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Gastropub delights at Eat Drink Talk
Preparing your own hand-made pasta used to seem the height of kitchen ability to me . Once there, anything (hollandaise sauce, rice-aligned sushi, unfrozen roast turkey) would be possible. It looked a long way off. Even with dried pasta, that magic moment between undercooked and overcooked would always pass when I was elsewhere, answering the phone or attending a crucial juncture in ‘Hollyoaks’.

Step forth Eat Drink Talk’s Jennifer Klinec. Conducting informal classes from the kitchen of her Clerkenwell flat, Klinec works through six or so meals in a session, the results of which are passed round to be munched and mulled over by the ten students who are gathered round. In my gastropub cookery class, plates of lamb neck fillets with puy lentils, fried halibut on chorizo mash, and – crucially – ricotta gnocchi in a foraged mushroom ragout were handed out. Sometimes, as with the rolling of the gnocchi, students were encouraged to get involved; otherwise, we relaxed with freshly prepared cocktails while Klinec showed us the moves. Feature continues