The Kitchen Table #1
New features, favourite recipes, cookbook picks and the people inspiring me right now
Hello friends and welcome to The Kitchen Table!
This is my brand new series here on Substack - a place to share what’s happening in my world, what’s coming up, and what I’ve been enjoying lately.
If you’re new here, hello! I’m Mark - a baker, cook, food photographer and writer living in the beautiful rolling hills of the Devon countryside.
I’ve spent the past couple of years immersed in baking and documenting my progress here on Substack and Instagram - developing my skills from scratch, being part of the awesome community of foodies here and falling deeper in love with food along the way.
This year, we’re going bigger. We’ll be diving into more cookbooks, exploring food cultures that deserve our attention and having real conversations with the people behind the food.
So, pull up a chair and let me tell you what I’ve got planned.
I’ve been working on something big behind the scenes and I wanted this first edition of The Kitchen Table to be where I share it all with you. This year I’m building everything around three pillars:
Cook the Books
Each month we’ll get lost in a chosen cookbook. I’ll show you around what the book has to offer and get stuck in making several recipes. There might be some recipes from the book for you to save and try, too! Think of it as a personal tour through the cookbooks that deserve a place on your shelf!
Cook the Books LIVE: I’ll also be hosting 20-minute Substack Live sessions with the authors themselves - which will be a fantastic opportunity to ask questions, hear their stories and connect with fellow foodies.
Cook the World
Food is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to explore places, cultures and even memories.
Each month, we’ll explore somewhere new through recipes, stories and conversations with the people who know these flavours and dishes best. Every destination gets its own stamp in our digital passport - collect them as we go! (Can you tell I’m an 80s kid!)
The Kitchen Table
This is our space to gather. I’ll be sharing updates on what’s happening in my world, news and recipes that have caught my eye, a look at what I’ve been enjoying lately and spotlighting people who have inspired me that month.
Kitchen Table Talk: A new interview series where I sit down and chat with fellow food folks. As I continue finding my feet in the food world, I’m increasingly curious about how people build creative careers around it. And what better way to explore that than by chatting to content creators, bakers, chefs and founders… the people who are doing exactly that!
I’ve got some fantastic posts and conversations lined up over the next couple of months. Here’s what’s coming:
March
March kicks things off with the very first Cook the Books LIVE and Kitchen Table Talk conversations - two brand new formats I’m really excited (and slightly terrified) about.
Cook the Books: Kitchen Table
Cook the Books LIVE: Emily Cuddeford
March 18th at 1pm - Click here to register
Emily and I will be chatting about the story behind the book, the recipes and what she hopes home bakers take from it.
Kitchen Table Talk: Hope Batchelor
March 26th at 6pm - Click here to register
Hope and I will be chatting about her shift from full-time project management into food and content creation, what it really looks like to make that leap, how she manages the workload, and what’s next.
April
April marks the launch of Cook the World, and we’ll be starting our journey in Ukraine. Our Cook the Books pick for the month is Felicity Spector’s Bread and War - a powerful account of the war in Ukraine told through the lens of bread and baking. Felicity has spent years travelling back and forth to Ukraine, helping set up a mobile bakery with Bake for Ukraine, bringing fresh bread to front line communities. It’s an extraordinary book about food, resilience and hope. I’ll be sitting down with Felicity herself for Cook the Books LIVE (date TBC).
Cook the World: Ukraine
Cook the Books: Bread and War
Cook the Books LIVE: Felicity Spector (Date TBC)
Kitchen Table Talk: Andrew Dargue & Donna Conroy of Vanilla Black
April 14th at 9am - Click here to register
Andrew and Donna founded Vanilla Black, an award-winning Michelin-recommended vegetarian restaurant in London that was described as one of the most exciting meat-free venues in the world. We’ll be chatting about food and what it’s meant in their lives - exploring the journey that led up to Vanilla Black, the years it ran, what came after closing its doors and what is still to come…
If you’re not subscribed yet, now’s a good time! There’s a lot coming and it’s all free. Hit that button and I’ll see you in your inbox.
There’s only so many books that I can feature on Cook the Books - but there are also so many incredible books out there that deserve a moment in the spotlight too. So, this is Cookbook Corner - a space where I can share more books that are on my radar, whether they’re new releases, old favourites or ones I’ve just stumbled across that I thought you might enjoy.
If you’ve read any of these or have recommendations of your own, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!
A Meal for Two by Emily Ezekiel
I picked this up as a gift for Ben for Valentine’s Day. 95 recipes all scaled for two people. From quick 15-minute weekday meals to proper date night dishes. I suppose the book was for me really, but the gift was that Ben gets to pick meals for date nights and I’ll make them for us. Win-Win!
The Farm Table by Julius Roberts
I’m a huge fan of Julius and what he’s doing. A professional chef who left London’s restaurant world to live and farm sustainably in the Dorset countryside. And this book is the result. 100 seasonal recipes that capture the true essence of British rural life, written from a place of genuine love for the land and the food it produces. As Nigel Slater put it: “A heartwarming and uplifting book. The recipes are utterly gorgeous.”
A Love for Food by Carole Bamford
As you know I love going to visit Ben’s brother in the Cotswolds, if not anything but for the chance to spend time at Daylesford, and I picked this book up last time I was there. It’s over 150 seasonal recipes straight from Daylesford’s kitchens, using produce grown sustainably on the farm. It’s a beautiful book - part cookbook, part celebration of caring about where your food comes from.
What else would you add? Would you like to see any of these featured in Cook the Books? Let me know in the comments!
Sure, my ‘saved for later’ recipe list is never ending (and I bet yours is) but nevertheless - these are the recipes that deserve to be on it. Ones I want to make, and ones I think you should too.
Mango Sticky Rice Tart, Hope Batchelor: Hope has been travelling round Southeast Asia for the past six weeks (and what an amazing trip) and developed this recipe as soon as she got home - inspired by just how much mango sticky rice she ate out there.
I’ve bought a big bag of Thai glutinous rice to give it a go because... I must. That mango top looks too tongue-smackingly good not to! Side note: couldn’t find any of that rice in Waitrose and they told me they’ve never stocked it? Very odd…
This recipe from Sam Nixon popped up on Instagram and looked so delicious - we’ve already gone out and bought the ingredients! And it's a one pan wonder - which is always very welcome, especially so on a Sunday. Four chicken thighs browned off in olive oil, pancetta, leeks, garlic, butter beans, chicken stock, crème fraîche and tarragon. Twenty minutes in the oven and done. Me and Ben will be tucking into this later today.
I’ve been sat flicking through the latest Waitrose magazine and this recipe for Speck & Truffle Pizzette practically said ‘make me’, so I will. I’m going to make my own dough for it and I’m thinking of pairing it with the homemade pesto recipe from Kitchen Table (page 16) too.
Mark Diacono shared this recipe for Devon Spiced Beans in his latest post - and they sound every bit as delicious as the photo looks. I’m always a fan of ‘something on toast’, so I look forward to trying this. I’ve also never heard of a ‘lantern of mace’ before - love it!
It would be criminal not to share a rhubarb recipe, ‘tis the season after all! Emily Cuddeford’s latest post is a love letter to Yorkshire forced rhubarb - she tells how she ordered a whole 7kg box direct from one of the last remaining growers in the Rhubarb Triangle, Rhubarb Robert. (What a great name!)
There’s a rhubarb and roasted vanilla jam recipe that apparently tastes like the perfect distillation of rhubarb and custard - and a Grasmere gingerbread-style rhubarb and ginger crumble bar inspired by a bakery visit during her trip to Oxford recently.
I’ll be giving this a go later this week!
One of the best things about being part of this community is discovering and sharing people doing who are doing brilliant, inspiring things. They say you should surround yourself with people who inspire and motivate you, don’t they? Here’s a few who’ve done just that this month:
Feasts and Fables (Barrie and JoJo), Encourage Meant
If you’re not already reading their weekly Encourage Meant posts, you need to fix that! Every week Barrie and JoJo drop Field Notes for Curious Minds - a beautifully (and carefully) curated collection of photography, art, travel, reading and people that have inspired, motivated or encouraged them. They champion other creators in a way that feels genuinely heartfelt and generous. They’re exactly the kind of people you want in your life. Writing from their basecamp in rural France, they’re proof that the best content comes from curiosity and kindness. Go follow them!
I’ve been baking for two years and I still haven’t made brown butter. I know, I know - it’s almost sacrilegious. Kerry’s latest post has made that impossible to ignore any longer. It’s a brilliant, thorough guide to perfecting beurre noisette (brown butter to you and I!) - providing foolproof tips, sensory cues to watch for and a gorgeous collection of recipes to put it to use.
Hazel is a phenomenal recipe developer, food photographer and stylist whose work I find genuinely inspiring. Her images are moody, textured and absolutely stunning. In a recent post she explores how to find inspiration in unexpected places. From the textures of a cheese board at a vineyard, to ‘Caravaggio’s use of chiaroscuro’ and the way afternoon light hits a cup of tea. As someone who’s constantly working on my own food photography, her writing on light, composition and the discipline of chasing the ‘second shot’ has made me think differently about how I approach my own work. One to follow.
And there we have it, friends - the very first edition of The Kitchen Table! I really hope you’ve enjoyed it. This is a brand new format so I’d love to know what you think, what you liked, what you’d like to see more of and anything you’d change.
As you can see, the next couple of months are shaping up to be really exciting! With our first ever Cook the Books LIVE sessions, the launch of Kitchen Table Talk, Cook the World kicking off in April - and some brilliant conversations with some brilliant people along the way.
If you’d like to make sure you don’t miss any of it, hit subscribe - it’s free and means the world. And if you know someone who’d enjoy this, send it their way. The more the merrier at this table.
This all looks great Mark!
That rhubarb is beautiful. Love the alliteration for cookbook corner Mark. Very clever!!