Love Tart

This probably should be called Love Tart on account of it being lent to us by Rosie Lovell and being universally adored at the last 2 secret suppers we’ve had. Rosie knew it from her school dinners as Gypsy Tart and we’ve labelled ours as Muscovado Tart with a healthy dollop of crème fraîche and a homemade berry coulis.

There have been campaigns for the release of its recipe amongst our guests, and I’ve noticed Bex our waitress hanging back in the kitchen longer than normal to get going on some seconds. So here it is. Run wild! (Just don’t eat the whole thing.)

Heat the oven to 200°C. In a large bowl, briskly whisk together 300g of muscovado sugar with a tin of evaporated milk for up to 15 minutes – don’t scrimp on this as it aerates the mixture. Leave to stand while you roll the pastry – this was a happy accident I discovered the second time I made it and which actually resulted in a stickier, toffier pudding.

Dust a clean surface with icing sugar and roll out a sheet of shortcrust pastry. Sprinkle again with icing sugar and roll to the thickness of a pound coin, or just larger than the diameter of your tart tin. Lay the pastry over the tin, pressing it into the corners and slicing off the overhang with a sharp knife. Bake for 5-10 minutes or until the edges are golden. Remove from the oven and whisk up the mixture again quickly. Pour it into the pastry case. It doesn’t matter if you pour to cover the top of the pastry which may have slipped down the sides of the tin. Return to the oven for another 15 minutes or until the surface has darkened a little but is still tacky. Set aside to set and cool.

To make the coulis, bring half a cup of water and a teaspoon of sugar to the boil, stirring as it heats and dissolves. Add a glug of creme de cassis and remove from the heat. Add the syrup to a bowl of mixed berries (supermarkets tend to sell very good value boxes of frozen ones if you’re on a budget or out of season) and blend with a hand blender. Finish with the juice of half a lime to kick it up a bit – this is pretty vital if you’re serving with a sweet tart.

Cut a slice of tart onto a small plate and serve with a generous drizle of coulis and a dollop of crème fraîche.

Ellie

A bit on the side

Sometimes, when people arrive for a secret supper and they’re first through the door, the best way to welcome them is to get something on the table pretty pronto. They should of course be thanked – celebrated, even – for having survived the trials of our waiting list and for turning up at a stranger’s door on what is invariably, these days, a cold night. And while these aren’t exactly hot, they do go a long way towards breaking the inevitable ice of settling in at the table with a first drink. Having voulunteered to take the helm at Christmas this year, these may well be on the menu for a pre-supper starter with my family. They scale up easily if you’re cooking for large numbers, and are beautiful to look at.

Cut a baguette into thin widthway slices and grill on both sides until golden. Spread generously with ricotta, top with fine, fine slices of serrano ham, torn basil and a little drizzle of homemade fig vinegar if you’re lucky enough to have it. Mine was a gift from my godmother and it’s so good I can nearly drink it. If you don’t have anything along its lines, try a shot of balsamic, a squeeze of lemon and a spoon of maple syrup whisked up in a mug. Keep mixing until you have a sticky- sweet/tart combination that’s mellowed by the basil on the bruschetta. We replaced the serrano with halved figs for an elegant vegetarian alternative:

Ellie

A warm potato salad for a sunny winter’s day

Before the deluge set in that evening, Saturday was one of those beautifully bright and crisp winter’s days – the type of day that always makes me feel dramatic and optimistic. I woke up stupidly early, threw open the curtains and decided I would go to the shops, make gingerbread (recipe coming soon), walk the dog, read the papers, make lunch and visit a friend all before helping Ellie move Salad Club’s apparatus from her flat that afternoon. It’s amazing what you can achieve without a hangover.

With my long list of tasks mounting up, lunch needed to be speedy.  The sunshine made me crave some fresh, summery flavours, yet the bracing chill called for warmth. A spatchcocked poussin covered in salt, pepper, chopped red chilli and a squeeze of lemon went into the oven to roast at 190ºC for 45 minutes. A healthy portion of new potatoes then went on to boil in salted water – small ones left whole and larger ones chopped into halves or quarters. I hate biting into a starchy, underdone potato so I always prefer to overcook them slightly until they’re forgiving and fluffy. As the potatoes boiled I made the dressing. I’m not a huge fan of potato salads drenched in mayonnaise. In fact, the only mayonnaise based potato salad I like is made by our friend Francis – he does an amazing dressing with mayo, mustard and caramelised red onions which I can never recreate. I’ll leave him to the white stuff and stick to this version – a light, fragrant dressing which works brilliantly both hot and cold.

With a pestle and mortar, pound together a handful of chopped mint leaves, some big flakes of sea salt and a light glug of olive oil into a paste. Scrape the paste into whatever bowl you plan to serve the salad in. Add the juice of a lemon, some finely chopped spring onions, lots of pepper, a bit more salt, another glug of olive oil and mix together.  Chop some more mint and a handful of parsley ready to throw in at the last minute. After the potatoes have been boiling for about 25 minutes, chuck some sugar snaps into the water with them and cover.  After about 3 minutes drain everything in a colander, shake gently and then tip into the bowl with the dressing. Toss everything together carefully, throw in the remaining herbs and serve steaming with the poussin, a dollop of chutney, or whatever else you fancy. A perfect warming lunch enjoyed in the shadows of a rare sunny day in November.

Rosie

One pot chorizo and barley stew

My first go at this was made up from one of our secret suppers’ leftovers – the rich juices of roasted peppers, a handful of olive stones and half a pack of pot barley – but it’s just as easy with a few simple ingredients and can be made in one pot.

Preheat the oven to 150. Gently heat your cuts of good quality chorizo in a steel-bottomed pot until the edges curl and darken and have released some of their red oil into the pan. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add to a glug of olive oil a finely diced onion, a bay leaf, half a very finely diced carrot, half a sliced red chilli and 2 or 3 cloves of crushed garlic. Stir and soften until translucent over a medium heat and then pour in a large glass of red wine and a few branches of fresh thyme. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes. Roughly chop a couple of red and yellow peppers* and add to the pot with a tin of plum tomatoes, which are best strained and pummeled through the hands to release their flavour. Small cherry tomatoes or pitted black olives are good added here too. Return the chorizo to the pot and stir in a couple of handfuls of pot barley, making sure it’s stirred well and submerged in liquid. Cover and place on the middle shelf of the oven for up to an hour, making sure the barley has swollen to plump kernels.

Serve with a crumbling of feta and the rest of the bottle of red.

*Alternatively, roast the peppers beforehand in the oven and conserve the roasting tin juices for the pot – the longer they cook, the more juice or stock you’ll have. I also went through the slightly fussy but experimentally exciting process of boiling off the clinging flesh of black olives from their stones in the hope of adding more flavour. You needn’t do this but I was out of olives because they went to our guests.

Ellie

Our friends Electric

Menu for Saturday 7th November

Last Saturday was a poignant evening for us as the lights went up – and down – for the last time on a secret supper at Ellie’s rare flat in the beating heart of Brixton. As always, the restaurant was filled with the chuckles of happy strangers and the kitchen with the familiar smells of spiced pork and pumpkin. The menu featured some of our most popular dishes from past suppers and was finished off with a delicious gypsy tart, recipe courtesy of the lovely Rosie Lovell. Plates were licked clean and after many bottles of wine and perhaps a few too many cigarettes, our last batch of guests were sent out into the Brixton night, happy to have been a part of it and leaving us to sit in the humble restaurant we built from scratch to feel proud of our efforts. The early morning clean up was a buoyant affair, both of us in high spirits after a successful night and full of anticipation of what’s to come.

With the cleaning finished in record time we set off on a Sunday amble through Brixton. First stop, the rather pricey and lacklustre farmers’ market on Pope’s Road, picking up some sugar-based sustenance to deliver at No 1 Village Bakeries in an effort to energise Rosie and Raf for the epic clean up*.  Then for the papers and some gin in a trusty dark corner at the Effra. Leaving Ellie, Tom, the papers and the gin in said corner, I set off to walk the dog and make good of our leftovers:

Pig farmer’s pie

Fry a chopped onion and a couple of cloves of crushed garlic until soft. Add your leftover shredded pork shoulder to the frying pan (this recipe would be great with leftover lamb shoulder too, I suspect). Pour in a tin or two of plum tomatoes, a glug each of red wine, Worcestershire sauce and balsamic vinegar and poke a sprig of rosemary into the mix before leaving to simmer on a gentle heat. Feel free to add anything else you might usually add to a shepherd’s pie – I was just working with what I had in the cupboard! Meanwhile peel a large sweet potato, a large white potato and half a butternut squash (or whatever starchy roots you have that need using up) and boil in salted water for about 10 minutes. Turn the pork mixture up high until it reduces and thickens slightly then pour into a baking dish. Mash your roots with some salt and butter and pile on top. Grate over some parmesan or cheddar or, again, any cheese in your fridge that needs eating, and slide into a hot oven until the top is golden brown and bubbling – I turned to grill for the last 5 minutes to get it really crisp. Et voila – a delicious Sunday supper made entirely from leftovers, guzzled and enjoyed as only winter food can be.         

Lovely leftovers

We’ve had such a fantastic year and looking back at everything that’s happened since this little blog was born in April makes us smile and shake our heads in disbelief. Thank you to everyone who follows our culinary ramblings here and to those who have waited patiently for a seat at the restaurant for months. It has been such a pleasure to meet and feed so many of you and we look forward to meeting many more of you in the new year.  So, as Ellie settles into her new Brixton home of slightly smaller proportions, Salad Club will be evolving into a more portable venture.  We have plenty of excited things lined up for 2010 so be sure to keep up!

* watch this space for news on a special Salad Club Sunday coming up at the No 1 Village Bakeries in December.

An extra hour for sausages

After a busy secret supper on Saturday and a late night’s prep on Friday, Sunday morning called for a sit down and some sausages before heading to Ellie’s for the big clean. I was reminded of the clocks going back by the sombre Radio 4 news beeps pronouncing the ungodly hour of 8am! Once over the initial shock, I embraced the stolen hour and set about making the perfect sausage sandwich…

Roughly slice a red onion and throw into a hot pan with a glug of olive oil. Add the sausages and leave everything to cook gently on a medium heat. As Nigel Slater insists, never rush a sausage. If you have any tomatoes lying around slice up the big ones and throw them in or add cherry tomatoes whole with a few sprigs of thyme. Have a cup of tea and read the papers for about 20-30 minutes while everything softens and sweetens.

Put some pita bread in the toaster. I always get Holy Land pita at Nour cash and carry on Electric Avenue (4 bags for £1) and you can get it in most Middle Eastern shops and some delis. It’s so much tastier and cheaper than the thick, starchy pitas you get in supermarkets – stock up your freezer.

Finally, open the pita with care (a toasted bread pouch full of air can be hotter than the sun) and stuff the sausages, tomatoes, onions and pan juices inside. Serve with tomato chilli jam and a pot of tea while you finish the papers. The ideal way to spend that extra hour.

Rosie

Beach hut brunch

Yesterday’s cool, bright weather had me in a yellow beach hut on the South coast making scotch eggs by candle light. Limited to a small gas oven, a packet of real cheap bangers and half a dozen eggs in a bag from the beach cafe, we kept with the 1950s spirit of things and rolled up our sleeves to delve up to our elbows in sausage meat. The back room kitchen feel of the whole process had us in stitches. This is cooking at its least glamorous and most romantic – in this hut, food is about delicious and indulgent basics: too much brie, much more butter and a handful of sweet clementines. Every meal is a table picnic where greasy pâté knives cut through cheese, tea brews in bowls and boiled eggs are spooned onto half-toasted cuts of white bread. It lacks etiquette, but it’s my all time favourite weekend by the sea. There’s a pub in Mayfair that makes the most exquisite scotch eggs fresh every day, and which sell out about an hour after they hit the bar. Their velvety insides and crisp, warm breadcrumbs make for the perfect combination with a pint of dark ale and are the far superior cousin of the petrol station variety.

Makes 4 scotch eggs.

Semi hard boil 4 eggs in water for 4 minutes from cold. Preheat the oven to 150°C and squeeze the sausage meat of 8 bangers from their skins onto a clingfilm covered flat surface. Combine together with your hands and roll out flat with a dry rolling pin or large knife to cover an even surface about the size of an A4 sheet of paper. Crumble the crusts and centre of 2 slices of stale bread with your fingertips – brown or white will do. If it’s still fresh, toast it first to dry it out. Cut the sausage meat into 4 strips widthways (each a little wider than egg width), remove the eggs from the heat and replace with cold water. Once cool, carfeully shell them and lay across the middle of the sausage strip. The egg will be tender and still has some cooking to do, so be gentle. Working from the bottom of the strip upwards, peel it away from the clingfilm and wrap it around the egg, binding together to join on all sides. Try to keep an oval or circular shape. Transfer to plate of breadcrumbs and roll to coat evenly. Place gently on a baking tray and bake for up to 20 minutes, turning occasionally to darken the breadcrumbs and ensure even cooking. [We actually tried frying them first as we’d heard something about industrial scale scotch eggs being deep fried. Without a deep fat fryer, we started a little kitchen fire in the pan (remember the hut was made of wood) and with only olive oil at hand, couldn’t heat it sufficiently to stop the breadcrumbs from just soaking it all up. So we finshed them off in the oven, which is probably the best place for most people to put them, and which will help dry them out a bit when using cheaper sausage meat.

They’re not the most beautiful things in the world, but I love their handmade look – there’s something quite Renaissance about a sausage wrapped egg. If Henry VIII had a picnic, he’d have these, I reckon. Next time we’re going to try some variations with quail’s eggs, venison sausage and chorizo – watch this space.

Ellie

A bit scrambled

After a ’sociable’ evening at the restaurant, the only thing fit to prepare Ellie and I for the big clean is a good egg (or two). Sometimes fried, occasionally boiled but most often scrambled until light and fluffy, with a few choice additions conveniently left in the fridge from the night before.

Breakfast in the restaurant

Parmesan and sage scrambled eggs on sourdough toast
Allow 2 eggs per person and crack them into a bowl. Whisk or fork roughly and add some pepper but no salt at this point – it can make your scrambles tough and watery. Melt a generous knob of butter in a saucepan on the smallest hob set to the lowest heat. When the butter is bubbling, throw in 2-3 sage leaves and let the butter infuse off the heat for a minute or two while you put your bread in the toaster / under the grill. Return the pan to the hob and throw in the eggs, a generous grating of parmesan and a slosh of single or double cream. Let the eggs do their thing and only give them a gentle stir every now and then. Resist the temptation to turn the heat up… slow and steady wins the race! Just before you reach your desired egg consistency, add a small pinch of salt (make it a big one if you’re not including the parmesan) and remove from the heat while you butter your bread. Your eggs should be spot on by now so serve them up, grind some black pepper and dig in. The washing up has never been so easy.

Rosie       

Supper news

Saturday saw us embark on yet another secret supper journey which, we have to admit, was slightly more stressful than usual. Ellie managed to cut herself and come over all queer whilst being filmed by German TV channel ZDF – luckily Tash was on hand with blue plasters and the producer cheerfully volunteered to finish chopping the mint. Rather than holding things together for the team, I was busy spilling meat juices on the floor, burning my fingers and the bread for the bruschetta (several times) and generally swearing a lot. By the time the guests arrived, which was suddenly and seemingly unannounced, our inner perfectionists were feeling somewhat rattled.

Regardless, the dining room was alive. Yet more wonderful guests brought the restaurant to life with their laughter, enthusiasm and glass clinking. Friend, neighbour and founder of the lovely Saltoun Supper Club, Arno, jumped up from his table to give us both a hug and kindly blamed the moon for all earlier calamities whilst lovely guests Mary Rose and Phillip celebrated a 31st birthday, gifted with a bottle of wine by a table of 6 from the Independent.

We were tired and exhilarated as each course was carefully plated up and whisked out to the hungry, grateful mob beyond the living room door. With the last dollop of crème fraîche lustily scraped from every plate and the macchiato froth licked from every lip, it was time for digestion to begin. In a proper restaurant this would be the time to ask for the bill before stumbling out into the cold with bleary eyes and a full tummy, but at Salad Club it’s the moment we take off our aprons and meet the people who make every burn, cut and spill worthwhile. Cigarettes are sparked, more corks are popped and chairs are pulled up to strangers’ tables for friendly conversations and exchanges.

The trust that we’ve put into our customers – to come, to be nice, to contribute – and the trust they in turn have placed in us – to be here (!), to cook a great meal, to host – is what makes this work. Here are 17 strangers in the sitting room, most of them drunk, all of them happy and content. None of them has ever put us out or smashed anything up or started an ugly row with their neighbour. No, these are good people who like the same things as we do – good food, good atmosphere. As long as we can keep them coming Salad Club will survive. We feel it’s a bit of London that makes living in this city worthwhile.

The morning after:

A cold day’s curry

I think, finally, we have admitted there is no going back to the hazy, mango-juicy days of Summer when supper involved reaching in to the back of the fridge for a slab of feta and some cool, dilled radishes. Not that there were many of those; I think I can recall a handfull. No – late summer is edging past us, soon to be obscured by fat root vegetables and a palm of pulses.

It was on Sunday night, 2 days into a cold and knowing that it would last, that I hauled myself over to the hob and brewed up a curry. The cold has lasted all week, and though I’m only just coming through the gluey stages of recovery, I still have one more bowl to finish of this mammoth stomach-warmer. The combination of Autumn’s warm turnip with the sweet, hot spices and coconut milk is just the thing to start a new season on. Its robust ingredients means it will last in the fridge for a few days as well, and develop in intensity as it does so.

Add to a large, steel-bottomed pan a table spoon or two of peanut or vegetable oil and sweat a large, finely chopped white onion, throwing in a scattering of coriander seeds, mustard seeds and shelled cardamon seeds. Keep the heat on low. Add a medium stick of cinnamon and stir to coat, allowing the spices to release their flavours. Peel and dice 2 medium turnips and one medium potato. Add to the pot with half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, a generous teaspoon of cumin, 2 gloves of crushed garlic and a finely sliced thumb of ginger. Stir well to coat for 5 minutes. Spoon a cup of tomato passata or puree into the mix along with a fresh cut red chilli, a tin of coconut milk and turn the heat up to soften the root veg. Remove the cinnamon stick and discard. Allow everything to simmer, partly covered, for up to an hour – stirring occasionally to unstick veg from the bottom – and turn in a can of drained chick peas for the last 10 minutes. I always add an extra knob of fresh, fine cut ginger right at the end, as it lifts the heat again. Taste for heat, and add more cayenne or ginger, or anything else for that matter, depending on what you want. Stir in a good pinch of salt flakes and serve straight from the hob on basmati rice with mango chutney and strained yoghurt, and a good palmful of fresh coriander.

Ellie