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Our weekly food diary
Billy and Jack first met on Masterchef in 2016, but when they finished the show as runners up they decided to team up as a duo to share their love of playful and quirky takes on classic British dishes. The pair are ‘self-confessed food geeks’ and certainly have a varied menu - here they shared their weekly food diary with us for an insight…
In February 2018 Billy and Jack will be hosting a one-off supper club at Plum + Spilt Milk in London, cooking for 24 hours straight from 3rd-4th February in aid of Cancer Research UK for World Cancer Day. Book tickets here
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Monday
Breakfast: We’re both the same when it comes to breakfast, especially on a Monday! The day always starts with a cup of coffee, nice and strong, often black or sometime a flat white. Actual food is often forgotten, sometimes just a piece of sourdough toast with butter.
Lunch: We hate food waste, so lunch is inevitably a sandwich or a wrap made up with whatever leftovers we have from recipe testing, supper clubs or private dining. We’re quite lucky that there is usually something pretty tasty in the fridge! A nice steak sandwich with some hot sauce is a firm favourite.
Dinner: Jack always tries to stick to meat free Mondays so dinner will always make the most of whatever great seasonal vegetables are available. Roast broccoli hash with a fried egg and lashings of hot sauce is a particular favourite.
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Tuesday
Breakfast: Tuesday is often a day for recipe development and testing! We love working with great British ingredients like Marmite (we love it!) and you can’t beat a crumpet covered in our popular Marmite butter.
Lunch: We often work at Jack’s in Fulham just around the corner from North End Road an amazing street full of market traders, greengrocers, butchers and fishmongers. It really is a proper foodie street, so great for us. There is also a rather good falafel stall that’s a decent shout for a quick lunch on the go.
Dinner: Billy is really into Vietnamese food at the moment, his cupboard is full of amazing sauces and ingredients so dinner is likely to be noodle based, a pho or beef salad, something hot and spicy.
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Wednesday
Breakfast: Occasionally we remember to eat properly so it’s a smoothie full of fruit and veg. Spinach, apple, cucumber and ginger is a particular favourite!
Lunch: We’re busy testing recipes for a number of supper clubs and private dining events coming up so lunch is taken up with trying a whole host of dishes. It’s not your typical lunch, and rather puts you off dinner when you’ve tried six or seven dishes in a row! Today we’ve been on dessert, we’ve eaten a lot of doughnuts!
Dinner: Doughnuts!
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Thursday
Breakfast: We’re running a supper club today so breakfast is a lot of strong black coffee and a pastry! A banana sneaks in as well for energy as much as anything as today is going to be a long day.
Lunch: We grab a quick sandwich in between prep. It’s really funny that on the days we cook for people we generally hardly eat anything! We used to order in Deliveroo when we were cooking but our accountant told us off!
Dinner: Today we served 24 people a four-course feast inspired by French classics, duck liver parfait, confit chicken in a white wine veloute with mushrooms, slow-cooked beef short rib with a big red wine sauce, potato terrine and crispy snails, finished with a glorious custard tart with celeriac ice cream!
N.B. We may have had a cheeky fried chicken burger after service…
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Friday
Breakfast: Black coffee is calling after a late one last night! We also pick up a cold-pressed juice to keep us going.
Lunch: To make up for the lack of food yesterday we pop into the Dairy in Clapham for their set-menu lunch. It’s great value and one of our favourites, amazing contemporary seasonal food and a great natural wine list to match.
Dinner: On a Friday, we crave simple food and are very happy with a lovely pasta dish with pasta Jack brought back from Lucca on a recent trip and a slow-cooked sauce made from Ox tail… and a few glasses of red!
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Saturday
Breakfast: On Saturday Jack gets up early to cook at a project that provides food for people in need so breakfast is again usually a black coffee whilst madly cooking for 60 guests
Lunch: We’re hosting a pizza brunch near Waterloo with our friends at Crust Bros so it would be rude not to indulge ourselves! We dig into our favourite Marmite, cheddar and taleggio pizza and another with four types of cured pork and a Burford brown.
Dinner: In a spectacular lack of planning Jack is also hosting a dinner party so it’s back to the flat to prep a series of beautiful curries from the India Cookbook by Pushpesh Pant. It’s a treasure trove of amazing recipes and inspirations. When we cook for friends we often cook things other than what we cook in the week, so curry or Korean is often on the menu!
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Sunday
Breakfast: A full English at Plum and Split Milk is the best way to start a Sunday! Especially with a slightly sore head.
Lunch: We’re also big fans of the classic Sunday lunch. Billy’s got friends and family over so he’s cooking a beautiful rib of beef with ALL of the trimmings, followed by our signature cornflake custard tart.
Dinner: On a Sunday, we’d be lying if we said that dinner is anything more than a glass of wine and some left-overs, maybe a bit of cheese in front of the TV! Loving Blue Planet 2 at the moment.