Cooking for the artists (five menus)

Menus, recipes and notes on seasonal cooking for big groups (in this case, our art class students last weekend).

This menu - ‘green goddess’ chicken and quinoa salad, tomato focaccia, cos salad and pear frangipane tart.

What should we cook this weekend?

Well. Let’s see…what about some beautiful, big flavoured Autumn meals to share?

This bumper newsie is loaded up with five full menus, notes and recipes from three days cooking last weekend for a group of art students at Mum’s place just over the Blue Mountains.

So here it is—the complete chronicle of how we fed eight creatives over four days in and out of the studio.

I've included everything from the Thursday afternoon welcome cake to Sunday's farewell lunch, with all the practical notes and little shortcuts.

This post is for paid subscribers and I thank you all for supporting me so I can spend the time putting these big posts together. I really really really hope you find some good things to cook this weekend (or any weekend or any time in here).

Sophie x

Ps - It’s a long one and will probs get cut off by your email server so please click through to read this on the Substack app or web-platform.

Everyone arrived around 4 pm, just in time for arvo tea. So I used my Visitor Cake recipe (with fresh figs folded through just before baking). This recipe is from In Good Company, and I’ll share it below.

For the beef

This way of slowly slowly cooking a beef fillet is so easy and so very delicious. I know the meat isn't on the cheap end, but a little goes a long way and you use every part of it (there's no bone or fatty bits), so it's real bang-for-buck stuff.

The best thing to do is ask your butcher for a nice eye fillet all tied up, please, and thank you. For eight people, I had 1.2kg, and there was enough (sliced thinly) to put out for lunch two days later.

Then, a few hours before dinner (or lunch), rub the meat with olive oil, sea salt and pepper. Place in a roasting tin and let come to room temperature (this is mostly because the proteins in room temperature meat are more relaxed, so they retain moisture better during cooking than cold meat, which tightens up when heated. Not throwing it in the oven while fridge-cold can help with that).

Preheat the oven to 100C and cook the beef for 2.5 hours. If you have a meat thermometer (I don't, but I'm thinking I'll invest this winter and have my eye on this fancy one), you want the internal temp to be around 53C.

Remove from the oven, transfer the meat to a chopping board and cover tightly with foil. Leave to rest for about 45 minutes (or 20 at a pinch; the longer, the better, I think). Tip any pan juices into a small saucepan and set aside until right before serving. Then you can heat up and stretch out if you need to with some white wine and seasoning.

If you are cooking for a big group and don't want to even think about the possibility of the 'main character' not performing well - please consider doing this. It's a cinch to carve and good with all kinds of things (just some nice Dijon mustard for starters).

For the Eggplant and capsicum

One of the things I love about this recipe (below), is that you throw everything in one big pot, put the lid on and into the oven it goes for the same amount of time as the beef. Another thing I love is how tasty it is.

For the broccoli and salsa verde

Trim the broccoli (or swap for green beans) and blanch, then toss with a punchy salsa verde (recipe below) and, if you have any, finish with dukkah (recipe below) for crunch.

For the plum crumble

For the plums, you halve about 12 plums and put them in a saucepan with about 1/4 cup water, a couple of tablespoons of sugar and a cinnamon stick. Then, slowly cook down until softened. Then, transfer to a big baking dish (or individual ramekins) and top with crumble mix (below). Then, transfer to the fridge until ready to bake. When that time comes, preheat the oven to 180 degrees and cook for about 20 minutes or until the crumble is golden.

Salt-baked salmon with caper vinaigrette

Like that eye fillet of beef, this salmon is a total winner when cooking for a crowd. For around eight people, I used a 1kg (ish) side of salmon (pin-boned) that fed us all with leftovers that Mum, Dad and I had for dinner on the Sunday night.

So all you do (full recipe is also below), is lay the salmon down on a bed of rock salt (if you have it - not expensive at the shops and does make a difference here because it draws out the rich natural oils and the salt bed also creates a sort of 'thermal buffer' between the oven and the fish which means it cooks more evenly and gently), and then pop the tray in a 160C oven for about 40 minutes. And it's done.

The result is tender, perfectly cooked, delicious salmon. I flake this onto a big salad and drizzle with a caper vinaigrette (recipe below - can be made well in advance if that helps).

For the gratin

Pictured above and the recipe is below. It's wonderful on a cool day as a side or main.

Peach friands

I used the recipe from this post but swapped in fresh chopped peach and drizzled with Ruby Callebaut chocolate because our local kitchen shop had some on their specials table and it looked cute. I melted quite a lot of it, so I used what was left after drizzling on the friends to coat a few fresh figs (then sprinkled with sea salt). They were really good, too.

Roast chicken with braised lentils