A fabulous lunch

Kenneth Zammit Tabona treats the Taste team to a lunch at home.

Kenneth Zammit Tabona, the accomplished and well-known water-colourist, is also a keen cook whose invitations to lunch and supper are accepted with pleasure, not least because of the trouble he takes in setting a spectacular table. His eye for detail and harmony, which manifests itself in his work, gives him something of an advantage in injecting flair into a conventional table-setting by breaking the rules while at the same time adhering to them.

The table is perfectly laid, but the twist is that nothing matches. Nothing is part of a set. No single item has its twin, and yet it all melds together beautifully because each piece is carefully chosen not to jar against the rest. All the cutlery is of old silver, of different styles and periods, but all of it is plain and simple. All the water-glasses are of delicate coloured glass, engraved or otherwise decorated, in tones that are in harmony with each other. The plates and dishes come from several porcelain and china manufactories and were made in various decades of the 19th and 20th century, and still the designs meld together. The burnished silver serving-dishes, including a lovely soup tureen, glow against the sparkling crystal wine-glasses, each of them different. “I love going to auctions,” Kenneth says. “It’s one of my great pleasures. And I can’t resist odd plates, dishes, glasses, bowls, forks, spoons – anything for the table. I never use sets of things, because I think that this way is so much more interesting and lively.”

Kenneth prepared soup made from squash (“I usually make up this recipe using sweet potato and pumpkin, but I couldn’t find any sweet potatoes yesterday,” he says). This was followed by stuffed boneless quail, steamed broccoli with a dash of white sauce, roast potatoes, and parsnip pureé. Afterwards, when everyone was getting adjusted to the unusual experience of a large ‘holiday’ lunch on a workday, and dreading the prospect of returning to the keyboard, Kenneth emerged from the kitchen bearing a large glass bowl of chocolate mousse.

The small new potatoes were scrubbed, peeled and roasted in the usual manner. The broccoli were broken into florets, rinsed, lightly steamed and served with some white sauce poured on. Here are the recipes for the soup, quail and parsnip purée – but not for the chocolate mousse.