the entire kitchen in with the lettuce. I spend the rest of the evening dodging pieces of dilapidated lettuce.

A knock at the door signals the arrival of my entertainment; a friend, Matthew Eglin, to whom I am eternally grateful. I usher him upstairs to where my housemates are waiting whilst we finish the meal.

By the time dessert is reached I breathe a huge sigh of relief. The kitchen is a bombsite, but my cheesecake is happily nesting in a tin ready to cut, and my brownies are oozingly gleefully in the microwave. Things seem to have gone well; my risotto retained some bite (though I  worry if it was too stodgy), the lamb made its own lovely gravy, and the dauphinoise set perfectly. Even my cheese board was met with glee.

Eventually, it is time for my entertainment. Considering that we discussed my life drawing at previous evenings, and that my guests have had a gander at my collection of drawings on my bedroom wall, I have come to the decision that for my entertainment, I will conduct a short life drawing class. Last week, it sounded like a different, exciting idea; today, after too much food and plenty of wine, I am not so sure. I stipulate that he will keep his boxers, a figurative fig leaf, in place.

I scuttle upstairs to fetch Matt, and find him ensconced in a housemate’s room, being fed large quantities of vodka. Upon questioning, my housemates reveal that only these vital doses would quell his shaking at the prospect of posing naked for my guests.  Emboldened, Matt takes me aside and asks me to choose a pair of pants from the selection he has brought with him. I am not quite sure how to respond to this – and I opt for some black Calvin Klein’s.

When it actually comes down to it, my guests kindly take the life drawing in the fun spirit it was meant; they embrace the idea and set about their paper s with gusto. Greg, however, looking slightly worse for wear and sinking gradually into the sofa, has to make a real effort not to drift off to sleep. Before my guests leave I give them each a dessert goodybag – there’s plenty to go around, and they at least said they enjoyed my offerings.

As the host this week, I don’t know what my guests really thought, so I really do have to direct readers to the website and video for these. In fact, when it came to writing this, I purveyed my notebook, sadly abandoned during most of the meal. What writing there is is illegible, a large splodge of dessert obscures something, and a scrawl of “yum” spreads across the page.

Once my guests have gone, I set about cleaning up, starting with the unrepentant lettuce. And my housemates, bless them, managed to help me get rid of all those nasty, fridge-occupying leftovers.