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MAGIC BEARD
Ashley the vegetable grower from Trill Farm, has a magic beard.
What does a magic beard look like? It is jet black, shiny and extraordinarily bushy; it seems independent of the face, aloof, like it serves a higher purpose.
I should perhaps point out, for the sake of Ashley’s reputation, that he has in no way declared his beard to be magical, in fact, he has repeatedly denied that his beard has any miraculous powers whatsoever (beyond its ability to accentuate a strong jaw line and promote an impression of masculine prowess).
I know if I had a magical beard, I would deny it.
SPARROW GRASS
May is the month when our taste buds are crying out for the lush green shoots that abound at this time of year - wild garlic, purple sprouting broccoli, nettle tops and watercress but the most eagerly anticipated of all must be English asparagus.
For me, the all too short season for it stimulates a feeding frenzy and I find myself eating a bunch or two every day.
Piccalilli - The truth
It's amazing that the English taste for piccalilli ever took off. It has a quite unique flavour which is not to everyones taste and infants find both the colour and texture highly off-putting. However, it is the procurement of the pickle that should have been the greatest barrier in it's popularity.
Piccalilli is harvested from the well rotted seed pods of the Lalilli tree found only in the foothills of the Aravalli mountains in Rajasthan.
It's common name of The Wrestler Tree nods toward the hardship in obtaining the pods necessary for our Sunday supper.
Utter Rhubarb
February can be the dullest of months in the kitchen but there’s the occasional glimpse that spring is about be sprung upon us, perhaps the first being the delicate pink shoots of forced rhubarb.
Forcing is in essence, subjecting a plant to both heat and darkness so that the new shoots grow quickly in a desperate search for light. In the case of rhubarb, this has fostered what has to be one of the strangest sights in British farming.
The Story of Miss R Prim, who sold her soul to Satan for the world's biggest turnip
The gaggle of florally printed ladies shuffled and chattered like a colony of penguins in an arctic wind, those on the perimeter of the assembly endeavouring to burrow their way into the fervency of the centre and those in the middle furiously relishing their fleeting magnitude in the whirl of shortbread fingers and sherry.
The squeaks and titters echoed round the Town Hall until a booming, masculine voice quaked the twittering into silence.
“Good afternoon girls...”
Salsify
Whether it's lack of exposure to it or the fact that it is often the dirtiest vegetable in the shop, Salsify is often widely over looked which is a shame as it's creamy flesh and unique taste are just the thing for palates that are about to go through the winter.
It's common name of Oyster Plant alludes to a similarity with the taste of oysters but it is firmly in the celeriac / parsnip / artichoke camp for me.
Napkin Swans
A man rushed in last night, flying through a restaurant of diners, to order a naan bread to take away. He slapped £1.20 down on the marble counter, when I told him that the premises was no longer an Indian restaurant he replied,
“But I just want a naan bread”
“Toast?”
“No, I want a naan bread to take back to my room.”
“I’m sorry, but we cut the tandoor oven into bits with an angle grinder.”
I then pointed to the rows of neatly displayed antique cups and the Victoria Sponge before us on the counter.
“We’re an English tea and dining room now.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
No foaming please, we're English.
We’ve moved house. The cat shat in the bath. Enough said.
We are now looking at piles of boxes in East Devon, the same boxes, but in different configurations. My makeup box is now under a very large box of Anthony’s fishing magazines, on which I administered a couple of wrestling moves before it tore, spilling a glossy image of a carp onto my feet and momentarily leading me to believe I had found a mirror.
The box of vitally important, business related papers are under the box of ill-screwed and perspiring jars, salvaged from the late fridge.
All socks have been lost in transit.
London versus Lyme
I am moving to the country. Now you assume I am some middle-aged stock broker reading Country Living and visualising herself in Hunter wellingtons and a tweed skirt, gazing wistfully over the landscape with a wicker basket of carefully arranged orchard fruits whilst petrol bombs fly through the window and the city burns around her.
CrackBerry Cordial
Last month I had a BlackBerry but when we moved house I put it in a box and now I can’t find it.
I can no longer text, call or email any of my friends. As a matter of fact, my fingertips are a little too big for the tiny keys anyway and sometimes sentences like “meet you for one in Holborn after work?“ come out as “ meer top dor one in Holbornaft err wok“.
It’s like the thing is translating my messages into Dutch.
Anyway, it’s probably a good thing that I can’t find it.
With all the extra time on my hands I’ve been out picking actual blackberries.
Strawberry Jam. Discuss. (Warning- contains explicit language)
Strawberry Jam is firstly a preserve, secondly a spread and thirdly a filling.
This is no natural history, review or criticism of Strawberry Jam; Jam is not the kind of topic to lend itself to essay writing.
Let us begin with the Strawberry. Strawberries are green before they are red, is this relevant? No.
Have you ever sniffed the holes in the plastic box containing strawberries in the supermarket? Yes you have.
Alderney Crabs
My father lives in Alderney because he hates the labour government. He has a violent crush on Margaret Thatcher and likes to bring her up on a daily basis. Anthony, who is from Nottingham, has written a sympathetic account of the miners strike and used to be a skinhead. I took Anthony to meet him in May, on a tiny plane from the 70's with more weight in duty-free gin than passengers.
Recipe for crab sandwiches
To use a well worn metaphor, making a crab sandwich is not the time to be thinking about silk purses out of sows ears. With so few ingredients anything left wanting in freshness, quality or generosity will only serve to disappoint. You really cannot polish a turd.
Although I’ve seen some very posh versions of them, a crab sandwich is the antithesis of haute cuisine. For this very reason, and the fact that I grew up eating them, is perhaps why I love them so much.