Sarah Vine gives us the lowdown on how to host a political dinner party for 10
Okay, so it's all very well being gluten-free, but how do you cope when you have to host a political supper for 10?
Simple: you inflict your eating habits on your guests.
I arrived home at 6.30pm after a long day at work. Guests were due at 7.45, so I needed to get cracking.
First, I lined two baking trays with borlotti beans, chopped onions and garlic.
Then I added organic chicken thighs, skin on (I allowed for two per guest).
Then I added some cherry tomatoes, halved, lots of fresh shredded basil, butter (pushed under the skins), salt and pepper, a good slosh of white wine and a twist of dried chilli. The whole lot went into the oven at 190 centigrade.
Then I washed and quartered some sweet potatoes and popped them in a roasting pan along with a handful of the Food Doctor Seeds rubbed in Virgin coconut oil. They too joined the chicken.
Rifling around in the fridge, I found a mixture of green beans, pak choi and spring greens, all of which I chopped and chucked in the wok with a spoonful of coconut oil and a dash of Tabasco.
For pudding, I spread frozen berries and raspberries on plates, sweetened them with Xylotol and then put a couple of bars of Green & Black's Organic Dark chocolate in a bain-marie to melt. When the time was right, I poured the chocolate over the berries and added a dollop of cream. On contact with the cold berries the chocolate hardened to a crunchy shell, making a delicious no-carb pudding packed with antioxidants.
Then I drank a big glass of red wine and went to bed.