Friday Night Feast, Pippa? It took me until 4am on Saturday to make it! And my jellies still wobbled even more than your bottom By Jan Moir Pippa Middleton's new column for Waitrose Kitchen magazine is called Pippa's Friday Night Feasts. Got it? Big clue in the title. Huge statement of intent right there. For it is Friday night above all others, she declares, that is the perfect night to cook. It is a night that holds the promise of the weekend, but which is far enough away from "pre-Monday melancholy" to feel free and exciting. Hmm. Firstly, why does Pippa pretend that she dreads Mondays? It's not as if she's got a job, a day shift or a coal face to return to. As far as anyone can tell, her life is one long, pleasurable boomerang from the Caribbean to the ski slopes via Paris and back again. Nothing vexatious there, unless you count the bruises caused by being pelted with free handbags. Wobbly feast: Jan Moir's Japanese feast for six turned into dire duck pancakes, sushi from hell, and pre-fab spring rolls with blocked drain Mojito and inedible jellies Yet Pippa insists that Friday is the night she likes to start the weekend by staying at home and entertaining her friends by cooking and serving delightful meals. However, I imagine that in reality, most Waitrose shoppers start their weekend by crawling home from work exhausted, with barely the strength left to rip open a packet of Twiglets and extend a trembling hand towards that bottle of wine in the fridge they've been dreaming of since 3pm. Forget about them! They are old news. Yes, Pips has been hired to cash in on her royal connections and cachet. But the supermarket chain also hopes that she will appeal to the young, free, single and wealthy Waitrose shopper; that ideal consumer with a disposable income and a disposition that demands cocktails and snacks by royal-ish appointment. Premiere: The column is Pippa's first for the Waitrose magazine Waitrose is hoping there are thousands of them out there, and that they crave the same casually glamorous lifestyle as its star. For her part, Pippa has promised that her new engagement is "an exciting opportunity to share my own passion for food and entertaining, and I can't wait to get started." Well, that moment has finally arrived. In her debut column, published this weekend, Pippa has chosen a pan-Asian theme and a menu that involves a cocktail, three types of sushi, duck rolls, prawn-stuffed Vietnamese spring rolls and, for pudding, a tangerine and sake jelly topped off with coconut cream. She has got to be joking. That sounds a complete nightmare, even for an experienced cook. Why can't she just throw a pot of traditional nag bol at her guests and be done with it? That's far too easy. Everything in Pippa's world must be perfect, right down to using "angular Asian-style tableware" (Pippa-speak for a square plate) to display the spring rolls. She also advises the use of "smooth pebbles" as chopstick rests - is there any other kind, I wonder? Even though there is very little actual cooking involved, Pippa's menu still looks as if it will take all weekend to prepare. "A lot of these foods can seem too fussy to make at home," she soothes, while urging her new readers that nothing could be further from the truth. Give it a go, she seems to cry out from the magazine's cover. There, her hands are doing something soft focus with a bamboo mat. Her silk dress is sprigged with flowers. Her eyes burn down the camera, entirely ringed with panda-kohl in that bizarre way the Middleton women favour. This is a brand new look for Pippa. Demented. Nevertheless, I will give it a go. For once, I will put my misgivings about Pippa's culinary credentials to one side. I will ignore the fact that she is only there, twittering on about "light, satisfying and seriously tasty flavours" because she is the sister of the Duchess of Cambridge. I will give that girl a break. Some budget-stretched, economically battered and fed-up citizens might feel that being lectured on the finer points of table placement and dipping sauces ("garnish with sesame seeds") by 29-year-old Miss Middleton is one indignity too far, but not me. Not any more! For I am this newspaper's Pippa Correspondent. And I am going to cook her Friday Night Feast if it kills me. Pippa says you don't need to go to Chinatown to buy any of the ingredients and guess what? She is right. Everything you need for her first ever Friday Night Feast is available in a Waitrose store near you. Coincidence or what! May I say this, Pippa? I hope we can be candid with each other. A cynic might conclude that your entire menu seems to be geared towards encouraging consumers to buy as many items as possible. For a start, there are seven ingredients in your Ginger Mojito cocktail, eight if you count adding ginger beer. That's a lot of effort for one drink! I get to Waitrose at about 7pm. Instead of my usual smooth and expert glide through the aisles, it takes about 35 minutes of concentrated shopping, zigzagging through the store to get everything on the list. Some ingredients are annoyingly vague - yes Pippa, chillies and Chinese pancakes, but what kind? - but I manage to get the lot, including the flowers for the table and tea lights she suggests. Total cost: £140. Ouch. How many guests is this for? Weirdly, Pippa never actually gives catering numbers - that would be too bloody helpful. As she suggests making only six jellies, we must assume that is the head count. Pippa Time: 5 minutes per cocktail. Jan Time: 10 minutes for four. Like I said, is this a cocktail? Or is it a game of "How Many Expensive Waitrose Ingredients Can I Cram Into One Glass"? The answer is seven - including an entire half lime for each glass, an extravagance they would surely baulk at in The Ritz. You have to muddle the squeezed lime, mint and some syrup from a jar of stem ginger into a glass, then add rum and top up with soda water. Garnish with some fresh ginger and a red chilli. Pippa gives an alternative of ginger ale, which I noticed only after buying the syrup - how irritating. It kicks like a mule with toothache, especially if you accidentally use Thai chillies, like I do. Pippa says: "It's got a warm, fiery finish . . . perfect with Asian food." Jan says: "Maybe so, but it looks very unattractive, like a blocked drain." VERDICT: It's the hot toddy from hell. Never mind the Friday Night Feast, this is the Friday Night Beast. I kind of love it. 'No fuss': Pippa promises that the idea that the advanced menu is difficult and time-consuming 'could not be further from the truth' Pippa Time: 25 minutes. Jan Time: 30 minutes Even Pippa has to admit that this is less a recipe of hers than a "specialist kit you can find at Waitrose." Indeed it is. The Nem Viet kit costs £2.69 and contains rice paper pancakes, vermicelli noodles and a sachet of dipping sauce. It's very straightforward. To make the rolls you must be able to "soak," "soften," "submerge," "place," "fold" and "slice." It's the kind of thing even a minor royal might manage to do without the help of cook or nanny. Straight off the bat, our cookery expert reads the back of the packet like a pro. She advises readers to cook and drain the noodles, prepare the pancakes and fill them with cooked king prawns sliced lengthways, lettuce that has been "torn into leaves," three types of herbs and grated carrot. In a daring addition that is not suggested on the packaging, she tentatively suggests chopped cashew nuts. She also advocates using different coloured chopsticks when eating them. She's crayzeee! She doesn't warn against tearing the rice paper - which is easy to do - but the spring rolls are quick and easy to assemble. And they look really impressive, as she promises. Pippa says: "The rolls are wonderfully fragrant and look great." Jan says: "A fiddle, but bursting with clean, healthy flavours." VERDICT: Delicious, nutritious and low-calorie. A must for Carole Middleton on her Dukan diet days. Pippa Time: 15 minutes. Jan Time: 140 minutes. "I know few people who would turn down a hoisin duck roll," trills Pippa. Never mind turning them down, love - what about throwing them up? Pippa advocates using duck breast mini fillets for this dish, but my local Waitrose has run out. Instead, I have to buy a whole duck, roast it for 90 minutes, let it rest for 15 minutes, take the meat off the bones, shred the meat and skin, then mix with the hoisin sauce. I am still slightly short of the 350g of meat she specifies, but have a great, haystack pile of gloopy meat in front of me. It smells ghastly. Pippa gives no instructions on how to cook the Chinese pancakes - she is clearly bored with reading the back of packets already. So I do it myself, and am instructed to steam or microwave them. I have no microwave, so have to steam the pancakes for four minutes apiece in four batches. In the meantime, I weigh and chop 70g of cucumber and five salad onions into thin strips as instructed then assemble the pancakes. They are unspeakable. There isn't enough duck, or are the pancakes the wrong size? Is it me or is it Pippa? Mine look like badly packed cigarettes compared to her lovely, tight rolls, but isn't that the way with everything? Pippa says: "A party food classic - they are so moreish." Jan says: "Yuk, I'd be embarrassed to serve these to anyone. It's taken hours, the hoisin sauce is horrible and the pancakes are like blotting paper. VERDICT: Whisper it - Marks & Spencer's brilliant Peking Duck Kit is a thousand times better. 'Casual': Pippa Middleton is offering 'casual dining ideas and recipes' which includes juicing 600grams of tangerines for jelly which should be served in 'vintage tea cups' Pippa Time: 80 minutes. Jan Time: 180 minutes Make your own sushi! Yah! It's the kind of thing you do on a Friday night when you're 29 and don't have a life of toil, a bunch of kids, or a practical thought in your head. That was my initial reaction. Did anything happen during my long, dark night of sushi-making to change that? Pippa advises that you first make your sushi rice and cool it. I had my doubts, but her method was perfect. The seasoned rice came out impeccably - a quiet thrill. Then, the horror. You have to make three separate fillings; a crab one, mixed with mayonnaise and sweet chilli sauce, plus sliced avocado and red chillies. Then you have to make a one-egg omelette, slice it into strips, and combine with quarter of a red pepper and 40g of avocado, both sliced into strips. For the smoked salmon one you mix soft cheese with wasabi powder and 80g of blanched asparagus. Pippa does not actually explain how to blanch the asparagus - in her world, everyone simply knows how this is done. All this takes hours. Pip's explanations on how to roll the sushi are not particularly clear - there's not enough space, what with all those lists of ingredients - so I look online for a demonstration. My first sushi roll looks like a draught excluder, but I soon got the knack. Pippa says: "The first time I made sushi was at Edinburgh University." Jan says: "I wonder if she ever made it again." VERDICT: Absolutely delicious but . . . why not make your own sushi? I'll tell you why. Because your kitchen will look like a bomb site afterwards and you won't get to bed until 4am. Pippa Time: 35 minutes. Jan Time: 65 minutes Juice two 600g bags of tangerines? She's gone too far this time. I squeeze the recalcitrant torture-oranges until the wee small hours, heat with mint, mix with leaf gelatine, add the sake and pour into plastic glasses. Pippa says use vintage teacups, but frankly I can't be bothered. It's nearly 5am. Put in the fridge overnight to set. Mine never do. Pippa says: "The coconut cream adds a soft sweetness." Jan says: "Who juices tangerines in the real world? Nobody. VERDICT: My jellies never did set. They wobble like Pippa's most famous asset. Expensive, fiddly and a lot of effort for very little return. Everyone loved the sushi, hated the duck and the spring rolls had a mixed response. The jellies were inedible - my fault! - but in the end, there just wasn't enough food for a feast - on a Friday or any other night. As one guest put it: "That was nice, but what's for our main course?"