A tart for March

Served with sour cream and a glass of Jurancon 2014 Clos Thou, a small-batch sweet wine made from super-late harvested grapes. Perfect.

Hazelnut and sour cream cake

A few weeks ago I was at a really wonderful event in Bristol, a wine dinner with chef Matt Williamson and Vine Trail, a specialist in small domaines in France. A review of the evening, hosted at Hamilton House in Bristol is in the March issue of the brilliant South-West food magazine, Crumbs. Matt's wife Claire Thomson (of 5 o'clock Apron fame) made the most delicious tart for pudding and here is the recipe...

Hazelnut and sour cream cake (serves 8-10)

Ingredients
120g light brown sugar
120g plain flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
65g cold butter, diced
120ml sour cream, plus extra to serve
1 egg
120g hazelnuts, skinned and chopped
4 plums, chopped into bitesize pieces
3 sticks pink rhubarb, chopped into 2cm pieces, tossed in 2 tablespoons of light brown sugar

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4
Line a 25cm cake tin with grease proof paper
- Mix the sugar, flour and cinnamon together and rub in the butter until you have a sandy mixture
- Spread half of this mix into the cake tin and press down slightly, forming an even base
- Whisk together the sour cream, baking powder and egg. Add the remaining half of the flour mix to the sour cream, then pour it over the base of the tart
- Tip the fruit on top and sprinkle over the chopped hazelnuts
- Bake for 40 minutes. Serve with extra sour cream or creme fraiche

A duck, a chef and hungry diners looking for food and friends...

Your place or mine?

Move over John Lewis! The award for ad with all the Christmas feels goes to WeFiFo, a new platform revolutionising social dining, connecting enthusiastic cooks with hungry guests. Have a look at this wonderful animation to find out more...www.wefifo.com

(Animation and illustration by Anna Ginsburg, concept illustration by Alexis Deacon, sound design by Ed Berriman)

WeFiFo - airbnb for food

A social dining revolution from London to Lancashire

A Game Feast at Ronnie Murray's Peckham Manor supperclub hosted with WeFiFo

To a cold and drizzly Peckham last night for Ronnie Murray’s (ex-Group Head Chef of HIX and of recent Great British Menu fame) Peckham Manor supperclub with WeFiFo. It was a sensational menu full of Autumnal flavours with blackberries, pigeon and venison steamed suet puddings. The standout dish was pudding, an Autumn Tasting Plate, a dish Ronnie described as a walk through the woods with various blackberry preparations, granola, lemon curd, honeycomb and a greedy, tooth-tinglingly-sweet dollop of honey, fresh from his Dad’s beehives in Berkshire.

Autumn on a plate.

It was my first experience of WeFiFo, a new platform leading the social dining revolution connecting people, who love cooking, with those who love eating. Cannily described as ‘airbnb for food’, WeFiFo is for home cooks, supper club hosts and pop restaurants to create and host food based events in their own home.

Supper clubs are not just for professional cooks though, people up and down the country are opening up their homes to share food and company. Maria Grieco, a truly wonderful human being, from Lancashire joined WeFiFo in June and has already fed nearly 200 people, many of whom would otherwise be eating in isolation. She hosts an average of two WeFiFo events a week, from a traditional Sunday roast to exotic Syrian themed evenings for the recent #CookforSyria charity initiative. Guests have included a dementia sufferer and her live-in carer, five woman all in their 70s who live in sheltered accommodation and a single mother and her son, who hadn’t had a Sunday roast in 5 years.

"We all have to eat - and food is the building block of humanity. Meals should be shared. Eating should be about sharing food, conversation, laughter, tears, stories and life. No one should eat alonE, unless they want to."

Maria Grieco, WeFiFo host, and all round superstar

Hear, hear Maria. I will be joining you on the WeFiFo revolution!

www.wefifo.com

Ronnie plating a salad of pigeon, pickled elderberries and wet walnuts.