Goblets of borscht, turkey-shaped madeleines: why Martha Stewart’s fantastical menus are still an inspiration

The lifestyle guru’s advice on 1980s entertaining was absurd – but reminds us that hosting should always be fun

The celebrations were imminent and the greenhouse ready to accommodate – among the orchids, in unseasonable November warmth – an intimate Hawaiian luau. The table was set with giant clam shells for serving vessels and miniature hibachis for grilling Dungeness crab. Somebody had found a small, pink pineapple and secured it on the watermelon like a brooch. The hostess considered the merits of a hula dancer, but in the end settled on a more succinct spectacle: a 19lb suckling pig, enwreathed with sub-tropical flowers and caparisoned in bronze.

It was, and could only ever have been, a Martha Stewart affair. This was before the media empire, in more innocent days, when Stewart was a caterer in Connecticut. She was brilliant even then. It takes a spark of something dazzling, even dangerous, to notice a single detail – an orchid, say – and from this to extrapolate a 20-person luau. A while later, Stewart wrote about the party in Entertaining, her 1982 cookbook debut, lushly photographed and with step-by-step instructions for chicken wings with banana. “The pig wore a necklace of starfruit,” she explained. It speaks to Stewart’s generational talent for nonsense that this isn’t even in the top 10 wildest sentences in the book.