A Table for Friends by Skye McAlpine

This week we chatted to Skye McAlpine, author of A Table For Friends, to hear her tips for comfort cooking this lockdown. She also shares 3 of her favourite recipes at the end. We can't wait to make them and I'm sure you will love them too. Share your images with us at [email protected] or tag us on social media.

As winter and lockdown loom, I find myself comfort cooking a lot: I’m making hearty soups and baking cakes, trying out recipes from new (new to me, at least) cookbooks, and punctuating the afternoons with a tray or two of freshly baked cookies, still gooey and meltingly hot in the middle when we eat them. Meals dictate the rhythm of our days now: there is joy, solace and a quasi-escapist delight to be found in breakfast, lunch and dinner, comfort in the constant regularity with which each meal comes round.

This is of course a fine balancing act: while I love to eat and to eat well, I am also reluctant to live out my life on the carousel of cooking, table-laying, clearing, washing up and then cooking once again which doing so innately implies. Within the rhythm of our meals I have come to find my own happy rhythm, one which allows me to balance good food with the kind of instant, low-effort gratification that is doubly gratifying when you are its architect. As any homecook knows, there is a special kind of magic to this kind of cooking: the most satisfying suppers are the ones that take minutes to get on the table but taste like you never want to eat anything else. I’ve learned that it’s less about knowing how to cook and more about knowing what to cook.

So here is my advice for lockdown cooking: how to do it well, and above all how to do it in a way that is every bit as enjoyable for you as for as those lucky enough to have you cook for them:

1. Buy good ingredients and do very little to them: there is incomparable beauty in simplicity, most especially when it comes to food. Now that the days are getting colder, a real favourite in our household is tagliatelle with a thick, blue gorgonzola sauce, topped with a few slivers of sweet pear and a handful buttery walnuts is a real favourite in our household: it takes moments to throw together and I could happily eat it for lunch and dinner until the end of my days. 

1. When planning what to cook always be mindful about the washing up too: this might sound obvious, but never ever use two pans where just one will suffice, and if you do use more than one pan (sometimes this is inevitable), then the recipe should really be worth it (when it’s something really good, I find I don’t mindso much!). My current one-pan favourite is what I call ‘Aphrodite’s Chicken’, a simple recipe for roast chicken where you cook the bird over a bed of thinly sliced, salty potatoes - this imbues the potatoes with flavour from the chicken’s cooking juices but also - pragmatically - saves massively on washing up. Serve with a crisp green salad, a decent bottle of wine and you have right there the recipe for domestic bliss. 

Sometimes frivolity is downright necessity. Small touches like taking the time to lay the table properly, eating by candlelight, adding a jug of flowers to the table, or using those linen napkins you usually save for special occasions - are small things you can do that bring a disproportionately great amount of joy to the everyday. And while it might not be strict necessity, few things in my experience bring greater joy than cake: my flourless chocolate chestnut cake, fudge and dense, with just a hint of aromatic rosemary is perfect for right now. Eat as is, warm straight out of the oven, dusted in a cloud of snowy icing sugar, perhaps with a dollop of sharp creme fraiche on the side. Then have a slice for breakfast the next day.

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Flourless Chocolate, Chestnut & Rosemary Cake (For 8–10)
Hands on time: 10 minutes
Hands off time: 45 minutes baking 2 hours cooling
-Salted butter, for the tin
-500g sweetened chestnut purée
-4 eggs
-75g ground almonds
-40g cocoa powder
-Leaves from 4 rosemary sprigs, plus extra sprigs for the top Icing sugar, to dust

A few years ago, I made this for a bake sale at my elder son Aeneas’s school, and found myself swamped with requests for the recipe, which is adapted from the old Venetian cookbook, ATola Coi Nostri Veci by Mariù Salvatori. Chocolate cake is often dry and, in spite of its dark, sumptuous appearance, rather disappointing to eat. This, however, chic-ly dusted in a cloud of icing sugar, is the ideal balance of velvety chestnut and rich, fudgey chocolate. The rosemary is entirely optional, but gives it a soft grown-up-ness.
I use the cans of sweetened chestnut purée here, for ease and convenience. An import from France, it can be tricky to find, so I stock up whenever
I see tins at the supermarket or in delicatessens, as it always comes in handy, even to serve over vanilla ice cream with a little chopped dark chocolate and crumbled meringue. But if you can’t find it easily, feel free to use the unsweetened variety readily available in British supermarkets: use 400g, whisking it lightly with 100g icing sugar, until smooth, before you begin.
Heat the oven to 180 ̊C/fan 160 ̊C/Gas 4. Butter a 20cm round cake tin and line with baking parchment.
Pour the chestnut purée into a large mixing bowl. Separate the eggs and lightly beat the yolks with a fork, then add them to the purée. Pour in the ground almonds, add the cocoa and mix well. Roughly chop the rosemary leaves and add them to the batter, then stir until well combined.
In a second bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff, then fold into the chocolate mix. Pour into the tin and sprinkle on a few rosemary sprigs. Bake for 40–45 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin, then turn out. The cake will keep nicely for 2–3 days. Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Tagliatelle with Gorgonzola, Pear & Walnut (For 4)
Hand on time: 15–20 minutes
-350g tagliatelle
-80ml single cream
-450g Gorgonzola cheese, chopped
-1 large or 2 small pears A handful of whole walnuts
-Fine sea salt
-Freshly ground black pepper (optional)

If the Spaghetti with Creamy Lemon Sauce on the previous page is innately summery, this is its warming winter counterpart: an indulgently rich balm to soothe body and soul in the bitter cold. The pear and walnut are by no means essential, in fact a plate of tagliatelle drenched in just the creamy, peppery cheese sauce is pure joy. However, the chunks of fruit add a delicate sweetness that cuts through the intense richness of the sauce and it’s little extra effort to throw them in. This dish breaks all my rules of stress-free cooking for friends, as it can in no way be prepared in advance. But it’s so simple to make that I feel comfortable and happy serving it to company, though I would baulk at cooking it for more than six, because the delicate timings of the pasta become too unwieldy for my peace of mind. Fill a large saucepan with water, add a generous pinch of salt and bring to the boil. When the water is galloping, add the pasta and cook until al dente according to the packet instructions. Meanwhile, pour the cream into a small saucepan and add the cheese, then set over a medium-low heat and stir occasionally until the cheese has almost completely melted. Core the pear(s) and slice finely, then roughly chop the nuts. Drain the pasta in a colander, reserving a little of the cooking water (roughly 1⁄4 cup), toss in the cheese sauce and reserved cooking water, then, just before serving, toss through the pear and walnut pieces. Add a little black pepper, if you like, and serve immediately.

Aphrodite’s Roast Chicken (For 4)
Hands on time: 10–15 minutes
Hands off time: 1 hour 10 minutes cooking
10 minutes resting
-4 potatoes
-4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
-1 small chicken, about 1.4kg, preferably organic 1 lemon
-A large bunch of rosemary 2 garlic cloves Sea salt flakes
-Freshly ground black pepper

This recipe comes from my mother’s friend,Aphrodite,and is to my mind (smallest of puns intended) truly food of the gods. Its charm lies in its simplicity: the bird roasts on a bed of very finely sliced potatoes, which crisp to golden around the edges of the tin, while those directly under the chicken are soft and deliciously imbued with the rich cooking juices.The trick is to make sure that you get a little bit of both kinds of potato on your plate. You can happily prepare this a few hours before you’re ready to roast the chicken, cover and store in the fridge. Just don’t slice the potatoes more than four hours or so ahead, as they may brown or curl. Heat the oven to 200 ̊C/fan 180 ̊C/Gas 6. Finely slice the potatoes into rounds 3–5mm thick, using a mandolin if you have one. Arrange in a single layer over the bottom of a large roasting dish, overlapping them. I do this in a round 32cm tarte Tatin dish, but whatever you have to hand will do. Drizzle with 1 tbsp of the olive oil and season generously. Set the chicken in the dish, nestled over the potatoes. Prick the lemon all over with a fork and stuff it into the cavity along with half the rosemary. Drizzle the remaining oil over the chicken, then rub it into the skin with a very generous dash of salt. Lightly crush the garlic cloves (unpeeled) and scatter them over the potatoes, along with what is left of the rosemary. Now set the roasting dish in the oven and cook for 60–70 minutes, until the skin is crisp and the juices run clear when you stick a knife into the thickest part of the bird (between the leg and the body).Allow to rest for 10 minutes before carving, then eat with the potatoes.