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.