Events
Good food for a good cause
I am joining forces with Dan Green to create a fundraising art and dining experience. As well as supporting my food ventures, we are collaborating to help raise funds for a community art project in Ghana, a project affiliated to our favourite charity , the Safe Foundation, as we have come to know this Ghanaian community through their work and support.
Large scale prints of photos of the Kumasi community and its members will be pasted in the neighbourhood streets and walls of the school Safe Foundation volunteers started building in 2010. We want to empower and pay tribute to a community that builds its own resilience and gives back to the visiting Safe Foundation volunteers as much as they give to it. The artists will collaborate with the Safe foundation to make this project happen but we will need support to fund its completion, and costs such as materials and airfares.
We will soon be sending more information to many of you about our endeavours but we count on your support to make this project happen. So watch this space, get in touch, get involved!
Our first supper club is taking place on Saturday 21 September 2013 at Jacob’s Market Cardiff. You can book a place at the event here:
http://www.wegottickets.com/sct/ZgGSsYkKGA
And you can find out more about the artists here:
Email me at liaskitchen@gmail.com.
A-not-so-Greecee-food-affair
Last night the Greek gods of Olympus gathered around our table to savour good food and good company.
A-not-so-Greecee-food affair presented dishes that many people in Britain have a different cultural reference for like revithokeftedes (the Greek falafel), politiki salad (the Greek coleslaw ) and Aubergoni (Cycladic cannelloni-like aubergine parcels).
On arrival people were greeted with a glass of Nectar-a strawberry cucumber and lemon juice cocktail sweetened with honey. And we closed the supper with an almond meal and semolina cake doused in brandy syrup and served with ice cream.
Everyone was an Olympian god last night-persona randomly allocated on arrival. And there was poetry (Cardiff’s ode to Greece), singing which included the very apt political song ‘Εν δυο κάτω’, learning your name in Greek and some interesting Greek facts relating to Nana Mouschouri’s vocal cords and private parts. I am still laughing!
Thank you all for such a wonderful night and honouring Lia’s Kitchen with your presence. I can’t wait for the next supper club. If they are all like this one we are in for a year of a wonderful evenings.
I hope the gods smile on you today .
I’ve cooked, I’ve sold, I’ve conquered
I usually underestimate how much work and particularly how much fun there is in doing something that I have never done before. This is exactly what happened when Lia’s Kitchen was on-tour last weekend and in preparation for the Art Carbootique on 14 April 2013 in Chapter, Cardiff. Admittedly, I tried to do so much. I arrived at the market with so many pies, too much halva, and boxes of Mexican biscuits … but somehow it all worked peeps! Everyone seemed to love it, with cards and food samples ‘going going gone’ throughout the day and the past week.
Deciding to do this was one of these ‘why not?’ moments that I absolutely love-it feels like the beginning of a journey or an adventure. Preparing was perversely exciting for the organizing geek that I am. I got tired, oh yes I did. But the satisfaction that being part of the market gave me is indescribable.
A highlight was getting the chance to cook at Thé Pot café in Cardiff and I would like to thank the wonderful Natalie who kindly let me use kitchen to prepare all the food samples. I love Natalie’s café and I think she is an astute business lady who I would be happy to work with any day of the week.
And apart from Twang! And Dan Green who helped make the recipe cards I could not have done this with without Michal Iwanowski, who apart from an endlessly creative being is a wizard in the kitchen, and my loved cousin Elpida Sarvani, who might be one of the smartest and multi-skilled persons I know. Thanks you all.
And thanks to all of you for supporting Lia’s Kitchen! Watch out, this is just the beginning…
If you are interested in getting Lia’s Kitchen Card Recipes have a look here and please get in touch at liaskitchen@gmail.com. It’s a bargain!
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- The Pot Cafe Kitchen
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- Lia’s Kitchen at Art Cabootique
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- Lia’s Kitchen at Art Cabootique
Leek is gold
It has been a cold spring in Wales but on my return from the vegetable stock exchange this morning I can say, hand-to-heart, I was hoping for a cheaper price for leek when I set out on my quest at dawn. But leek is gold and spinach is platinum it seems.
Still, final ingredient ticked off my list, I am enjoying a warm spiced apple tea surrounded by onions, leeks, and boxes of goodies with which I concoct Lia’s Kitchen food samples for sale at the Art Carbootique, Chapter Art, tomorrow (14 April 2013).
It takes preparation getting ready for a market stall and serving food, even if just samples. Food hygiene training, finding a kitchen, paperwork, beautification, set up and much more add up when you have weekends only to fit it in. It’s all fun and worth it though!
I can’t wait until tonight and Sunday morning for the part I enjoy most: The cooking!
My recipe (post) cards are in front of me. They look beautiful and include recipes for the three dishes I’ll be making.
And guess what there’s leek in one of the recipes, lots of it!
Good morning!
Roll on 2012
Choosing photos taken by Tom Beardshaw and Dan Green on New Year s Eve party to share with you has proven a lot more difficult than I thought! I spent most of my Sunday afternoon selecting images, deleting them by mistake (oops!), trying to recover them, and remember what I need to do to reduce photos in size…arghh!!!
Perseverence has paid off but I am exhausted. So the two cabbage roll recipes that I also wanted to share are not typed up yet and will be with you early in the week. Photography is no simple task for my mind. Mr Green I am in awe of you- I don’t know how you do it! I takes me ages to even put a slide show together online.
This slide show captures a few moments of our wonderful evening on New Year s Eve. I love Tom s photos and have deliberately chosen some blurry images because … well this is how I remember some of the night! Love to all particularly my lovely guests and stars of our night x
PS-Thanks to Tom Bearshaw who picked up the camera and document much of the night. And thank to my lovely Dan Green for teaching my some editing basics and providing some food snaps.
PPS-apostrophes and other symbols are not working on this laptop at the moment…this might explain the chosen syntax of this blog entry.
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Lia's Kitchen 
Jacob’s Market Art and Dining Supper Club
Posted on Updated on
This time last week we were taking down our pop-up restaurant and packing Lia’s Kitchen for a return home after a successful art and dining fundraiser and one the happiest birthday’s of my life. Thank you so much for overwhelming us with support, we were fully booked with a waiting list and a few spectacular late night reservation ‘wars’ took place for the last few places at our dinner table.
To all our guests I have to say thank you, you made the atmosphere of the night so wonderful. Thank you to our lovely friends some of which travelled from London and Plymouth for this !!! But even though half the people there we had not met before and they did not know each other, when I walked in to greet everyone before we started eating I was welcomed by a relaxed and comfortable vibe. ‘How wonderful’, I thought, ‘it’s worked!’.
So that you know you have helped us raise enough dosh to cover all our expenses for setting up the pop-up restaurant and to contribute to the fundraising for the community art project in Ghana. There will be more events coming up and you can always purchase a Ghana print from Dan Green Photography to support the art project , see here.
I am so moved and impressed that we have set up and delivered this event in our spare time. Jacob’s Market opened their doors to us- thank you Liz, Ian and Mike (for your wonderful bar and cocktails)! Dan Green set up and took an exhibition of prints and pasting of images from Ghana in 24 hours. Our friends worked so hard with us- Martin chopped and cooked tirelessly. Becks was the best maitre’d with her calm assertiveness. Peanut and Dan rocked the floor and were fantastic hosts. Beth was a joy to work with and gelled wonderfully with the team shifting her attention where it was most needed. And my lovely Elpida, was a rock, washing, serving, tidying and being there to the bitter end.
Some people have asked me whether I am mad holding this event on the eve of my birthday. To this I happily respond that I probably am. But this was the best birthday ever because to see people coming together to support art and food ventures, to see them loving the food and the environment we set up in a white walled gallery is precious. And because I shared a sense of achievement so big with new faces and people I love. I guess it is true that joy when shared is magnified by a million.
See you on 26 October at The Pot, Crwys Road, for the next one!
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This entry was posted in Comment, Events and tagged jacobs market, liaskitchen, popup event, supper club.