Sunshine in a bowl: the key to serving a seasonal supper

We tried several different configurations, none of which were satisfactory. In the end the kitchen table was just carried out into the garden. Then we had to take out all the chairs, obviously, and quite a lot of jam jars for all the flowers. Then the coffee table came out, to have somewhere to put the food; and candles, in more jam jars, and fairy lights to put in the rose tree and drape along the fence. The gift of atmosphere – a small and puny bluetooth speaker – went under the table. The wastepaper baskets from the study and the bedroom were filled with cornershop ice and a sort of peachy Romanian champagne; and we also put those in the garden. The garden was now a sort of extra room, green and white swags of plants draped across the table like those chiffon things you get at weddings; and the kitchen was a clean blank slate, seemingly much bigger than it had ever been. With both kitchen doors open, we put the little round black iron bistro table in one corner and then the martini glasses went on the bistro table. We put martinis in the freezer.

At some point we opened not the Romanian party fizz, but the fancy champagne. We drank it and took it in turns to shower and descend the stairs, trying things with our hair, trying things with lipstick, looking at the party through half-closed eyes to see if it was all correct.

I made an olive-oil tart: pastry in the food processor, spooning over cold thick yoghurt spiked with garlic and lemon, deciding whether to put over the top the beautiful big tomatoes in violet and scarlet and almost-black, or the new asparagus and green herbs. Would it be nicer to have a tomato tart and little crispy asparagus and garlic mayo, or nicer to have an asparagus tart with tomato salad, that most perfect of all summer things? I love cooking for summer parties. I love cooking in summer, especially when it’s hardly cooking at all: just baking the pastry in a thin crisp sheet, and spooning over lovely things.

We cut some flowers for inside, and put cut flowers outside, too: midsummer, roses everywhere, but I wanted even more. I wanted to feel sort of sprawling, as if the battered fences of this small city garden were only illusions. The neighbour’s barbecue smoke drifted; somewhere someone was having an illegal bonfire. A few doors down they had put up a swimming pool that filled their garden and their children were shrieking with joy. A car out the front was playing Afropop. Summer in the city is a party without edges, everything hazy with June feeling and smoke and champagne edges. We lit our barbecue for the salmon.

There was something missing from the bistro table, and we realised in time that it was a platter of gildas: those in little skewers of olive-anchovy-pickled-pepper. Sometimes things are fashionable for a reason and that is how I feel about gildas. It is possible that Kate also fried some anchovy in sage leaves, and put them on a stack of paper towels on the bistro table: a little pause, I kept saying, just a little pause before the party begins! A martini and an anchovy is a wonderful way to enter a summer party, especially if you have had to take public transport to get there, and are hot and angry about it.

This way the kitchen could be a kind of decompression zone from summer-in-the-city to summer-at-the-party; and there is nothing more vital to a party – any party – than zones. Swapping the kitchen and garden around made two new exciting party-mode zones, both distinct from their everyday purposes; and then the sitting room, cool and dark, made a third, secret zone, in which overwhelmed people could regroup before re-entering. We did nothing to the sitting room except hoover it, and light a single lovely candle. Without the candle it merely looked off-limits; with the candle you could see it was part of the party.

We put the salmon over some cherrywood chips. This, I must say, is not my area. I trust my friends with such things, which is why you need at least five people of varying skills to host a really great party. You need enough of you that the jobs can be divided fairly, with enough time to have a nice time. Hosting solo is for braver people than me: I have never done it, and never would. If you know enough people to throw a party, you know enough people to ask them to help you throw the party in the first place. Then you can drink champagne together, and by the time the guests arrive they are already walking into something wonderful. Which is all anyone wants from a party.

The cherrywood made me think about pudding: it’s always cherries with me in summer. If I don’t make dinner I make a sticky cherry cake – one bowl, one spoon, olive oil, ground almonds, kind of like a frangipane – and if I do make dinner I buy a cherry pie from the supermarket and serve it with just-whipped thick cream. If it’s a party for a lot of people, like a wedding, it’s just cherries in those kilo boxes you get at the Turkish greengrocers. But it’s always cherries in summer. We had some more champagne, and looked at each other.

The best two parts of any party are, of course, the two hours before it starts and the hour after it ends, but the best moment of all is when the doorbell rings for the first guest and you feel that curtain-up sensibility – all bright and clean, like champagne, or a promise. And you stand there for a minute, poised. And then the dog goes wild at the door, and someone goes to answer it, and then the party starts…

Serves 6. Ready in 1 hour, plus chilling time

thick Greek yoghurt 400g

garlic 2 cloves, grated 

lemon 1, zested

salt 1 tsp

tomatoes 200g

tarragon 20g

basil 20g

kalamata olives 25g

olive oil 2 tbsp

For the pastry: 

plain flour 160g

salt 1 tsp

white wine vinegar 2 tsp

olive oil 60g, chilled

water 50g, chilled

egg 1, beaten

For the pastry, whisk together the flour and salt; add the vinegar to the cold oil and water, and slowly stir into the flour, handling as little as possible. Shape into a block, and roll out to about the thickness of a £1 coin: I do this between two sheets of greaseproof paper. Lift on to a baking sheet and freeze flat for about 30 minutes. 

Heat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Brush the pastry with beaten egg and bake for 20 minutes. Let it cool completely on the baking sheet.

Stir together the garlic and lemon zest, then mix through the yoghurt. (If it’s watery, strain it in a fine sieve or over a J-cloth.) Let the pastry cool, then spoon over the yoghurt.

Roughly chop tomatoes into bite-size pieces, season with salt and black pepper, and set in a sieve to drain; tear and stone olives; chop tarragon and basil. Toss the tomatoes, olives, and herbs together with olive oil and spoon it over the yoghurt and pastry. Serve with green salad and drizzle with balsamic glaze.

Serves 8. Ready in 1 hour 

butter for greasing

ground almonds 200g

golden caster sugar 150g

salt 1 tsp

baking powder 2.5 tsp

demerara sugar 1 tbsp

extra-virgin olive oil 200ml

eggs 3

almond extract 3 tsp

vanilla extract 1 tsp

frozen cherries 200g

Preheat the oven to 190C/gas mark 5. Roughly grease and line a 20cm circular cake or flan tin. 

In a big bowl, weigh out and whisk together all of the dry ingredients, except the demerara sugar. 

Pour in all the wet ingredients, whisking the eggs and oil as you go to form a smooth batter. 

Pour the batter into the lined tin and cover with the frozen cherries. 

Sprinkle with the demerara sugar, then slide into the oven (you will probably want to put it on another baking sheet for ease). 

Bake the cake 40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. The top will look a little burnt – this is correct, and also the best part. Serve warm with cold ice cream.