11 Dec 2023
Elena Hogg, founder of local culinary company FOOD by Elena, has an ambitious meal to prepare…
Open-plan living seems like such a great idea until you host a lively group of your oldest friends, add their children into the mix and discover there are 17 of you all (literally) clamouring for airtime. The cacophony in a kitchen-cum-living-cum-dining room with precious few soundwave-absorbing soft furnishings is skull-fracturing and makes you regret prioritising interior design trends over a few doors to separate the noisiest from the noisy.
But I would proffer that decibel and enjoyment levels are directly proportional, so the pandemonium was certainly a good sign, and short-lived, mercifully, with the children lured away by popcorn and a film. And perhaps I noticed it more than everyone else, because I was the one cooking while others engaged in merriment. I was beavering away producing what turned out to be enough food for a small army, which meant keeping a lot of balls in the air at once, when I usually struggle with just one.
I did ask myself – several times – why I was cooking quite that much food. After filling the kids with the standard half-healthy-half-not veggie sticks, hummus and pizza, there remained only 11 adults eating, after all. By catering standards, that’s not even close to a lot. And yet I ended up making enough food for double that number, judging by the copious leftovers, despite the fact that this crew is certainly not meek of appetite.
A good theory would be that, because I’m used to scaled-up catering as a job, it comes naturally now to cook lots. But that’s not it at all. It all simply comes down to a classic case of keeping up with the Joneses.
One couple among this very lovely group of friends is particularly ‘foodie’.
Talking to them about their travels to far-flung places in search of culinary nirvana induces sharp pangs of both hunger and envy. This same couple regularly hosts, feeding us the most glorious fare and in vast quantities. Their reputation precedes them among their entire friendship circle, and one half of the couple spent much time developing a tantalising menu which was available to order for home delivery in their local area of Finsbury and beyond, too. Find @ms.wanton on Insta for a visual, and you’ll see what I mean by tantalising.
Her husband is by no means kitchen-shy either, and between the two of them, they are the hosts with the most(s). And they are the Joneses up with whom I’m trying to keep. Overly laboured grammar intended.
I realised, armed with oven gloves as I faced another round of musical shelves with the oven, that the pressure I was feeling was entirely self-inflicted. No matter that I’m a fairly busy caterer, the approval-seeking cook in me is still there.
Back when I was planning what to cook, there was only one kind of cuisine I was minded to do. Middle Eastern food is colourful, brimming with flavour, pretty on- trend, easy to upscale quantity-wise and offers a huge variety for both vegetarian and meat-based dishes. No-brainer.
In fact, as the festive season approaches in earnest now, I can fully recommend Middle Eastern, southern Mediterranean and Persian
cuisines, which all overlap in certain areas, for larger gatherings where you’re looking for cheerful conviviality over formal dining.
For example, a variety of dips with flatbread serve as a fabulous starter and barely even require a plate. If you make one with carrot, one with beetroot and one with spinach, you’ve got an inviting rainbow of choice. And dips are easily made in advance to save you stress on the day – win-win.
I popped these dips out on my kitchen island for people to help themselves to mid-mingle, instead of serving a starter course. This means you’re restricted to the dining table for as little time as possible and the whole evening feels more party-like, which I wanted.
When we did go and sit down for the business end of the evening’s eating, probably the prettiest dish on the table was the filo pie with ricotta, chard and feta. Not entirely authentic, granted, but the oven-bronzed waves of filo were so perfect in the messiness that you just felt compelled to cut into it and devour.
It offered some creamy respite from the spice and kick of its neighbouring dishes, too.
The most imposing dish was probably the enormous pot of smoky, sweet and punchy chorizo sausage stew, served with steamed rice layered with pistachios, crispy-friend onions, and dried barberries, cranberries and sour cherries. The stew had been cooking down gently for the best part of a day, which gave it an unctuous, toffee-like quality punctuated with salty, meaty bites of sausage. I was actually quite glad there were some leftovers of that.
There were also sumac-roasted chicken wings, moreish and savoury, and impossible to eat without using your hands, adding to the relaxed vibe I was aiming for.
On the vegetables front, there were cumin- and coriander-roasted aubergines and also a hearty ‘salad’ of puy lentils, red onion, bell pepper, capers, kale and pine nuts. Tossed in an experimental roasted garlic and lemony dressing, the umami factor was high, and I will be adding puréed roasted garlic to every dressing I make from now on.
You’ll be able to smell me before you see me.
To finish the meal, there was cake. I don’t often make cake for dessert, as it feels like an afternoon treat more than a pudding, but two of my guests had a birthday coming up, so it seemed fitting to stab a couple of candles into it and subject them to our singing.
The cake was polenta-based, which qualifies it slightly more than regular cake for dessert status and, in keeping with the cuisine of the evening, contained pistachios, cinnamon and cloves, and was topped with yoghurt and syrupy, pan-roasted figs. I’ll never quite be convinced by the grainy texture of polenta, but it can withstand a fierce injection of spices and it’s satisfyingly robust, too, which befitted the evening’s unceremonious, casual food offering.
Things got so casual, in fact, that everyone finished the evening in various degrees of reclination: the digestive slouch, I like to call it, or the post-prandial slump. Everyone except the odd few, who instead decided to take turns on my son’s Segway hoverboard with varying degrees of success and a near-miss on a broken rib. It was comedy gold, though. Next time I’m going to leave the pogo stick lying around…
