Kitchen Stories: top chefs and restaurateurs talk family time and home cooking, plus a recipe for leek and mushroom galette
Seppe Nobels of Graanmarkt 13
I’m in a new relationship, and we’ve been together for three months. The day the lockdown started in Belgium, my girlfriend was here with her two kids – a son of five and a daughter of ten – and my two daughters – 12 and 16 – were also here, so there are six of us in the house. We decided it was the right moment to get to know each other better, actually! Thankfully we have enough space that everyone has their own spot, so they can do some self-reflection, but the kitchen is the most central, communal space in the house right now.
The most important thing for me, like in the restaurant, are vegetables. We can’t fight viruses with food – we need doctors for that – but we can at least eat healthily, which we try to do. We start the morning with homemade granola and yoghurt, fresh fruits. The feeling you have when you start the day with a healthy breakfast is, in my eyes, completely different than if you eat a quick piece of toast with some salami or something like that.
We eat three times a day and we always sit together. It’s not only the food, but being together, talking, sharing ideas that’s important. The kids have schoolwork to do and I’m also busy with a new cookbook so it’s nice to sit together and discuss what we’re all working on. The global situation is not at all good or nice but the other way of thinking about it is that you have beautiful quality time with your family, with your inner circle of loved ones, and it’s nice to be together.
I’m constantly in the kitchen at the moment. As well as cooking three times a day with my family, and cooking for the new cookbook, I’m working with Delhaize Belgium, the best supermarket chain in Belgium. They asked me to inspire people during the lockdown because they found that people were always making the same recipes, over and over again, and they aren’t the healthiest: fish and chips, spaghetti bolognese. So we started up a series of cooking videos in Instagram to inspire people and the response has been crazy, even though it’s just me with an iPhone in my kitchen.
When I cook now, the kids help me and it’s funny to see how they cook, and how they think about food. It’s really nice to talk with them about it, and sometimes I’ll try more challenging vegetables for kids like Jerusalem artichokes, special types of asparagus or salsify, and because they’re all different ages, it’s nice to see their reactions: how they think, whether they like the vegetables or not. It’s very interesting for me, as a chef.
The things I’m cooking are always cooked with produce from local farmers, like in the restaurant. For sure, at this moment, we need to keep on ordering vegetables, meat and fish from them, because they’re having a really hard time. The restaurant owns some fields in the countryside, which are full of vegetables that we can’t use. I’ve been trying to give them to family and friends, as well as artisanal cheeses and other ingredients we had left in the restaurant. It’s always better to share than to throw – it’s such a pity to see beautiful ingredients go to waste.
David Gingell of Jolene
It goes without saying that the coronavirus is the worst thing to happen to us as a nation in most peoples’ living memory. For some, there is a silver lining to this! People have the time to cook for their families. As a family, we have always enjoyed dinner together as it’s a really good time to share our day and talk about things.
I have always used cooking at home as a kind of therapy. I think we can all do with slowing our thoughts down a bit at the moment. I feel that food carries an emotional value, not just a calorific one. It’s a really nice way to connect to happier times in the past – mum’s lasagne, maybe.
I’ve been making sourdough at home. We are cooking lots of things from scratch like tray bake pizza, almost in the style of focaccia – I go for cheese and tomato. We serve some anchovies and chilli flakes on the side as my eldest, who is six, loves anchovies.
It’s also really good fun to get the kids involved. It will take you twice as long with the kids, but they always eat well when they have had a hand in the prep. We have always made cavatelli pasta together. It’s really just semolina and water made into a dough then cooked in boiling water, which can be tossed in a simple tomato sauce topped with Parmesan, with chilli flakes for me.
Hopefully when this is all over people will value our planet more and the importance of the food we eat and where it comes from. My parting message is for you to take your time to cook your onions slowly, as they are much sweeter that way.
Clare Lattin of Duck Soup
The larder comes into its own in times of crisis, and for me, when life is up in the air, I tend to navigate towards Italian or Indian cooking: both cuisines do so well in using humble ingredients and making them taste great. The Italians lace everything with olive oil and good seasoning. And cooking Indian-style food, using an array of wonderful spices, can hide a multitude of shortcomings on the ingredient or skill front.
Pulses, legumes and pasta (tinned or dried) are a good place to start, along with a decent spice cupboard. I try to buy spices in bulk; small jars won’t last five minutes. I make a big batch of a good spice mix and keep it in a jar, or infuse an oil to drizzle over roasted vegetables, a fried egg or potatoes. It’s good to have a few things like this prepared for when you want to rustle up something quick that delivers on satisfaction, and it’s easy to add more flavours and ingredients as you go along to change the dimension of the dish.
Italian-wise, legumes and pasta form the basis of so many great meals in my house. With beans, I often just begin by using onion, garlic, olive oil and a range of herbs as a base. Enjoyed with perhaps a pinch of chilli, parmesan and squeeze of lemon or the addition of greens, foraged wild garlic or a handful of broccoli florets. You can add stock, stale bread toasted in thyme and garlic, bacon, or finish with a different herb and nut pesto – there’s plenty to experiment with – even just walnut, garlic, bread and milk is divine.
I always seem to be making stock in my house – it’s one of the secrets to making humble vegetable dishes taste great. I use pork stock in dishes like chickpeas with cabbage, finished with some parmesan. I make chicken stock with leftover bones or a carcass and then freeze it. Veg stock I make from the green ends of leeks, slightly drying out onions, carrots, celery. I’ll never discard these vital stock-making ingredients – they are the backbone to legume bliss – and, instead, I pack them into a bag and put them in the fridge until I have enough for a stock.
The humble soup is a place to get really creative, but I love using really simple bases like potato or chickpeas. You get a delicious, wholesome, silky soup and I dress them up with all manner of flavours: sage and potato; potato, cabbage and chilli; potato and wild garlic; leek and potato or chickpea, farro, rosemary and chilli. I often use my stocks as a broth base in which I add beans, any left-over meat, spring greens or toasted sourdough.
Whilst I have time on my hands, I am planting a ton of salad leaves and herbs. They can be grown in window boxes, balconies and kitchen windowsills. Having fresh leaves and herbs on hand can transform your cooking. I try not to be without mint, marjoram or oregano, bay, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. And a simple but effective range of fresh salad leaves such as mustard, mizuna, rocket and gem provide quick and easy accompaniments to most dishes and delight the palette.
Clare Lattin’s leek and mushroom galette
To use up odds and sods, or normally wasted ingredients, I usually bake a galette – it’s a really easy, rough, French tart, and can be made savoury or sweet. It’s the perfect vehicle to house a few slightly ‘over’ ingredients. It’s also a godsend when you suddenly find yourself anchored to the cooker – making a couple through the week means an easily accessible slice for lunch with salad greens plucked from the balcony pots!
There are different ways to make this pastry, but for now, when ingredients are scarce, butter and flour is ample. Flour is tricky to get right now, so, instead, I’m using less obvious ones that tend to be in stock, such as buckwheat, spelt or einkorn. The heritage grains give a different but interesting flavour and can always be mixed in with the white to dilute the intensity of, say, einkorn flour.
For the filling, I use up fridge finds or parts of the vegetable that might go to waste such as the outer leaves of cabbage stewed with bacon, onion, a bit of cream, the odd leek, onion, foraged wild garlic and cheese, mushrooms, crème fraîche, apples that might have seen better days, soaked prunes, pears, almond and walnut bits. At this time of year, you could chuck in some nettles.
I also make my own marzipan with egg, ground almonds and sugar. You don’t need much and it’s the perfect sweet base for lots of fruit.
For the pastry
300g flour (ideally white, or a mix of heritage and white, usually 1:2 white)
250g cold butter
A pinch of salt
Iced water
For the filling
25g butter
Olive oil
2 tbsp crème fraîche
2 leeks (or an onion, a leek, and some greens – whatever you have)
1 punnet mushrooms (chestnut, field or wild, or whatever you have)
Large handful wild garlic (optional)
Large pinch chilli flakes
Salt and pepper
1 egg yolk
First the pasty
In a food processor, pulse your (very cold) butter into your flour. You want to ensure you have small lumps of butter visible, so don’t overwork it. Gently pour in your ice-cold water to bring it together, until it forms a dough. Go gently as you don’t want it to end up too wet and be careful not to overwork the dough. Take your pastry, and quickly pat into a flattened ball shape, cover in airtight wrapping and chill in the fridge for a few hours.
For the filling
Chop your leeks to about 6-7cm lengths, then cut into two lengthways and then across into 1cm slices. Put into a bowl of cold water and swirl to release any soil. Lift and drain with your hands, leaving any unwanted bits behind.
Gently melt your butter on the stove, add your leeks and cook on medium heat until soft, adding a little pinch of salt. Set aside.
Next, slice or quarter your mushrooms and, in another pan, pour in your olive oil, heating gently. Add your mushrooms and cook until soft. Combine the mushrooms with the leeks, along with the wild garlic, chilli and salt and pepper to taste. Cook gently until the garlic has wilted, about a minute. Take off the heat, add your crème fraiche, stirring through until all is coated. Taste and season accordingly. Leave to cool completely.
To assemble
Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark four. Grease a baking sheet with butter. Cut a size of baking paper to cover your sheet, and lay it on onto the worktop. Flour gently and roll your pastry straight onto the baking paper, into a rough circle and until about 4mm thick. The beauty of this tart is its roughness so you don’t need to create the perfect circle. Crinkly and misshapen edges are fine – it’s what you’re going for.
Once rolled, carefully lift the baking paper with pastry and place onto your greased baking sheet. Into the centre of your pastry circle empty your leeks and mushrooms, leaving about a 3cm border around the edge. Then fold in the edges, about 2-3cm, overlapping your leek mixture just a little. Overlap each fold with the next turn of the border inwards and give it a gentle push down so that the folds stick to each other. Don’t try to be too perfect – go with the flow.
Finally, brush the folded edges with beaten egg yolk and bake in the oven for 30-40 mins. If you like, you can add parmesan, taleggio or another cheese along the way; sometimes I do this after 20 minutes. Either slice or grate the cheese over the leek mixture and pop back in the oven until the pastry is golden brown. Serve hot or room temperature.
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