*NB. wrote this nearly 8 months ago… lots been happening… been disorganised…sorry!
To (a) divest from Instagram, making CRUST more newsletter-centric and (b) share the supperclub experience with subscribers who aren’t on Instagram, I’d like to start logging the CRUST supperclubs here.
So, Supperclub Log #1 is a write-up of the most recent supperclub (29th November ‘24), which was CRUST’s sixth supperclub.
I’ve been procrastinating sharing anything on Instagram from this one, because I failed to take any pictures of the food. Nice one.
Despite being more proud than ever of the 3.5 courses we produced for 45 people that Friday night, I woke up on Saturday afternoon with no evidence on my camera roll, baffled by the absence of a ctrl-z for this situation.
Luckily, it was just pictures of the food we were lacking. Vibes-wise, the supperclub was captured beautifully by Aaron. And I’ve managed to source a few plate pics from guests (thank you!!)
Part One: Ode to Ella
Aaron’s images of Ella and I in the kitchen make me so happy because she makes me so happy. We look like the proper little team that we are here, even if my hair is doing the Bryan May thing it does sometimes…
It is difficult to describe how fantastic Ella is as a partner in the kitchen. She came to ‘sous chef’ my first supperclub in the church hall in West Norwood. That was only the third time we had ever met. I was jittery and focused, with less attention to spend on charming a new friend than I’d have liked to have had. But we were seamless. We slid around eachother in that tiny kitchen, giggling in our Julia Childs’ impressions; she told me to add more acid, and no more acid, and I trusted her completely; I bossed her around and didn’t feel awkward about it. She knew when to boss me back. No bullshit. We are giddily the same page.
It is very beautiful to me that, nearly two years, six supperclubs and 6000 voicenotes about Hugh Corcoran later, mine and Ella’s friendship is interwoven with cooking and CRUST.
Most importantly, Ella always saves the day.
She arrives at my house on the morning of a supperclub whilst I am still in my dressing gown. She breaks me out of my feralness momentarily, as I talk her through the menu and the assorted containers of prepped food laid out on the kitchen table - a proud, wired squirrel displaying her nuts.
This time, one of the jobs I’ve left until morning is assembling jerusalem artichoke ravioli for the vegetarians. We do so together, gently and diligently. Ella even takes pictures of me pulling our dough through the pasta machine as the sunlight hits my dressing gown. We make far too many raviolo- to account for just about anything going wrong.
Just about anything, except getting to South London Louie and leaving the tupperware on a kitchen counter near the oven.
So, as we were preparing for mains service: a code red. Eighteen beautiful ravioli had become a thick, gluey brick. A lasagna of sorts. We considered serving them as such to our vegetarians. But we knew we couldn’t. We were frozen, squinting at each other with glittery eyes, lips pursed on the crest of laughter, summoning the solution. Before it had arrived in my head (and truly, there wasn’t space for it), Ella whipped the ravioli out of my hand: ‘I’ve got this’.
There’s nothing like someone that you trust completely saying ‘I’ve got this’. Immediate relief and permission to focus on all the other things. Intense gratitude because I simply didn’t have room for this one in my head. As far as I’m concerned, the problem has been solved. Of course, she finds half a bag of fusilli in the kitchen and whips up a perfectly emulsified pasta sauce from the mashed Jerusalem artichokes and whatever else she could find. Thank fuck.
Ella saves the day - she’ll turn up with joy, she’ll unsplit the sauce, she’ll tell me it’s the best thing she’s ever tasted; she’ll remind me to eat; to take fifteen minutes before service for a glass of wine outside and a break from going back over the same lists in my head. And she tells me that she’s had the best time, even though I know I couldn’t stop going through lists during our fifteen minute wine break, and I know she was underplaying her hunger when we didn’t properly stop to eat until we picked up sandwiches and our kitchen wine on the way to the venue.
Part Two: The Menu
Time to talk you through the menu. The idea was to celebrate winter vegetables, and to try out some of the techniques I’d learnt whilst staging at Inver.
1. Devilled Eggs Three Ways
We began, as is customary, with devilled eggs three ways. Category is: aliums.
Frizzy leeks atop leek oil mayonnaise
Caramelised onions atop caramelised onion mayonnaise
Black garlic mayonnaise, with a touch of lemon.
2. Pumpkin, apple, sage
The first element of this dish is a pumpkin seed cream. This was something I saw being made on my final day at Inver, to be used as a base for a sauce. It stuck in my brain and I re-created my own version. On top of the pumpkin seed cream was a slice of roasted delica pumpkin, more pumpkin seeds that had been toasted in brown butter, a spritz of lemon juice, a drizzle of sage oil, and chunks of pickled apple.
I managed to get one picture from an obliging reveller (above) - another (below) is from le test kitchen, where my housemates enjoyed different versions of delica pumpkin for weeks.
3. Jerusalem artichoke, tarragon, rainbow chard
A really dark and half-eaten picture of what was actually quite a nicely plated dish, I promise!
When I came back from Inver and friends asked me what I’d learnt, I tended to say ‘well the first thing is that it’s actually really embarassing that we don’t brine our chicken’. And they’d say ‘Really?’ and I’d say ‘Really. Really embarrassing’. So, I became obsessed with brining chicken. And I bought my first meat thermometer.
One Sunday, I fed friends with chicken I had brined in salt and sugar for 24hrs before following the Julius Roberts tarragon chicken recipe. It was a serious success, and I wondered whether there was a way of elevating this dish.
At the same time, I had been thinking a lot about Pam Brunton’s beautiful sauces at Inver. One, in particular, where cured halibut, cucumbers and blackcurrants were served with a sauce made from smoked mussel stock, buttermilk, butter and fresh oysters. It was a shockingly beautiful dish - the balanced umami of that creamy salty tanginess has been seared into my tongue and I think about it a lot.
I used that formula to start thinking about a tarragon sauce and ended up using buttermilk and butter, plus anchovies to replace the salty oysters and a very golden chicken stock (another thing I learnt from Inver- cook your chicken stock twice, using the first stock as the base for the second). When it split on the day of the supperclub, we used grainy mustard to help bring it back together - a perfect accident. Now that I had dallied with the real chefs for a little bit, I also split the sauce (on purpose) with tarragon oil before serving.
To accompany the chicken: a jerusalem artichoke mash and charred rainbow chard.
4. Carrot and cardamom (Nani’s carrot halwa)
I have adored carrot halwa since I first ate it - it’s another dish that pops into my brain and tongue at least twice a month. I don’t have a very sweet tooth so I suppose it’s a perfect pudding for me: sweetness is balanced with the savoury rootiness it has come out of. As the winter vegetable theme started to emerge, this was an obvious choice. And it was made more special by following the whatsapp-recipe that B’s grandma sent over from her kitchen in Karachi. Shout out Nani! She is more present than she would ever realise in our kitchen and in our conversations about food and life and family. So it felt special to include her.
Some pictures of a few cuties enjoying their halwa…
So that’s a wrap. Thank you again so much, Aaron, for your beautiful pictures that truly saved the day!!! Keep your eyes peeled, readers, for the next supperclub!
Beauuutiful writing and pics !!
The food of all food! The vibe of all vibes!