Fine art of cooking: Leading artists cook up a storm

Art and food go hand in hand and have always done so. In European cities many well-known restaurants and shops have a history of building up great collections of art by allowing artists free food and drink in exchange for a piece of their work. I remember going to see the late Lionel Poilâne at his famous bakery in Paris, and the room behind the shop was packed full of drawings and paintings from great Parisian artists, including a fantastic chandelier sculpture made from bread. When the artists couldn't afford to pay their weekly bread bill, they would offer a piece of their work instead. It's amazing how even a humble loaf of bread can be bartered for a piece of art. (Mind you, Poilâne makes probably the most expensive sourdough loaf in the world, so perhaps it's not so humble after all.)

To this day, artists love hanging out in restaurants – and new shows are often hosted in leading restaurants or catered for by well-known chefs who have a connection with the art world. I've done my fair share of these events myself – often in cahoots with Margot Henderson of Rochelle Canteen – and they're sometimes staged in the most amazing and unlikely venues, as well as at my own Oyster and Chop House in Smithfield.

For this week's Food & Drink special, I've rounded up a few of the artists who helped me a couple of years ago when we needed lots of fresh new artwork for the re-launch of Scott's in Mayfair, and asked them to give me a favourite recipe along with their visual impression of the recipe itself. I tell you what, it was a damn sight easier than rounding them all up for the Scott's project!

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Polly Morgan's stuffed partridge

Serves 4

As well as using wild animals in her work, Polly is a keen meat eater. "It would be perverse to kill a creature in order to weakly imitate its life," she says, "so I don't think animals should be killed for taxidermy. I think they should be killed for the table, the most vital place to be. I find food and eating in company spiritually satisfying, and restaurants enrich my life the way the Church did for my grandparents. In my image, the birds are the sacrifice and the table the altar. Here's my recipe for the Communion."

4 oven-ready partridge, preferably with livers and hearts
Butter for basting
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the stuffing

A couple of good knobs of butter
1 small onion, peeled, halved and finely chopped
A good pinch of ground cinnamon
1tsp chopped thyme leaves
20 shelled pistachios and shelled almonds, roughly chopped
1tbsp chopped parsley
40g short grain rice, cooked
A couple of good pinches of sumac (optional)
1tbsp dried barberries or dried cranberries (chopped)

Pre-heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Remove the partridge from the fridge about an hour before cooking. Gently cook the onion, cinnamon and thyme in the butter for 3-4 minutes, stirring every so often, until soft. Mix with the remainder of the stuffing ingredients. Remove the livers and hearts from the partridge, if they have them, chop roughly and add to the rice mixture. Season and stuff into the cavity of the bird. Season the birds themselves then heat an oven-proof pan on the stove with a little butter and lightly brown the birds on the breasts and legs and roast for 15 minutes, basting every so often.

Serve with a salad or seasonal greens, or as a starter with a mezze mix.

Polly Morgan is a British artist living and working in London. She mainly employs her taxidermy skills in sculptural works and installations (pollymorgan.co.uk)

Mat Collishaw's vodka jelly

Makes about 12 shot glasses

Mat's recipe just had to involve vodka or beer – because that's all he drinks! He says that he's always in two minds about whether to have a dessert or to step up a gear and get into the harder stuff. He avoids unnecessary raised eyebrows here by cleverly going for the intermediate option: the vodka jelly. These jellies are really good fun and I've often served them made with absinthe, either as a dessert or as little shot-size portions at a party. You can make these as strong or as weak as you want, but don't be too shy.

250ml water
250ml vodka
Juice of half a lemon
200g caster sugar
4 sheets leaf gelatine

Bring the water and lemon juice to the boil, add the sugar and stir until dissolved then remove from the heat. Soak the gelatine leaves in a shallow bowl of cold water for a minute or so until soft. Squeeze out the water, add to the syrup and stir until dissolved. Add the vodka, then pour into shot glasses. Leave in the fridge for a couple of hours or so until the jelly is set.

Mat Collishaw is an English artist working in a wide variety of media

Anya Gallaccio's lamb osso bucco with orange, lemon and capers

Serves 6-8

Anya Gallaccio is a keen cook and one of the few people who ever invites me round for dinner. She has even booked herself and her partner Kelly in early for our Christmas Day game-bird feast. For this recipe, Anya uses lamb shanks cut into 3 rounds (get your butcher to do this), or you could use a cut from the neck before it has been sawn in half, so that you get nice round steaks with the bone in the centre.

10 lamb shanks, cut crossways into 3
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 litre chicken stock
80g butter
2 large onions, peeled and finely chopped
A couple of sprigs of thyme
1 or 2 large carrots, peeled and cut into rough 1cm dice
2 celery stalks, peeled if necessary and cut into rough 1cm dice
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
2 bay leaves
70g plain flour
2tbsp tomato purée
A couple of glasses of dry white wine
The grated zest of 1 orange
The grated zest of 1 lemon
2-3tbsp capers, rinsed and roughly chopped
1tbsp chopped parsley

Season the pieces of lamb and place in a large pot. Add the chicken stock and top up with cold water to cover. Bring to the boil and simmer for 1 hour. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a thick-bottomed pan and gently cook the onion, thyme, carrots, celery and garlic for 2-3 minutes until soft. Add the bay leaves, flour and tomato purée and cook on a low heat for a minute or so, stirring every so often.

Slowly stir in the white wine and a few ladlefuls of the stock from the pan the lamb is in, simmer gently until the hour is up on the lamb, then empty the contents of the pan into the lamb pot, season and simmer for about another hour or until the lamb is tender.

If the sauce is not thick enough then remove the pieces of lamb and simmer the sauce until it has thickened and return the lamb to the pan.

Mix the orange, lemon, capers and parsley together. Serve the stew with polenta or mash and scatter the orange mixture over.

Anya Gallaccio is a Scottish artist who was a 2003 Turner Prize nominee

The Magic of Mushrooms by Tim Noble and Sue Webster

Serves 4

Tim Noble and Sue Webster are vegetarians – and they have their own little smallholding down in the country where they like to go to escape from London at the weekends.

Sue says: "Here's a little something we like to rustle up while frolicking on our land, Folly Acres, in the Slad Valley of Gloucestershire where mushrooms grow wild atop Honey Hill – if you're lucky enough to catch 'em emerge at the break of day.

"The ground is moist this time of year and so there are usually plenty of edible mushrooms growing wild deep in the woods ... but beware: the novice should remember that there are bold mushroom hunters and old mushroom hunters but no bold old mushroom hunters – so begin your collecting with the safe and the obvious."

For the polenta

A pint of milk (570ml)
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed with your own bare hands
A pinch of salt and some freshly ground white pepper
A bay leaf
70-80g of quick cooking polenta
100ml double cream
90g chunk of freshly grated Parmesan

To serve

90ml of extra virgin olive oil
About 1kg good quality clean wild mushrooms; 2 more gently peeled and crushed cloves of garlic
90g butter
Another pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper
A generous handful of finely-chopped parsley

Bring the milk to the boil in a thick-bottomed pan, then add the garlic, bay leaf and seasoning. Simmer for about 5 minutes, then whisk in the polenta. Turn the heat down as low as it will go and cook gently for 10 minutes whisking every so often so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. Add the cream and Parmesan, and cook for a further 5 minutes. Pour into a clean pan if necessary, cover and put to one side to keep warm.

Avoid washing the mushrooms if possible as they absorb water like a sponge. If they are dirty, scrape the stalks with a small knife then wash very briefly in a bowl of water and dry immediately on some kitchen paper. Cut the mushrooms into quarters or into finger-width slices.

Heat the olive oil in a thick-bottomed frying pan, then cook the mushrooms, a couple of handfuls at a time for 3 or 4 minutes until nicely coloured. Add the butter, pinches of salt and pepper and garlic and continue to cook for another minute or so, then chuck in the parsley at the last minute. Put a dollop of polenta on a plate then sprinkle over the mushrooms.

Tim Noble and Sue Webster are artists who draw on punk and popular culture in their work

Tracey Emin's chicken soup

Serves 4-6

Tracey always seems to have a roast chicken in her fridge, and a bloody good job too, as they're just what you feel like demolishing after a big night out. She always seems to have caviar in there too, though it's usually well out of date. Whenever she offers me caviar, I always turn the tin upside down to check the use-by date before she poisons me.

After eating her roast chicken, she sensibly does the right thing with the carcass and makes a hearty pot of soup.

1 chicken carcass
1 onion, peeled
2 sticks of celery
6-7 large carrots, peeled
tsp cumin
3 whole tomatoes
2 potatoes, peeled and sliced
1 red onion, finely chopped
4-5 shallots, peeled
A few cloves of garlic
1tbsp sugar

Remove all of the chicken that is left on the carcass, then chop the carcass into 3 or 4 pieces and place in a saucepan of boiling water with a whole peeled onion, the sticks of celery and one of the large peeled carrots.

Add some salt and maybe half a teaspoon of cumin. Bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour.

Strain the stock through a sieve into another pot and add the tomatoes, the rest of the peeled and chopped carrots, a couple of potatoes, peeled and sliced, and any other seasonal vegetables and simmer very gently for about 1-2 hours.

Meanwhile, fry the finely chopped red onion with 4 or 5 chopped shallots and a few cloves of crushed garlic in some olive oil for 3-4 minutes, add a tablespoon of sugar then cook for a few more minutes, turning the onions with a spoon until they are golden.

Add the onion mixture to the soup and continue simmering for another half an hour. Season the soup if necessary and serve. If you want to tart this up a bit, you could add chanterelles or other seasonal wild mushrooms. By the way, Tracey drew the picture below from her hospital bed, so in return we delivered a roast chicken straight over to her.

Tracey Emin's Independent column appears every Thursday

Gillian Wearing's chicken curry

Serves 4

Gillian likes to cook this for her partner Michael Landy after he's spent a long day in the studio. She prefers to use chicken breast for her curry, but I prefer the thighs, as they stay moister when cooked and have more flavour. Gillian's view of herself is that she's a pescatorian who only eats fish that doesn't look like fish, although I'd have to point out that she seems rather partial to chicken too!

So when she comes round for a meal I often end up serving her chicken breast or a fish fillet that has been completely boned and skinned. Here is her recipe – you should be able to find all the ingredients from any good supermarket or your local Indian superstore or market.

16 chicken thighs, boned and skinned or 4 chicken breasts , skinned and cut into four
4 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
A couple of tbsps of ghee
4 tbsp of Patak's Balti chicken paste
1 litre chicken stock
1 can of processed peas
6 dried apricots, soaked and halved
2 tbsp freshly chopped coriander

Marinade the chicken in the balti paste overnight. Melt the ghee in a thick-bottomed pan and gently cook the onions for 4-5 minutes, stirring every so often until soft. Add the chicken and any of the marinade that's left, then the chicken stock and apricots. Season, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 45 minutes until the chicken is tender and the sauce has thickened. Add the coriander, simmer for a couple more minutes and serve with rice.

Gillian Wearing is an English photographer and video artist

Rebecca Warren's mum's tortilla

Serves 4

The sculptor Rebecca Warren was one of the gang who helped to re-launch Scott's restaurant in London – and this is her mum's trademark recipe. Rebecca says: "My mum Encarnacion, who changed her name to Brigida, used to cook us Spanish omelette. This was her highlight dish, as otherwise her cooking was more Wendy Craig from Butterflies than Elizabeth David."

8 medium potatoes, peeled
1 large Spanish onion, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
6 large eggs, beaten
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil

Heat the olive oil in a plate-sized trusty frying pan or a non-stick one. Gently fry the onion and potatoes on a very low heat with a lid on for about 10-15 minutes, seasoning and stirring every so often so they cook evenly without colouring. You may need to add a tablespoon of water every so often to create a little steam and help them cook. Drain the onions and potato in a colander, then mix with the beaten eggs.

Wipe the pan clean and add a little more olive oil. Cook the mixture on a low heat, stirring it a couple of times then let the omelette set in the pan and lightly colour one side. Place a plate over the pan and invert the pan and slide the omelette back into the pan and cook the other side until golden. Slide on to a warmed serving plate and serve immediately; or you can eat it cold.

Rebecca Warren is a sculptor