1001 Nights

Our third TWMF Supper Club was held on 04 December. We decided to call it 1001 Nights to reflect how dark the nights here have become and to ward off the winter blues. There was something about the glow of lots of burning candles, coupled with the ruby red of pomegranates and the lively energy that our guests brought to the evening that made this evening particularly memorable.

The lesson learned from last supper club was to keep things simple and to cook from the heart and that's exactly what I did. What a difference that made! I was relaxed, in control and had time to chat with our guests and enjoy the live music we had as well (more on that later).

The food was mostly Persian and reminiscent of our first London Cooking Club which was held at The London Foodie's house around the same time last year. Kelsie made a delicious welcome cocktail of fresh pomegranate juice and seeds and cava. Starters were an assortment of mezze: homemade flatbread, beetroot with yoghurt, winter tabbouleh, harissa-spice chicken wings and an utterly awesome batch of babba ganoush. One of our guests practically demolished the whole batch of babba ganoush and we sent her home with a takeaway portion.






For mains we had spectacular jewelled rice, with roast lamb and a pomegranate molasses gravy. One of our guests opted for sea bass stuffed with fresh herbs and dried fruit.



The highlight of the evening for me was a mini concert of santur music performed by Moritz. I found him on the internet and he kindly came by to perform a 30-minute set for us. You can hear a clip of his performance here. While he was performing we served a cooling palate cleanser of pomegranate sorbet.




Dessert came next and I relied on my tried and true recipe for Persian Love Cake. Totally sweet and intensely flavoured with cardamom and nutmeg. We had to wrap up the rose syrup scented baklava because everyone was stuffed.




Wine and more wine and brandy and conversation flowed about myriad subjects such as, scrum, ostrich egg omelettes, the difference between 'dag' and 'bogen' (australian vernacular terms) to name a few.

Funnily enough, Kelsie and I started TWMF Supper Club so that we could meet more Berliners, but on this particular evening, all our guests were from out of town! We had DoktorG and his wife, MsGourmetChick and her fabulous friends, and Kaeladan who was visiting us from Glasgow for the weekend.



I'm glad we got our mojo back and are really looking forward to our next supper club in January.



As always, here's my list of lessons learned:

1. Definitey make the sorbet the night before, i didn't this time and it was melting as soon as i served it out.


2. If you are going to have entertainment, limit the performance time and wait to serve any courses until it's over. I got the sense that people didn't know whether it was ok to eat or not while Moritz was playing.


3. Have a few taxi numbers on hand for guests to be able to make their way home if it's really late.

Sources:

• Thanks to Dave and Matt for letting us use some of their photos from the evening in this blog post


• THe gorgeous legs of lamb were purchased from Wild+Geflugel at the Karl-August-Platz market in Charlottenburg


• Beautiful sounds from Moritz on his santur


• overall recipe inspiration from New Food of Life by Najmieh Batmanglij and My Persian Kitchen


• Speciality Persian ingredients including advieh and dried barberries from Fruta Shiva (persian groceries in Charlottenburg)

A Persian Feast from the London Cooking Club

A couple of months ago Kels and I were invited to dinner at The London Foodie's home. We had met at the Wahaca Autumn Menu tasting and connected right away with each other. That meal was absolutely AMAZING and deserves it's own blog post (coming soon).

Over dinner we talked about doing a meet-up with each of us contributing a course -- kind of like an American-style pot-luck. Fast forward 8 weeks and our first gathering happened two weeks ago.

Three couples participated and in addition to the courses we chose we also added to the mezze and brought 2 bottles of wine to go with our dishes.

The theme, as the title says was Persian food. Most of the recipes came from The Food of Life cookbook with the exception of my mezze and the Persian Love Cake which came courtesy of Pikelet and Pie.

The menu was:

Mezze:
Fresh baked bread with black sesame seeds
Cheese and walnut dip
Aubergine dip
Lemon and garlic harissa spiced chicken wings
Chickpea, feta and red onion salad




Jeweled rice with roast Guinea Fowl



Lamb shanks with herb sauce



Persian Love Cake with yoghurt

We're planning another gathering in January with the theme being Scottish food in honour of Burns Night. I'm envisioning this cooking club growing into something along the lines of a Basque Txoko or gastronomic society. People meet regularly to plan and cook menus and then eat the results with family and friends. Many of them have multiple generations of members with waiting lists for new memberships. Only recently they have accepted female members. Some have their own dedicated meeting places and kitchens. Every January there's a big festival in San Sebastian where the various societies compete for a much coveted award for best meal.

I'm thinking a future venue that can accomodate more people might be the Underground Cookery School where some fellow food bloggers met up for Ghana Food Night this past August.

Here's a link to our facebook page. Please add your name to the fan list if you'd like to participate in future meet-ups. I'll be organising a planning meeting after the new year for the January meet-up and we'll take it from there.