Summer scents and sweetpeas

August 15, 2010

Packing up for the hols’ may be palpitation inducing: thundering down the motorway to take the dog for her summer billet with my sister, racing through a month’s paperwork in the early hours, and making the house ship shape for a magazine Christmas shoot . But boy it’s worth it! Exchanging city shorts for beaten up espadrilles and t-shirts is as good for the soul as  the summer diet  based around   grilled sardines and hunks of watermelon.

 Just scraping under the 20kg limit as usual, my suitcase is stuffed  with books  for long spells of reading under the beach umbrella.  Favourites include   The Surprising Life of Constance Spry  by Sue Shephard; Outliers ‘the story of success’ by Malcolm Gladwell,  and  The Algarve Fish Book by Nic Boer and Andrea Sieber.  I’m also inspired by  Reinventing  Letter Press by Charlotte Rivers,   a stylish   little book with fabulous printing ideas.

Along with the reading matter, there’s just enough room  to slot in  a few bars of Green and Blacks chocolate bars.   It will head straight to the fridge as soon as possible after we meet the sauna temperatures of Olhao in August.

I’ve also tucked in the  dolls house sized  Indian terracotta pots that the  returning  traveller produced from her mighty backpack. Perfect for salt, pepper, and chopped herbs, they are also  a tangible reminder of just how far my middle born has spread her wings  in the last six months., 

1’m  counting on the Spanish lodgers to  nurture the courgettes and tomatoes all swelling nicely in the warmth and damp. One of them is a specialist ham carver, so I hope his talents for precision extend to the vegetable patch.  They’re  already under instructions to feed and water Miss Bea, the cat   who will lord it over the  sofas,  spreading her black fluff,  with the dog safely out of the way..

One last look around the flowerbeds, to enjoy the sweetly scented  white nicotiana- another unexpected  success from last year’s seeds, which in turn were produced from the previous year’s blooms that i collected. And even the agapanthus managed to defy the winter’s ravages and has just put out some glorious blooms. I’ll miss the sweetpeas, too, their delicate soapy fragrance is so much part of an English summer garden.

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 Before I snap the case shut   I  must tell you about  three new finds: Feitoria.com.pt sells a cleverly edited collection of   Portuguese accessories, such as  leather slippers, donkey milk soap,(yes, honestly)  and cork ice buckets –  so much more inspiring than the usual souvenir stuff. Closer to home ther’re  simple  Welsh blankets and other  celtic  home ideas from Blodwen   And molly-meg.co.uk   sells stylish  child sized chairs: a good idea for anyone want ing a nice  bit of  scaled down Ercol in the nursery.

Seaweed Prints and Sourdough

March 28, 2010

Only a few piles of dog eared admin remain before we can escape to Olhao and the new room on top. On the way to the post office, mimosa and forsythia are fizzing with yellow. It seems a little wasteful to be leaving behind the first budding and greening signs of spring but the draw of sand between toes and sardines are tantalizing too. And after more technology malfunctions (I won’t even go there) parking ticket angst, missed train connections, and near hospitalisation involving clogs on a down escalator, I’m ready to walk there, let alone fly .

Just have to get in a session of dough making for pizza (artichoke hearts, green olives and parmesan, is my current favourite) and other homemade creations (see here my sister in law’s divine rye sourdough bread) to illustrate my new book. The four legged paparazzo is enjoying the cooking sessions too, hanging around the worktop for crumbs, and helping herself to the subject matter of a flapjack shot when no one’s looking. It’s all go putting together the pages, and the deadline is no tiny speck in the distance anymore. But that’s good, too, because it means the weeks are slipping away until the backpacker daughter returns.

When I’m back first stop will be gorgeous fabrics at the V&A exhibition, Quilts 1700-2010. Might even get round to a spot of quiltmaking with pretty seaweed prints from the museum’s collection of archive printed cotton. Check out more print ideas from Printand pattern.blogspot.com and Liberty prints at knockdown prices in the new range for American chain store Target .

Spring garden notes:
Divide agapanthus: I have an extended family of agapanthus plants that came stashed in a suitcase from Spain and are now packed tightly in a pot like chocolate fish in a tin, which is how they like it. This year, though, division is necessary to keep the plants vigorous and I cut them down the middle with a fork and plant the new half in a fresh container.
Feed shrubs and climbers: I started with the standard roses, and have now worked in more compost and bonemeal around the shrub and climbing roses, and gorgeous pale lilac wisteria at the front of the house.

Sow seedlings half hardy under cover: Nicotiana and zinnia seeds saved from last year are germinating in a tray on the windowsill. Sow less than think as a pinch of seed goes a long way.

Prepare trenches for beans and ‘chitted’ potatoes and dig in muck or compost (on another sea salty note, I remember my grandmother lined her bean trenches with seaweed and newspaper to conserve moisture).

Sweet and utilitarian

March 1, 2010

Bother! I’d hoped to get my post out before the end of February. I am diverted from my laptop to equip the eldest daughter with ‘wedding ring’, door wedge, extending washing line and all the other stuff for the gap year female traveller. It is like losing a limb when she walks through Terminal 5 departures, but I can get in the bathroom now. And in the way that life sometimes seems to synchronise itself, my new book contract is signed and the deadline is just about the date she returns. Publication is next spring, but I’ll give you some sneak previews along the way.

Some design notes:I won’t ever tire of gingham, it’s a really inexpensive way to add a spot of spring colour to the home: a simple pull on chair cover ,say . My temple is MacCulloch & Wallis who sell online as well as from a shop crowded with young fashion students in central London. Look out, too for enamel alphabet letters and numbers from Hyperkit, more timeless simple design. RIP Lucienne Day one of our great designers, known for her painterly and simple Fifties’ fabrics. I also have a passion for the stacking Polyprop chairs that her husband Robin Day designed, and can still be picked up from secondhand shops and markets.

There are walking babies, crawling babies, sicky babies and back-up babies modelling shoes in the house, and so I escape to the garden. It’s looking spare (an understatement) but crocuses like bright fruit drops are pushing through. I prune the roses with vigour giving the 4 standards the equivalent of a military short back and sides. But they will flower well and spread without looking wild and untidy. They have a good feed with shovels of rich earthy compost from the bottom of the bin. It’s so cold I can’t be bothered to dig it in, but it’s raining so the nutrients will wash down to where the roots need it .

The room on top in Olhao is nearing completion after the builders have ducked and dived the thrashing winds and rains of the Algarve’s worst weather in 30 years. It’s a whole new vista up here. In the distance, a band of cobalt sea beneath a grey blue sky, tv aerials, flapping laundry, a silver winding mesh of homing pigeons, the fizzing pink of an almond tree. And all with the Olhao soundtrack of dogs barking, bells, and the strains of a fado song on next door’s radio. NB The dearth of photographic evidence is due to further gadget malfunction, this time, my newly acquired i-phone, a marvellous invention, when it works

The blues and greens of the seaside are exhilarating but no less than the rolling hills and valleys on the drive to see my Dad in Somerset: a mossy palette as if from a Farrow and Ball paint chart. And then there is more heavenly natural colour at the Van Gogh exhibition, where my rushhour Friday stress melts before the artist’s drawings and paintings of French gardens and vegetable patches

What with all the backpacking details I almost leave the marmalade making too late, but am saved by the last boxful of Sevilles at the local greengrocer. Soon the kitchen is a bittersweet aromatic fug and the mind only focused on the job. No wonder DH Lawrence said “I got the blues thinking of the future so I left off and made some marmalade.” I read though that 80% of marmalade eaters are over 45. Don’t you think we should champion the young to get boiling and stirring? It’s such a pity that marmalade has that fusty old major at the breakfast table image.

I pot the marmalade in recycled jars that I save and store under the sink. Holding one’s golden efforts in a simple glass jar topped with a cellophane lid and decorated with a homemade label is pure pleasure; so, too, is a slice of bread topped with marmalade and a spoonful of creme fraiche.

Porridge and blankets

January 13, 2010

The snow woman is limbo dancing in the garden (her structure undermined in a temporary thaw) and the skiers have returned from the Brockwell Park slopes. Welcome to 2010 and the weird world of weather. For the last two weeks we Londoners, together with the rest of the country have been grappling with the biggest freeze-up for years.

This one is maybe not as punishing as the winter of 1947 when people were using pneumatic drills to dig up frozen parsnips and 20 foot snowdrifts cut off thousands, but it is bad enough to inflict an itchy collection of chilblains upon my 15 year old‚Äö?Ñ?¥s toes. The red and swollen effects have been hastened by her unenthusiasm for sensible (ie uncool) walking boots. I explain (the without judgement style of explaining) that Top Shop pumps are probably not the best option for negociating ankle height slush, grit and skating rink pavements.

Even if the footwear advice is not exactly welcomed at least the suggestion that everyone keeps warm with hot bowls of porridge at breakfast is met with approval; not only comforting but the ideal vehicle for large amounts of dark muscovado sugar or golden syrup. I make it with roughly one cup of oats to three cups of water. Bring the ingredients to the boil in a saucepan and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until creamy. Honey, butter, cream, creme fraiche or chopped dates are other delights to eat with porridge.

The hyacinth bulbs I potted some weeks ago are throwing delicious scent around the room, and this, combined with the wood smoke from the fire gives the house the feeling of a rural oasis…….. I can almost hear the sheep bleating.

Reading in bed at night, swathed in an array of colourful wraps and blankets to keep warm, I’m told I look like an eccentric aunt. How romantic. One of my favourites is a cotton cellular example that I dyed lilac to pep up its hospital look. I’d like to add one of Donna Wilson’s takes on traditional Scottish blankets to the pile. And if I was to introduce some colour to my bedding themes, then Dorma’s new duck egg blue cotton sheets would be perfect.

I’m the first to bang on about the false economy of buying cheap gadgets. But when my iron was lost on one of the shoots a few months ago, as a stop gap I nipped down to the electrical shop and bought the cheapest one I could find. In short, a mistake highlighted when I swished, rather than sweated, through the creases with the new Phillips model that has replaced the bad buy. With the windows steamy, a cup of Earl Grey, and the afternoon play going in the background, I soon got through the stack of pre-washed tea towels to be made up into linen tablecloths, orders for which are flying out of my online shop.

Linen sheets and peppermint creams

December 17, 2009

8.00am: a fairy tale encounter with iced petals and snow flakes when I venture into the garden this morning to prod a blocked drain. A mucky distraction from the business of Christmas shopping which is something that I always intend to get done without getting stressed over, but never quite manage to pull off. It would be wise not read all those Christmas gift guides which swamp the reader with choices and possibilities that make decision making even more problematic. At least they’re not all about solid gold teapots these days, and hey, the Rolser (shopping on wheels vehicle of choice in Olhao) was even in the Eco Gift part of the Observer magazine.

The shop floors of the Nation, though, continue to be choked with over packaged Starbucks gift boxes and pile ‘em high towers of celebrity memoirs. And talking of books, real ones, I have just ordered several copies of the Little Stranger by Sarah Waters . It’s supposed to be a good eerie read – perfect for a snug holiday afternoon.

I know that all the mags are telling us to make our own presents, but it’s not quite as simple as that. You need time to create a handsewn bag for Aunt Olive or a knitted mohair scarf for your nearest and dearest. I know it’s all about the thought but setting yourself the task of homemade gifts for everyone can induce similar palpitating stress to battling through Oxford Street department stores. The way I do it is to do a bit of shop bought and a bit of homemade, and try to give appropriately. I can’t see my 20 year old wowing over a box of peppermint creams but know that if they’re prettily wrapped in tissue, will really please a girl friend or grandparent.

HOME MADE PEPPERMINT CREAMS: 1 egg white 450g icing sugar, juice of half a lemon, 5 or 6 drops of peppermint flavouring, the mere driplet of green colouring (or they’ll look gruesome and lurid). Beat the egg white until fluffy, and add all the other ingredients to make a ball of green paste. Roll out to half an inch thick and cut out shapes. I like mine round, but stars and hearts would be good for christmas too. Decorate with silver balls and leave the creams to dry on greaseproof paper overnight
Christmas biscuits are also a winner, and can be thrown together in half an hour, left to cool and either eaten for tea or wrapped up as a gift. Watch me making a batch on my latest YouTube

I have in mind, a ‘present to myself’ set of Volga linen sheets. But the car needs to be fixed and what sort of parent lets their children drive off in a dodgy vehicle? This business of feeling responsible for your offspring, doesn’t diminish as they get older, quite honestly you feel even more protective towards them as they hurl themselves around the world on gap year travels and hit party nights in drink sodden University cities.

Another way of giving beautiful presents without spending a fortune is to have a rummage around charity shops for someone elses old glass. I set myself a visual style guide: no crystal glass, nothing coloured and always simple in shape. In this way it makes the hunt easier and defines the ‘look’.

Seagulls patterned like Fairisle jumpers swoop over the house in Olhao, where the ‘ room on top’ is emerging from piles of rubble and bricks. I’m not going to post the ‘works in progress’ pictures because they don’t look much fun, only to me. I will wait for a ‘before’ and ‘after’ show. Dare I say it, but it might take less time than we thought because Mr Martinho got off to a roaring start when a violent storm was forecast. It didn’t appear but, because there were more hands on the job in anticipation, the men were able to take down the old roof, and construct the building’s cement platform in just a few days. I like the way they have put all the old tiles to one side for reuse.

I’ll leave you at the end of the year, with a plate of plump aromatic lemons, as typical an element of winter, as the rickety wagons of roasting chestnuts in the twinkly Olhao cobbled streets.

Bulbs in the shed

November 26, 2009

It has been a glorious Indian summer of an autumn: crisp golden leaves catching in my hair and tumbling across the grass as I walk in the park. But now the clouds have burst to soak the leaf fall which pastes the streets like papier mache. London is good at this time of year quieter, more mellow. In the deepening shadows the city squares and churchyards seem more secret, invitations into the past.

At weekends it’s hat, scarf and ribbed tights weather. Dark sunday afternoons are for eating cake and idling at an exhibition. I really really recommend the visual magic at The Museum of Everything, showing unseen artists, who create their work outside the eyes and ears of the art world. Take Judith Scott, who made sculpture from household objects entirely hidden by being wound-about over and over by wool and yarn. Scott had Down’s syndrome, and only communicated through these things. They’re very convincing, together with the spirit drawings of medium Madge Gill, and the ceramic recycled kingdom of Indian roads worker Nek Chand. The works are unintentional, delicate and profound.

What a contrast at Tate Modern where Pop Life: Art in a Material World is billed as a foray into the world of the celebrity artist. It includes Andy Warhol wallpaper, Damien Hirst’s golden spot paintings, a reconstruction of Keith Harings’s Pop Shop and some unappealing top shelf stuff in the over 18s’ room. The artist as commercial brand continues to flow into the shop where Tracey Emin white mugs are a whopping ¬¨¬£15.00. It all left me feeling rather flat and anxious to go home and do something nourishing like collect the bean and nicotiana seeds from the pods I’ve been drying by the boiler.

I wake up to the door bell and a postman (something of a rarity during the recent post strikes) bearing a cardboard box with perforated holes from Crocus. It’s the tulip bulbs: Lilac Perfection, Tulipa White Parrot and Tulipa Violet Beauty. All to be planted asap. Six inches isn’t too deep too keep out the the foxes and squirrels who enjoy a crunchy bulb or two..or three….or more. By the way, bulbs are poisonous if eaten by humans and can be irritating to the skin.

A couple of weeks ago I planted up of bowls with specially forced bulbs of hyacinths, paper whites, and crocuses so we will hopefully be surrounded by gorgeous scent and colour over christmas.The secret is to keep them cool and in the dark to let them develop good roots before bringing them into the warmth and light.

Now for some trumpet blowing: Remodelista editor, Sarah Lonsdale has voted my blog as one of her top ten eclectic design blogs. And I’m ‘Queen of Simple’, no less, in Grazia magazine where there’s a piece on the house in Olhao. Speaking of which, hooray! hooray! almost a year to the day, we have the licence to start work on The Room on Top. Who knows what will be in store, once Mr Martinho’s gang arrive and start the heavy work? I will keep you posted.

A room isn’t a room without Farrow and Ball’s ‘Teresa’s Green’, it’s my current passion, having just re-painted the tv room. A room isn’t a room without a dog, but unlike paint which can be painted over if you get fed up with it, a dog is for life. Should be, but round here ‘weapon’ dogs roam the streets with hoodied youths who can’t look after themselves, let along something on four legs. We found a sad, abandoned and emaciated staffie with sores and trailing claws who clambered wearily into the back of the car and let me take her to Battersea Dogs Home. If you want to rescue her she is Brindle/White SBTX

What with all the leaves pouring off the trees it seems a little unseasonal to be to picking remnants of a summer flower garden: a few rose heads, nasturtiums and so on. I hope it’s not because of climate change. But then Pepys describes roses blooming in his London garden in the middle of December, and that was hundreds of years ago before we’d begun to stifle the planet. Anyway, it’s good to press the petals between the pages of the telephone directory for simple decorations that you can stick on your christmas cards.

The warm conditions followed by wet this autumn have been a fungi foragers dream. My family really got into searching for porcini, (penny buns) field mushrooms, chanterelles, blewitts and parasols when we lived in Spain. These are edible mushrooms that are quite easy to identify. The locals there were crafty so and sos and thought nothing of raiding their neighbours’ fields before daylight.

On a stroll through Berkshire parkland we found parasols (actually umbrella shaped) poking up beneath gnarled trunked oak trees. They’re very tasty fried in a little butter with parsley, but as with all edible mushrooms you shouldn’t eat them in large quantities because they’re hard to digest.

The September issue

September 20, 2009

I have had an action packed summer: six teens and me, in Olhao. ( No time to paint my nails, let alone get a new blog post out) The heat, beach and three meals a day keep them out of trouble. There are a few ups and downs: livid red grazes from a failed mission to rescue a mobile phone, another you-learn-by-your-mistakes- episode with drinks in pretty colours, bags with keys and money left at shops, and spectacles washed away whilst frolicking in crashing waves.

The food side of things is more of a challenge Not that the gang are fussy, in fact they lap up everything from crab to clams but the sheer weight of daily supplies is in danger of destroying the Rolly Rolser shopping bag on wheels. This trusty accessory joins the fleet that Olhaons trundle over cobbles to the daily fish and vegetable market. Saturday is best when local farmers bring their own produce and I come home with exquisite olives, sprigs of mint, garlic strings and brilliant zinnias, one euro a bunch.
I am keen to get to grips with grilling sardines, and hang around peeling white washed alleys where old ladies and fishermen expertly fuss over their door step bbqs. The story: gray charocoal, not too much of it and a cup of water for damping unruly flames. This ensures light crispy skins, rather than the oily black charred offerings if the charcoal is red hot. As for preparation, the daily catch is so gleaming and rigid with freshness there’s not need to gut them. Salad to go with sardines includes our take on Italian panzanella made with stale bread, chopped tomatoes, cucumber, onion , parsley and a dressing with oil, balsamic vinegar, and garlic. Then there are lemon quarters to squeeze over the fish and bring out its flavour.

The teen gang leave with the exuberance with which they arrived, in a whirlwind of Kate Moss scent, suntans, tangled salt hair and flip flops. The house settles back into itself again, with the air of post party relief that comes from from sending everyone home in one piece. I have a few delicious mornings in bed with Alan Bennett’s witty and self deprecating memoir Untold Stories . Then it is planning the Room on Top project for which, 8 months on, I finally have planning permission. The very last little bureaucratic hurdle is the 3 month licence, which should be through next week. More finger crossing.

As I pack away t-shirts and cool dresses, I muse that that it’s one thing to have visual records of Olhao’s unmanicured charm, but another to convey the pot pourri of smells: overworked drains, rotting fish, the waft of a honeysuckle in a hidden courtyard; beery fisherman, lingering herb cologne, home cooked stews, the ozone and saltness of the sea air. They’re so evocative, so of the place, it’s hard to conjure them up mentally but London suburbaban street air seems so bland in comparison, even when the foxes have been having a party by the dustbins.

Back at the ranch in Tulse Hill, the house has been earning its keep and host to shoots, including one for SMA baby milk of feature film proportions (apologies to my neighbours) with baby models, back-up baby models, and crates of plastic flowers; the latter draped all over the garden to make it look more colourful. My son says why can’t it always look like that. I give him the look reserved for similar utterances about things not meeting his exacting standards.

Actually, the house is looking a bit bashed up after all the babies, cables, and cameras. So I am planning to do a bit of tidy up: repaint floorboards, and renew floor coverings with simple tactile rush matting, the sort we had at home in the sixties’. I am also debating one of Atlanta Bartlett’s white country tables from her new online store Pale and Interesting.
The vegetable garden has survived a month of sporadic watering and nurturing from family members who remained to look after the shoots. The lettuces didn’t stand a chance, but the potatoes (Pink Fir Apple) and (International Kidney) are plump; we eat the first earthy diggings, boiled in mint and tossed in butter.

Cherry tomatoes, yellow courgettes, garlic and shallots have all performed far better than I’d dared hope, and I shall plait together a bundle of garlic for my friend’s birthday. Thanks, in part, to Lambeth council: it is their free compost bin that is the receptacle for the nicely rotted contents from the kitchen peelings.

Despite the jolly hard work of nurturing and tending to the nursery of delicate seedlings that started life next my desk, it is pure pleasure to see last year’s bean seeds curling and climbing up the wigwams, heavy with slender green pods.

Even the temperamental basil, that threatened to expire when I brought it outside too early is keeping us in supplies for pesto. The magical notion of producing so much from so little is exquisitely shown by a border of leggy nicotiana plants, whose delicate white flowers release intoxicating scent at nightfall. Weeks of sensual and visual pleasure from a packet of seeds is truly gratifying.

London might not have the laid back charms of a Portuguese fishing town, but there are more than enough autumn shows and exhibitions to divert post holiday blues. I am looking forward to the new ceramics gallery at the V&A , settles and benches by Studioilse on show at Leila’s Cafe, part of the London Design Festival , or booking a table at local home dining room the Salad Club. Don’t miss life on planet fashion in the endearing and irreverent documentary, The September issue which chronicles Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s preparations for the September 07 issue. I am agog because I once worked in an office below the Vogue fashion floor, and was terrified by the svelte things that tended the sample rails upstairs.

It’s the time of year, too, to think about hunkering down with warm blankets and cushions by the fire. I use a mix of calico and cuttings from Liberty floral cottons to make simple patch work covers. See my trusty sewing machine in action on my latest Youtube video which shows you how to make a simple bobbly trimmed tray cloth: an idea that could easily be put in the pipeline for diy christmas presents.

And if all you do is go for a walk, take a bag, the trees are heavy with fruit: crab apples, plums, sloes and so on, for a spot of autumnal jam making.

Wild swim

July 14, 2009

Good news! Elle Decoration, July Issue, has voted my blog as one of the best style blogs on the web: ” British style journalist Jane Cumberbatch’s blog is a feast of gorgeous photography and inspiring ideas, on everything from Ercol furniture to making shortbread. Her style is simple, relaxed and recession-friendly”. I’m in sartorial male blog company too, from Mr Peacock who offers tips on how to customise an Ikea sofa, to James Andrew a NY designer who dresses as hip as his surroundings and Jonathan Adler who’s mad about blue.
It’s sweatingly hot and steamy in the city but at Hampstead Ladies pond , spreading trees shade this North London oasis and swimmers become part of nature as they move between floating water lilies and small fleets of ducks with ducklings. It’s my first ever dip here, and it feels like heaven, so peaceful, and even though the dark water seems eerily bottomless, it is fresh and free from tangled weed.

Ben and Jerry’s or Haagen Dazs might be what the teenagers prefer to spoon into their wafer cones, but I live in hope that student budgets or even ennui with the packaged stuff, might nudge them towards making their own ice cream. It’s dead easy. See my latest YouTube for proof.

As all bee experts will testify, the global bee population has recently entered a catastrophic decline, in a syndrome despairingly known as “Colony Collapse Disorder”. Thriving bee farms are being turned overnight into ghost towns as workers mysteriously desert their queens and everyone is quoting Albert Einstein to the effect that if the bees go, the human race will perish four years later. Well you wouldn’t think there’s a buzz crisis in Tulse Hill the bees are positively crowding out my pom pom thistles and lavender bushes in their pollinating and honey making efforts. In fact, this year. Nevertheless, I’m going to do my bit and offer up a quiet spot by the shed to host a hive a brilliant initiative for urban beekeepers who need more space.

I’ve been communing with more bees at Das Kransbach spa where you can get stuck into some serious treatments or idle away the day in buzzing and knee tickling Alpine wild flower meadows. The boxy hives passed on the walk home are the source of sticky golden chunks of honeycomb for breakfast. Just as energising for the soul are the sublime rooms designed by Ilse Crawford and the simple back-to-nature saunas, and pools that lull guests into bliss. No spartan spa this is, either, with delicious cakes on trays at teatime.

Rhubarb Rhubarb

March 3, 2009

Against the park’s winter wreckage, tiny citrus-scented white and pink flowers on the witchhazel are optimistic signs of spring where only four weeks ago children whooped and played in the extraordinary snow. I marvel at how the bulbs push up new centimetres of green. We have had a few good days feeling the sun’s weak rays. After months of nature’s inertia, suddenly everything seems possible and there’s a sense of urgency to get out and start planting. But late February and March can be a dangerous and deceiving time, taunting us with false starts.

Regardless, I have been wielding the fork and spade to prepare my vegetable patch. One irritating aspect is that the cat and dog think that it’s for their benefit, a new and soft litter tray. My deterrent against the pets, and the squirrels is some fine netting. I really felt like an old time gardener as I dug in bucketfuls of our home grown kitchen compost. It’s not all perfectly rotted, but eggshells help drainage and any alien bodies, like the knife I lost last summer, and mouldy oranges which shouldn’t have been put in the compost anyway, I put aside.
In a few weeks I’ll plant out my ‘chitted’ potatoes having left them in a cool light room. Warmth and dark will only encourage your seed potatoes to start towards the light, and you want the ‘eyes’ to be firm and holding the nutrients before they go into the ground. I’ve also got some garlic and shallots which are an experiment this year.

It’s gratifying to use last summer’s French bean seeds. I collected the dessicated pods dangling from the last trailings around the cane wigwams and stored them in plates on the old kitchen dresser. I plan to germinate them on the window sills in old eggshell trays filled with compost. I shall also see what comes of my own heirloom sunflower seeds which I collected five years ago from the farm where we lived in Andalucia. The important thing will be not let the seedlings get too leggy which is what they will do if exposed too long to the light and heat.

Do you know north Norfolk? If it’s not on your agenda, then add this eastern English rural backwater to experience space: wide open skies and flat fields spreading and fanning in the distance. As the light fades, the vast horizons here glow spectacularly in the last blasts of sunset and the huge sands by the sea at Holkham will revive most spirits.

North Norfolk remains a back of beyond place where old men in caps dig bean trenches in cottage gardens, and you can walk in solitude for ages with only blackbird song or the sudden flexing of a deer as it bounds through a hedge. I have often come back loaded up with herby lavenders, which do so well in this dryer part of the country or utilitarian country things like a traditional pestle and mortar or old folding card table from one of the unassuming secondhand shops in the small towns.

Last week I was there visiting friends, and on their advice, looking for a cheap bicycle. It is so much more scenic than looking for bikes, probably nicked, in a Brixton back alley. We drove past fields where white barn owls skimmed the hedge tops, and mounds of knobbly sugar beets were piled in thick sucking mud.

At Pode’s, a cluster of wooden sheds stuffed with old bikes and unrelated parts, a woman came out of a caravan on bricks and pointed us towards the possibilities. And there it was, a burgundy Raleigh Cameo (checking the online Raleigh Fans Forum I discover it is an eighties’ model) in good shape with two new wheels. After a quick wobble around I put my money on the counter including ¬¨¬£1.49 for a bell. Back home at the local accessories shop what savings I’d made on the bike were soon swallowed up in lights, lock, helmet and so on. But I’m happy enough with the deal.

WORTH A VIST

Out and about, in between meetings, and gasping for a caffeine hit, I came across Tea’s me around the corner from Ladbroke Grove tube. This teapot-sized boudoir-style cafe with big print wallpaper, tinkly chandelier and one informal table to sit around is a joy. There are elegant white cakes stands of gingerbread men, wobbly scones and flapjacks. The espresso here is exactly strong enough.

This is the season for rhubarb and so here’s my recipe for a crumble. I add orange and lemon for some interesting flavour.

Crumble:
300g plain flour,
175g unrefined brown sugar
200g unsalted butter, cubed at room temperature
Filling:
500g rhubarb cut into small chunks
150g brown sugar
juice and rind of l small orange
juice and rind of 1 lemon

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Mix the flour and sugar in a large bowl then rub in the butter, a few cubes at a time, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs
2. Place the rhubarb, sugar, orange and lemon juice and zest in a 24cm ovenproof dish
3. Spoon over the crumble mix
4. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until the crumble is browned and the fruit mixture bubbling
5. Serve with cream, icecream, fromage frais and maybe, if its the weekend or you want to be more decadent a glass of sweet moscatel wine

Snowfall

February 9, 2009

Last week a white ‘Narnia’ descended upon London and suspended the daily grind. Snow! The headlines said ”-5C and we’re all going snowwhere”. I pulled on the layers and walked through mounds of fluffy powder. Our road had become a heavenly avenue with snowladen branches bejewelling my steps. That sound snow makes as it packs under your boots! The velvety swish of car tyres on untreated streets!
And instead of fussing about interest rates we found ourselves asking how do you roll a snowman, what have you done with the sledge, can I build an igloo in the garden?

At the park I heard whoops and cheers, as if it were a blazing day at the beach. Monday had been cancelled along with school and all of London’s buses. The entire city surrendered to delight. It’s a scene one barely witnesses in London, one of innocence, of snow in a city that doesn’t do extremes of weather. Families were out in force with young children and dogs. People slithered downhill on anything from professional snowboarding kit to an estate agent’s For Sale board (very apt in the property downturn don’t you think?). A modern day Bruegel had happened before my eyes.

It wasn’t a day for bicycles either. On the subject, this weekend I’m visiting a man in Norfolk, who, according to my friend Fiona, has a shed of secondhand models going for reasonable sums. Exciting. Maybe this time next week I’ll be pitching up at the post office and getting the thighs in trim on my own pair of wheels.

Thankfully the ice didn’t deter the shoots. Stylists, photographers and set builders are a hardy crew: one poor boy spent the morning getting bluer and bluer sawing chipboard amongst the drifts in the back garden, and the heavily laden props’ van negociated the Alpine conditions of Tulse Hill with aplomb. The Earthborn paint gang arrived with beautiful environmentally friendly rich chalky colours. I have my eyes on a soft mint green that would suit the garden shed which is need of a tart up for spring.

Good news. Garden experts predict the freezing weather will encourage an explosion of colour as the blanket of snow has put back the flowering of daffodils, crocuses, and snowdrops. For the past decade, spring flowers have come up early meaning the impact of the traditional spring bloom has been barely noticeable. Particularly pleasing to know, is that garden pests like aphids and white fly which survived the milder winters of the past few years are also expected to have been decimated in greater numbers.

Log fires, thermal leggings, and ginger and lemon tea are keeping me warm, plus the blue and white check blankets I bought over a decade ago from Welsh manufacturer Melin Tregwynt. Lux soap flakes and a quick spin on the wool cycle have maintained their fluffiness. It is also of no little importance, too, that the blankets are of top notch quality.

When fingers are swollen, after throwing snowballs while wearing under-performing woolly gloves, it’s time for tomato soup.

1litre stock ( I use a cube of dried organic vegetable stock if there’s no chicken stock in freezer or fridge)
2x 500g cans tinned tomatoes
l tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 onions
4 cloves garlic
4 teaspoons of dried oregano or
three or four sprigs of fresh and chopped
salt and pepper to taste
cr?®me fraiche to stir in

Peel and chop the onions and garlic and sweat for 10 minutes or so in pan with the olive oil and oregano,
Add the tinned tomatoes, puree ,and stock and simmer gently for 15 minutes,
Pulverise in a mixer or with a hand blender.
Add salt and pepper.
Serves 4-6