The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Saturday
A party spread for 20? Simple!
The Irish chef Clodagh McKenna likes nothing more than feeding friends and family – and it’s all in the organisation, she tells Xanthe Clay
SERVES 12
Simmer the berries and sugar in a pan over a low heat for two minutes, then add the crème de cassis. Set aside to cool.
Make a layer of madeira cake slices in the bottom of a large trifle bowl and spoon two thirds of the berry mixture on top.
In a bowl, lightly beat the mascarpone to break it down (make sure it doesn’t get too runny). Gradually stir in the custard and vanilla.
Spoon this over the berries (you can assemble with more layers of cake, berries and the custard mix, if you like). Finish with more berries and top with the whipped cream and chopped nuts.
Chill for a couple of hours before serving. lodagh McKenna knows how to give a party. Even the Irish chef ’s house, a shabbychic former artist’s studio in north London, looks like it was chosen with entertaining in mind. There’s an open fire, a vast, cushiony sofa, and a long refectory table in front of art nouveau folding doors that open on to a leafy courtyard garden where a fig tree scatters fruit on a path.
You may know McKenna from Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, or from her six cookbooks. But 2019 will be her biggest year yet. In January she is starring in Channel 4’s new prime time cookery show, Beat the Chef, billed as a competitor to MasterChef – the same month her new book, Clodagh’s Suppers (Kyle Books, £15.99) is published. In the calm before the storm, she has a buffet for 30 planned over Christmas. “Twenty to 30 people is the best number. You want enough to create an atmosphere, and there will always be a few dropouts: it’s Christmas and people’s plans change.”
Talking of plans, that’s the secret to a successful “do”. “For a Friday party, I like to spend the weekend before picking out plates, writing the menu, getting all the food in for the Monday and making a plan of when I’m going to do what.”
Whisking around me as she talks, carrying vintage plates piled with stuffed figs, Clodagh exudes cheerful Gaelic energy as she recalls childhood Christmases in County Cork. “My mum would do three different kinds of potato – roasted in beef dripping, boiled and mashed. Lunch would carry on until six or seven, and then we’d have a sort of pantomime, and all of us would have to do a performance, acting, singing. It would carry right on until 1am.”
Although she lives in London, the countryside has a strong pull. “Wherever you grow up it never leaves you. So while I love London, come Thursday I’m just itching to get away, to be out walking and cooking in a leisurely way.” Weekends are spent with her boyfriend Harry Herbert, one of the family who owns Highclere Castle where Downton Abbey was filmed. “Early every morning we walk around Temple Lake [on the Highclere estate] with the dogs. We don’t eat out, we cook in all weekend.”
She looks, and sounds, every inch the Irish rose, but Clodagh studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, then at business school in New York, before returning to Ireland to set up a chain of coffee shops. Yet her plans went out of the window when she went to Ballymaloe Cookery School to get the training she needed. “I completely fell in love with food. I never looked back,” she explains.
McKenna spent seven years working with the Slow Food organisation in Ireland and Italy, coming back to Ireland to open a restaurant, Clodagh’s Kitchen, which she ran until 2017. RTÉ, the Irish broadcaster, commissioned her to make four series on farmers and producers, which were bought by the Public Broadcast Service in America. Now she has a regular slot on NBC’s Today show.
In the meantime, there’s the party to think of. “I just love to entertain,” she says as she dashes off to take biscotti out of the oven. “Sharing food, it’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”
METHOD
Place the salmon in a dish that’s deep enough for it to be submerged in the cure – I find a roasting or pie dish is perfect.
Put the grated beetroot, dill, sugar, salt, gin and blood orange zest and juice in a bowl and mix well.
Spoon the mixture over the salmon, completely covering it. Place two sheets of cling film loosely over the salmon, and a heavy weight (like a can of tomatoes) on top. Leave in the fridge for two days.
To serve, scrape off all of the cure mixture. Pat the underside dry with kitchen paper. Thinly slice the salmon, leaving the skin behind, and sprinkle the pomegranate seeds and dill fronds on top to serve.