Library-kitchen-library
Firs published by Filler Zine, 2024
Chopping Club is a monthly gathering to cook and eat communal meals in libraries, organised by artists Niamh Riordan and Gregory Herbert. For the past seven years, Chopping Club (and its predecessor One Pot Project) have been a regular part of arts programme At the Library, a collaboration between Rule of Threes Arts and Sefton Library Service.
For the past seven years, we have cooked and eaten communal meals in libraries. Each month we gather around tables in the library itself, amongst bookshelves, open access computers and leaflets on will writing, baby book clubs, maternity rights and quitting smoking, to chop. We prepare soups, stews, ferments, jams, ice creams, breads, condiments, donuts. Sometimes we tell each other stories of recipes or ingredients, sometimes we go for a walk to gather those ingredients, sometimes we recite poetry. Once we sat and listened to sound of rhubarb growing. Often, we invite guests to cook with us: there have been artists, cooks, scientists and food producers around the table.
The important thing is that everyone chops, so everyone has made lunch for everyone else.
What is our kitchen in a library like?
How can we describe it to you, without you coming to sit and cook and eat with us?
Libraries are good at archiving. But we have not been good at holding onto, or cataloguing, these years of cooking and eating together. Because, how could we share the taste of a meal that has been eaten? How could we publish a recipe that has been interpreted by many hands? How could we describe a public space which shifts and changes and is unpredictable? How could we pin down the specific group of cooks who shape each meal, or record the overlapping conversations around the table?
We’ve decided that we should try, though. We should try to learn from our host, the library. We should attempt to shelve even something of what goes on in our kitchen-in-a-library. We’d like to pass on the recipe.
An impossible recipe
1.Libraries are free.
We cook in the library itself. This is important because it’s an invitation: here we are, peeling, chopping, talking, and creating a smell, hopefully a good smell. It’s probably not how you’d expect a library to smell, but you’ll smell it as soon as you walk in off Stanley Road, and, hopefully, it implies something like: come and cook and eat with us! Don’t worry, that’s allowed now! How much does lunch cost? people sometimes ask, and, because we are lucky enough to have that elusive resource known as funding, we are able to tell them that lunch is free.
We sit around big library tables, amongst the bookshelves. Sitting to cook is so nice. Sitting-cooking happens at a slower pace than standing-cooking. There is more chat and there’s probably a mug of something hot at each cook’s elbow. We have a couple of induction hobs, a couple of very large pots, plenty of knives and chopping boards. You will need many bowls for the containment of chopped items, and many spoons for tasting the pot at every opportunity. Things people have donated: a garlic press for those who hate chopping garlic, peelers (how did we survive without peelers?), better knives than we could otherwise afford, 5000 empty jars (approx.), 200 tea towels (approx.), time, energy, recipes, humour, reminiscences, a stand mixer, an air fryer. Soon, we will start lending out some of this equipment: you will be able to borrow an ice cream machine or a novelty cake tin, or a special bowl.
There are usually about fifteen or twenty of us, cooking together. Give 20 people a sack of onions to chop, and within ten minutes you will have a sack of onions chopped into a great assortment of shapes and sizes. What’s next? What can I do? Give me a job! people will start to say. You will need a lot of things to do. You will need to choose a recipe with plenty of chopping.
You will have so many hands at your disposal! So, why not make your own butter! Make pasta! Make dumplings!
You do not scale up recipes by simple maths. We don’t understand it either, but if you multiply a recipe for two by ten, you will have too much soup.
A kitchen without storage is hard work. For years we operated like this. We camped out: no fridge, equipment and dry ingredients stored in boxes on shelves in a back office. We used to try and give away as much as we could at the end of each meal: leftovers and fresh ingredients. But this year, we finished converting that back office into a fully functioning kitchen which we’ve registered as a food business. We still give away anything that is wanted or needed, but we can now also freeze, jar or shelve. We bottle vinegars, dry spices, brew drinks and jar up pickles for next time. Maybe kitchen cupboards and fridges are a type of library - an edible archive of taste, place, economies, thinking ahead, impulse buys, difficult choices, privileges, injustices, aspirations, needs, hungers etc.etc.
On any given day the library might welcome reading groups, messy play, gardeners, support groups, rhyme time. Shelves and tables move around, big jugs of hot water appear, wipeable mats for the babies, hot soup for when it’s cold outside. A librarian sits with someone who needs someone to sit with, or finds a chair for someone who needs to sit. The space adapts and opens up to contain whoever needs it.
When you cook with and for twenty-odd people your recipe will need to expand to accommodate twenty different styles of chopping garlic, someone who despises garlic, an allergy, an idea – let’s throw in some cumin! Your recipe will unravel. Your table will need space for everyone. Your soup will need leeway. You cannot be precious about the ‘right’ way, although you should be precious about it tasting delicious.
Amidst the chopping, the boiling, the chatter, the clashing of spoons, we can’t forget to mention the silliness. Cooking and eating together can make us emotional, nostalgic and sometimes sad. But also, cooking and eating together makes us silly. You can probably imagine the mess, innuendo, gossip and drama. Perhaps that’s the season-to-taste bit, the final step to this impossible recipe.