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Small green plums

10 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe, Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Allotment, Food, Fruit, Italy, Poetry, Stories

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‘Surprise/after so long/of a love/I thought I had scattered it about the world’

This beautiful string of words is by an Italian poet called Giuseppe Ungaretti. This is one of his easier ones. We used to say it in the manner of Cilla Black: Surprise! It sounds just as good in her Liverpool trill, in fact. But funnier and less sincere. This was back in the day when we were at university and revising for our end of year exams and anything to get us through it helped. Small tables in the corners of rooms, a lot of smoking, endless tea, the sound of the put-upon mum next door playing nicely with her children in the garden. My friend Angela would wait for a sigh, followed by the sound of a paperback being closed (she had bionic hearing) before making her entrance with a cup of tea.

Apparently I was a bit of a diva about being disturbed back then, my train of thought snagged by an interruption. It all mattered so much; having to re-sit as I did, because I’d failed a paper the first time round, meant I spent the whole summer revising. But now I still have those poems etched in my memory which I am thankful for, as well as having a free higher education and a huge wealth of actual experiences that did not involve the world wide web.

I remember cheque-books (in the off licence: Who do I make it payable to? Cashier: It’s all right we’ve got a stamp. Me: (writing on the cheque) It’s Alright We’ve Got a Stamp LTD), mix-tapes, actual love letters, long afternoons spent dressing up, sitting up all night talking and walking home at dawn, cream teas. Watching as people were brought over on a plane to see relatives they’d given up for dead forty years earlier on Cilla Black’s Surprise! Surprise!

The poem above has meant different things to me at different times in my life. At the time, at 20, it meant: I am an intellectual and I write in pencil in the margins of books I can only buy in Grant & Cutler. Now I understand it to mean, what matters is here. It’s been here all along. Or, it’s behind you, in the case of these plums. After three growing seasons, I have taken on a fallow plot behind me, which has been producing little green plums, Victoria plums, pears, apples, damsons and rhubarb that no one has thought to or been allowed to help themselves to. I’m sure I could have and no one would have been any the wiser. To think these plums have been dropping silently into the long grass all this time to be eaten by wasps and foxes. Which is possibly why our resident fox has such loose bowels.

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We don’t know what they are, a gage of some sort, but they are ripe, small and soft and full of the green juice. Avoid the ones with the caterpillars in; they feed inside ripening fruits and then mid-bite you look down and see a dark brown residue – caterpillar frass (poo). This is often accompanied by a tiny maggoty thing that rears up to meet you, with a massive smile on its face. Surprise!

I met up with Angela recently after many years and we talked about those times – my tendency to fall down stairs, our shrine to Victoria Wood, our innocence and excitement at everything. How we fell in love, platonically, with each other and how no one ever talks about that. And how we used to talk relentlessly in brackets: Hello Emma (yes, you can come in but your calves have to stay outside). Our love for Joan Hickson and Charles Hawtrey and the complete works of Marvin Gaye. Our completely exhausting silliness.

Perhaps you have to get to almost fifty to realise what an intoxicating surprise it is, that it’s still there. Better than anything, better than the future, which can exert a strange sense of threat. It’s a nice surprise to know that if you stand still long enough in one place all the best things will catch up with you. That is the hope, which last week proved true. And here is the poem in Italian, which I will endeavour to remember without resorting to my book:

           ‘Sorpresa/dopo tanto/d’un amore/credevo di averlo sparpagliato/per il mondo’

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I stewed the plums: cover the base of a heavy pan with a film of water, add the (preferably stoned) plums and a little sugar/honey/maple syrup/nothing. I sprinkled on some ground ginger and star anise. Simmer until the plums collapse, about fifteen to twenty minutes. Put lid on and leave until morning and eat with yoghurt. Or pot up and refrigerate. Also lovely sieved and made into a purée.

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Early Nigel

31 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Cookbook, Drama school, England, Food, Growing up, Ingredients, Meat, Nigel Slater, Poetry

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I recently went to visit my friend Claudia who I’ve known for 18 years and who lives in the wilds of North Essex. It is the sort of relationship where we often forget to be in touch, and because of the fact that I’ve been in LA, things have happened to one another that neither of us have had much access to. Stuff has happened. She has had three children, who have grown up despite me. They built a house I didn’t see or really know much about so long was it in the making. But we are great friends.

I met Claudia on the first day of drama school. I think I was wearing tweeds. Our friendship has been characterised by food and poetry, packets of ten Silk Cut and the very first intimacy we ever shared which was that we both experienced dizzy spells; Claudia because of Ménière’s disease and me because of recurring labrynthitis. In the background a man sang. We sat on armchairs – part of some kind of scene study.

I was, and continue to be, eight years older than her. However, she was often cast as my mother, screaming at me from the top of the stairs as I ‘eloped’ on one particular occasion with a voice and bearing so like my actual mother I was unable to carry on down the stairs and out the door. Our relationship continued in this vein, with me living in vacant houses, friends’ sofas, the odd floor and Claudia settled into domesticity in Clapham with an actual kitchen. I got to know it well, and her brother who lived there and who once told me that you were upper class if you could circle your wrist with your forefinger and thumb, and I couldn’t. I don’t think he meant anything by it and he was always very friendly, even when I set off the burglar alarm and the police called him at work.

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Food and poetry was our thing. Nigel Slater, Louis MacNiece, roast potatoes in goose fat, huge bricks of cheese, shards of shredded lamb, Elizabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin, Vicki Feaver. We would rehearse each other either in an empty acting room or at the kitchen table for the strange ritual of Speech and Verse where we were regularly sent before a panel of judges who talked a terrifying nonsense about ‘interplay rhythm’ and us having no legs.

And all the while, we ate fish finger sandwiches, smoked and talked about squid ink. Because there was the River Cafe and Early Nigel and a kind of romping carnivorous lust that predated the gluten-free, rather more anaemic times we live in now.

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It’s a difficult thing to sustain, eating like that all the time and then spending the rest of your money on Imodium. It was a bit Francis Bacon, a bit tiring, and a long time ago. This time it was the quiet I needed, the complete absence of sound.

We went for a walk and watched the ponies break into an edifying gallop, then rub their conker arses on the ground, legs to the sky, the smell of manure and hay, their velvety noses, the bare clink of metal. There was a frost that covered the ground, a spare-looking snow. There was the house itself which is all wood, low-slung beams, an old Nissan hut, a disused airfield. There were the children, who were a bit magic, one of whom is my god-daughter who reads with the same relentless drive as I did; a book a day, as if it were some kind of illness.

What has survived? Because so often in those very site-specific friendships, it is hard when those things, those props, have been taken away. I can’t drink coffee anymore, a thing we obsessed about; must be a stove-top percolator, milk must be warmed, cup must be hot etc. The colour a manilla cigar. Bread is hard; we loved bread, slathered with butter and a thick and amateur marmalade. Bacon. I’m not that person anymore, or not much of her remains. But what we had was lamb, the kids did too with spinach I believe and orzo. We all ate it. And since I’ve come back all I’ve done is roast lamb: lamb shoulder, lamb leg, tarred with oil and salt, rosemary somewhere deep inside, garlic charred to oblivion.

Lamb survived. (And Claudia did too, still my mother). I got the recipe from Nigel Slater’s Real Cooking – a book I would heartily recommend if winter food is exerting its bleak tyranny. It’s one of his early ones; you see his hands a lot, it’s spare and simple. A bit of poetry I think.

Roast leg of lamb with garlic and rosemary

Adapted from Nigel Slater, Real Cooking

“Fat – sticky and rich – is the bonus for the pork eater. With lamb it is the bones. The sweet, crunchy, brittle bones of a cutlet, or the softer lump in a chump chop, are a true treat for those not too proud to gnaw at the table. Lamb clings to its bones more tightly than does pork or beef, demanding that we pick up and chew. The meat around the bone being the sweetest of course. Cutlery is for wimps.” Nigel Slater, Real Cooking

Olive oil, not much

A leg of lamb (about 2kg in weight)

A few bushy sprigs of rosemary

6 garlic cloves, peeled

Sea salt

Set the oven to 230C/450F. Pierce the fat of the leg of lamb with the point of a sharp knife. Into each hole stuff a small sprig of rosemary and a slice of garlic (do the rosemary first, and then shove in garlic – according to NS this is easier). My lamb is rarely so invaded as Joe likes herbs to be ‘shown’ to the meat (see below).

Drizzle and dab fat and aromatics with oil. Grind over some salt (don’t go overboard here). Place in roasting tin and leave to roast for about 15 minutes per 500g, in other words about an hour. After 20 minutes, turn the oven temperature down to 200C/400F. If you wanted to include potatoes, which NS does, then set the lamb directly on one of the oven shelves and place roasting tin of 6 large scrubbed potatoes, sliced, underneath with a few shakings of salt and daubs of butter. The lamb will drip all over the potatoes which you may like.

Remove the lamb from the oven and let it rest for about 20 minutes before carving. After that first meal, I use the bones and any adhered meat for a broth which I then eat for days.

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One jar only

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Christmas, England, Food, Fruit, Ingredients, Jam, London, Poetry, Recipes, Stories

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Horseradish and mustard seed. Apples and quinces. A dollop of something that smarts and sears is what is required now. I found the last quinces of the season where I am staying, tiny little gnarled things covered in crystalline cobwebs. Yellow turning to black and as small as tomatoes. And I found some Granny Smith apples that were bunched on a tree in someone’s front lawn. Green, luminous and numerous and unpicked. The rest of the garden was bare and suburban. But the apples were a cartoon green. Perfect and unmarked, with an almost waxy sheen.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” the voice behind us was arch and querulous. I quickly retreated my camera. We turned on our best smiles. “We were just admiring your lovely apples” I said. “Well, come on then, I’ll give you a tour. You can have some if you want.” I promised her a jar of spiced apple jam in return and she perked up. We followed her round her plot and listened to the story of how they bought the house, 40 years ago, and how before that the actress Dame Sybil Thorndike would sit in the conservatory and ‘be round the bend.’

“Won’t you come in? You haven’t eaten? You must be hollow.”

We walked into the house. It too had been untouched. Simple and spartan and her husband Colin was also both these things. Small, white-haired and dainty. He was writing Christmas cards but when we came in he looked up as if he’d been expecting us and started talking as if it was a continuation of an earlier conversation. Our hostess went off to make coffee and came back with a cafetière. She was unsure what was in it; tea or coffee. “Perhaps it’s the most revolting thing you’ve ever drunk?” She enquired smiling and I ate a soft biscuit. The songbook of the musical Cats sat on a side table.

We talked about Cornwall – they had just sold a holiday home in Looe. Very pleasant, pronounced Colin. I had spent some time in Cornwall as a child when my dad moved there. “You probably won’t have heard of the place,” I said, “because it was a tiny hamlet on the edge of Bodmin Moor called Henwood. It had a riding school.” “Oh, we know it well,” cried Colin, in his soft burr. “Do you know Ted and Mary?”

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“Now tell me again – where do you live?”

Joe and I paused. He was sitting in a too-small green chair drinking tea-coffee. What do we say? Los Angeles? But we’re English, it was all too complicated. “Ormond Drive” said Joe, where we’ve been for exactly two days, house-sitting. Free-basing, I suppose you could call it, in Hampton, suburb of London, green and leafy, not really a town. A town lite, heavy with history. Colin got out his Cats songbook, and started to read from Growltiger’s Last Stand.*

His bucko mate, Grumbuskin, long since had disappeared,
For to the Bell at Hampton he had gone to wet his beard;
And his bosun, Tumblebrutus, he too had stol’n away-
In the yard behind the Lion he was prowling for his prey.

“We should really push off now. We haven’t done any shopping”, Joe said. “Oh, yes of course. We’ve ruined your morning”.

“And the apples?” Joe asked, as we stood on the threshold. We put on our winning smiles again. Colin gave us an apple each. I was expecting more of a flurry, and two seemed a paltry sum. It was enough for one jar only, which I had promised them. And they had asked us in, they knew Ted and Mary. It was Christmas. Colin had read us poetry. Time to be kind.

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Spiced quince, apple and mustard jam

Adapted from Felicity Cloake, The Guardian

Like its cousin, the apple, quince makes a wonderful pairing with pork (think Christmas ham), but is good with any fatty meat. The sweet spices, and the warm hit, make this jam an especially good partner for cheddar or other hard cheese. English quinces are now all but over, unless you can find a few malingerers as I have here, but Cypriot and Turkish grocers, and Middle Eastern shops will have their luscious and bulbous imports, so there’s no excuse. Ginger can be used here instead of horseradish, or as well as.

500g ripe quinces (or a mixture of quinces and apples)

1 shallot, finely chopped

100ml cider vinegar

175g light muscovado sugar

5cm horseradish, peeled and finely grated (or ginger)

½ tsp cinnamon

1 tsp mustard seeds

2 tsp mustard powder

Peel the quinces, cut them into sixes, remove the cores, then roughly chop the flesh. Put the fruit in a pan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, and leave to cook for half an hour until soft. Drain, then mash or blitz to a pulp in a blender.

Put the quince back in the pan with the remaining ingredients, except for the mustard seeds and powder. Cook for about 20 minutes, until thick, then take off the heat and leave to cool. Stir in the seeds and mustard powder. Decant into a sterilised jar (washed with soapy water, rinsed and then put in a hot oven for ten minutes) and refrigerate.

* Originally from Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S Eliot

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