3 Great Group Dinners To Cook This Month
This cookbook is a love letter to food, community, friendship and family. It’s for that big house share who each have their own bottle of olive oil but could so easily be sharing. For couples who love to host their friends and are always looking for an excuse for a dinner party. For families who want to eat delicious, affordable food but get stuck in a rut with the same recipes on repeat. For those people who live alone and want new and interesting ways to feed themselves. This book is for everyone, but the people I have really written it for are those who feel intimidated by cooking for big groups, who shudder at the idea of making pasta for ten on a holiday. I want to give those cooks the confidence to make a casual chilli for all their friends on a Wednesday night, because in reality, it’s achievable – and cheaper! – if you know how.
I’m from a big family, one of four kids, just like my parents’ respective families. We are a family obsessed with food: the running joke is that while we’re eating breakfast, we are thinking about lunch, and while we’re eating lunch, we are discussing dinner, and if after dinner we aren’t talking about what we might eat for breakfast the next day, well then, something must be wrong. Having baked with my grandmas as far back as I can remember, in secondary school I persuaded my mum to let me cook tea for the family one night a week. My parents are both musicians and often worked in the evenings, so we established a routine whereby once a week I would cook tea while my mum taught cello, so that we could all sit down to eat as soon as she finished. Clever parenting on my mum’s part: this must have been a big help to her, while making me feel like I had won the lottery. Cooking for six soon became second nature.
I’ve been cooking for large groups at home and professionally in the kitchen for over a decade, so I have a head start. For me, it has always been food. It is the thing I go to bed thinking about, and the thing I wake up thinking about. It’s what I turn to when I am sad, when I’m mad, happy, drunk and in love. I want to share my knowledge, my passion and my recipes with as many people as possible, so that more of us can be in for dinner, more of the time. Given the choice between dinner out or dinner in, I would always choose to stay home and cook.
Inspired? Here are three recipes to recreate at home…
Confit Cherry Tomatoes & Labneh on Toast
This is my favourite way to preserve summer cherry tomatoes. It’s such a treat to be able to enjoy a sugary sweet cherry tomato, even when they are no longer in season, on top of thick, creamy labneh and perfectly toasted bread. It’s a vibe any time of day, but as a slow Sunday breakfast this toast really shines. Once confited, these tomatoes will keep for up to a month in the fridge. Once you have made the labneh and confited the tomatoes, you can whip up this meal in seconds, so it’s a great one to prep for the week and come to when you are short of time. It’s not just breakfast: the tomatoes are good on everything from savoury pancakes to eggs, pasta to couscous and polenta – use them far and wide. When you have eaten all the tomatoes you may well have some confit oil left over – hold on to this, as it is brilliant to add to salad dressings or use as a cooking oil, adding extra flavour to everything it touches.
Put the cherry tomatoes, olive oil and a pinch of sea salt into a medium saucepan over the lowest heat possible and leave to confit for at least 1 hour, and anywhere up to 3 hours.
To make the labneh, mix the yoghurt with the lemon zest and ½ tsp of sea salt.
Place a sieve over a bowl and line the sieve with a large, clean piece of cheesecloth, muslin or a fresh dishcloth. Pour the yoghurt mix into the lined sieve and tuck the mixture in with the excess cloth.
Leave to strain like this in the fridge overnight. In the morning the bowl will have collected all the milky excess liquid from the yoghurt (which you can discard), and you will have a thick labneh in the lined sieve.
When you are ready to serve, toast the bread and rub it lightly with the garlic clove. Top with the labneh and then the tomatoes, drizzling over some extra confit oil and sprinkling with salt and pepper.
Salt & Vinegar Potato Soup
I don’t always have the time to hand-make dumplings but I often crave pierogi, and when I do, I make this soup. It has all the flavours of a pierogi but takes a fraction of the time to make and is delivered in a warming broth that feels more appropriate for lunchtime.
Boil the potatoes in well-salted water until tender, around 20 minutes depending on the size of your potatoes. They are cooked when a knife slips easily through them.
In a large heavy-bottomed pan over a medium heat, melt the butter with the olive oil and add the onions, salt and black pepper.
Cook the onions for at least 20 minutes and anywhere up to 40 minutes, so they get jammy and caramelised.
Remove a quarter of the onions from the pan and reserve them for topping later.
Add the stock, vinegar and all the potatoes to the pan. With a potato masher, or the back of a wooden spoon, break up the potatoes to release some of their fluffy interior – this will help to thicken up the soup.
Continue to simmer for 15 minutes, to allow some of the liquid to reduce and thicken.
Stir in all the chopped dill and half the sauerkraut.
Serve in bowls, topped with a dollop of sour cream, a sprinkle of chives, the rest of the sauerkraut, the reserved caramelised onions and more black pepper.
Halva, Dark Chocolate & Sesame Cookies
Crunchy, chewy, salty, sweet, this cookie has it all. If you’ve never tried halva before, I highly recommend hunting it down – it’s a sweet sesame treat that’s sort of crumbly and soft in texture. When baked into this cookie it becomes a perfectly caramelised, nutty, chewy addition. You can find halva in most major supermarkets but failing that, any Middle Eastern store will have it in abundance. These can also be cooked from frozen and I always like to have a box in the freezer ready to go.
In a stand mixer, beat together the butter and brown sugar until just combined. Add the egg, 150g of cubed halva and the vanilla and mix again until well combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition.
In a separate bowl combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt, oats (both flour and whole), sesame seeds and chopped chocolate.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until a dough forms, then shape the cookies into 20 equal-sized balls, each weighing roughly 55g – I do this with an ice-cream scoop so they are all the same size.
Roll each cookie ball in more sesame seeds. Using the remaining 50g of halva, press a piece of halva into the top of each cookie and put them on to a lined baking tray that fits into your freezer.
Freeze the shaped cookies for at least an hour, or until you are ready to bake. The cookies will last well in the freezer for up to 3 months like this.
When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C Fan/Gas Mark 4 and line a baking tray. Space the cookies out so they have enough room to double in size and sprinkle each one with a little flaky sea salt.
Bake for 12 minutes, then take the tray out and sharply tap it on a hard surface – this deflates the cookies and gives them a thin, crinkled texture. Put the tray back in the oven for a further 3 minutes.
Leave to cool completely on the tray, or until they are cool and firm enough to handle – there is nothing quite like a warm cookie fresh from the oven.
Follow Rosie at @ROSIEKELLETT & buy ‘In For Dinner’ here
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