Flavour is a bit of a magical art: a blending of the traditional and the innovative, the complementary and the contrasting, the familiar and the unusual. But what may only be a moment of joy on the tongue takes much longer to produce – the result of experience, insight, creativity, passion and skill. Dishes that delight and get talked about are often the result of a perfect pairing in the kitchen. Here, we meet two pairs of talented chefs – creators and innovators who have doubled up to make flavours twice as nice.
Fusion foodies
Sometimes, amid the bright lights of their Selfridges’ kitchen, Troy and Jarrell Johnson look back at their humble beginnings and feel nostalgic for them. The brothers started Sweet Dee’s Jerk with just £500 – and used social media to get attention for their new-gen Caribbean food brand. Even their supportive parents’ patience was tested when they kept making a mess in the kitchen and had people forever pulling up outside their south London house to collect orders.
The Johnsons eventually moved into a shared kitchen space and got their business on to delivery apps. But no sooner were they establishing themselves in catering for corporate events than the Covid pandemic shut the whole thing down. They quickly launched a Caribbean meal kit and were soon taking orders from across the country for their prep-at-home mac and cheese, coleslaw and jerk chicken.
Then they got a four-week slot in a concession in Selfridges, on Oxford Street, the first black-owned Caribbean business to get such a berth in the famous department store. “That was momentous for us,” says Jarrell. They proved such a hit that their stay got extended – and two years later they are still there.
In their mission to add a unique British creative edge to Caribbean flavours, innovation has always been important to the Johnsons. “To discover new flavour pairings, you need to get out there and find out what’s current in the dining scene,” says Troy.
Jarrell cites their jerk chicken taco, which has a pineapple salsa complementing the smokiness of the marinade and sauce. “I love that kind of fusion,” he says. “When you hit on an effective pairing, it’s a case of one plus one equalling so much more than two,” he says.
They’re currently working on a Moroccan-inspired sauce that will go in their jerk chicken wrap, which is one of their biggest sellers in Selfridges.
Right from when they were knocking dishes out in their parents’ kitchen, the brothers have been a pairing that’s been perfected over time to become more than the sum of its parts. “We were always quite close growing up – we’ve even had the same friends,” says Jarrell. “It’s been a benefit for our work because the trust has always been there. Even when we don’t see eye-to-eye we can smooth it out.”
This balances them out creatively as well, as they each bring their own strengths and ideas to the kitchen. “Troy’s recipes are on our three signature sauces,” says Jarrell, “while the seasoning and marination of the chicken is my side of it.”
While the Johnsons’ heady ascent is testament to their craft and passion, some things haven’t changed: “They were innocent times,” says Troy of their business’s earliest days. But “to this day, it’s still all about a love for providing good home-cooked food.”
Less is moor
The “holy grail” of a recipe, says Samuel Clark, is “to use very few ingredients” which, when they’re combined, “produce something that is elevated to become memorable and special”.
Samuel is one half of the celebrated husband and wife team behind London’s pioneering Moorish restaurants, Moro and Morito. He met his wife Samantha when they worked at The Eagle in Farringdon, central London, widely regarded as Britain’s first gastropub. After they married in 1996, they set off on a camper van road trip through Spain and Morocco.
Samuel and Samantha Clark of Moro and Morito
“We wanted to get closer to the specialty ingredients that you couldn’t get in the UK at the time,” says Samuel. From street vendors and tapas bars, they collected preserved lemons, homemade harissa, wind-dried tuna – “We could taste food how it should taste,” he remembers – and took their ingredients back to the campervan. Once they found a rare argan oil, and then made salads with it in the evening. “We were trying to get these authentic flavours under our skin,” he says.
The Clarks took this authenticity home with them. “When we returned to the kitchen at Moro,” says Samantha, “we would just shut our eyes and we were back in the market in Tangier.” To this day, they eat rocket salad from their allotment, which was grown with seeds that originally came from the Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul.
Simple but effective flavour pairings are at the heart of much of what they do. “There are classic flavour pairings: sweet and sour, salty and sweet,” says Samuel, “and then you’ve got earthy flavours with floral flavours.”
One of their dishes is the unlikely combination of kebab with rhubarb. Like many of their creations, its inspiration came from being on the road: to be precise, stopped outside a famous kebab shop in Istanbul, where “there was a guy from the hills selling rhubarb”.
“You’ve got the rich, slightly fatty kebab and then the sourness and astringency of the rhubarb. The whole combination is magical,” says Samuel.
In bringing authentic Moorish flavours centre stage, the couple – who describe themselves as “relentlessly inquisitive”, as well as “adventurous and romantic” – have evidently proved to be a magical pairing themselves.
Great food deserves the right partner. Double-casked in sherry or wine casks for a range of deliciously rich flavours, Tamnavulin single malt pairs perfectly with a huge range of dishes. Find out more at tamnavulinwhisky.com
