FEATURE: At Home With Arjé

In The Kitchen With Oli!

The Arjé HOME for CURRENTS Magazine, Part II

As we embrace the season of gatherings, we're excited to share with you a cherished recipe that's become a favorite for our cozy get-togethers at home. Oliver's mussels marinara, long adored by our friends, find their perfect match with just the right sourdough bread, ideal for savoring the sumptuous tomato sauce. This recipe serves beautifully as either an engaging appetizer or a hearty main dish and we love to cook this as guests mingle around the kitchen island! We hope it adds a touch of warmth and joy to your gatherings, just as it does to ours.

MUSSELS MARINARA

Serves 4 people.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ pounds mussels

• 1 or 2 Squid based on the size, legs removed

• 1 dozen cherry tomatoes

• 2 cloves garlic

• ½ medium onion

• 1 small bunch of cilantro

• ½ cup tomato puree (can be store-bought)

• ¼ cup white wine

• 5 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 small dry chili

• Sourdough bread for dipping

Prep:

• Clean the mussels with fresh water
• Clean the squid with fresh waterand slice into rings
• Cut cherry tomatoes into halves
• Dice onion
• Peel and smash garlic

Cook:

• Fill a large lidded pot with olive oil and place on high heat. Add garlic and onions and bring to a boil.
• Add squid. Once cooked, add tomatoes and stir well. Cover the pot and let cook for 5 minutes with the lid on, maintaining high heat.
• Add mussels and wine, stirring well to mix. Cover pot and cook for 3 minutes.
• Stir again and add tomato puree. Cover and cook for 4 minutes.
• While cooking, prepare slices of 1" sourdough bread rounds and toast. We recommend toasting in the oven.
• Remove lid and stir pot well. Add in cilantro—we recommend full leaves with stems removed. Add in dry chili, smashed or crumbled with hands.
• Serve with toasted bread nestled in the side of the pot, half-dipped into the mixture. Enjoy hot!

Setting The Table

In setting our table, each piece is more than just decor; it's an invitation to conversation and curiosity. The smoky allure of our handblown glassware, the tactile story of our hand-carved wood boards, and the intriguing forms of our sculptural candlesticks are all conversation starters in their own right. They're chosen not just for their aesthetic, but for their ability to spark a story, to be picked up, admired, and talked about, making every gathering more memorable.

Moen: I understand that you designed quite a few pieces of furniture in your home. Everything feels perfect for the space. What was your process and did you have any prior furniture-making experience?

Arjé: Thank you for your kind words! The process of designing and making the furniture was an exciting and special journey for us. We had no prior experience in furniture-making before embarking on this project. We are completely self-taught in this regard. Oliver, with his background as a patternmaker, played a pivotal role in guiding the process. He applied the same principles he learned in creating clothing to the process of building furniture. During a “break” in our renovation process—as we focused on the business side of building out Arjé HOME and taking a moment to re-align—Oliver began experimenting with furniture-making. He utilized his equipment and skills to start building the pieces we had sketched out. Initially, we had planned to take our sketches to a wood workshop to create prototypes, but we ended up creating all the first prototypes ourselves. It was an incredible, hands-on process. We learned as we went along, making adjustments and refinements to achieve the desired designs. It was a true labor of love, and we’re thrilled with the results. Designing and making our own furniture allowed us to have complete control over the aesthetics and functionality, ensuring that each piece was tailored perfectly to our space. Overall, the experience of designing and creating our furniture was a deeply rewarding one, and now serves as the foundation of our brand! At our studio in Dumbo, we are producing furniture, working on custom commissions, and creating our new furniture collection.

Vol. II, Pages are a little piece of the new Arjé World in your inbox each week.

 For us, a favorite source of energy is stopping into our local coffee shop each morning. We never know what inspiration we’ll run into or news we’ll overhear- on fashion, culture, design, music, art, travel and restaurants. Consider our newsletter your coffee shop anywhere in the world, where we share our newest loves, our stories on makers and collections, our sounds and tastes and projects. Welcome to the conversation.