Come Dine With Me series 4 When dinner parties go bad

Date Published:

04/04/2008

Few things pile on the pressure like hosting a dinner party - the timings, the heat and the troublesome guests come together to create one big boiling pot of fun. 4Food uncovered a raft of disasters to make your toes curl

Starter's orders

Soup is always a popular choice to get the party started, quick to prepare and simple to cook. But don't leave things to the last minute like our learned colleague who was in such a rush to get the dish to the table he poured scorching-hot spinach soup straight into the blender. Within minutes the pressure was so extreme the lid burst off, firing boiling hot soup onto a waiting guest and livening up his bright white shirt with a fetching dollop of green slime.

Feeding pregnant guests can be a challenge, but while some hosts respect the importance of feeding mums-to-be maternity-friendly foods, others adopt a more laissez faire attitude. On turning up for one dinner, a pregnant friend of 4Food noticed that the host was planning to serve up a starter of duck liver paté. Our friend sheepishly admitted she wasn't keen on eating paté during pregnancy but insisted she was happy to go without.

Mildly put out but eager to impress, the host marched into the kitchen to find a more suitable replacement, returning minutes later with a whole block of Red Leicester cheese, garnished with a sprig of parsley, and a handful of dry crackers. Having already rejected one dish our mum-to-be had no choice but to tackle the cheese mountain, pushing her heart and saliva glands to the max.

The main attraction

Christmas dinner is ripe for disaster and never more so when there's a dog involved. Left unattended one Christmas morning, Biggles the greedy retreiver, ate an entire Christmas turkey including the bones, leaving his loving family with a festive repast of parsnips and sprouts.

By way of comeuppance the gorged hound was plagued terribly by digestive problems, unable to go to the toilet for weeks and eventually had to be force fed charcoal to allow him to pass those bulky bones.

Another friend's dad, convinced of the merits of undercooked vegetables, likes to keep his carrots crunchy. So as the family sat down one night for a massive feast of home-cooked curry they were prepared for a bit of a chomp. However, after a couple of bites, one of the guests was shocked to find a two-inch splinter of glass in his mouth.

When quizzed, Dad said: "Oh, I forgot about that. I broke a glass in the pan but I thought I'd gotten most of it out." The rest of the meal saw everyone chewing tentatively before rushing to the kitchen to spit out mushed up mouthfuls of curry and glass.

Suspiciously, the only person not prising brittle glass shards out of their mouth was Dad. His response? "Well some of us just don't make a fuss."

Ending on a low

The key to impressive cooking is to keep it simple - a lesson not heeded by our next host who tried to wow the crowds with a white chocolate and hazelnut cheesecake. The piece required homemade hazelnut brittle for the base, involving molten sugar and crushed hazelnuts. Unfortunately the heat of the hazelnut brittle in the blender melted the plastic into the cheesecake base adding a chewy white component to the pudding.

Never one to let good food go to waste, our host served it anyway. Every other chew resulted in a jarring of the jaw and a disconcerting crunch as teeth connected with plastic. Remarkably nobody complained. Good old British manners.

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