Sara's Messy Kitchen: Love Entertaining

Being a foodie I obviously love entertaining, as to me there is no feeling better than sharing something you love with friends and family.

Entertaining/hosting can be very stressful if you are not clever about it. You definitely don’t want to spend the entire night in the kitchen and you also don’t want to keep people waiting for their food for too long.

The trick to finding the right balance is planning ahead and being prepared. Planning a menu that can be mostly made in advance will really help. There are so many things that can be done before hand, and kept in the fridge until you are ready to serve. This includes blanching veg, making salads and side dishes, and even making desserts.

Slow cooked food and roasts are great for when people are coming over as they are low maintenance foods and therefore you don’t really have to worry about them.

Another thing to make your life easier, (and this one took me forever to do as I am such a perfectionist and want everything done properly) is using pre-prepared goods. It used to be so that shop bought things tasted terrible and could even ruin your food, but now a days you have amazing things like Woolworths all butter puff pastry and delicious homemade ice creams which are just as nice as if you make them yourself, only much less time consuming. More of these include Woolworths onion marmalade, cooked beetroot (the fresh ones in the fridge, not pickled in jars), deveined prawns, cooked rice, cut butternut and many more. This is so not cheating! These things are there to make life easier.

Most importantly make sure you have enough snacks. Keeping guests eating snacks will make sure they don’t get too hungry, that way no one will notice if the food is running a little late. Obviously snack come in many forms. Nuts, biltong, chips and dip work really well, but I like to put in a little extra effort. One thing I really love making, because they are so simple are little tartlets. You can make them in all different sizes and flavours, and even make them a little more complicated/fancy depending on how much you want to impress your guests.

Here are 2 of my favourites. They are so quick and easy to make, especially if you use Woolworths all butter pastry, and guests are always impressed and satisfied.