After a very welcome window on the world, we’re back to home dining.
To be honest, I found eating inside cafes and restaurants an anxious experience. My heart aches for the restaurateurs and caterers, who were already struggling, and have now been forced to circle around to their backup plans of food delivery and takeaway service.
The silver lining is that, second time around, many will already have the systems in place to hit the ground running. And for the greedy (and lazy) there is so much out there, you can eat really well in your own home — with minimal effort.
Hannah Glass, is relatively new to the North West London market. The Pinner-based, private chef, didn’t head straight to a career in the kitchen. She studied business management at Birmingham University, during which time she got busy in the kitchen heading up the J-Soc’s Kitchen Committee, which catered weekly Friday night dinners for up to 300 hungry students.
A change of direction from her initial career choice in HR saw her head off to train as a chef at Leith’s School of Food & Wine — where I also studied. Hannah qualified five years ago and has had a varied career that has included feeding Hollywood stars filming in London — both on set and in their homes. She has also acted as private chef to more than one royal family from the Middle East and Far East.
Coronavirus put paid to both film-related work and visiting royals, and when bookings tailed off back in March, she pivoted to the home deliveries market.
The change of direction started literally as lockdown kicked in: “I had a big lunch booked in Dorset for Mother’s Day. When that got cancelled, I decided to offer Mother’s Day afternoon tea.” She received 70 orders in three days. “It really took off and I’ve carried on doing private dining for customers in North West London during lockdown and since then.”
She didn’t take another day off until July, working 15-hour days and fielding an average of 30 enquiries daily. The main focus had been private dining, but in late October, she trialled a virtual supper club, which I joined from my kitchen.
My box of goodies arrived late afternoon. There’s something celebratory about unboxing. Especially when you’re unpacking beautifully presented dishes of fancy food and freshly baked focaccia rolls. Some of the food was plated and ready to go, other dishes needed a little finishing off.
The supper club kicked off at 7.30pm with a presentation from Hannah and co-chef, Jodene. Plus a talk from wine expert Elliot — who did have a surname but which I missed in my hurry to get to the canapes. (Sorry Elliot.) He had put together a wine pairing menu for the banquet, but as I was eating alone, I'd stuck to one type of alcohol.
I’d managed to hold off from eating any of my meal before then, but did woof down a couple of the rolls, which were superb, soft and topped with crunchy salt.
While I watched Hannah and Jodene's intro, I grabbed a glass of fizz to drink with my canapes: roasted fig and goats cheese topped walnut shortbread; an elegant sesame tuile, topped with roasted carrot and celeriac hummus (really unusual flavour) and a gorgeous textured Asian-style crispy rice cake.
Five slices of tuna tataki sat on truffle mayo. My job was to pour over citrussy ponzu sauce, before digging out my chopsticks. It was perfectly seared on the exterior and pleasingly tender.
Red wine braised (kosher) beef cheek was melt-in-the-mouth tender, with a similarly soft textured, crunchy crumb coated beef ‘bon bon’ and golden slab of potatoes (Pommes Anna) and sauteed greens. It had arrived in an ovenproof container with instructions on how to heat it.
Hannah and Jodene admit to being sweet-toothed so it was no surprise that there were two pudding courses. A chocolate pudding with chocolate sauce plus seasonal blackberry compote and crunchy toasted hazelnuts to scatter over it. The pudding and sauce needed also needed warming up, but for such high quality food without even leaving my house, it was no hardship.
The final touch was an espresso cup of Earl Grey tea ice cream with crunchy apricot and pistachio biscotti.
Hannah will be starting a Saturday night Dine In menu for 2 weeks in Nov- 14th and 28th. Two or three courses delivered to your door, which can be ordered by email in advance. There are veggie and vegan options as well as the meat.
She also offers three-course meal deliveries; afternoon tea and (the one I really fancy for my next celebration) a brunch hamper, which is £50 for a basket of goodies for 2 -3. It includes fresh orange juice; tea; salmon with caperberries (you know it’s posh when there are caperberries involved); sourdough; tomato and pumpkin salad; yoghurt with homemade granola plus fruit salad and freshly baked pastries. How gorgeous to receive that to start your special day? Or any day for that matter!
We’ve eaten out to help out, so, with a few more weeks of this lockdown and, most likely, a winter of discontent to get through, do yourself a favour and dine in with Hannah.
Find out more about Hannah here or on her Facebook group - Hannah Glass Private Dining
