SUMMER LOVING...
TART LONDON – AKA LUCY CARR-ELLISON AND JEMIMA JONES – KNOW HOW TO DO SERIOUSLY SUNNY FOOD. ELLA WALKER MEETS THE FOODIE DOUBLE ACT
OPEN A Love Of Eating, the debut cookbook from bespoke caterers and food columnists, Tart London – aka Lucy Carr-Ellison and Jemima Jones – and you’ll feel like you’ve been tipped directly into summer.
There’s a charred mackerel salad with broad beans, chicken burgers layered with pickled cucumber, and a spicy chilled avocado soup that all scream outdoors eating.
“It’s quite easy, comfort food,” says Jemima, 30. “It’s the kind of food Lucy and I make when we get in from a very long day.”
It’s also all rather pretty. “Whatever your budget, you can always make your dishes beautiful,” notes Lucy, 31. “It’s just taking that one second, finishing it with a herb or chopped chilli. I think that’s achievable.”
The pair became friends while living in New York in their early 20s. They teamed up to launch Tart, a bespoke catering company, largely feeding crews on fashion and photo shoots, a world they were familiar with (Lucy as a photographer, Jemima as a model and assistant).
The brand name was a result of walking onto shoots carrying crisply baked tarts: “It’d be, ‘Here come the kitchen tarts’, so Tarts stuck,” says Lucy.
They’ve since catered for some pretty famous names, from Kate Moss and Stella McCartney, to Penelope Cruz (“I’ve got the biggest girl crush on her,” says Jemima. “Giving her breakfast, I was just speechless. She asked me a question and I blushed a whole new colour of red!”) and Robbie Williams (“I was in such awe, and so proud because he had seconds of my chicken dish,” remembers Lucy).
Fashion and food aren’t entities you’d automatically assume were a natural fit though, but Lucy is firm: “Everybody has to eat. We came into it just at the time when the idea of just drinking champagne and having a lettuce leaf was changing.
“People wanted to look good and feel good, and they needed energy throughout the day.”
Jemima adds: “Food was always quite a depressing thing on shoots... It would either be a takeaway from around the corner, a cold sandwich, or these industrial pans of overcooked pasta bakes and salads that had been dressed five hours before, they were so limp.”
Tart offered a no-brainer alternative. The duo would arrange a pop-up kitchen, plug in their induction hobs and cook on the spot, whether that was in horse boxes without reliable electricity, or watching fashion photographer Tim Walker (who got them their first catering gig and has written the forward to the cookbook, left) shoot surreal scenes.
“Whatever stresses there were during the day, you were giving people happiness – it was really exciting but utterly exhausting,” Lucy remembers.
They admit – as neither of them are professionally-trained chefs – that there was a lot of learning on the job, including Googling Jamie Oliver recipes if someone requested something they didn’t know how to make.
“You’re always learning,” says Lucy, who grew up in Northumberland. “Still, if I ever have a question, I call my mum.”
The girls’ current focus, aside from A Love Of Eating, is their soon-to-be launched London restaurant (“Right now, it’s pretty hectic,” explains Jemima), but their favourite thing to do is just discuss food between themselves.
“The only thing we talk about, from the beginning of the day to the end, is food,” says Lucy.
“That extra little crunch you got on top of a ceviche...” picks up Jemima wistfully. “It’s like, ‘Oh my god, I went to this last night and tried this, with this pickled rhubarb...’,” continues Lucy. “It’s so bizarre that it never gets boring.”
Here are three of Lucy and Jemima’s recipes to try at home.
A Love Of Eating: Recipes From Tart London by Lucy Carr-Ellison and Jemima Jones, photography by Laura Edwards, is published by Square Peg, priced £25.