Hello Feeder gang!
I have always loved having my friends around to eat, but the joy I take from it has been renewed in the wake of my house arrest (having a baby who has a bedtime that needs adhering to). This is a relief, because there aren’t many alternatives to hanging out at mine. Heading out to restaurants is no longer a viable option, nor is going to friend’s houses, unless we want to bring an obnoxious amount of baby paraphernalia and set up house in their bedroom.
Gathering people around our table is the best option, and one I like very much. I get to play head chef, choose the wine, whip out the Monopoly Deal when my brain is done with chatter, and all in the comfort of knowing my little love is happily snoozing upstairs, her little face is beamed at me from a little screen next to my plate. Big group hangs are cool, but the chats you get to have with a little gang of four around some hearty, unpretentious food is my new favourite form of socialising.
This week, I thought I’d run through a menu for a dinner that, in my mind, has all the things I need to be happy on such an evening. Deep fried snacks! Prawns! Chicken and chips! Chocolate! It looks special-ish, but is in actuality very easy to execute. You’ll get the recipes for my prawn fritters with lettuce and herbs, yoghurt chicken with chips, tzatziki and salad, and chocolate pots with sourdough and salted honey cream. As well as the recipes themselves, you’ll get a bit of a rundown for how to structure prepping it all.
You’ll also get my recommendations for my favourite places to eat chicken and chips in London, some books I’ve devoured of late and the TV show bringing me joy.
As ever, one recipe will be available for free, and the rest will be for my paid subscribers. If you enjoy my work, then becoming a paid subscriber would be so appreciated. It is these paid subscriptions that allow me to take the time to test these recipes, and keep producing this newsletter.
I’m offering a discount until the end of May that gets you 20% off subscriptions for a whole year, making it £3.19 a month or £36 a year. You get at least 4 exclusive recipes and lots of recommendations from me. You’ll also have get access to the hundreds of recipes that I’ve released on here over the past few years. Come and join the party!
Enjoy!
Sophie x
Day before or morning of:
Prep chocolate pots
Marinate chicken
Day of:
Toast breadcrumbs (for pudding)
Make tzatziki (for main course)
Prepare prawn fritter dry mix (for starter)
Prepare lettuce and herbs (for starter)
Prepare salad ingredients (for main course)
Parboil potatoes for chips (for main course)
When guests arrive:
Roast chicken legs (for main course)
Finish prawn fritter mix and fry (for starter)
Roast chips (for main course)
Assemble salad whilst chicken rests (for main course)
Whip cream (for pudding)
Whenever I go out to eat, I like to get something deep fried, and so it feels right to offer the same crispy, oily treats to my friends when they come round to mine. In Seville, I tried these stunning fritters called tortillitas de camarones, which were like very crispy little prawn pancakes. These fritters have the essence of those, though I wanted them to be a bit smaller and fatter so they can be wrapped in lettuce with some fresh herbs, so I have prepared them more like pakoras. I also wanted them to have slightly more Greek vibes to fit with the rest of the menu, so I’ve got dried mint involved in the batter, and fresh dill for wrapping with the lettuce.
If you are a bit scared of deep frying, don’t be! Just don’t fill your pan too high (no more than 1/3rd full), don’t leave the hot oil unattended and invest in a good quick-read thermometer so you can monitor and adjust the temperature easily. I love this Thermapen one.
Serves 4
200g raw king prawns
2 spring onions
70g plain flour
40g gram flour
1 tsp dried mint
½ tsp sweet smoked paprika
100ml cold water
25g fresh mint
25g fresh parsley
½ head of butterhead lettuce
1 lemon
salt and vegetable oil
Roughly chop your prawns. Finely slice your spring onions and chop the dill.
Add them all to a bowl along with the plain flour, gram flour, dried mint and smoked paprika, and 1 tsp of salt. Give it a mix, then add 100ml cold water to create a batter.
Fill a medium sized saucepan about 1/3rd of the way up with vegetable oil, and gently bring it up to 180°C. Heat your oven to 150°C fan.
Take small handfuls of your mixture and gently lower it into the pan, frying about 4 at a time. Lift out of the pan with a slotted spoon and place on a baking tray. Keep them warm in the oven whilst you fry the rest.
Whilst the fritters fry, prep your veg. Cut the ends off your butterhead lettuce and separate them into leaves. Pick your herbs into smaller pieces of leaf and stem, and give them all a gentle wash and dry.
Serve your fritters up with a pile of lettuce and herbs on the side of the plate, and a few wedges of lemon to squeeze over. Stuff the fritters into lettuce leaves with the herbs on top, and eat them whilst still hot and crispy.
If you are a person who eats chicken, there aren’t many dinners better than chicken and chips. More complicated dinners are simply not necessary! Not when you are cooking for yourself, and certainly not when people are coming round to your house. The classics done well provide me with a very particular kind of anchoring comfort, and don’t we all like to feel this way? I know it’s how I want my friends to feel when they are at my house: relaxed and cosy, and truly themselves, and chicken and chips is the culinary embodiment of this feeling.
Again, we are Greek-ish here, with yoghurt and vinegar marinated chicken to tenderise it, roasted on a high heat, before letting it get buttery soft on a lower heat. The marinade and the shallots you roast underneath the chicken create a sensational gravy.
I serve these chicken legs up with very easy chunky oven chips, tzatziki and a Greek salad of sorts, just one more suited to this time of year before tomatoes come in proper, with red endive and jammy shallots that have been cooked under the chicken.
Serves 4
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