‘Il Tavloa” – WELCOME TO THE TABLE

After being to the Prinsloo allotment and planting potatoes, we thought it was only right to do a cooking blog!

We had a wonderful evening with the AMAZING Luke Hopper, who lovingly taught us all about seasonal cooking, the importance of food culture and made a fab meal in the midst of it all. Also, the Top Tips are just chef’s kiss!

Luke cooked us a gorgeous (Seasonal) spring greens risotto.

Ingredients:

Red onion

Courgette

Celery stalk

Asparagus stalks

Lemon

Frozen peas

Arborio rice

Small white wine

Mint

Veg stock

What is seasonal cooking I hear you ask?

It’s essentially eating things that are being grown naturally and are in season now.

“All the vegetables in the meal were being harvested in the UK now pretty much. If you go into the supermarkets a lot of the vegetables we used will say grown in the UK as opposed to being grown abroad in the off season.”

Why is it beneficial to eat seasonal?

1) It tastes better – The growing process doesn’t require as many chemicals to provide an artificial environment or to be ‘kept well’ whilst they are flown across the world. The veg will be fresh and have all their juicy natural flavours!

2) It’s better for the environment – You’re not flying food halfway across the world (A BIG carbon footprint) You’re using less pesticides and chemicals in the growing process. (Pesticides have had detrimental effects of wildlife and people, findings have even found that they increase the risk of cancer!)

3) Better for the UK economy – investing in UK farmers. You’re helping out the local farmers who are most likely to be doing things in a better way than big corporations. “TOP TIP: some things don’t grow in the UK and that’s okay, so we have to import them eg. lemons. BUT again, there is still a way to do this well. Shopping from a green grocer means that they’ll tend to be imported through a local farming network rather than through a major chain like Tesco or Sainsburys. For the Beeston lot, Fred Hallam’s is a great green grocer!”

What got you into cooking?

Luke got into cooking for the opposite reason we would have thought. He grew up with parents that made plain meals, with very little seasoning, in his words “nothing too exciting”. It was only when he came to Uni that he was pushed to explore cooking. When he started, he was all in, he fully immersed himself in learning from YouTube, if you know Luke, he has clearly learnt A LOT because his cooking is NEXT LEVEL.

Favourite meal to cook?

FRESH AND COMPLETELY HOMEMADE PESTO PASTA!

Whilst this is the ‘staple and boring’ Uni meal, when done right and from scratch, pesto pasta is a true delicacy, something that we miss out on! (it’s also SUPER EASY, literally pop all the ingredients into a mixer)

What was your Lockdown dream?

Over Lockdown, Luke questioned whether his job would still be there because he worked in hospitality, so he started thinking about what he loved… Cooking! Particularly Italian food!

Luke dreamt up a community of people, bit like BBC good food, centred around Italian food. Where they shared tips and tricks, suggestions and places to shop. The name for this amazing vision was ‘Il tavola’ – which means the Table.

“This is it; Italian life is centred around the table, you get married at the table, there’s celebration of life at the table, even funerals are held at the table. Its where you share time with your family and friends. That was the vision, a big table, doing Italian life together and then lockdown lifted, and I went back to work but one day that’s the dream…”

TOP TIP number one – “Not to quote Ratatouille, but ANYONE can Cook. It’s something anyone can learn”

TOP TIP number two – “Learn about the culture you’re cooking, that often feeds into why certain flavours go together, why dishes exist. Risotto for example, it was a cheap meal, in theory you could make it with stock and rice. During the war when Mussolini was in charge, the only things Italians could get was rice and veg from their gardens – so they would make veg stock and make a risotto. There’s a whole culture in Italy called “cucina povera” literally meaning poor kitchen. Most Italian food is based out of poverty. So, learn about your food, care about where it comes from, care about where your meat comes from!”

TOP TIP number three - “What you put into food is what you’ll get out. If you use good ingredients, you could be the world’s worst cook and still get something good out of it. The wine that you drink is the wine that you cook with! There’s no such thing as cooking wine, what you put in is what you get out”

Last biblical TOP TIP for you-

“Biblically, the first things that God said to Adam and Eve, is you can eat from any tree of the garden, like taste and see the Lord is good, he gave us food for a reason, by cooking and eating good food we are honouring God”.

If you do any seasonal cooking yourself, send us your recipes, we'd love to see what you do!

Let's make a 180!