Welcome to Between Courses

Savouring the in-between.

I am writing this from somewhere in the middle.

There have been so many versions of this first draft that have sat until they’ve gone cold, been digested and discarded over a shamefully long period of time, but nothing has stuck as much as a pervasive, slippery feeling of being in-between. Between life phases, in a career transition, between who I am and want to be. It’s a sticky place to write from and I’ve let it be an excuse not to begin. I felt like I had to be sure, find a defined niche, expertise, to land on a name.

There have been some false starts (some better than others) and some anchors: a dusty old Wordpress, an essay or two landing in places I’m proud of, a wine-fuelled conversation with my dear friend Tor about a paper almanac that evolved into a living, breathing and frankly brilliant natural wine bar.¹ A zine TBC... A talk at a Studio Harvest supper that totally shifted my outlook on food systems.² A growing archive of menus, annotated with hand-written traces of generous adjustments made to accommodate my allergic body.³ More of that later. A growing Substack subscription collection (sorry for lurking!). Cooking for a living on weekends.⁴ Through it all, my insatiable appetite has remained a constant. For food, yes, but also for everything else.

M.F.K Fisher’s ethos “First we eat. And then we do everything else.” formed the bones of an earlier version of this newsletter. I first read it on the Table homepage and it’s become a mantra. Eat first.⁵ Everything else later. Whilst it didn’t quite stick, the ritual of peeling, chopping, stirring, hosting, tasting, snacking, sharing is something I have reached for, again and again, as a method (or recipe?) for coming back to myself. In all my attempts to move beyond, I’d overlooked the in-between I feel most at home in: the space Between Courses. This feels like the natural place to write from.

M.F.K Fisher from bed.

Lately, in a different form of consumption/digestion, I’ve been reaching for the kind of memoir writing that resists resolution, that spills over the edges of form and lingers in process. This Ragged Grace by Octavia Bright, Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti, The Gastronomical Me by Fisher herself. I return to work that resists neatness and categorisation. That writes from the middle. This Ragged Grace contains some of my favourite descriptions of food and eating outside the canon of ”food writing”… a conversation about love/ a desire to be serious/ a desire to lose yourself held over a plate of “spooning” prawns on Stromboli, a hot mess of truffle piadine and a motorbike crash, a challenging meditative experience with a biscuit.

Most recently, I’ve been (re)reading Small Fires by Rebecca May Johnson.⁶ I’ve been floored by the way she thinks through food, the repetitions, politics, erotics, poetics and refusals. By the way she blows up the kitchen, dismantling it into its constituent parts, and repositions it as a site of empowered, creative resistance. “It was through my hands and through the cooking of recipes that I began to understand myself,” she writes. “Me too,” I reply. So I had decided to eat first. What next?

I landed on Between Courses on a flight to Amsterdam. Workshopped the title with friends there. It felt right. Like naming the space and feeling of satisfaction when you’ve finished a plate and the conversation spills over- when a carefully assembled table is un-done and loose and honest. Like naming a life lived from meal to meal. We spoke about eating cheese toasties and dancing to Sophie Ellis Bextor in the rain. About nostalgia and story and provenance. Later, on my way to pick up a bottle of wine, I passed a blurred window with a sign I misread as ‘This Must be the Plate.’ An affirmation I was clearly seeking out. I drafted this post on the plane home.

THIS IS THE PLACE/ So This Must Be the Plate!

So, here it is! A newsletter about food, but also about everything else. The restorative power of eating, the journeys/ things/ people/ books/ conversations/ exhibitions/ recipes that feed me. It’s a commitment to putting words to paper before the plates have been cleared and the burnt bits are scraped from the pan.

What to expect:

Essays, fragments from the kitchen, reflections on journeys and wandering and art and failing. Recipes and recommendations and conversations. Recipes and recommendations as conversations. The odd interview. Probably a bit of mess, too.

So, welcome to Between Courses. Thanks for being here. I would say bring a dish but I’ve probably got that one covered tbh. Could you bring an extra chair?

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1. Volume 08 — Table Magazine- thank you, Anna, for being so gentle with/ generous about my work// F I L L E R (@fillerzine) • Instagram photos and videos forthcoming edition on The Body// ELIXR WINE (@elixr_wine) • Instagram photos and videos

2. The talk by Dr Fatmah Sabet and supper, hosted by Studio Harvest and my brilliant friend Jesse at his cafe, were about embodied food knowledge and local food systems. The zine idea emerged from a chat with Jesse over a negroni, and we’re working on it. His Substack is here. You should read it.

3. I recently read an essay by Panayiota Soutis on Receipts as Objects over on The Goal is to Eat that made sense of this insatiable impulse to collect. Of the meaningfulness of paper ephemera.

4. Long live plates piled high, laden with sauce, and toppling towers of butter. If you don’t know Naughty Nonnas yet, get to know!

5. Ben Drinkwater’s An Alphabet for (Modern) Gourmets is a hot, fresh take on Fisher’s culinary ethos which brings it into the 21st Century.

6. You can read more of Rebecca May Johnson’s (highly recommended!) writing on food over at Dinner Document, or via Vittles, where she is an editor.