A Festive Italian Lunch With Dara Klein

It’s the beginning of a new week in early winter and the Compton Arms pub in Islington is full of festive sounds. The pop of a prosecco cork. The heady groove of a disco playlist. The backstage clatter of a kitchen preparing to feed people. Meanwhile, a long table is strewn with lychees and laid with rust-hued linen napkins, a ceramic jug of branches, and beechwood candlesticks which hold beeswax candles, votive-thin and glowing.

The Compton is usually closed on Monday lunchtimes, but today chef Dara Klein, whose pop-up restaurant, Tiella, has lived here for almost two years, has invited friends for an Italian holiday feast. Given she and most of her guests work in hospitality and that Christmas is just around the corner, this is a precious opportunity to break bread – or pasta – with some of her nearest and dearest in her adoptive home of London.

The smell of a rich ragu floats into the room, followed by Dara carrying what can only be described as a vat of lasagne. She is met by a hum of approving noises. At Tiella, Dara set out to serve up her brand of elevated Italian comfort food, which draws on influences that include an early childhood in Bologna, her family’s roots in Puglia and, once her parents had moved the family to Wellington New Zealand, their restaurant. “I grew up within the four walls of trattoria,” she tells me, and Tiella is a homage to her mother’s food: these are platefuls intended to nurture.

And nurture they do. “Today’s is a classic lasagne bolognese, which is what we eat during the holidays in Emilia-Romagna,” she tells me (Dara’s distinctly Kiwi accent is broken up with references in Italian that betray a native speaker), “it’s a heavily nostalgic dish for me and it is universally adored. In fact I know the British have a special place for lasagne, too.” Her guests gather round as she dishes up satisfying wedges of it, revealing its strata of pasta, bechamel, meat ragu and cheese as she goes. On the table, too, is a salad of winter leaves – purple-flecked Castelfranco, curls of Treviso radicchio – with figs and mint, and a bowl of untraditional golden potatoes, which Dara has made as a nod to our pub location.

Dara came to London in 2019 to join her boyfriend Marcus, also from New Zealand. “On our first date he told me he was moving here in three months’ time,” she says, “I never wanted to move to London, but now I can’t imagine living anywhere else.” Not least because it puts her close to Italy. And she has amassed a crew of chosen family here, some of whom sit around the table today – wearing TOAST, no less.

There’s Alice Gray, “a front of house superstar and also my best friend,” who Dara met at an industry networking event soon after arriving in Britain; “she has bundles of charisma and joy and is an amazing dinner party guest.” There’s also Seb Myers, head chef at Planque, a modern French restaurant in Hackney, “a dear friend and mentor to me”; Jenny Phung, founder of roving Chinese-inspired restaurant Ling Lings, who Dara credits with “starting all this” (she made the introduction to the Compton Arms); Diarmuid Goodwin, a chef from Belfast with whom Dara cooked at Trullo and Sager and Wilde, and who made a point of picking a TOAST Donegal wool jumper to wear. Opposite Dara is Jordon King, a chef who has taken social media by storm, and who shares with her a Bolognese background; lastly, Marie Mitchell, whose debut cookbook Kin: Caribbean Recipes for the Modern Kitchen was released earlier this year. 

Conversations meander from the best London pubs for dates to everyone’s Christmas traditions. For Dara, it was about “diasporic Italian food” cooked in a very different season from European Christmas: “December is summer in New Zealand, so we’d have mussels, crayfish, pasta with clams,” she says, “My parents would always gather the restaurant strays and have a big family meal with whatever was left in the fridges before the holiday break.” Her father would cook meat outside on the grill, and for dessert there was tiramisu, torta gianduia and “always panettone, which would linger in the kitchen for days – I love it toasted with marmalade and taleggio." 

It is a star-shaped pandoro – panettone’s plainer sister (without the dried fruit, which makes it ripe for adaptation) – that forms the basis for dessert today, stuffed with sweet, vanilla-laced cream, sliced miyagawa satsumas, clementines and pomegranates. Wearing a black needlecord dress and, I learn, her signature gold hoop earrings, Dara brings it to the table and dusts it with a sleet of icing sugar before we all tuck in.

Back in the kitchen, standing at the stove nursing a giant moka pot of espresso, she tells me of what’s to come. Tiella’s Islington residency ends in December. “It’s been an incredible incubator for me, but I think I’ve outgrown these four hobs and rinky-dink oven” she says, gesturing to the cooker. In time, Dara plans to open a permanent site. Before that, though, she’s writing a book, and in January will begin the process of ordering a lifetime of Italian recipes on the page. “Food has always been at the centre of my life,” she says, tapping her head, “it’s already written in here.”

Christmas Pandoro

This presentation of pandoro is very typical during the festive season in Italy. Much of the success of this cake comes down to the quality of the Pandoro that you purchase. Usually the pandoro comes with a sachet of vanilla icing sugar, which, traditionally, you sprinkle on the cake. I incorporate it into the cream. I prefer using the plain pandoro for this recipe instead of the traditional fruity panettone. This dessert pairs nicely with sparkling wine or Champagne.

Recipe (Serves 6-8)

1 Pandoro (I prefer the star shaped, plain variety)

400ml double cream

Icing sugar

5 citrus fruits (I used a mixture of clementines and miyagawa, but blood orange also works nicely)

1 pomegranate

Method

Start by carefully slicing the pandoro into 3 equal sections, horizontally. Prepare the fruits, cutting them into sleek segments, taking care to remove the peel and pith with a Prep the pomegranate by deseeding it, removing any of the white membrane.

Whip the cream to medium-soft peaks, I use the icing sugar from the Taste and if you prefer it sweeter, sift in an extra teaspoon. Once the cream is whipped, chill it for half an hour.

Place the pandoro onto a serving plate. Begin by constructing the first layer, first scooping a quarter of thecream and carefully spreading it around the If you like it citrusy, you can spoon over some of the juice before scooping on the cream. On top, arrange the fruits in an even pattern, making sure they’re evenly distributed. Cover with the next slice of pandoro and repeat the process, until you’ve used the whole cake.

Make sure to leave plenty of cream and fruit for the very top.

When serving, sprinkle over a dusting of icing. Serve immediately.