There’s a state I get into about an hour before guests arrive. I sweat, I swear and I chop food like I hate my own fingers. Sprinting becomes my preferred method of navigating my flat. I shout – a lot – at inanimate objects like full vacuum bags, blunt kitchen knives and spiteful canapes that have deliberately overcooked themselves.
Frankly, I need help. I’d love to tell you that this is an important realisation that I’ve come to via enlightened self-awareness, but it really became obvious when a mid-stairs attempt to vault the vacuum left me on crutches.
So anything that makes hosting easier is very, very good news to me. Hence, my new co-worker: Amazon’s Echo Show 8 – an Alexa-enabled device with a screen. I’m having people over for brunch, and this time, I’d like them to not make disparaging comments about the bulging veins in my temples. So I’ll be using Alexa to help me pick the menu, do the shopping, act as a sous chef, pick music, offer dinner party games and help clean up afterwards. Or so I hope.
“Alexa, can you clean the house for me?”
“I would if I could, but I can’t – so I won’t”
Oh well, can’t fault the attitude.
First, I attempt to find a recipe. This is usually a nightmare for me, given that I only cook dishes whose instructions pass my Three Fs test: no food waste, no faff, and no frivolous ingredients; while dried Iranian limes may be a standard-use ingredient for some, I know that any I buy will be used once and then spend a decade decaying at the back of my cupboard.
It turns out that all it takes to do away with a painstaking multi-hour process of ploughing through webpage after webpage, is to say: “Alexa, show me brunch recipes.” A BBC Good Food menu pops up and one catches my attention: “Turkish one-pan eggs and peppers.” When I ask Alexa to open it, she tells me that it “takes 35 minutes to make and has five stars with 79 ratings”. A quick read-through confirms that the trickiest culinary feat required is cracking eggs, and that the most exotic ingredient required is parsley. I’m sold.
The next step of my prep is usually even more agonising: shopping. If you wanted to brace yourself for food shortages in a post-Brexit Britain, you could do a lot worse than visit my local supermarket, in which staff automatically respond to casual greetings with: “We’re out of stock.” This time, however, I say: “Alexa, show me shopping skills” and Morrisons pops up second. I “enable skill” (skills are a bit like apps for Alexa), then all I do is tell Alexa which ingredients to add to my Morrisons shopping basket, log on to the supermarket’s website and select my timeslot. The ingredients arrive shortly afterwards, with nary a surly queue in sight.
Shortly before guests arrive, I decide to set the mood. It’s Sunday, and I’m determined to usher in a new, relaxed and happy era for my reputation as a host. A soundtrack of carefree reggae seems to be the thing. I ask Alexa to “play reggae”. Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds fires up, accompanied by the lyrics scrolling down screen in gigantic font so that I find myself staring at the words: “Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, ‘cause every little thing gonna be all right.” It feels a little on the nose, given my aforementioned hosting anxiety.
“Alexa, you know I’m worried – don’t you?”
“Sorry, I don’t know that.”
A likely story.
As guests turn up, I prepare a welcome cocktail of a Tom Collins, using an Alexa skill called The Bar. After a few bits of banter-tastic menu navigation (“Welcome to the bar, can I see some ID?”; “Tom Collins coming right up!”) I’m given instructions and an ingredient list that let me whip up a long, refreshing citrusy drink.
I tell Alexa to start reading me the recipe and I follow it step by step, using the Echo Show to set voice-activated timers as I go. By the end of it, I’ve got a shakshuka-like dish of sautéed, spicy pepper and tomato sauce encircling baked eggs – accompanied by a creamy yoghurt topping, punchily packed with parsley and garlic. Unfortunately, there was no setting to stop me mistiming how long to cook an egg for without setting the yolk into a solid yellow disc. But that aside, I’m well chuffed with the results – and by judiciously spooning the yoghurt on to the top of the egg yolks, the happy murmurs of my guests suggest I’ve gotten away with my overcooking.
Food over, so it’s time for games. Asking: “Alexa, show me game skills” shows us a menu of 30 options and leads to playing a guess-who game called Akinator, which attempts to tell you which famous character you are thinking about, just by asking a few questions – we utterly outfox Alexa by selecting Tottenham MP David Lammy. We follow up with Song Quiz – which plays us clips of tracks from a set genre (we select 90s) and makes us guess artist and song title. Cue impassioned debates about decades-old R&B, cries of “Yes!” at the hearing of nostalgic faves and an entirely unfair victimisation of the winner for being a Michael Bolton fan, due to jealousy of his excellent musical knowledge and excellent mixing of Tom Collins cocktails.
The gathering ends, guests are happy, and my pulse is unlikely to trouble the emergency services. All in all: a very easy afternoon of entertaining. As my last guest leaves, they quip: “What now? You going to get Alexa to start the dishwasher?”
Sigh, if only I had a dishwasher.
