We hired Chelsea to be our evening waitress—a 19-year-old the size of a toddler, brimming with energy and cheer. She lived in a big house in Palmers Green with her brother; five sisters; their various partners and friends; a dog; a parrot; and her mum, Adele, a gifted chef and a free spirit who had had a few restaurants in South Africa before she moved her brood to north London.
These kids grew up in Adele’s restaurants—serving, cleaning, chopping, chatting—so Chelsea had no trouble fitting in at Honey & Co, taking the job in her stride. She and Rachael fell instantly in love, and Rachael took her on as the little sister she never had. For the first few weeks they were inseparable. They would approach tables together, Rachael always introducing them in her northern accent: “I’m Rachael, this is Chelsea.” They would go out after work to a spot down the road that they called “the vibrating pizza place” and stay up all night drinking cheap wine in Fitzroy Square.
At the time we were only open for lunches. We were pleased with our lunch offering but we wanted dinner to be something different, and we were not sure what. We were bouncing ideas off each other, tactfully ignoring Chelsea’s teenage notions (“Let’s do Mexican nights! With hats and maracas!”) and trying different menus. Eventually we decided to do a set menu. As it was a particularly wet August our theme would be “Somewhere in the world it’s summer,” and we had a terrific menu full of summery things—corn on the cob, watermelon, grilled prawns… The girls spread the word and our ten tables quickly got booked.
Sarit and I were downstairs cooking. Chelsea and Rachael were setting up the restaurant. We gave them a packet of tea-lights, forgetting to tell them not to use all of them, which of course they did, making the place look like the set of a cheap horror flick or a Gothic funeral.
On the drab, cold August evening our guests started to arrive, and it all started to go wrong. The couples on tables 9 and 10 were both regulars whom we like a lot; they are neighbors, it turns out, who share a stairway and argue every morning about prams in the hallway, and every evening about booming music. The party of four on table 4 were residents of Fitzroy Square who grew frosty when they recognized Rachael and Chelsea as the girls who came to get drunk in the square at night. At first they wanted to leave, but then they decided to stay and make the girls as uncomfortable as they could. And although the room was quite warm from a hundred tea-lights burning, the rain on the window meant that no one was in the mood for ice lollies and watermelons. The night came to its end slowly, horribly, and to cap it all poor Rachael, always so graceful, slipped on a piece of chicken that someone had dropped and glided across the entire restaurant on her bum. She ran downstairs and would not go back up until everyone had left, so embarrassed was she. (I have my suspicions that the harpies on table 4 tripped her.)
By the end of it we were all battered and bruised (Rachael more than the rest of us) and none of us wanted to open for dinner again. Indeed it took us another six months before we opened for dinner full-time, and perhaps longer before we were completely satisfied with what we had to offer. I’d like to say that that night was the worst and it was all plain sailing from then on, but unfortunately that has not always been the case; we’ve had many a bump along the road to our perfect dinner. We now offer an à la carte menu for starter-main-dessert-type meals, and a set menu with an epic mezze selection, which is more what we are about.
The recipes in this chapter are for light, bright-flavored main courses, and although some of them require a bit of attention, most are as simple to make as they are to eat.
Make this instead of a shepherd’s pie the next time you buy ground lamb for dinner. It is just as easy, and though the flavors are distinctly Middle Eastern, this dish pushes the same buttons of comfort and domestic joy. A tomato salad on the side will cut through the richness nicely, and a bit of flat bread will help to mop everything up.
Dinner for 4–6 (there is not much meat but the topping is quite rich)
1 small cauliflower, broken into florets
4 cups/1 liter water
1 tsp salt
2 medium onions, peeled and finely chopped
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 heaped tsp salt
generous 1 pound/500g ground lamb
1 heaped tsp coarsely ground fennel seeds
3 tbsp baharat spice mix (here)
heaping 1 tbsp tomato purée
1 cup/200g natural yogurt
¾ cup/200g tahini paste
2 eggs
juice of 1 lemon
½ tsp salt
1–2 tbsp water (if needed)
2 heaped tbsp pine nuts
generous 1 tbsp chopped parsley, to serve
Place the cauliflower in a saucepan with the water and 1 tsp of salt. Bring to the boil and cook for 5–6 minutes until the florets are soft. Drain and place in a shallow saucepan or casserole dish (about 8½ in/22cm in diameter).
Fry the onions on a medium heat in a frying pan with the oil and half of the salt until the onions start to go golden. Add the ground lamb and the remaining salt, increase the heat to high and use a spoon to break the meat into little pieces. When the lamb starts to brown, sprinkle on the ground fennel and baharat spice and cook for 3–4 minutes. Stir in the tomato purée and continue to stir while cooking for a further 3 minutes, then spread all over the cauliflower in the casserole dish. You can prepare this stage up to a day in advance—just cool, cover and store in the refrigerator until needed.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Mix all the topping ingredients together apart from the water and pine nuts. If the mixture is very thick, stir in enough of the water to loosen slightly—the consistency should resemble thick yogurt. Spread the topping over the lamb in the dish. Sprinkle the pine nuts all over and bake in the center of the oven for 15 minutes or until the tahini looks set and slightly golden. Sprinkle with the parsley and serve.