Gizzi Erskine’s cooking with gin
The celebrity chef shows us how to throw the ultimate dinner party
There’s something rock ’n’ roll about Gizzi Erskine. It could be her iconic ’60s look, complete with immaculate eyeliner flicks you don’t expect to see on someone who spends most of their time in a sweaty kitchen. It could be her gang of celeb mates including Caroline Flack and Noel Fielding, who recently turned out to support the launch of her supper club collaboration with Tanqueray gin. Or it could be because you’re most likely to bump into her at the achingly cool newly opened Mare Street Market in east London, where she’s just flung open the doors of her very first restaurant. “I’m so happy with it, but it’s pretty relentless,” she tells us. Whatever it is, we’d love to eat at her table, so we asked Gizzi how to host the ultimate no-fuss, non-pretentious dinner party using our favourite ingredient – gin!
We always thought you had to have wine at a dinner party?
In the UK, we’re used to having a gin and tonic before our meal, like when we finish work. But look around the rest of the world – Spain, for instance. They will have gin alongside their tapas. It works well with lots of different foods, so being able to create a menu with gin as the hero that complements the food, and to understand what it does to your taste buds, it’s been a real dream job.
Do you think supper clubs are the antidote to this digital world we live in?
Yes – I love communal dining, as you’re sat next to someone new and you’re forced to find
‘Gin works well with lots of foods’
out about that person. You can’t not be interested, otherwise you’re just not going to have fun.
If you’re a dinner party novice, but you want to wow your mates, where should you start?
Think about the people you’re cooking for – are they fun people who are after a riotous time or are they old-school and will want something more formal? I love when you can just prepare big platters of food for everyone to help themselves, as it creates conversation and people are leaning over each other.
Do you always try to create an Insta-perfect dinner table?
No, but it’s great to embrace the ingredients. Put lots of colour in your dishes and maybe some flowers and low lighting on the table to create atmosphere.
How do you juggle being a great host with being chained to the kitchen?
If you plan it well, you can serve light starters that you can prep beforehand, and then do one dish that you can stick in the oven to cook slowly and serve with a salad, then bring a pudding out of the fridge.
Dinner parties can be pretty intimidating. Do you have to be a kick-ass cook to impress your guests?
You just need to have one dish that you’re confident with. Don’t feel like that dinner party dish needs to be something swanky. It’s very hard to mess up something like roast chicken – and everyone loves it. The most irritating thing about people having dinner parties – and what no chef in the country would do at home – is an amuse bouche or five different courses. No one eats like that at home. That’s what restaurants are for. Just stick to what you know and don’t try to be too clever.
What inspired your love of food?
I’m very lucky, as my mum is obsessed with food in a similar way that I am and she’s fairly bohemian in the way that she likes to tackle life. We’ve never just had meat and two veg – we’ve always eaten really interesting vegetable dishes. My mum always wanted to have a career with food and she never did it, so I’m doing what she wanted to do.
Do you eat amazing food all the time or do you have a guilty go-to?
Yeah, totally. I love the proper Asian packet noodles – there are Kimchi ones, which I probably eat way more of than I should do!