The sky is blue, the garden is glistening.  It seems to be a new country  after days  of sodden grey clouds.   So good because  I have a visit from Masaki and the editorial   team at the Japanese magazine Lee,  a widely read title about simple, practical living  for Japanese  women of all ages. What fun it's going to be to spend the day with people who get just as excited about a piece of white linen or a single pink rose bloom as I do.  They're shooting a Pure Style story which will be coming out next spring - but in the meantime here are my  shots from the day.  I'm planning my Tokyo trip already! There's walnut shortbread   in the tin, (see above)  lemon and ginger tea, and wait for it,  lunch in the garden  an  occasion which has occurred precisely twice this year because of the unrelenting downpours.  But first, a quick tour of outdoor Brixton farmer's Market where we are met with  glossy piles of herbs, broad beans, quineafowl eggs, strawberries, asparagus and rhubarb  all looking even more tempting as the sun shines  on the weekly  market scene  running  alongside the railway arches. Especially good is  Akiki for  wild rocket and salad leaves.  Hey, I could almost be  wandering between the flapping awnings e in Olhao's  Saturday market so fragrant and colourful is the sight before me.  















    Above,  Brixton Farmers' market specials: herbs, garlic, wild rocket, and guinea fowl eggs. My  simple summer lunch menu, Nibbles: cheese straws Main: cod (from Pauline the  Norwood High Street fishmonger)  fried in the pan with  butter, garlic lemon parsley and capers; panzanella, tomato and bread salad roast  beetroot, lentil  and  goats cheese  salad Pudding: Strawberry water ice and walnut shortbread    



Cheese Straws 50g plain flour ;  50g butter ; few grains cayenne or Pimenton pepper; 75g  very strong grated cheese ( I use Gould's extra tasty Cheddar- and it really is ) ; 1 egg yolk Sift the flour and seasonings together and rub in the fat. Add the cheese, mix to a stiff dough with the egg yolk, adding a little cold water if necessary. Roll out and cut into pieces . Place on baking trays and cook in a hot oven watching very carefully as they burn easily. Serve hot or cold- but they're cheesier hot.  



 



  Roast beetroot , lentil and goats' cheese salad (recipe from  my cookbook). 500g beetroot, 200g cooked lentils , 2 red onions finely chopped, 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar, 4 tbsp extra virgin  olive oil, 100g goats' cheese crumbled, handful mint leaves, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. To roats the bettroot: Put in a roasting pan  cover with foil and pace in an oven preheated to 190C for about 45 minutes. Top and tail the knobbly ends, then peel the beetroot and cut into chunks. Combine all the above ingredients, season to taste    



  Panzanella (also from the cookbook) 200g stale country bread; 1kg ripe tomatoes torn not chopped; half cucumber , 1 onion , handful of parsley,  2 garlic cloves, all roughly chopped. 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar; sea salt and freshly ground black pepper Tear the bread into chunks and put in a bowl with the tomatoes. Mix and leave for 15 minutes to let the bread absorb the tomato juices. Add all the other ingredients and serve.  



 



    Masaki  tucks in to lunch- elderflower cordial made by my sister in law in the foreground.  



    Strawberry water ice: l kg strawberries, juice of  a lemon,  half pint water, 200g sugar Hull and Puree the strawberries, press through a sieve. Make a syrup of the sugar and water by boiling them together for five minutes or so. When cold add it to the strawberry pulp. Squeeze in the lemon juice. Chill the mixture before freezing.

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    Norman, David, Mario, Linda, Naomi, and  Kate are  just some of the fashion glitterati  that ex Harpers and Queen and Vogue fashion editor Vanessa de Lisle has worked with over several  decades. When she's not rehabilitating clients' wardrobes through her consultancy The fashion cupboard,  Vanessa's green fingers (as creative as her eye for fashion) are busy in her pint sized South London back garden. A Saturday evening in June is the perfect time to pedal over the hill to see what delights Vanessa has been nurturing. " It's over its best' she says  self deprecatingly  as I drink in the rich and luxuriant visuals: tumbling roses, a giant pot of lilies, topiary bays,  peonies,  aliums,  foxgloves, a lush  grapevine for shade,  York stone flags punctuated with  mint and  alchemilla, and, as backdrop,  fencing and trellis painted in soft muted green.   'Small scale grandeur meets  cottage garden'  I think to myself, and so not past it.  It's interesting to hear that Vanessa's original vision was for  a  courtyard Mediterranean feel " Of course I only have one sunny side,  so haven't been able to do pairs, which is what I like.  All the greys and silvers struggle, as do all the white flowers which seem weaker than their colourful cousins. In the end one has to go for what thrives. So it looks more cottagey now with all the usual suspects".    



  " I  fiddle with the garden all the time,  I think a small London garden is so different to a country one.  It's important to keep the bigger things down to size or replace when they get too big, otherwise small gardens get unbalanced with a few huge shrubs and no room for other interesting plants. I try to let all the plants have enough space to show off."   Vanessa de Lisle    



  Above,  Raubritter, a pretty rose with small blosssoms.  



    Above  is  Marie Boisselot '' The whitest of the clematis''  according to Vanessa and  Iceberg  "The default London white rose, unkillable, no scent but works hard for its space and does flower again as prolifically"  she goes on to explain.    



    A hint of pink: Constance Spry , above and below a catwalk slender pinky foxglove .   Vanessa says  "though I have pink roses which I love , all of the herbaceous plants and clematis are blue and white  unless I have a stray fox glove which comes up pink and will be taken out before it seeds"    



  It goes without saying that  Vanessa is  as  good a cook as she is at the fashion and gardening.  We eat roasted  halibut, " from a man who brings it down from the Norfolk coast to the Saturday food market at the local primary school"  with  beans spinach and courgettes. Pudding is  homemade lemon ice cream and  baked rhubarb. With  the scent of the  roses  wafting through the open French window, and the garden quietening in the dusk,  this  queen of fashion's  retreat is fittingly evocative and other worldly.    

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Last weekend The Sunday Telegraph's Stella Magazine ran this piece on the house in Olhao. Thought you'd like to see the scans!    



   

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  As part of Jubilee fever it's fitting that my heavenly scented pink roses are named after  Constance Spry who created  Coronation Chicken for the slap up feast after HM's  coronation in 1953. The recipe, which later appeared in Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume's cookbook, called for deboned chicken, poached in wine and herbs, served with a cinnamon and curry powder mayonnaise sauce beside a helping of rice salad. A real treat of Empire fusion at a time when Britons still went shopping with ration books. I have always though it rather sickly and insipid and rehashed  badly at too many family weddings. The  Jubilee salmon wrapped in pastry that the cook very generously  left half of for us to enjoy after filming a Waitrose video in my kitchen last week is much more  tasty, and, in keeping with the current austerity, not bad value, too.  



  I am looking for a new cleaner, and for several weeks have been the post-shoot crumb sweeper and setbuilding mop up person. Thank  god for the Dyson which  deals with the debris and most excitingly almost wolfs down a dog eared Jack Dee script lodged in a rarely visited  corner. Which reminds me, a writer left their notebook behind with a list of new book ideas....I won't tell...  and need your address to send it back to. With the cleaning wages now mentally arranged in my account there is no guilt when I find myself sucked like the dust in to my favourite shop Cos. I choose the brightest tomato jeans that have ever crossed my wardrobe threshold  and a Fifties  style  jacquard  blue and green bikini . I am rather pleased with sunglasses from Urban Outfitters,  but the holder of kitten Coco  young  bird hunter of Tulse Hill , says they're a bit too 'Indie'.  I hope it's not another way of saying mutton dressed as lamb.  I'm not going to ask. PS  Mustn't forget the main  purpose of the shopping trip,  more white  sheets from John Lewis.  



  The peonies and alliums are putting on a great show of colour blocking and what with me weeding and watering  in the  new  tomato jeans -  it's  Right On Trend  here .  



             

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