Post match roundup

  Though I told you I was wired like a fuse box, as soon as the dough had risen I was out like a light. The minute dawn cracked, I was back in the kitchen bouncing round like a pinball. Deep joy came from the meatballs in tomato sauce. I had started the sauce the day before so once I had seasoned the lamb, rolled out the balls and fried them for a bit of colour, they got straight  to simmering. This meant that by the time I served them, they had been cooking away for over ten hours. The tomato sauce was rich and deep and the meat was soft and tender. I was overjoyed. 

  The other jackpot was the end of the dough's journey. I had made the onion marmalade the day before so all I needed to do was turn my oven up to molten, roll out a ball of dough to wafer thin, spread a bit of onion over the top and shimmy it onto my pizza stone. In the time it took me to roll out the next ball and apply some onion, the first had cooked and a production line was born. In no time I had eight of the beauties. Result!

  That's a picture of me whisking the pissaladiere to the starving masses. If you look closely you'll notice two things. One, I'm carrying four plates so I must think I'm some kind of pro and two, it looks like a smile has broken out, a clear giveaway that I must be enjoying myself. I must admit, I had a great time last night. There were less people but we had a smashing atmosphere and because it was the second time, I had more of an idea of what to expect so I was super chilled.

  By the end of the evening, the result of my two day cooking marathon was taking its toll but what I realised afterwards was that I would rather work a bit harder to produce proper food than to take shortcuts to make my life easier. I love the fact that I'm so driven to share food with people and the more the merrier.

  There's a good chance that in the future, we're going to cap the number of tickets so the ambience is a bit more intimate and I can produce food to a level I'm happy with without giving myself a heart attack. There isn't a date for the next supper club yet but I'll let you know as soon as there is one. However, because a lot of the faces last night had been to the first one, I'd bet it'll fill up quickly so book early and don't miss out.

Kirk out

Chefsebastian.com