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cook club with Eva Thorne [a Gullah Geechee-inspired supper]
Welcome to cook club.
A hundred food businesses cook out of this kitchen every day. Twice a month, we open the doors and you step inside. You cook at shared tables alongside the person who lives and breathes the cuisine, then everyone sits down together to eat. Drinks flow. Music plays. The table talks.
On Saturday 21st November, we hand the pass to Eva Thorne, founder of The Garden of Eva.
In the UK, “Southern food” tends to be reduced to the likes of mac and cheese and fried chicken. Eva’s table goes so much further. You cook a supper inspired by the Gullah Geechee foodways of the coastal Carolinas, Georgia, and northeastern Florida, built on heritage ingredients you’ll rarely find on a London table, and discover just how rich and varied Southern cooking really is.
The night
You arrive to a glass of Red Drink, a hibiscus and ginger cooler with deep roots in the Black American South, and notes of gospel, blues, and soul filling the kitchen. As you tuck into bowls of boiled spiced peanuts, a soft, salty roadside snack, Eva gathers everyone round to tell you the story of the Gullah Geechee-inspired table you’re about to cook.
Then, aprons on, it’s time to cook supper. A savoury cornbread from Eva’s own family recipe. Chicken perloo, the Lowcountry one-pot rice dish that shifts with the season and whatever’s been caught that day. And while it simmers, braised greens. As you go, Eva introduces you to the lesser-known ingredients you’re working with, and the history and culture these dishes carry.
Once the lid comes off the perloo, everyone pulls up a seat at the shared table and gets stuck in, with chow chow (a tangy Southern relish) and pepper vinegar to season as you like. To finish, out comes the bourbon-rich Lane cake, the tall Alabama layer cake Eva used to make for her parents’ Christmas dinner parties.
Whatever’s left goes home with you.
You came thinking you knew what “Southern food” was. You leave knowing how much more there is to it, and wanting to cook your way through the rest.
What's included
Welcome cocktail: Red Drink
Dinner: a three-course Gullah Geechee-inspired supper
A recipe card to take home
Good to know
Please arrive at 5:15pm to sign in (we’ll start promptly at 5:30pm)
Self-serve drinks honesty bar
For this cook club, please note there is no vegetarian option
Ages 18+
We’ll have a photographer at the event, so if there’s anything we should be aware of, let us know when you book
About Eva
Eva Thorne founded The Garden of Eva, which makes pantry ingredients and condiments inspired by the American South, her heritage. Her products are sold online and in independent stores, and have been on the menu at Honest Burgers twice.
Her family’s Black Virginian roots date back to the late 1700s and early 1800s. With a career spanning academia and government and corporate advisory work on sustainability, she found a new calling in the food traditions that connect her to home. For Eva, sharing that food is a way of welcoming people into a rich history, and making new connections over a good meal.
Tonight, you cook with her.
Allergens
Tonight’s menu contains peanuts, gluten, eggs, milk, celery, and sulphites. The perloo is cooked with sherry and the Lane cake with bourbon.
Please note that Mission Kitchen is a shared commercial kitchen. A hundred food businesses cook here every day and all 14 named allergens are handled on site, so we can’t guarantee any dish is free from traces of them.