The Art of Friday Night Dinner: Recipes for the best night of the week

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I like to use a whole one rather than pre-sliced as the flavour tends to be better and you’ll get chunkier pieces.

For this week’s Friday night dinner, I wanted something that would sit comfortably in this moment, right on the cusp of a new season. I know this puts me firmly in the camp of people who complained they missed pubs and seeing friends, only to retreat back to the sofa at the first sign of a pint, and I’m not proud of it. A warning that this is going to give you two pretty generous portions of mash, but I tend to feel a bit panicky if there isn’t enough. Although some episodes are centred around Jackie’s eccentricities, she is usually the straight character who tries to run a normal household, but is disrupted by the rest of the family. Occasionally, Friday nights are for shutting the world away and revelling in a moment of fallow time before the weekend.Friday Night Dinner’s popularity only grew with time – viewing figures doubled for its sixth series, in 2020 – so the announcement this week that there will be no more episodes was a blow for millions of fans. They are frequently interrupted by their strange but good-hearted neighbour Jim Bell ( Mark Heap), who is attracted to Jackie and visits them due to his loneliness, in most cases accompanied by his dog, Wilson, of whom he is afraid. Put roasting tin on the hob - you may need to use two rings to distribute heat evening - and add remaining wine. Previously best known for his theatre work and parts in BBC dramas, Ritter brought that rigour to Martin, ensuring he was both sublimely eccentric and entirely plausible – equal parts stubborn and oblivious to social norms (such as not spending 80% of your time topless) and satisfyingly off-kilter in his reactions to absolutely everything.

Incredibly, the show was the second sitcom about a British Jewish family to arrive on UK screens in the space of six months, after Simon Amstell’s Grandma’s House. Yet while Grandma’s House – the bleaker and more awkward of the two – bowed out after two series, Friday Night Dinner kept going.The thing is, though, after a few weeks catching up with pals and drinking south London’s watering holes out of pale rosé, the temptation to stay home on a Friday night, make something good for dinner and not speak to anyone is strong. Steafal’s chicken involved a marinade with two mustards, orange juice, brown sugar, grated garlic and fennel seeds.

Occasional guest appearances were made by Martin's mother, Cynthia Goodman ( Rosalind Knight), referred to by the boys as "Horrible Grandma" due to her cruel and condescending treatment of the Goodmans.If I were to list the things I would miss most should I be cast away to a desert island, close to the top (behind family and friends and proximity to good coffee) would be dinner parties. For the 10th anniversary of the show, a special 90-minute documentary episode aired on Channel 4 on 28 May 2021, entitled Friday Night Dinner: Ten Years and A Lovely Bit of Squirrel. Friday Night Dinner changed that, with a primetime sitcom that wasn’t about being Jewish, but rather featured characters that happened to be Jewish. The finished result is the kind of dish that’ll have everyone diving in to pick gnarly bits of bread and pepper off the side of the pan.

However, the awful news of Ritter’s death made another series seem incredibly unlikely and now Popper has confirmed it, citing a reluctance to incorporate children into the show’s situation (the last episode ended with both brothers expecting babies). To date, it has had six series and 37 episodes, charming audiences with a chaotic mix of brotherly, practical-joke-based warfare, motherly mollycoddling, stomach-churning condiment consumption (dad Martin) and terrifying social ineptitude (neighbour Jim).It usually starts with a sip of something cold and ends with friends tipsily heading home, full and happy.