New Year's Eve 2020 style

I don’t want to be slaving over the oven for my family’s New Year’s Eve feast — but nor do I fancy ordering a take away and having to go out in the cold and queue to collect it.

What I want is a stress-free evening with sublime, fun, tasty food that my whole family will enjoy. Recently my Instagram was awash with a new name — Mo & Eric's — delivering freshly cooked food to your front door, for you to finish at home. The kit includes absolutely everything, including garnishes — and the most incredibly simple instruction card — and it takes only 20 minutes to put the finishing touches to the food. It’s not under kashrut supervision, but kosher options are available*.

Obviously, in the interests of thoroughness, it was only right that we tried EVERYTHING on the menu — and Mo & Eric's did not disappoint.  

Our delivery included burgers, such as Whiskey Business burger and Miso Hungry burger, as well as Soda-Licious wings and Miso Hungry wings, with mac ’n’ cheese and cheesy potato skins for the non-meat-eaters.  

All the chicken products were packaged in ovenproof silver dishes, clearly marked, with the other ingredients — bun, lettuce, sauce etc — in clear plastic pots, also clearly marked, so you could navigate them with the aid of the instruction card and identify which went with which food.  

Nothing took more than 15 minutes to heat up and while the meat and potato skins were in the oven, my daughter set out the remaining ingredients according to which dish they accompanied.  

The excitement grew, as the smells wafted through the kitchen and grew even more with anticipation as I brought the food to the table and we started to build our supper.
It was such fun to watch my daughters build their burgers with the precision of a MasterChef episode and then sit back in triumph before the obligatory Instagram photos — and then the bite into the burger, skins and wings, followed by just the sound of pure pleasure.

For me, a burger is all about the patty but Mo & Eric’s chicken was so succulent and juicy, mixed with the most delicious finger-licking sauces — the family was in heaven.
The chicken wings were declared equally yummy and there was every garnish one could desire — special praise for the extra crunch given by the sesame seeds.

Dare I say it, but the loaded potato skins took me back to the days of TGI Fridays? To be honest I could have devoured all of them but I had to leave room for the mac ’n’ cheese and mushroom and parmesan arancini balls  — not forgetting the cherry on the cake …. The Cookie Dough Pots.

Oh my! These oozed flavour and happiness and will be the perfect ending to a sour old year — and what we can only hope will be the start of a sweet new year (apologies to Rosh Hashanah for stealing its vocab).

Mo & Eric's ticked every box. Simple tasty food. Food that transported you to happy memories and the start of new ones. Food that was easy to navigate, fun to put together and enjoyable to eat. And most of all, food that left our bellies full — but not the sink or dishwasher.  

Bundles are available for New Year Eve, including kosher* options, for groups of two, four or six people, containing wings and burgers as well as sides and cookie dough pots.

*Kosher meat and non-dairy but not supervised.

Currently offering 15 per cent off: https://moanderics.com/collections/new-years-eve-bundles 
 

There are some silver linings to a socially distant end to this ghastly year, writes Victoria Prever. Top of my list is the chance to taste the food of super talented chef, Adam Handling. 

Handling, who is still only 32, started his training aged 16 at Gleneagles, and has a clutch of awards on his mantlepiece. If his name sounds familiar, it may be because he was a finalist on Masterchef: The Professionals in 2013.

Pre-pandemic, he was at the helm of five restaurants and a bar — but, like many of his fellow restaurateurs, was forced to close one — his Hoxton restaurant. Thankfully, he’s still operating at The Frog in Covent Garden and Adam Handling Chelsea and at the Belmont Cadogan Hotel — both of which have more than one venue. 

And, here comes our silver lining — he and his team have come up with Hame, sending you his fine-dining menu to eat in your own home. (Hame is Scottish for home.) 

Handling had been unwilling to do a simple delivery service, as he felt his form of fine dining wouldn’t travel well, so this menu needs a little DIY before you can tuck in, but the Hame team has done all the hard work. Each dish is a high-end, flavour-filled treat. 

We tested the vegetarian menu for New Year’s Eve and, at the start of December, took delivery of a box full of clearly labelled pots and pouches for two portions of each dish. Also included were recipe cards and — and this is the most important part — a QR code on each recipe card that links to a video on his website of Handling demonstrating how to do the assembly. 

On the menu were two giant sourdough rolls which needed crisping in a hot oven, with a jar of onion butter to slather on, and crispy onions to sprinkle on top. Heavenly. I could lunch on those every day. The leftover onion butter was swiftly gobbled up. 

Next up was “Mother” — a dish invented for his mum. It involved plating up truffled cheese, a slow-cooked egg, sweet/sour lime and date paste, crunchy Granny Smith apple, pungent mushroom powder and bright green spring onion oil. This was the most fiddly dish to assemble — especially as I hadn’t noticed the instruction to watch Handling’s video. (Doh.) Once you have a video to follow, it’s relatively easy. (Now I know what I should have done.) Even if mine looked like it had been constructed by a two-year-old, it tasted amazing. 

Creamy burrata sat on a thick, garlicky tomato Romesco sauce, more bright green oil — chive this time — and some softly cooked leeks. Gorgeous.

My favourite was in the mushroom agnolotti dish, which was super-simple to assemble and exploding with flavour. Again, make sure you watch Handling’s video – there’s a top tip for taking the butter out of its plastic pouch. And a need-to-know prep instruction about the sauce.

The menu is definitely indulgent — before dessert there’s a gooey, truffled Tunworth cheese plus sticky fruit loaf that only needs warming. 

It’s probably fortunate for my waistline that we tasted the menu before they’d finished the dessert, so you’ll need to test that for yourself. Handling did send a large square of outstandingly good, chocolate brownie, though (I fought my children for that).

I’m fessing up to having missed the memo about the QR code. I had to make up the presentation as I went along. Having now seen Handling doing it, I think I didn’t do too badly, but do watch it. You’ll have fun plating up — maybe even compete among yourselves for the best attempt. 

Cocktails are also available to order as is wine.

If you’re not sure how to spend December 31 and you love great food, this will end your 2020 on a high. 
www.adamhandling.co.uk