How we had a party and raised £1200 for Mountain Rescue, cookbooks and restaurant reviews as normal.
November 4 2024
Introduction
Something different this week from the normal format of cookbooks, restaurants and travel from the weekend’s papers.
This week’s restaurants and books are below and there isn’t much travel that fits into my brief.
Instead, as requested, how we organised a reunion party last week at our house and raised £1,200 for Mountain Rescue.
Party Time
When I moved to London in the 80’s, I only had three friends here and I joined a newly formed mountaineering club to get out into the country at weekends and develop a social life. It developed into lifelong friendships, iand so many memorable holidays and weekends in the mountains. It was also where I met my husband. Those original members still meet up for a week every year in the mountains in the UK, and other groups go skiing in the Dolomites and to the Alps in the summer.
As we live in London and have a big kitchen, we offered to organise and host a 40th anniversary party as we did for the 30th. This time, we did it differently and instead of everyone bringing something, we decided to raise money for a charity by providing the food and drink. I cooked the food and did the comms and my husband did the drink and everything else. In the ethos of the club, friends brought puddings, gluten free bread for canapés, lent glasses and plates, and were always there at the end of a WhatsApp.
Fundraising
We asked a friend who knows about these things. He suggested we choose a charity that was meaningful to us and of national significance and to set up a JustGiving account to collect the money. We suggested a minimum donation of £20 and the Maths shows that obviously some of the 35 guests gave more and some who couldn’t come also kindly donated. The charity we chose was Mountain Rescue.
The advantages of JustGiving are that
you can pay straight by card
we weren’t involved with the money or its admin
it’s a trusted third party and JustGiving send the money straight through to the charity at the interval the individual charity has specified.
If you are a taxpayer, it is easy to add Gift Aid and this will aid Mountain Rescue even more. For example, for £20 via JustGiving which was GiftAid-ed it, the chosen charity would get £25 less 95p commission = £24.05
The menu
Pesto and tomato tarts with Parmesan cheese pastry
Croûtes with olive, fig and basil tapenade and sun dried tomato garnish
Bruschetta with muhamra from Honey and Co’s first book and walnut and pomegranate garnish
(I did around four canapés per person)
Main
Hasselback aubergines with feta, a Georgina Hayden recipe from Greekish.
Green salad and herbed rice
Puddings comprised blackcurrant crumble, gluten free cheesecake, fruit salad, lemon tart, chocolate biscuit cake, chocolate tart and French apple tart all with a lot of cream. Afterwards, we found the remainder of seven different types of cream in the fridge.
I kept it all vegetarian, for simplicity’s sake. There were some vegetarians on the invite list, and also in my experience, people will say ‘I’ll have the chicken, and ooh, I’ll just have a bit of the vegetarian as well.’ And then you can’t judge quantities and end up with a lot left over.
I wanted something that could be served cold as there would be a lot of people in a small space and I didn’t want any accidents with hot pans.
I know most people’s dietary needs and preferences and the menu was gluten free and could be cheese-less if necessary. The menu was in the invitation email and I asked people to let me know if they couldn’t eat or didn’t like anything.
Giving the menu in advance was good as it stopped any indecision on my part to make something different.
It was all recipes that I’d made before, I knew that they worked, people like them and I could make them quickly. It wasn’t the time to make a new Ottolenghi recipe, however enticing that might be.
We all have big appetites and I know the sort of food everyone likes. A lot, basically. You have to know your audience.
To drink, there was Pimms, elderflower cordial, sparkling water, red and white wine, and an assortment of beers.
The comms
The list of people to be invited came from the original Club President who coordinates the annual week away. We know some people better than others which was why we felt the comms were especially important to make it feel friendly and welcoming, but clear.
The date had been fixed in the Spring and I sent a reminder in July and then a full email in September with a deadline to reply. A friend gave feedback to make sure the tone was right and I’d included everything. Then I put a reminder in the WhatsApp group and another email reminder a few days beforehand, tactfully saying that we wanted to announce the full amount raised at the party which led to a flurry of donations.
The shopping, the prep and the cooking
My motto is to do absolutely as much as I can in advance. I did an online shopping order, bought more stuff over the week from the High St and the aubergines (a bargain two huge ones for a £1), herbs and salad from a market on the Saturday.
I made a long prep list and scheduled them in over the previous week, such as to make muhamra and cheese pastry for pesto tarts and freeze, make two jars of French dressing for salad, make tapenade, deseed pomegranate, chop up sundried tomatoes, roast and chop walnuts and put in box, make croutes, make the tomato sauce.
On the day, I had to make the hasselback aubergines and the tarts, assemble the croutes, cook the rice and make the salads, while my younger daughter came to help and to serve. There’s one oven so I had to cook the aubergines in batches
As everyone started off in the kitchen, all the prep had to be cleared away, everywhere cleaned down and washing up done and put away before people arrived.
I have to focus when cooking for big numbers and I don’t potter around. Of course, I’m not a professional chef but I have learned to do one thing at once, eg slice up all the aubergines, then cut up all the garlic, then make a bowl of olive oil, then brush all the aubergines with oil and insert the garlic into the slices.
Our younger daughter came to help and serve food and others pitched in on the night as well with the clearing up.
Quick recipe rundown
Bruschetta-thin slices from a baguette, brushed with garlic butter and baked in a hot oven for c10 mins until golden.
Croûtes:- the same but circles cut from a basic white loaf, four to a slice, 125g butter melted with two cloves garlic will do around 48. If any butter left over, use for cooking.
Pesto and tomato tarts:- a shortcrust pastry with 250g plain flour, 125g butter, 50g Parmesan and black pepper. Cooked in mini muffin tins with a half to a teaspoon of pesto in each, half a cherry tomato , brushed with a tiny bit of olive oil for around 15 minutes in a hot oven. I like Sainsbury’s fresh pesto for this although on rare occasions, I might have made some of my own. Should make 48 if you don’t go mad with the tub of pesto.
How to organise the space
The same principle of getting stuff done in advance also applies to the space.
We always put the drinks in the furthest possible place from the front door so that people have to come right into the house, avoiding a bottleneck. We brought the booze up from the cellar, gathered and arranged chairs for the living room, got out tea towels, a table cloth and all the crockery, platters cutlery and glasses.
We moved a lot to a room upstairs including our coats and the shoe rack from our narrow hall, rugs rolled up from the living room to avoid spillages on them, the microwave, airfryer, toaster etc from the kitchen to make more room on the work surfaces for crockery and plates of food. It was all so tidy that I couldn’t find my shoes or waterproof the next day.
Puddings were temporarily stored on the desk in my study upstairs until it was time for them so my husband swept everything on it into a shoe box and people’s coats went on our bed. Three people were staying the night so the whole house felt under scrutiny. It was all so tidy, it was like living in a show home and someone jokingly asked when we were putting the house on the market.
We had big balloons saying 40, sparklers in the garden, and some emotional speeches stressing our friendships and common bonds. A great time was had by all and we raised a glass to our next meet up in the Spring in the Lake District.
Please like and share this post especially. I will try to answer any questions in the comments.
Books
Home Made: Recipes From The Countryside by Kate Humble
in the Independent with an interview and recipes for cauliflower curry, Thai fish stew and autumn fruit board.
Marcus’s France by Marcus Wareing
in the Times with an interview and recipes for pork chops with fennel, sage and onion, pan-fried fish with crushed new potatoes and sauce grenobloise a quick coq au vin, cherry clafoutis and an easy tomato, onion and olive tart
Restaurants
In the FT, Tim Hayward went to Trivet at London Bridge in London SE1 and thought it ‘bloody brilliant.’ where chef Jonny Lake makes the case against tasting menus at his two-Michelin-star restaurant.
In the Guardian, Grace Dent was at Wildflowers in London SE1 and wrote, ‘the menu is hearty, but thoughtful and fancy – but not painfully fancy.’
In the Observer, Jay Rayner went to Mauby in London SE4 and said ‘on an early Friday evening, Mauby has exactly the vibe you want of it: relaxed, mellow and bubbling with end-of-week chatter.’
In the Standard, David Ellis was at the Yellow Bittern, a new restaurant by Hugh Corcoran who had a residency earlier this year at Italo in Vauxhall. It does not take cards, and bookings are by telephone or letter only. He gave i three stars as although he loved it, ‘ I can’t with a straight face say somewhere with sometimes middling food, no wine list and barely any choice (almost none if you’re a solo diner, or a veggie), that only takes cash, is worth four or five stars.’
In the Sunday Times, Charlotte Ivers was at It’s Bagels! in Primrose Hill, London, NW1 which does bagels and there’s a second branch in Notting Hill, and a third opened last month in Soho. She liked it.
In the Telegraph, William Sitwell was at Cornus in London SW1 from the people behind Medlar on the Kings Road for ‘delicate, accomplished food’. but advised, ‘with £30 for starters and £45 for mains; go if all the fun places in London are booked out. Because if you want hustle, energy, vibe, colour, noise and memories then, er, don’t go to Cornus.’
In the Times, Giles Coren went on an advance return train trip from London to Preston to eat at Aven and recommends that everyone else does the same as it ‘was top, top cooking. These are supremely gifted and thoughtful chefs.’ A quick thought though that Times readers might not all live in London .
Travel
I’m away at the moment for a night’s autumn stay at a country pub, not one of those featured in the Times but similar. More of that next week.
There’s hardly any other travel this week that fits into my idiosyncrasies and self imposed brief, or I’d be here for ever. UK and Western Europe, affordable, accessible, useful information and not personal odysseys, no random readers’ recommendations, no skiing, cruising, and sailing. There’s a good article on Antwerp in the Observer though.
Reading the papers
People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.
The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives a certain number of free articles
Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.
It sounds fantastic Kate. What a great feat of organization and so lovely to have a party with such a great purpose and with people you share such strong bonds with.
Well done Kate! x