Cooking the Books - fourth

Cooking the books Part 4

We’re welcoming everyone back to Longford Farmhouse for the last two weekends in November, for our fifth in the series of ‘Cooking the Books’ dining events.

We have had some new, first-rate chefs join us this year on larger events, and they are keen to get into the kitchen to cook for these intimate private dining sessions here at the house.

The books we are ‘cooking’ come from Tom Aitken, Gill Meller, Rose Prince, The Ethicurean, Gizzie Erskine and Valentine Warner and we’ve put together a fascinating array of dishes for you to savour and share with your friends.

Sadly we’ve had to increase the price for the event to £70, but I think that for a welcome cocktail, canape, five courses, coffee and BYO wine with no corkage, that still represents real value for money.  Shop around and see what’s on offer elsewhere.

We really recommend ordering your wine from Artisan wine & spirts - they will deliver it here meaning we can get it all organised & in the right place before you arrive.

We’re kicking off with a Picante de la Casa cocktail, all the rage at Soho House I’m told by my inside man and booze specialist Chris Quin.  Think Tequila and fresh red chilli and a few extra bits and bobs and you’re pretty well there.

We’ll be serving courgette, spring onion and cheese tartlets alongside the cocktail, just to soak it up and dampen things down, then we’re into carpaccio of bream from Tom Aitkens, lovely dark brown, through cream flesh, kissed with lemon zest, chives, spring onion, thyme and a lemon dressing drizzle.

For the vegetarians, we have a delicious dish from Gill Meller’s ‘Root, Stem, Leaf, Flower’.  Bitter radicchio alongside shaved celeriac and sliced blood orange.  While we’re on the subject of vegetarians, we’re also featuring from the same book, cauliflower puree with butter, rosemary and sage roasted banana shalllots, garden herbs and crispy kale.

For our third plate, I really want to cook this Rose Prince, ginger, butter dal recipe.  She made it for Bee and I when we went to join her for lunch and a chat a few years ago.  She served it with Arctic Char, which is farmed just down the road from her house.  We’re doing it with my favourite gurnard, pan fried and roasted, with a roasted squash version for those who have an aversion to fish.

Then an Ethicurean speciality, beetroot pearl barley with bordelaise sauce.  They do it with pigeon, we’re doing it with seared and sliced duck breast and a handful of wilted kale.  The Bordelaise sauce really owns this dish, grabbing you by the core of your soul and sending you, satisfied, on to the pudding course.

But before we get there, I picked up a great new book a month or so ago, ‘Restore – A modern guide to sustainable eating’ by Gizzi Erskine.  It’s absolutely FAB, great writing and great recipes.  We’re doing ‘Roasted beetroot, Beluga lentil and watercress salad with goat’s cheese croute’, which with a salsa verde dressing is completely knockout.  If I’m absolutely honest, I’d never heard of Gizzi, even though she’s got 4 books out and has been on the telly.  It just goes to show there’s always something out there to discover.

Finally, we’re re-kindling our relationship with Valentine Warner and finishing off with his divine ‘Citrus yoghurt with black sugar’, indescribably simple, indescribably delicious, you’ll all want to take the recipe home.

So there you have it, divine dishes from six dishy chefs, all under one roof, what a great deal.

We’ll be selling individual seats to the table, or multiples thereof for groups, via our web page, see link below.  For those of you who would like to book a room for all your chums, we have the larder, always popular and seats 10, the drawing room with fire which seats 14 or the sitting room which seats 8-10.  The dining room, which seats 24, we use to bundle up mixed groups, it’s rowdy, but a fun place to be.