The perfect sandwich

My father had many talents. Born in 1919, he was an old-fashioned gentleman who strove all his life to be current. He wore clothes like a dandy - apple green suits with feathered hats in the 1940's, silk shirts deeply unbuttoned with a gold Buddha at his olive-brown neck in the 1970's. When he died my mother counted some 200 shirts in his closet. He wrote radio plays before television was invented, then moved on to directing cult advertising commercials for Coke in the early 80's along with music clips for AC/DC and the first cooking videos for Australia's original celebrity chef, Charmaine Solomon.

He was a hopeless romantic, or else a bit of a Lothario. He was married three times before meeting my mother who was some 30 years younger than him. I was his first child, born when he was well into his 50's.

Dad taught me how to grab onto life, to be excited by it, and to never stop learning. He would sit at the end of my bed, a glass of scotch clinking in his long fingers, and improvise whole essays on art, literature, war, Greek mythology, the colonialistation of Australia (I did very well at school). He spoke fluent French, played piano, was a fine drawer and a writer of many (unpublished) crime novels.

But, foremostly, my father's motto was "I don't eat to live, I live to eat". While my mother churned out beautiful meal after meal all throughout my childhood without much fuss or performance, my father hogged the culinary spotlight, writing an Italian cookbook that took us all over Italy as guests of the best restaurants in each province.

But the one project that he never got off the ground, that was dearest to his gourmet heart, was his plans for a book in search of the perfect sandwich.

A good sandwich is very hard to find. I was lucky enough (or fated, it seems) to work in one of Sydney's most fashionable and favoured cafes - Latteria in Darlinghurst  - back when the press-down sandwich maker was still quite new to Australia. My boss was Italian. He used only the best ingredients: huge rounds of pecorino cheese hung from meat hooks, mayonnaise was made by his mother each night, mellow mortadella was imported from Italy, and the bread came hot each morning in a taxi from the Turkish bakery in Surrey Hills. We offered only 5 things for lunch. But they were 5 perfect sandwiches. And the recipe I am about to give is for the sandwich I ate every single day for over a year when working there. It's all to do with proportion - the proportion of each ingredient is paramount. And good bread of course. I have yet to find a brilliant sandwich in Manchester - it's all industrial mayonnaise slathered around defrosted caterer's chicken strips, tinned corn mushed in with bucket-loads of grey tuna. I'm sure it's different in London. I recently had an amazing courgette, smoked ham and taleggio pizza (which is, in essence, an open sandwich) at Story - a deli that reminded me of the kind of food and atmosphere I miss, that reminded me of what great cities can offer.

So, here it is, for you Dad: my perfect sandwich.

Tuna, pickled veg, parsley and mayonnaise


Best quality tinned tuna - I use Serena in Australia and Rio Mare in the UK
Pickled veg mix - or green olives
Parsley - leaves picked or chopped
Good mayonnaise - Helmans or home-made
A little lemon juice (optional)
Maldon salt, ground black pepper
Either light rye or Turkish pide

Method:

The thing is, not to use too much tuna - just cover the bread in one layer, rather than a great mountain of it., Make sure there is enough mayonnaise to moisten the whole thing, but not to make it gluggy and bland.
You can go crazy with the parsley - no-one ever felt sick from too much parsley. The pickles should be in nice small pieces, dotted evenly amongst it all. This sandwich also works really well in a hot sandwich press - press down hard so that the oil from the tuna and mayonnaise sneaks out a bit and turns the top of the bread gold and crisp.

Saigon monastry tofu and lemongrass

photo by Elaine Dunstan

In the wet season the rain in Ho Chi Minh City comes without warning. One minute the streets are their usual craze of millions of motorbikes beeping and darting like a swarm of crazy wasps, then suddenly, from nowhere, riders and passengers are covered in flimsy plastic cagoules, flapping like so many wings.

I lived in Vietnam with my husband and then two year old daughter for six months some years back. Standing at the balcony of our arrival hotel I lift my girl up to view the street below. Beep beep beep. Scooters perform a  mad dance; the small heads of babies wedged between parents as families of four cram on one bike. Dotted along the wide boulevard is stalls selling everything from noodle soup to t-shirts, cigarettes to french crepes. Women in pyjama suits of wildly patterned nylon crouch on corners peeling pineapples, cooking waffles, shouting 'manicure, pedicure, massage'.  

We have been warned about drinking tap water and the threat of bird flu hovers like some reckless fate - I decide to return to my vegetarian roots. 

We move into a typical two story concrete house with balcony opposite the local Cao Daism monastery. The street is its own kind of village, with laneways worming off from it. A hairdressers is set up in the downstairs of one house, a local kitchen sells breakfast of barbequed pork with fried egg, rice and pickles that the owners spend the rest of each day preparing. They sit outside on upturned buckets, hammering the meat on chopping boards on the path, meticulously sorting through each grain of rice. 

Our landlord and his wife - The Vans - sit in the lounge room on our first day of lease, eating plain rice from small bowls. A neat line of shoes is at the entrance. They have invited all the neighbours to come and have a peek at the newly decorated house and it's foreign tenants. Mrs Van takes me on the back of her bike to the local supermarket and picks Mickey Mouse sheets for Phoebe's bed as a house-warming gift.

The soundtrack of my life in Vietnam will be this: endless piano scales from our neighbour's son, 5 am and 5pm gongs and chants from the monastery, the schwip schwip each morning from the streets outside being swept by all the good wives, the echoing call of street sellers through the winding lanes of our village.

Each morning I share strong sweet coffee with the novice monk Ngoc, as he sits outside stirring huge pots of  beans on an open fire.

Ling, who works in the monastry kitchen, teaches me how to cook like a local; fried rice needs sugar and salt. We go to the supermarket and she chooses the right brand of soy sauce, the better rice. We are joined by Fin who sometimes lives in America and says he will interpret for us because he is my friend and "this is what friends do".

Fin is shocked at how much I buy, the careless way I have shopped. At the counter paying he remarks, "this means nothing to you, the cost of this shopping". I have spent about £15.

At home, Ling cooks tofu on a low flame, slowly turning each piece over with chopsticks, over and over until they are gold. I watch her transfixed, her every move is deliberate and measured. She pounds fat sticks of lemongrass down to a pulp and adds it to the pan with pepper and chilli and delicately places it all on a plate of finely sliced tomato and white onion.

I offer Ling some money to come over once a week and later that day a woman from down the lane comes knocking at my metal gate saying she is a much better cook than Ling and will have the job, and any spare clothes of my daughter's for her grandchild too please. Fin comes back in the evening asking for money for interpreting and gives me Ngoc's shoe size to buy him some new shoes. The Vans soon hear of my domestic industry and send around their daughter to do the ironing and cleaning. She asks for about £4 for a half day's work and yet still there is whispers I am paying too much.

Ngoc disappears. I miss his wide eyes through the gaps in my gate each morning waiting for coffee, his smooth hands reaching into the folds of his pale blue robe for a single orange to offer. I used to count this blessing like a gift from the Buddah himself. I never see him again. I never got him those shoes.

Everywhere I go I sense the subtle shift in posture, as women squatting at their open doors follow my passage through the village. I smile and say hello, rats scurry to drains below.

It's the middle of the day and the heat makes going outside unbearable. Children are being called inside from play. The piano finally ends its flow of rising and falling notes. A padlock clinks shut on our neighbours door. Smoke from the monastery incense makes a lazy arc to sun whitened sky. My daughter sleeps naked on the couch. I sit inside our little concrete house watching white lizards dart on walls. The sound of this silence like solitude, anonymity.

Ling's tofu and lemongrass

(I recently had a great version of this classic Vietnamese vegetarian dish in London, Hoxton at Cay Tre http://www.vietnamesekitchen.co.uk/  Thanks Brian!)

1 packet firm tofu, sliced into pieces about 2cm thick

2 stalks of lemongrass, outer layer peeled off, pounded

1-2 small red chillis chopped

1 tsp tumeric

generous splash of soy sauce

pinch of salt/pepper to taste

1/4 c groundnut oil for frying

2 medium tomatoes thinly sliced

1-2 white salad onions finely sliced

Asian basil leaves for garnish

Method:

Fry the tofu in hot oil, turning with chopsticks until gold on each side. You may want want to pour some oil from the pan off before making the sauce.

Add to the pan the lemongrass, chilli, tumeric, stir a few times then add the soy and sugar and let bubble and combine flavours. About 3 mintues.

Place the tomato and onoin on a flat plate and pour the hot tofu mix on top. Finish with some basil leaves and serve with rice and/or some crunchy spring rolls, iceberg leaves and Vietnamese mint.

An altar to the fig

Lately, the perfect form of figs have been haunting me from their marked-down tubs at Tescos. Turkish sirens reduced to 50p for three. There is something almost taboo about their bruised black skin and fleshy inners. It seems a violation not to buy them before they fade.

Figs are needy little beauties requiring some form of devotion, at the least, some tender respect. The only recipe I knew off the top of my head was a salad made with jamon, butter beans, baby cos and quartered figs. But it's not salad weather.

Last winter, by the end, as I crawled out from the cave of my ubiquitous parka and into the glaring light of the (don't tell anyone) tanning salon for just a few sessions, to get some vitamin D, I stared in horror at my naked reflection. My wobbly tummy and thighs. I vowed not to let this happen again, to stop squirreling the winter away with dashes of cream, mountains of parmesan and mid-morning croissants.

Drizzle drizzle drizzle. My days are again encased by the bleak weeping cloud that is the Manchester sky. What to do with these figs?

A galette. Pastry, really good pastry. It seems like the perfect, decadent yet fragile altar to the sexy little figs. Because I only had 5 figs, I added some slices of apple and that damson jam I made. And already I am dispersing nibbles with sit-ups. One slice equals twenty sit-ups, twenty squats, ten leg lifts.
Perhaps it will work.

(Also, I made the tart with beautiful new season heritage apples as there was enough pastry to make one small tart (the fig) and one large (the apple). I paired the apple galette with some Bon Mamman peach jam.

Fig, apple and damson galette

(To make one large tart, serve with optional sit-ups)

1 1/2 c plain flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon fine polenta

pinch of salt

170g unslated butter cut into small squares and chilled briefly in the freezer (French President is brilliant)

6-7 tablespoons iced water

smear of damson jam (or any you fancy, marmalade would work)

about 10 figs, cut into slim wedges

some slices of apple (with a squeeze lemon juice to prevent browning)

sugar to sprinkle

Method:

Combine the flour, sugar, polenta and salt in a big bowl.

In a food processor, with the blade on, put in flour mix and add butter. Don't mix for too long, just until it forms crumbs, some larger bits of butter can remain.

Put the mix back into the bowl and add the water, one tablespoon at a time, combining with a fork until it forms a dough.

Shape the dough into a ball and cover in plastic and refridgerate for one hour or overnight.

Heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Line a baking tray with parchment.

Roll out your pastry on a lightly floured surface into a roughly round shape about 30cm in diameter.

Transfer the pastry onto the baking tray and smear some jam in a circle leaving a 5cm edge for folding later. 

Working from the outer edge of the jam circle, place slices of fig then apple until you get to the centre.

Fold the edges over and sprinkle the exposed fruit with a little more sugar.

Bake for 40-50 mins.

My favourite little cafe

Like so many people I have the dream of owning a cafe one day; although I'd probably have to open it on some small Mediterranean island customed by locals with relaxed attitudes to consistency. I want the freedom to close for a day at the beach when needed, or to change the menu daily. I would amble to the market in the morning, have coffee and a chat to the charming barissta then reverently choose my produce while planning what to serve. Then I'd cook all day to music and put fresh flowers on the tables. Oh, and I'd only open for lunch: simple, tasty plates like polenta with browned mushrooms and parsley, broadbean pesto on sourdough with some leaves or tuna, green olive and artichoke pasta. My kids could do their homework sat at the bar munching on peaches, drinking hot chocolate in the mild winter.

I made something for lunch yesterday that I'd definitely put on the menu: ricotta and zucchini crostini. I decided to keep the Australian zucchini rather than courgette as I say now in England, because it rhymed nicely with crostini. It takes about 2 minutes to make and yet it comes across as something rather special and refined, the delicate creamy flavour of the ricotta is clean against the crisp richly oiled bread and peppery courgette.

Ricotta and Zucchini Crostini

(serves 4 for lunch or as a classy little starter)

75ml extra-virgin olive oil

8 slices of good bread (I used Chorlton sourdough from The Barbikan deli)

2 medium courgettes thinly sliced on rounds

8 tablespoons ricotta

lots of ground black pepper

a little maldon sea salt

Method:

Heat the oil in a fry pan and add the bread, as many slices as you can fit without overlapping. Cook the bread on both sides until it had turned a pale gold.

Cook the courgette slices in the same oil and season with pepper and salt. Toss pan around so that both sides of the courgette get browned.

Spread the crostini with the ricotta and top with courgette and a little more pepper.

***

Another thing I made recently as part of a tapas with friends was cannelini beans, cornichons, egg and peppers. It was something we had on the tapas sharing plate at De Los Santos and I really like the combination of colours and textures; the smooth round beans (white) and tangy crunchy cornichons (green) melded with crumbly egg (yellow) and a lemon dressing. The addition of (red) peppers was an after-thought of mine as I had a jar bought back from Spain by my friend Marie-Noel.

Cannelini Beans with cornichons, egg and peppers 

(Serve as part of a tapas)

400g tin of cannelini beans drained

2 tablespoons of cornichons thinly sliced

1 organic egg hard boiled

1 red pepper roasted, skin removed and sliced

a dressing of lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil seasoned and shook-up

You can dress the salad a few hours before serving and it keeps in the fridge for a couple of days, but tastes best served at room temperature.

  

A pie for my love

Gareth loves a pie. He welcomes a pie from the oven like a lover in a new dress - a little whistle, a side look of lust. I never trust my ability to make pastry; sometimes my pies look more like an ill-fitting op-shop frock than designer threads, but none the less, my husband still pays his compliments for the effort sincerely made.

But! This time it really, really worked and she was so beautiful I had to take a photo of her.

Gareth bought me the Rick Stein's Spain cookbook as an anniversary gift (the gift that gives back) and so I made an empanada last week. My connection to Spanish cooking is long and impassioned - from the volatile year I spent working in the kitchen of the restaurant owned by my Spanish boyfriend with his mother - to my time cooking with the lovely Diana at her gorgeous tapas restaurant in Melbourne, De Los Santos.

Both experiences brought out what I called my inner mamma. I felt that the food of Spain required in the cooking a kind of inherent spirit, a Latin passion that guided your hands in the measuring and cutting and theatre of the kitchen. In these two all-female kitchens, we talked about love, we cried about the past, we sang to the radio, we sweated and cursed and laughed and worked our arses off. I loved it. I loved the food, which was a revelation of flavours to me, my experience so far being mostly of Italian and South-East Asian flavours. I was astounded at the mix of roasted squash with cumin, of squid with orange, of thick creamy butter beans with slow-cooked rabbit. I made potato tortilla everyday at  De Los Santos and could never resist eating a wedge warm with a slice of our home made bread.

So, anyway, perhaps it's no surprise that my empanada worked (and was admired and devoured by Gareth) - here's the recipe:

Empanada of tuna with tomatoes, peppers and pimenton
(Adapted from Rick Stein's Spain)


310g plain flour
3/4 tsp fast-action dried yeast
1/2 smoked paprika
125ml warm water
60ml olive oil
1 good egg, beaten to glaze
salt

For the filling:


3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion chopped
2 garlic cloves crushed
1 red pepper seeded and chopped
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 400g can chopped tomato
250g best-quality tinned tuna in olive oil (I use Italian tuna, not the horrible grey mush from most supermarket brands)
A handful of green olives
Pepper

Method:

Make your dough by sifting the flour, yeast and paprika into a large mixing bowl, make a well in the centre.
Dissolve the yeast in the water and add to the dry ingredients untill a dough is formed.
Knead on a floured surface for 5 minutes until smooth.
Return to a clean bowl, cover and leave somewhere warm for 1 hour to rise.
For the filling, fry the onion, garlic, red pepper and pimento on a low heat for a long time (15 mins) until soft and sweet but not burnt.
Add the tomatoes and cook gently for a further 25 mins until the sauce is thick, not watery.
Add the tuna and olives to the sauce and turn off, allowing to cool slightly.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius.
Grease a baking tray (I used a flan tin) with some butter.
Bring out the dough and cut the ball in two - one piece slightly larger than the other.
Roll out the larger piece to fit your tray, and place in tray leaving about 1cm overhanging.
Spoon the sauce into the tin and sprinkle over the remaining olive oil.
Roll the second piece of dough out and brush the edges of the pastry in the tin with the egg before laying the lid on.
Pierce the top with a fork and brush with egg.
Bake for 30 mins or until golden.
Serve with love!

Sexy Spanish mushy peas and urban kitchen wonders

The end of summer and rain in England.

A recent holiday back home to Australia ( http://www.takethefamily.com/features/long-haul-family-holidays-byron-bay-australia )  left us cashless and marooned in Manchester for the long six weeks of school holidays. One week - bare shoulders, properly warm and jubilant - I bought a paddling pool for the kids. It was the last day of sun. All the next week it rained and the grey blanket of sky wrapped us in a dreary embrace.

So I watched Rick Stein's Spain and yearned for the Mediterranean. The reliable heat: hot and hotter hours of long days. Finding that groove of holiday where everything tastes better and the light illuminates in a more flattering manner. I seem to cook better and look better in the Med. A stall of sunrich tomatoes and courgettes is enough to inspire a meal. I dress more simply - like my cooking, I need less faffing. It takes a week, but by week two, my husband Gareth and I  imagine ourselves to be kindred locals.

A local served up a great dish of broadbeans with mint and ham to Rick that got me cooking. Broadbeans have just come out of season, so use frozen if there is none to be found, just take their skins off after defrosting in some cold water. To keep things seasonal, I don't see why you can't use runner beans or french beans cut into 2cm lengths. I altered the recipe from the Spanish meat-medley - it had hock and black pudding - which I replaced with panchetta cubes as I never like to mix meats in one day let alone one dish. He used fresh garlic and included the green top part of the bulb - I found fresh garlic at the organic grocer - it's subtly different in flavour but has a really different texture, the cloves covered in a moist skin.

It was the technique of  cooking the beans down in stock with mint that I was curious to try. It was amazing, like sexy mushy peas all silky and minty and we mopped it up with toasted sourdough drizzled with some extra virgin olive oil.

Broadbeans with panchetta and mint
(Serves 2 for a rustic dinner)

2 tbs olive oil
150g panchetta cubes
2 white salad onions roughly chopped
3 big cloves of garlic chopped
2 cups of podded, skinned, fresh broadbeans (blanch the fresh beans for a few minutes then peel off the outer skin)
2 generous sprigs of mint
2-3 cups of veg or chicken stock
sea salt and  black pepper

Method:

In a heavy-bottomed fry pan fry the panchetta on a medium heat in oil till golden, then add the onion and cook till softened before adding the garlic.

When the garlic has released it's scent and softened but not browned add the broadbeans and stir to coat with the flavours of the oil.

Pour in the veg or chicken stock, add the mint and season (be careful with the salt as panchetta and stock can be very salty already). Turn the heat to high and let bubble for a minute before turning the heat to the lowest temperature and putting on a tight fitting lid (or covering with foil).

Let cook for about 20 minutes unitill the broadbeands are really soft and almost collapsing. Serve hot on toasted sourdough brushed or drizzled with oil and a crispy salad and/or fried potatoes.

                                                                           ***      

I am amazed at how much food is growing in Manchester. It's like being pregnant and suddenly so is every other woman - once I saw one tree groaning with apples in a neighbours garden - I began to see fruit and food growing everywhere. Rosemary, apples, pears, wild mushrooms sprouting in moist parks, cabbages in council planters, green tomatoes destined for chutney.

Gareth and the kids love scrambling around the garden of the abandoned house next door to us. They usually come back screaming from bramble pricks or ant bites or nettle stings, but last week they came bearing a bucket of mottled skinned pears. River, our four year old boy, ate them peeled and cut up, one after another; loving them perhaps in that way that eating something you have grown or picked or even just seen growing makes the experience richer, better, fascinating - so removed from the source are we normally.

Eventually, he tired of pears and so I decided to make a cake. It's an Italian recipe and can be used with plums too. Speaking of plums, I MADE JAM!

In my effort to be more like Jane, I used the bag of damsons we picked from her tree at Rushall House and made my first ever jam. It was easy: cook the plums, strain the flesh from the stones, add equal quantities of sugar to fruit and cook again with some lemon zest till it's thick enough to resist sliding down a plate...nice.

Italian pear cake

About 5 pears peeled and quartered
150g melted butter plus some for greasing
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
150g castor sugar
250g plain flour sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk

Method:

Heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Grease a springfoam cake tin with butter.
Put eggs, vanilla and sugar in a bowl and whip until voluminous, pale and fluffy, pour in melted butter and fold in.
Add flour and baking powder and mix gently with a wooden spoon to incorporate.
Put half the pears on the bottom of the tin, scrape cake mix over them, top with remaining pears.
Bake for about 1 hour or until golden and set.
Serve with pouring cream.

Aunty Vicki's first food memory

When I first moved to Melbourne from Sydney, 23 and reeling from a dramatic relationship break-up, it was Aunty Vicki who met me at the train station and wrapped me in her navy-coat warmth, smelling like Chanel, smelling like safety. She drove from Flinder's Street through South Melbourne and down the wide plane-tree lined boulevades to St Kilda. I remember her plum-red lipstick, the fat toast we shared in a graffiti-walled cafe, and that the sky was low and grey. Palm tree leaves whipped about in the salty air and yet there was no waves on the bay - the silver water seemed eeriely still, like a dream. I was used to the crash of white spray on cliff, azure blue above me and a glaring horizon. Here the horizon was contained by the bay's edges and I felt suffocated, compressed by the landscape and grief.

Vicki knows the power of food to heal and connect. She used food to draw me in to her heart and to inspire in me a love of Melbourne.  She took me to Acland Street for European cakes, Chinta Ria for laksa, Brunswick Street for coffee, Marios for pasta, her local Turkish takeaway for carrot dip and fresh pide and over time I did grow to love Melbourne despite my heartache and it's uncanny reflection in the heavy, melancholic skies.

I moved in to a share house with an ensemble cast of writers, herbalists and performers. About once a week I would go to Vicki's for dinner, opening her pantry, then fridge on my arrival. The sight of her neat jars of herbs, expensive olive oils and stocks of pasta was soothing, like a safety net beneath the whizzing trapeze of my life.

Vicki is famous for many dishes - her individual chicken pies, Vietnamese coleslaw, spicy tomato pasta with crispy salami, her myriad of ways to cook the fresh fish Uncle Roger brings home from the Victoria Market on Fridays -  but when you say "Vicki's famous..." it is usually followed by "plum tart".

She told me the story behind her famous plum tart while we pitted persham yellows from Jane's tree that lovely weekend at the end of August, that now feels like it belonged to a different life, as I sit here in my terraced house in South Manchester on a blustery September morning.

Plum Tart

A little girl called Marion lived across the road from us and used to play with us in the afternoons. Mum had a plum tree but didn't know what to do with all the plums (she was never much of a cook) and so she would give them to Marion's mum Claire. 
Claire was a holocaust survivor from Germany; she made this tart from the plums and would give it to mum as thanks - after the war the whole street would swap fruit and veg.
I loved this tart, it is my first real food memory, my first taste of European cooking, but I never got the recipe off her.
25 years later I was on the North Balwyn tram when I spotted her, Claire. She remembered me and, even though I had only three stops to go, I went to the end of the line with her and got this recipe. I have been cooking it ever since.

200g unsalted butter
6 tblsp castor sugar
2 egg yolks
3 tablespoon plain flour
1 tablespoon self-raising flour
1 kg plums - a dry variety
3 tablespoons golden castor sugar

Method:

Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Cream  the butter and the 6 tablespoons of castor sugar in a food processor.

Add the eggs, incorporate, then add the flours in the proportion of 3 plain  to 1 self raising untill the mixture balls but remains glossy and moist.

When I saw Vicki make this pastry, she ended up using 9 tablespoons of plain flour and 3 self-raising.

Put the ball of pastry straight into a 20cm flan tin and spread out with your fingers to the edges, making it as even as possible.

Chill in the fridge while you pit and quarter the plums.

Place the plums on the pastry in a neat spiral, starting at the outer edges of the tin.

Sprinkle with golden castor sugar.

Bake at 180 for approx. 50 mins or untill the pastry is golden and set - check at the edges.

Rushall House - the last hurrah of summer

 

My Aunt Vicki and Uncle Roger are over from Australia. We all converge for a long weekend at the end of summer at their friends Jane and Martin's house in country Norfolk. We love Rushall House. It's huge and elegant and like nothing we ever knew in Australia - stately with rambling gardens of roses and fruit trees - properly posh but in that easy way that's more bohemian and welcoming than austere and stand-offish.

A life-time spent living in urban landscapes makes me a gawping tourist to Jane's world. She breeds chickens and makes jam from her fruit trees. She grows all kinds of vegetables and collects French antiques that she restores, refurbishes and sells from a converted outhouse shop called Vintage Vanilla. She also runs the house as an occasional B&B when she's not already full of extended family or friends from London, all converging in the aga-warmed kitchen drinking wine and eating meandering meals of home-grown produce.

Gareth, the children and I spend an hour picking raspberries one afternoon, carefully selecting the deep crimson ones from the iridescent reds that are not yet ripe. They drop from their stems with the slightest of tugs; cradled in an open palm, they feel like precious jewels, sensuous and fragrant, leaking red juices like blood. Redcurrants on neighbouring bushes are as soft as tears; such delicacy required to pick them. After dinner that evening we devoured the berries with slices of nectarine and splashed with amaretto - it was an inspired combination.

Jane has basil growing in great abundance and already has jars and jars of pesto in her fridge from this year's crop. The secret to good basil is a warm summer she says, start the seeds indoors then lots of sun and only harvest them when the leaves are dry - not in the morning when the dew is still on them. She also makes a pesto from parsley and walnuts that she smears on grilled fish or serves with angel hair pasta

On the holiday Monday we have a lunch of mugs of courgette, potato and spinach soup, radicchio and avocado salad, chicken liver pate, preserved artichokes and olive tapenade with warmed pittas. Virtually everything had come from the garden, including the onions for the soup that Jane harvests each summer and stores in string sacks in the light of the greenhouse - onions grow again in the dark. One year's harvests lasts stored like this and serves them for another whole year.

Jane made a delicious damson cheese spiced with allspice she served after dinner one night with various cheeses and biscuits. She also makes damson icecream and jam.
One day I will be more like Jane.


Damson Cheese


2.75kg damsons
300 ml water
2 teaspoons ground allspice
sugar


Method:

Wash the damsons and place them in a preserving pan with the water. Cover the pan and simmer gently until the fruit is tender.
Sieve the fruit to form a puree then measure it.
Allow 450g of sugar to each 450g of pulp.
Return the pulp and the sugar to the pan and cook, stirring all the time until it is very thick.
Bottle in sterilised jars, cover and label. Will yield about 2.75kg.
(Other suitable fruits are blackcurrants, gooseberries and quinces.)
Serve with cheeses or cold meats.