Summer ingredients

July 20, 2008

I can’t believe the slugs and snails did not get their evil way and decimate the beans. But then I did keep an eagle eye on the fledging shoots, crunching any marauders, as they budded and curled skywards up the bean sticks. In the last weeks the flowers have dropped to leave nascent pods which are swelling fast as a result of the downpours we’ve been having. There are even enough fully formed to pick a first batch and eat steamed with melted butter, garlic and lemon juice.

The rocket is also doing well, and the bitter sharp taste transports me to the whitewashed Italian house where as a lily white 18 year old ‘exchange’, I picked it for the first time from a herb patch outside the back door. I learnt to toss it in golden olive oil for salad that the family ate after the daily plates of pasta and grilled meat.
The southern tradition of whole families sitting down to bond and eat proper meals is something that seems to be on the wane in our takeaway culture. But after sitting through the food, family, failure and friction within France’s community of North African emigres in the film Couscous (La Graine Et Le Mulet) I began to think that maybe the odd tv dinner wasn’t so sad after all. I would recommend this film though, for its mouthwatering visuals of the preparations for fish couscous: gorgeous steaming piles of fluffy grains, spicy sauces, firm fleshy mullet and wonderful cooking pots.

A quick but delicious way to eat couscous is to combine the cooked grain with olive oil, chopped mint, parsley, spring onion, and grilled peppers. This is a sublime salad to eat with meat or fish, or on its own.

I’m an alfresco girl, even if the weather looks set to be indifferent for a party this weekend. Once I gather a few colourful cushions and fabrics around the table, a string of lanterns, shawls to keep warm and something fizzy to drink, I will imagine the mood to be more Tangier than Tulse Hill.

The swimming pool season

There’s not much time to write. It’s over 70 degrees, the sun is shining, the sky cloudless and the lido’s cool ripply blue water beckons. The government wants free swimming for all – it’s already part of the primary curriculum – but there aren’t enough outdoor watery oases like the Brockwell Park Lido where swimmers from 0 to 90 plus can get fit and chill out. My season ticket here is worth more than a hundred pairs of Manolos in terms of well being. A few lengths and a dry-off in the sun are guaranteed to remove the jitters or bad humour. Looking at all the blue below and above my breast stroke makes me think of what a brilliantly versatile and natural decorating tool this colour is.

From deep hyacinth to very pale ice, blue comes in a myriad of shades. I think of how blue turns to lavender when mixed with violet, or turquoise when blended with green. Take a cue from the fashion world and look at the soft blues that characterise denim as it is washed and worn. These shades adapt as easily to home furnishings as they do to jeans and jackets.
My favourite blue dream-scheme is walls in sludgy grey/blue offset with white painted furniture, blinds in blue and white ticking and bowls of cut herbs. Make your own blue story by adding blue pigment to a white base, like my friend Hermione who repaints her beach house in Portugal, every spring with limewash tinted with blue.

And as it’s the time of year for alfresco feasts, a blue and white checked tablecloth is an important part of my kit, whether it’s to spread out at a picnic on the beach, or to make the table look jolly for an everyday meal. Blue and white checks are prosaic, pragmatic and never look out of place.

Good things

We’re back home: back to our own beds, and garden with the beans now curling wildly up their wigwam supports. It’s odd to imagine that 10 days ago the house was heaving with 40 crew and cast, false doors and walls, towering light arrangements, and a forest of christmas trees in the front garden. Like the fair that came to town and left, all that remains are some faded patches on the grass and a signed mugshot of Jack Dee pinned to the fridge.
The garden tasks have built up over five weeks of plunging downpours and bursts of heat. I’m deadheading roses (my favourite scented and blousy Gertrude Jekyll blooms), watering, and planting, rather late, several different varieties of tomatoes. I’d forgotten about the compost we’ve been making in our free Lambeth Council compost bin. It was a bit of a bonus, on top of the sunniness of the morning, to open up the hatch at the bottom and find an earthy smelling and glistening mush of fruit and vegetable matter to dig in for a hopefully bumper crop of Alicantes and Sweet Millions.

The family’s linen is in need of some maintenance. I shall have to put off excuses and deal with it. I try to follow the example of my Grandma Phyllis, who emerged intact from her devastated cellar, after a Luftwafe bombing raid over Clapham Junction and became, by necessity as the family lost their home and most of their belongings, a devoted make-do-and-mender. She sucked on Murray Mints as she repaired worn sheets by folding and cutting away the thin part. The cut edges would then be hemmed on her rackerty Singer. The sheet ends up with a central seam, but that matters little when there will be a good deal more wear in it.
Dyeing worn and grungy bedlinen is another good way to extend its servitude. I have found that the colours by Dylon last well; see the hot pink dyed sheet here, from Decorating easy. I know that dyeing with chemicals is not particularly eco-friendly, but on the other hand the amounts needed for this sort of home dyeing are small, and it’s more sustainable to eke out the usefulness of an item rather than chuck it.

There’s always someone trying to spoil the fun, like the government study which showed that 90 percent of the fruit from national retailers and pick your own farms was covered in pesticides. It’s not going to stop me from buying punnets of juicy sweet English strawberries from my local high street stall. I’ll give them a good wash though, before piling them onto a meringue base with blueberries, and any other summer berries I can find. I am thinking though, that it’s time to invest in an organic boxed delivery from Riverford Organics, which sound brilliant because bundles of asparagus, rhubarb, or whatever arrive just hours after they’ve been cut.

More thrifty decoration

I rise to the challenge of coming up with homespun, simple ,and cheap ideas. It’s needs must, but somehow more rewarding than pointing like a Carl Sarkozy/Bruni and saying I’ll have that, that, and….. that, regardless of price. Maybe if the boot was on the other foot, and I was able to waft around the Conran shop picking out anything I fancied I might think differently. But for now, I’m happy to go the inventive route to keep my home looking and feeling good.

The really important part of being thrifty and creative, and one important rule that I impress upon clients, is to make the most of what you’ve got, rather than always feeling that NEW, NEW, NEW, is the way to decorate. Take my rather worn and shabby chesterfield, that looks far from chic . I have debated it’s removal many times but it too comfortable , and I figure that it’s worth buying eight metres of good linen for a loose cover and facelift. Similarly, you can do wondrous things with muslin, like making an underskirt for a dressing table, which not only hides clutter but makes an ordinary piece of furniture look more quirky and individual.

Simple detail is another way of showing your creative spin around the home, and it can make an enormous difference for little time and effort. See how this scalloped edging in contrasting plain linen on a basic check blind looks pretty and homely.

The film crew vacates this weekend (I hope the cat’s not become precious, Go Cat won’t be good enough, since her filming debut) and we’re allowed back home. Being away for a month has given me time to reassess. I’ve decided that because no one really ‘sits’ in the sitting part of our knock-through kitchen and living space, I will remove the armchairs and bring in the large kitchen table. We will then have a much larger and more relaxed eating area, rather than being too close to the cooking action and piles of washing up. In turn the big armchairs will go up to the 19 year old’s lair at the top of the house. The kitchen itself, will be freed up for the business of cooking without interruption.
A good opportunity then to throw together some tasty goats cheese and red onion tarts. I have developed rather a pasion for them since I was put down for making half a dozen for our annual street get together. It was good to enjoy some neighbourly bonding and eat great food, partying on the grass around a long table with flickering candles, until the early hours. Suburbia can, indeed, be blissful.

Flower power

Florals are back, proclaim the catwalk shows for autumn and winter 2008. As far as I’m concerned though they’ve never been out. My childhood bedroom was papered in a groovy sixties’ daisy print, and as teenagers my friends and I wafted around in sprigged Laura Ashley smocks with Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark side of the moon’ as the soundtrack.
I always have a dose of florals around the house: a fabulous flowery plastic cloth that looks good for teatime or faded floral print cushions to go with striped ticking on a sofa. You could take a tip from the society decorator Nancy Lancaster who let her chintzes weather in the sun and rain. Not so practical in the average back garden me thinks. I’d rather hunt for authentically aged florals in a secondhand shop. Oxfam might yield somebody’s cast-off Sanderson slip covers, or a pair of curtains,in a classic Colefax and Fowler motif.
Some of my favourite prints are Liberty tana lawns. They’re expensive but I think it’s worth splashing out on a few beautiful things. As a student I worked at Liberty and stockpiled remnants that we were allowed to buy on discount. I’ve used them over the years to make pillowcases, dresses for dolls, or scarves for the beach. The Hille chair below, another junk shop find, has been given a revamp with just one and half metres of Liberty print. See how to make this really simple slip-on cover in my book Sew Easy.

It may be early June but damp pavements and low skies don’t bode well for this week’s planned pool excursions. Never mind, I shall pretend that its like a hot morning in Spain and make toasted bread rubbed with garlic, oil and fresh tomato(scoop out and use the insides only). I use a really good nutty extra virgin olive oil which I keep in a little metal jug with a thin spout, a basic kitchen staple from any Spanish hardware shop.
Photo by Vanessa Courtier.

On the move

We’ve moved out and Jack Dee the comedian has moved in. For the next month our house is his and the tv crew’s filming his next Lead Balloon series. I must confess I’ve never seen it (I’m an early lights out girl) but I shall be all agog to spot my cooker when it’s aired.
I go back to collect post and nurture the beans, which seem to have won over the slugs. Bea the cat has stayed and infiltrated the set. No one seems to mind. There’s talk of writing her in. My bedroom is ‘make-up’, top room ‘wardrobe’, (easy chair and rails of badly patterned shirts for Dee’s character, a successful but weary standup), and gap year son’s unusually pristine lair, ‘office’.
The Pure Style house is often the back drop for magazine shoots; it works hard for a living. We’re well drilled though. The practice of living with less means packing up for these invasions is far less fraught. So is the unpacking at the other end. Our temporary home is in leafy Dulwich where ‘yummy mummies’ steer (or jog behind) Bugaboo prams over manicured playing fields. Just as a huge glass extension seems to be the height of social and cultural acheivement round here, the Bugaboo (the price of a decent secondhand car) is the equivalent for aspiring parents. Give me a Maclaren fold-up job, that is light portable and relatively cheap. Mine survived three kids, and years of uneven City pavements without even losing a wheel. The commodification of childhood – ¬¨¬£1,000 nappy bags, and private members clubs for toddlers – is just as unsettling as the feeling that we’re not good enough unless our homes are perfect showhouses.
There’s never going to be a headline that says ‘your baby lying down and looking at a rose is great’. There’s nothing to sell in it. Similarly telling the consumer that he or she doesn’t need state of the art power showers, and expensive wallpaper with giant prints isn’t good for profits. The important thing is to resist the ads and dig your own path.

I like a good potter in the shed. We inherited ours from Mrs.Campbell, who took tea and cucumber sandwiches in it on pre-war summer afternoons. The live-in maid, sent postcards of her visits to Rhyll and slept in what is a.k.a Jack Dee’s ‘wardrobe’. The shed is now home to bean sticks, flower pots, and trays for drying apples. I painted it in a soft bean green to make it blend with the greens in the garden. Maybe over the summer I’ll clear it and write there like George Bernard Shaw did in his little revolving writing house at Shaw’s Corner, one of The National Trust’s properties. See custom built wooden summerhouses inspired by Shaw’s at www.scottsofthrapston.co.uk.

The weather’s perking up. I can’t wait to swim at the Brockwell park Lido, a thirties’ art deco outdoor pool recently given a fantastic refurbishment. It’s time, too, for asparagus, and summery salads like this simple nicoise-inspired arrangement. It’s really tasty and a good idea if you have tins of tuna in the house, and don’t know what to do with them. Amalgamate pieces of cooked potato, tomato, a few anchovies, a can of tuna and chopped spring onions. Serve with some homemade mayonnaise, or a simple dressing.

Going Dutch

Now I know it was worth numb fingers planting out my bulb order one grim darkening afternoon last November. Leggy, feathery white and deep lipstick pink (officially Blue) Parrot tulips are making gorgeous splashes of colour in the garden.

I’m the kind of gardener who goes for a show of less rather than more blooms, appreciating the individual beauty of curled papery petals and slender stems planted sparingly. The effect is airy and delicate. ¬¨¬£25, my budget for 70 odd bulbs to be spread over a wide area, was also a factor in my pared down planting scheme.

This wouldn’t have even bought a papery sliver of bulb skin in the seventeenth century when Tulipomania swept Holland, and a single bulb could cost as much as 1,000 Dutch Florins (the average yearly wage was 150 florins). Like a Prada handbag of the time, a highly prized single stem would be shown off in a specially designed tulipiere in Amsterdam canal houses and other upwardly mobile households.

My train of thought wanders now to Maren our Dutch lodger who played a mean piano and baked Dutch apple pie. Not only does this confection look good it tastes heavenly:
For the crust:
Mix l cup flour with l cup caster sugar.
Cut butter into the flour and add l beaten egg.
Cut enough dough for the lattice on the pie.
Roll the rest of the dough to about 4mm thickness,
to fit a 9 inch greased cake tin.
Roll out 8-10 strips.

For the filling:
Peel and slice 8 medium apples.
Add 3 tablesoons flour, half cup caster sugar, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, and 1 cup raisins. Mix well. Add to the pastry lined tin.
Brush 4 tablespoons apricot jam over the top of the filling.
Arrange the strips in a lattice shape.
Brush with milk.
Bake at 400 f for about 10-15 minutes, and turn turn to 375C for another 45 minutes or until the pie if golden brown.
Eat hot or cold.

PS If anyone has parrot tulip recommendations. Let me know

Spring greens

At last the clocks have gone forward. I’ve got a spring in my step like the milky lambs, part of the four legged contingent, at Alice Douglas’ gorgeous b and b where we spent a few days at Easter. It was worth the slog driving to Snowdonia in North Wales and her cleverly converted chapel. Even the urban teenagers coped with long walks in blustery wilderness when compensated by Alice’s snug beds, underfloor heating, hairdryers and, outside, steaming hob tub with a vast mountain panorama.

Now that the evenings are light there’s time to spring clean in the garden: clearing dead leaves, weeding, and setting up my wigwams of peasticks. The latter are for French beans (soaked in water to help germination) which I’ve just planted in trays of rich compost, along with rocket, basil, leeks, and sweet pea seeds. I’m not a particularly organised gardener but my pick from the seed packet displays usually include the above because they’re usually successful . That is, of course, the dreaded slugs do not get their way. This year I’m going to use the beer trap method: digging in shallow plastic containers and filling them with beer into which the slugs will fall on their way to my precious young seedlings. The only other alternative is organic slug pellets but the slugs here in south west London seem to have quite a thirst for a traditional pint, judging by the daily catch last summer.

For conquering Welsh mountains we set out each morning with a picnic stuffed in a rucksack; smoked salmon sandwiches with a thick slab of oat flapjack and a clutch of sweet clementines. These were picnics eaten on the move. It was too cold to sit still and admire the view. I will picnic anywhere but it is releasing to lie under blossom soaking up some early spring rays. If the weather is fine at the weekend we’ll picnic in the local park which is blooming and budding and all over. I’ll load up a basket with the papers, flask of coffee, plates(only if I can be bothered) bread filled with feta, cucumber and basil and whatever is left of the chocolate cake made for my son before he leaves on his gap year travels.

It’s one thing to perk up an outfit with a little cardigan or scarf say, in this spring’s fresh lime green or powder blue. (The local charity shop has been looking quite stylish lately with a window done out in a great green theme, so I might head off there for a snoop).
Doing something about your interior is another matter. I don’t have the cash for a whole new spring look, and neither would it feel right changing my home with the seasons. I like the familarity of all year round colours and textures. However, spring time is appropriate for a general refreshing such as cleaning the windows, washing loose covers, dusting off blinds, filling jugs with hyacinths or daffs. And if you want to inject some fresh colour without spending a fortune, why not run up a simple chair cover in lightweight cotton like the floaty little number show below from my book Sew Easy. I recommend John Lewis for a good choice in fabrics.

Shortbread and beans

This has been a week of a million loose ends and not enough time to tie them up. With such a shortage of minutes I rely even more on the throw-it-together school of cookery. There’s a perfumed aunt who’s coming to tea and I think she will approve of some really easy peasy buttery shortbread:

• 100g butter
• 50g caster sugar,
• 150g plain flour

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy. Mix in the flour and then using finger tips, shape into a smooth ball. Press into a greased 18cm sponge tin. Prick all over with a fork. Bake for about 40-45 minutes. Cut into triangles while still warm and allowto cool in the tin.

It’s so good to hear from other bloggers and especially maria who has just written a glowing piece about Pure Style. I was in one of those frazzled moments before her email pinged into my inbox and now my spirits are soaring!

I read that house prices in Britain are tumbling, and although I wouldn’t say that it is altogether a good thing, at least it might stop the endless obsession with property prices that has dominated dinner party and school gate gossip over the last few years. Rather than endlessly aspiring maybe we should make the most of our homes, enjoying them, even, rather than treating them as assets.

Now that Spring has sprung and sunlight is dancing all over the house again I can see just how grimy and grubby the walls are. Ok they’re white and what should I expect in a house with children and animals? But as I explain in my books, there’s no need for our homes to be perfect little domestic palaces. Who wants to be some kind of Stepford wife? I don’t. Nor do you. However, like re-touching grey roots, a spot of simple spring cleaning make can make a big difference. Nothing too drastic, though:

• fill a bucket with hot water and a little detergent and sponge all paint surfaces (my walls sparkle after a good sponge down)
• use vinegar to clean glass and mirrors
• wash all your cotton cushions and covers
• hoover or sweep the floors
• fling the windows open and let in the sweet spring air

The bean seeds I introduced you to last week have sprouted and filled their trays like a roomful of gangly teenagers. I’ve potted them on and now that the weather’s warmer have taken them out to the little shed at the bottom of the garden. It’s light and dry in there and the cooler conditions will stop them from getting too leggy and unruly which they were in danger of becoming if left to their own devices in the utility room.
It’s all hotting up now on the growing front and I know that the coming weekend will find me digging, weeding and eating shortbread to keep me going.

Frills and bread

Limp leaves, like chickens’ feet, unfurling on the bare horse chestnuts outside my window will soon be a green canvas with bobbing white candles. Year after year, season after season, nature gets it right and is reassuring.
I suppose I attempt a kind of domestic timelessness, a sense of continuity in the things that I look at, sit upon, or touch.
Simplicity is what I’m after, no great fashion statment that wears out after six months. The detail is important: although plainness has it’s own beauty there’s a difference between this and the tweak that makes an object a little more edgy, a sliver more stylish.
A good example is the loose chair cover. A basic pull-on no-nonsense white cotton cover is pretty good to look at in its own right. But when you add a perky boxed-pleat frill (see below in cotton by Romo fabrics) so that it skims the ‘kneeline’ of the chair leg, a perfectly acceptable chair cover becomes a rather smart and flirty one. A classic look that will go on for ages.

Whilst house prices are falling, bread prices are rising. Along with getting to know your tool box, now it’s not worth moving (see Decorating Easy for ideas) how about some thrifty breadmaking? This is my never fail bread recipe:
To make a couple of small loaves, combine 500g organic strong wholemeal bread flour, ltsp salt, ltsp sugar, ltsp of quick yeast (you don’t have to mix it up with water and sugar beforehand). Mix in 275ml hand hot water, ltbsp vegetable oil, and bring the dough together with your hands. Turn the dough out on to a floured surface, and punch and pull it vigorously for 5-10 minutes.
Cut, shape and place the dough in oiled tins, or shape into one piece or smaller balls for bread rolls.
Cover and leave to rise in a warm place without draughts, until it has doubled in size (anything from 25 minutes to 45 minutes – even an hour if it’s cool). Bake in a hot oven preheated to 220C for 35-45 minutes. The bread is ready if it sounds hollow when the base is lightly tapped.

This year a surprising number of instantly recognisable designs are enjoying significiant birthdays from Polo Mints,60 to Toblerone,100. On the design front, one of my favourite kitchen tools, the Moka Express by AlfonsoBialetti has been brewing the perfect cup of coffee for 75 years. I can’t think of a more efficient and simple way to get a caffeine hit first thing. If you can’t find the authentic Italian number, this kind of stove top coffee pot is on sale in hardware shops all over Europe and beyond.

Photos 1 and 2 by Vanessa Courtier