Cookbook Club No.1

And why I'm tweaking it ...

Substack may be one of the few remaining bastions of honesty in the www.world so I suppose it’s only right that I’m honest about how my gathering for the first Cookbook Club went.

The Cookbook Club that I started, that I made the rules for, that I suggested the recipes for and that I encouraged everyone to get on board and invite their friends over for. Yes, THAT Cookbook Club.

Well honestly, life got busy, and I was daunted by the assignment.

I found that I just couldn’t push the send button on the invites I’d made. I was afraid that I wouldn’t have time to get the shopping and the sorting and the house tidying (and the procrastinating) done. It felt like a JOB instead of a fun thing to do. And so, I gave myself a pass to change my plan.

I did a complete 360 pivot, from having ¹a gang of friends cooking a full menu together in the kitchen, to having one friend over for a couple of hours to do one recipe. To keep it interesting I chose the most “project” recipe of the three - the ²Pea Kachori.

And it was brilliant. It felt like a manageable chunk of time, a novel way of catching up, and a stress free way to tackle a new, unfamiliar recipe. The end result was a cracking lunch to share together before we both got on with our life and went back to work.

So I think that’s how Cookbook Club is going to look going forward. One unfamiliar recipe, the kind you simply wouldn’t tackle on your own. It could be Dumplings, or Sushi, or Stuffed Foccacia or Ferments. A way to turn “What on earth is this” into “Why haven’t I made this before”. And of course, because this is a Food Photography space, some ideas about taking some shots as you go.

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Between chopping, stirring and avoiding kitchen disasters we also did our best to take some Phone pics that hopefully captured the essence of the dish (and not just the mess we made of the kitchen)

I would recommend that you:

1. Gather a few props together before you start. For me this was a worn wooden board, some brown greaseproof paper, an old wooden spoon, a neutral denim apron and a retro citrus squeezer. I wanted the shots to feel real and not staged, so I kept the styling to an absolute minimum for this one.

2. Turn off any bulbs and really look at how the natural light is behaving in your kitchen. Find a good spot where it’s not too strong or harsh, but not too dark and gloomy. Near a big window is generally the sweet spot, and if the light is too strong then put some tracing paper or a voile curtain over the window pane to soften it

3. Buy a white foam board (Hobbycraft is where I buy mine) to use as a reflector on the opposite side of your light source (ie, your window). This reduces the harsh shadows and gives a more even light to your shot.

   

4. Try and find a series of shots that show flavour, process and then the finished dish to tell the full story of your dish.

I really enjoy cooking solo (less opinions, more taste testing), so splitting the tasks was a risky experiment, but happily a really successful one.

We also made the suggested condiments to go with it - a jar of ³quick lime pickled onions and some ⁴Mint and Chilli Yoghurt.

We put the world to rights, we learnt a new recipe, and then we ate together. Seriously, is there a better way to spend 2 hours? Huge thanks to ⁵Sarah for being the first survivor of my experimental first Cookbook Club!

I have made this first Cookbook Club post free to all, as it was still in the “working this out” pile. But if you’ve been considering supporting my work with a paid subscription now is the perfect time, as I am offering 20% off for all paid subscriptions taken out in the next 2 weeks with this special link that makes a monthly subscription less than a cup of fancy coffee - if you skip the milk, the lid, and maybe the cup ..

Thanks so much!

1. Which now I type it sounds more like a full-scale crisis waiting to happen, than a fun challenge …

2. A dish I had never heard of or eaten before. Like a culinary blind date, but with fewer awkward silences.

3. Lime Pickled Onions

2 red onions
4 tbsp lime juice (from 2 limes)
Salt

Peel the onions, cut it into very thin semi-circles and put in a bowl with the lime juice and three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt. Scrunch the mix with your hands, until slightly wilted, then set aside.

4. Mint and Chilli Yoghurt

125ml natural yogurt

30g fresh mint leaves

1-2 fresh green chilies

2 teaspoons sugar

juice of 1/2 lemon

salt

Remove the seeds and roughly chop the chillies

Pulse all the ingredients in a food processor

Add salt to taste

5. Sarah Hardaker is a fabulous Fabric and Wallpaper designer, (but also a brilliant cook). She goes under

Sarah Hardaker

on substack, @sarahhardaker on Instagram and her gorgeous website is here