Long Distance Dinner Party. Week 1

Social Distancing. Together.

The Options

For the first Long Distance Dinner Party we’re starting simple, options were:

A) The best ever tomato pasta – WINNER!

B) Turkish lentil soup

Both are quick, easy, and don’t have hard to find ingredients.

When is it?

We’ll be cooking together for the first time on Thursday 26th Mach at 6.30PM GMT

How do I join?

For the first one we’re going to try an Instagram Live. So follow me on @sophiewilliamsofficial and we’ll see how that goes. If it’s no good, we’ll try something different next time around.

Please note, you can cook along on the livestream, but not have any pressure to join in. You can just watch and comment if you like, but no one is going to force you to broadcast yourself to the internet!

Also, if you only want to hang out and not cook, or cook something different, go ahead – this is just about having some time together.

The Recipe

To make things as accessible as possible, I’ve broken things down into Essentials, and Nice To Have’s. I’ll be honest, it will be tricky to make the bare essentials ‘The Best Ever’, so if you have any of the nice to haves, they’ll go a long way!

Share the things you cook on Instagram with the hashtag #LDDP so we can all see what you’ve made!

The Method

IN ADVANCE  – If you want this to be Best Ever, start 15 mins in advance at 6.15pm. 

-Heat your oven up to 180. 

-Take your garlic (I use a lot of garlic, but maybe 2 cloves per person eating), remove your cloves from the main bulb, but leave the skin on, and put the cloves in on a baking tray or in a baking dish. 

– Take your fresh tomatoes and put them in the same tray or dish, drizzle a little oil over the top and put in the oven, mid-height. 

AT 6.30 – Once we’re all together, this is what we’ll do:

  • Wash hands
  • Prep. We’ll start by getting the ingredients ready – weighing the pasta, opening the tins, chopping the fresh basil, dicing the onion, chopping the garlic if you didn’t have time to roast it in advance.
  • Now we take the roast tomatoes and garlic out of the oven, leave for a couple of mins to cool. We want them to be soft and easy to squeeze. If you leave them too long they’ll turn dark and hard. When they start to smell great, check on them.
  • Boil the pasta. The trick to great pasta is great pasta water!  Make sure you get it as salty as the sea
  • Whilst the pasta cooks we fry up the onion and garlic in oil in the biggest frying pan available. The onion goes in before the garlic, and when it starts to soften the garlic goes on in (if you’re using raw garlic. If you’re using roast garlic, skip). 
  • Add the tinned tomatoes, salt and pepper. Let it bubble away a bit.
  • When they have cooled a little, squeeze the garlic (which should be soft and roasted) out of the skins and into the pan and put the roast tomatoes in there too. Depending on how fancy you’re feeling you can take the skin off – let’s see how it goes!
  • If you’re using fresh basil, the stalks go in now, if you’re using dried, pop that in now. We’ll save  fresh leaves for later
  • Keep the tomato sauce going, check-in on the pasta. When it’s done, drain
  • When the tomato sauce is at the right consistency, take off the heat. Tear the basil leaves and throw them in, and add the pasta to the pan with them.
  • Mix, mix, mix. Season with salt and pepper.
  • Serve into plates or bowls, sprinkle on cheese, and sit down to eat.
  • Chat time! Talk about how you’re getting on in the first few weeks of social distancing, and for some, self-isolation.

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