4. Flashback

We’ve been doing some good entertaining recently. We serve the handrolls featuring the fish I was buying in Tenterhooks. A winter lunch for a big group has a Mexican accent with a big mole thick with mulatto chiles, alongside chicken, arroz verde, black beans and cornbread, with smoked idiazabal Basque cheesecake to follow. We’re definitely getting back into the groove.

Pulling this off requires planning, clear allocation of childcare duties between us, and working out a menu that will fit the windows of time for cooking and shopping. Last minute prep is minimised in case the hours leading up to guests’ arrival are fraught. Mole benefits from a day’s rest. Preference on texture of Basque cheesecake varies, but I like it cold and smooth from the fridge, so cooking it the night before works well. Menus start from logistics and work outwards.

I look back on notes I made over the heatwave soaked months of spring and summer last year as the pregnancy progressed and we hosted to enjoy those final moments with friends before everything would change. The ‘last suppers’, I wrote to headline those pages. 

35 weeks pregnant. Two friends over for Sunday supper. Mezze of flatbreads with whipped feta, garlic sour cream, tomatoes in pesto, radishes. The flatbread purchased from Ranya on Kilburn High Road, and everything else made. White beans, sourced from Spanish specialist Garcia, cooked from dried in a vegetable dashi brought back from Japan. Mixed with shallot and garlic olive oil, fried courgettes, blanched broad beans, basil and lemon. Dessert of a parfait served on a biscuit base to make a kind of ice cream sandwich, with roasted cherries and shards of meringue. Ingredients from four local stores plus the farmers market and at least one item from Japan. 

36 weeks pregnant. A larger group for Sunday lunch on a super hot day. Part of the prep involves making a tube out of tinfoil to be able to have the portable air-conditioning unit that’s been keeping us cool at night do service in the kitchen/dining room, attempting to bring the temperature below 30ºC.

Prep starts on Saturday – the farmers market in West Hampstead for Fosse Meadows chicken, tomatoes, beans, onions. M&S for cream, butter, oat biscuits, cheeses. The Lonsdale Road fruit stall for a big watermelon. Ranya for polenta. More shopping on Sunday – the Queen’s Park farmers market for salads, herbs and cherries. The corner shop for limes and avocados. 

On Saturday night I make the polenta base for the tomato tart, with ghee and olive oil giving it the flavour and smoothness. A biscuit base for dessert, with crushed oat cookies, toasted hazelnuts and unsalted butter. Onions get caramelised and potatoes boiled for a salad. I try and do as much of the cooking as needs heat as I can. The kitchen is still 30º at 9pm, but at least the heat can cool a bit overnight before the sun rises and starts to bake us all over again. So I roast tomatoes and pass them through a mouli to get a chunky, textured sauce for a salad of green beans, which get blanched and plunged into ice water. I envy the beans at this point. I bone out the chicken thighs, freezing the bones for stock and bathing the thighs in a garlic brine. It’s late and I have a cold shower and try to sleep.

On Sunday I get up at 8am. It’s already hot. I slice and salt tomatoes, toast and grind spices and grate two cheeses, assemble the tart on the polenta base and give it a quick bake. The chicken is drained, dried and roasted in a hot oven, and left to cool. The pan is full of ‘liquid gold’ – the mix of juice, fat and crispy bits which will make anything delicious, so I scrape out and save that. The final bits of hot cooking are grilling halloumi, in thick chunks to keep it juicy, and blistering the green beans. The hot cooking is done by 9.30am. I jerry-rig the AC unit and crank it to try and cool the kitchen.

After the market trip I make gazpacho – tomatoes, onion, garlic, peeled cucumber, jarred piquillo peppers, breadcrumbs, olive oil, sherry vinegar and salt. It’s bright and just acidic enough to be really refreshing. I try not to drink it all. 

The watermelon is cut up, and combined with the halloumi, pine nuts and the juice from a jar of guindilla peppers. It will have rocket added before serving. The mouli’d tomato is combined with fenugreek and roast garlic to make a sauce for the blistered green beans. The sautéed onions are mixed with Kewpie mayonnaise, spring onions and lime juice to dress the cooked potatoes. 

A herb sauce of avocado, shiso, parsley, coriander, basil, olive oil, lemon juice and sherry vinegar is served alongside the chicken.

Dessert sees vanilla cream spread on the biscuit base, and it gets topped with pitted cherries. 

The food goes down well, including with the kids present who love the watermelon and don’t seem fazed by the pickle brine. Their parents voice their doubt that I’ll be able to pull off this kind of meal when the baby arrives.

38 weeks pregnant. Two friends over for dinner. This may be the last chance for a while for me to do a multi-course Japanese inspired meal. The shopping includes Japanese store Natural Natural, the local butcher, three different shops for vegetables and salads, the fishmonger and many ingredients brought back from Japan. To start I make dashi with kombu and katsuoboshi that I brought back from my last trip to Tokyo.

The first course is tomatoes marinated in cold dashi with shiso and sesame seeds, and sugar snap peas blanched, sliced open and covered with a ponzu gel. Then a chawanmushi egg custard with scallop in the bottom and topped with sakura shrimp in a thickened shrimp sauce.

Beef tataki – seared, sliced and served in mirin and ponzu with ginger and spring onion. A pickle of Napa cabbage and yuzu on the side. Then garlic rice made in a donabe pot with the chicken liquid gold from the previous hosting, fried garlic, fried dried shrimp, crispy onions, spring onions, Napa cabbage, soy fermented garlic, wild garlic butter and onsen eggs. 

To finish, cherry ice cream (made a few weeks previously at the height of the season) with cherries marinated in Mr Black cold brew coffee liqueur. 

It’s intricate food, with most of the dishes requiring care to balance the subtle flavours, until the rice dish which is a riot of flavour and texture, but still requires some focused attention to get the contrasting textures spot on – silky from the onsen egg and different fats, whilst not becoming a mush, with crispy elements shining through. Eating and serving takes time, with breaks between each course to enjoy the drinks and conversation whilst the next one is prepared. It’s heavy on pre-prep, but there’s little cooking that can be done in advance. Even I think it may be a while before I get to do one of these again. 

We start to wind it down after that. Family come over for lunch and with the need for iron we grill ribeyes outside and slice them up to serve with watermelon salad and crispy potatoes with aioli. And that was the last time of hosting as just a couple, as our attention turned in to the final days leading up to the birth.