• Recipe List
  • Sophie

Stories from the Stove

Stories from the Stove

Tag Archives: Travel

Trip to Suffolk, 1974

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by Sophie James in Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Countryside, England, Food, Stories, Suffolk, Summer, Travel

IMG_7956

I went to Suffolk and must write it all down before I forget, although much of the information was complex and hard to follow, compelling, beautifully described, but opaque. A bit like snooker, a game I love to watch precisely because I have no idea at all what is going on. I took a lot of photos. And if you want the science of it all, I would not be remotely offended if you went elsewhere.

I will however, as Noel Coward once advised, press on. This is a field of rape, and that is Sam Fairs, the owner of the field. It is mainly past flowering now (the spectacular yellow blossoms come in mid April to the end of May), so you are looking at the seeds housed in these long green pods. The seeds are the thing – they are pressed for their oil, on site. They are cold-pressed. A bit later, we went to watch this cold-pressing and the smell was interesting; yeasty, hops-ish, reminiscent of linseed. Sam and his family also grow winter wheat, winter barley, borage, marrowfat peas, but we weren’t here for that.

We were here for the rapeseed and its oil. I had already had an introduction to Hillfarm Oils (Sam and Clare Fairs’ extra virgin cold-pressed rapeseed oil) because I had been invited some months before to a meal where everything had been cooked using it. We even had the seeds speckled over custard for pudding – chalky, black things, tasting of dust and the outside. We had rape greens too. But I was amazed mainly by the colour of the oil – yellow, as if you could melt buttercups – and the flavour which everyone tells you is nutty and that is really the only word. Rich, nutty, warm, slightly grassy and always different, because like olive trees, there will be subtle differences in flavour based on the soil, the terroir, the weather. It’s our olive oil is probably the best way to look at it, we have it here and it grows brilliantly, though pigeons can be a menace.IMG_7949

The objective of any plant is to reproduce. This is apparently our objective too (As Sam put it, ‘growing more of me’.) When it comes to the rape plant, the oil is there to protect the seed, so it can do that, so it can carry on, so it can throw itself about. The farmer’s job is to capture it, harness it, pressing the seed to get the oil out. The way it was described it felt tantamount to murder. But in a good way. It made me think about what I was stepping on, what I might be killing mindlessly, where I am in the scheme of things. That plants are like me.

To return to the rape fields for a minute – they are presently green and house families of foxes that you can never see. There are butterflies, bees and insects. Come harvest time, the rapeseed pods will be brown and shatteringly fragile. But for now it is an endlessly waving green sea and all I wanted to do was run headlong into the midst of it, get lost and miss lunch.IMG_7937

Although I’m glad I didn’t because lunch was ice cream, scotch eggs, smoked mackerel and other exceptional cold collations, all locally produced, and later from the Cakeshop Bakery focaccia made with (actually doused is the word) rapeseed oil, speckled with crunchy salt, and an amazing root cake, made with beetroot, carrots, and the oil again. It was all really delicious. We ate it sitting in the Fairs’ garden. The tree behind us housed a family of owls. There were bats living in an outbuilding nearby and house martins somewhere behind me, under the roof. The next day we even saw a murmuration of starlings as we passed round a Blythburgh piglet and the sky turned dark above us.

IMG_8064

There are no motorways here in this part of Suffolk and no out-of-town supermarkets, no superstores. There are hardly any chains at all. The doughty and magnificent Caroline Cranbrook saw off Tesco more or less singlehandedly some years ago. So for two days it was like living in 1974, but with our modern sensibility for a flat white and the urgency for soya milk.

At the hotel, there was no internet reception – it was down for the whole evening – and we created our own murmuration, swirling around in the lobby trying to ‘find’ a signal. Until we gave up and gave in to the deliciousness of being untraceable for a whole evening and a whole night. In the morning, we talked about life before phones over scrambled eggs. What did we do? It is almost unthinkable now, a childhood with no signal, no texts, boredom, back at dusk or before dinner. What about work? People wandered off in singles or twos to take photographs or walk to Framlingham Castle, phones waving in the wind. Suddenly ten texts, endless vibrating, cheers etc.

Later we were deposited back to the station at Darsham, to the branch line taking us to Ipswich and then to London Liverpool Street where modernity, mobile phones, Boots and angry people in a hurry eating crisps awaited us. We said our goodbyes and dispersed into the melée. Tired and full of pork and cake, but happy.

Thank you to Polly at Food Safari for organising this wonderful trip.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Roses and kale

07 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by Sophie James in Not food

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Food, Fruit, Gardening, Los Angeles, Nonfiction, Stories, Travel, Vegetables

229

We have moved into our flat in Hampton (hence the silence, sorry) and I am thinking of getting an allotment. We went to Bushy Park Allotments on Sunday, to see if we could get in and at least get a good view of them, and there was a couple opening the gate carrying in a compost bin. We stood a way off looking at all the plots; they were untidy, shabby even, but there were also a lot of trees, and it looked both unkempt and rather beguiling; little portions of garden side by side as far as the eye could see.

The gentle hum of an engine, and I looked back at a man in a very low open-top car, with a bucket in the back and heaps of pink geraniums. He too looked unkempt and rather beguiling. He hadn’t sounded his horn, just sat in his very low down slightly rusted car waiting for us to move. He had shoulder-length sandy hair and was what people used to call rakish. My grandmother would not have trusted such a man; she would have said something about him being ‘freelance’. But there was a glamour about him and that he’d given us just the right amount of smile, to show he didn’t think we were in any way an irritant, made him alright.

image

The car rattled through the gates and disappeared into the thick brush of trees and stalks and general vegetable matter. That’s when we could have gone, but the couple smiled at us now and so I went up, leaving Joe to loiter, and said hello. Can I put my name down for a plot? (‘Put your name down!’ ‘Have you put your name down?’ has been a mantra of my mother’s since childhood). “Yes, you put your name down,” the lady nodded. And then they gave me advice along the lines of: make a nuisance of yourself, wear them down, and eventually someone will break and give you a piece of earth. “You need to not be afraid of hard work”, she said, looking me up and down in the way people do, thinking they’re being subtle.

They didn’t have much to do; it was cold and rainy and a few minutes later they’d emerged. ‘Put your name up on the gates and ask if anyone wants to share a plot’, the lady who was called Roz now said. I have to put my name up now as well as down. She said they’d picked some roses and they had some nice kale and they were done for the day. It seemed rather a bleak enterprise; coming to pick kale. I like roses but it wouldn’t occur to me to grow them on an allotment.

I think if it was me, I would take my lead from the freelancer driving through the gates and plant things with colour, a bit of rakishness, and some sweetness, some fruit, otherwise it all gets a bit Eastenders. A bit Arthur Fowler.

When I started this blog in LA I wrote about lemon curd. The curd was made from the very few Meyer lemons I’d eked from the tree we’d bought from an extremely rakish garden nursery on Fairfax and Santa Monica. We were promised ‘lemons in abundance’ from  the nice stoned man and although the tree was initially heavy with fruit, it never fulfilled its promise. As Joe Queenan likes to say, it wrote a cheque it couldn’t cash. But the sweetness of those lemons, their strange hybrid flavour and the thin mellow peel, started me off. I loved the colour too, a happy, acid yellow. I was never devoid of fruit thereafter. I fell in love with fruit, probably because there was an awful lot of it about in LA – orange trees mainly and their rampant, swooning blossom – and it was the first thing I genuinely liked about being there. It was growing, it was nature, it was beautiful to watch.

Perhaps I have not got the point of the allotment quite. Although I would be happy to share a plot and I wouldn’t be shy of digging, I’d need to insist there was a splash of colour, some orbs, some blossom, a cage, a tree, some espaliered plums and some brickwork to keep them warm. In the meantime I think I can live without kale, a terrifyingly healthy leaf.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Staying put

13 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Almonds, Food, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Sea, Stories, Sussex, Travel

image

This is tortilla, by which I mean Spanish omelette. Potatoes and onion sweated into a sticky mass and then flopped into beaten egg and then cooked at the lowest of heats until the top sort of coheres and then you flip it over and then it’s done. Better the next day. The recipe I use is by Delia. I somehow wish it wasn’t; someone less Spanish it would be hard to find. And yet it works.

We have been meaning to go on holiday. We were thinking of Mallorca, one of the Spanish Balearic islands. It’s apparently nothing like its previously sordid reputation and is actually really beautiful (and cheap if you use Norwegian Airlines and fly on a Saturday). But we didn’t go there. We flirted with Greece; Paxos, the place I visited when all I had was a single bed sheet and £40. We didn’t go there in the end. Something about scrolling down a screen and picking a place at random was off-putting, as if all these places were somehow the same, Turkey, Toulouse, Lanzerote, Labia? I think by the end we didn’t know if they were countries or cities or what.

And it wouldn’t really have been a holiday, more a kind of fleeing. As if we were train robbers, when we were just waiting for our flat to become available, and needed somewhere to stay in the interim. But we became a bit heady at the idea of Europe because we haven’t had Europe for so many years; the idea of it, where you get on a plane that costs 10p and suddenly you are in Bosnia! Or you get on a train and you’re in Paris, city of dogs. A coach to World War 1! But I really missed going into a travel agent and leafing through the brochures.

image

So we didn’t go away. Instead, I decided to photograph conkers against a hessian background and throw away my hideous shoes. I bought a new pair from Clarks shoe shop. In the end I had no idea what I was buying. They’re cream leather with green laces and they look like little crimped pies. “They certainly make a statement!” the assistant said, while I walked up and down. Anyway, I quite like them.

It is autumn here and everyone is going away. Mystified by the weather, everyone talks about it, and their colds, which are measly and mainly consist of sneezing. But there are extraordinary changes afoot, and it’s exciting. There are storms and dangerous fissures in the chalk Downs, the sea is wild but still swimable. There’s a colony of rare kittiwakes nesting in the cliffs at Seaford. On the seafront, some kind Lithuanian fishermen handed us some mackerel, which were a startling, shiny blue with eyes like little buttons. I don’t actually know that they were Lithuanian, because I didn’t ask. It was decided that they were, through some weird process to do with their courtly manners.

I was described as ‘the lady in beige’ today. There I was draped over a plastic chair waiting to have ‘my bloods’ taken by the phlebotomist and it made me smile. And a kind chef from my favourite cafe Front Room in Seaford gave me my own ramekin of Spanish almonds to go with my egg and chips. His gesture and the plate of food reminded me of the tortilla – a warm feast of oniony yellows and browns – which feels right for autumn, for rugging up in various shades of beige, for staring out to sea, and for staying put.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Still life

13 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by Sophie James in Not food

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Autumn, England, Fruit, Home, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Stories, Travel

image

These are pears that have fallen from the tree, next door to where we are staying in Chiswick, west London. It is a temporary stop-gap and we are house sitting and cat sitting a rather somnolent cross-eyed cat, an amazing shade of fawn. In fact everything in the house is on the fawn continuum so sometimes it’s hard to spot her. She is also the same colour as the envelopes that arrive from Hounslow council. Anyway, we have been enjoying the pears, that are apparently diseased. At the end of the street is a mulberry tree, which has just been cut back but earlier in the week the pavement was festooned with them, little car crashes all over the place, splats of pink, ruby spillages. We were keen to walk around them so as not to tramp mulberry stains through the house and spoil the general atmosphere of hotel calm. Which at the moment suits our mood, when normally we would be cradling the fruit in our hands and covering ourselves in the never-ever vanishing juice. Because when could you ever resist a mulberry? Never.

Although I have been posting from England regularly since I started blogging, it was as an LA resident. I would always eventually board a plane back to LA, full up on Bach’s Rescue Remedy pastilles and sodden with days of fraught tears. This time, however, I am writing as a resident of England, because we have moved from LA and are now back on English soil. My blog posts will lack, I imagine, some of the emotional freight they once had – nostalgia for crisps and autumn, the love of a good walk etc – and I will be a bit more, well, down to earth, maybe, but hopefully not prosaic. We will be returning to LA regularly so I’m sure I’ll have some interesting tales to tell from immigration, and the warm and caring LA drivers and those women with faces that look as if they’re made of brown candle wax.

image

In the meantime, I have turned the beam of my affection to those things that are difficult to find here – the type of sun and light in LA, which is almost a hard blue, all angles, and then driving, the thing that tormented me more than anything else; okay, I miss the grid system in LA. I miss grids. I miss driving in a straight line for hours at a time with no pedestrians, no people to ruin it, finding Say You Love Me on the CD player with my fingers (Fleetwood Mac Greatest Hits, track 11) tracing it like Braille in case the driver in front suddenly decided not to bother with indicating. And of course I miss our neighbours, who cordially and kindly took my cakes, sometimes as many as two a day (when things were really bad) and who became our friends, and then finally our family. And all the lovely people who scooped us up and fed us and listened to my various diatribes (“Cats need to be free to express their natural instincts!” “I’m European, I refuse to wear a bra”).

Sometimes I just miss the right turn out of the garage, the car tipping down the hill into the first sun of the morning, like a massive fruit in the sky, knowing it wouldn’t change, and being endlessly surprised by it. Here I’m not so much surprised as bemused by the amount of grown men in tailored suits eating Wotsits. Wealth, that’s a surprise, particularly here in London – it makes me want to go up to the chestnut-haired glossy mares drinking lattes in Chiswick House and ask how they did it, and could I have a look at their bank statements? I don’t remember London ever being so untouchably rich (reading John Lanchester on the subject helps).

image

So in that sense, I’m a foreigner, but in every other way, I’m home. ‘Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence’, Philip Larkin wrote. So no LA, no mad people, no Jessica Biel or citrus to beguile you with, but plenty of pears, cats, mulberries, unpacking and, when in London, extortion. It’ll be an interesting few months, thank you for following me.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Tentacles

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Cooking, Fish, Food, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Recipes, Sea, Stories, Travel

IMG_5155

You may not be of the tentacle persuasion. These are the tentacles of squid, and we peeled back the skin, disgorged the innards, threw away the eyes, and sliced the slippery white meat into rings. The tentacles we left alone, simply dragged them through flour and threw them into a bath of hot oil where they instantly froze, like the statues in Pompei. The squid is from Monterey, considered ‘local’ here, though it is over 300 miles away, going north.

This is strange to me, unfathomable really, given that we can drive to the sea in 45 minutes and swim in gorgeous, crystalline water. Malibu: a place where we have witnessed the sight of three stately California grey whales breaching the surface, their wondrous sheen, their size silencing, so that all we could do was point open-mouthed and watch as they shot up their water for us through their blow holes (not sure if that is the technical term). And then there are the pods of dolphins, the seals that pop up nearby as you’re swimming, darkly sleek and chubby. The pelicans fly slowly in a line, quite low, as if to be menacing. I don’t know where they are going.

IMG_1213

Today we watched a man pull a ray fish from the sea, a huge flapping thing that he slipped back into the water, pushing it in the direction of the outgoing wave until it complied and disappeared. The place is teeming with life. But the fish we buy comes from Santa Barbara or beyond.


To clean the squid, pull the head away from the body and with your fingers empty out the body cavity (which includes the ink sac – wear an apron). The cuttlebone will be in there too, transparent and flimsy – remove it. Now gently pull the wings free from the sides and slip off the purple membrane. Rinse under running water and drain. Cut into thickish rings (about 1cm diameter).

Keep the tentacles together by slicing just above the join. Remove the eyes and mouth. I keep the tentacles intact and fry them whole. The five squid I bought made up 1lb which was just enough for the two of us. There are those who like to soak the calamari in milk to tenderize it, and having done this once I don’t think it makes a great deal of difference. So, when you’re ready to cook, mix together equal amounts of plain flour and cornflour (cornstarch) with a pinch of sea salt. Fill a large, heavy-based pan a third full with sunflower or vegetable oil and heat. Throw in a pinch of flour and if it sizzles furiously, you’re ready to go. Drain the squid pieces well and pat dry, then drag them through the flour and shake off any excess. Fry in batches and when golden brown remove them to some kitchen paper. Sprinkle with salt and serve quickly, while they’re hot, with wedges of lemon.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Looking up

19 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Breakfast, Crepes, Downtown, Food, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Recipes, Stories, Travel

IMG_4757

We went downtown for lunch. I keep thinking of the song from Little Shop of Horrors – “Downtown, where relationships are no go! Down on skid row!” It had been about a year since our last proper visit, and though I’ve been drawn to downtown since I first started coming here, I’ve always been a little bit afraid of it. When I first got here I’d take the subway down to the Walt Disney Concert Hall – I’d get off at Civic Center and walk up the steps into this blazing steel sunlight, and make sure I never looked up. Reverse vertigo, that is apparently the term.

Anyway, that part of downtown is all sheer tower blocks, mirrored and panicky, like huge razor blades cutting into the sky. So I would look either down or straight ahead, breathing in until I got to a traffic light and then latching on to someone who was also crossing the road, as if we were friends. I once did this all the way to the Central Library, (looking straight ahead without breathing, latching on) to see Alain de Botton give a talk on why Los Angeles is so badly designed and hostile to walkers. On my way back, now late at night, I felt myself being followed. By the time I got out at Hollywood & Highland I practically rushed head long into the stream of traffic, and found myself face to face with Joe’s Jeep into which I clambered, frothing my relief.

So it’s progress that now, some years on, I can walk around downtown and look up without my feet slipping around inside my shoes. There’s another downtown that’s quite different to those corporate mirrored facades that birds crash into, believing it’s sky. We were heading towards it – to Spring Street because we wanted to visit The Last Bookstore, now housed in an old bank, and all around us were old banks, dark and gutted it seemed, no lights on, the occasional towel flung out to dry as evidence of a transient life. The banks are in the Beaux Arts style, tall and flat-faced with lots of windows and there were lots of people here too, unlike the rest of LA which is glossily empty of pedestrians (as if we ruin it or something).

The Last Bookstore is definitely worth a visit if you like cavernous rooms bulging with books, a bank vault full of horror (stories), a tunnel made of hardbacks, another tunnel made of knitting yarn and a floor made of pennies. And seriously danceable music and crunchy leather chairs. I went in search of a place to pee and found Creperie Sans Frontiere in a little precinct that connected Spring Street and Broadway, the only place that would let me use their bathroom for free. “It’s hard to say yes and it’s hard to say no,” was the lady’s parting shot, as she gave me the key attached to an egg whisk. I took this to mean that she has to decide who she gives the key to and who to deny, and that she probably has this quandary quite often. I went back to tell Joe about it (‘Spring Street and 5th, Spring Street and 5th’) and found him with his feet up on a cracked leather pouffe in the Lit Crit section.

IMG_4779

The crepes (‘galettes’ here) were huge triangles, rather like elephant’s ears. They were 100% buckwheat, which the owner said she edged towards gradually, until finally flinging herself entirely at the buckwheat’s mercy. The taste is rich and earthy, nutty, almost sour. It looks like burnt black earth. You imagine it will taste of an old hat, but actually it’s lovely with maple syrup and some goat’s cheese, maybe a few pecans or a fried egg. The owner had a tower of Nutella; I imagine it would be delicious with that too. We tried to decide where we were: Paris, New York or LA, or none of the above. Or all of the above, and ourselves in amongst it. Downtown is a trip.

When I made the crepes at home I made them smaller, almost like blinis, and found they were much easier to handle. Buckwheat is not wheat or even a grain, but the seed of a plant related to rhubarb (and sorrel), and it absorbs liquid much more than other flours. However, once cooked, it can take on flavours and textures well. Syrup and honey, nuts, soft cheeses, nut butters, jam, ice cream and sorbet. It’s also gluten-free and if you don’t tolerate cow’s milk (like me) then you can add a vast array of ‘milks’ to the batter. Here I used coconut milk.

Buckwheat crepes

Adapted from Arrowhead Mills & David Lebovitz 

18-20 crepes

1 1/2 cups (350 ml) whole milk (or see above)
2-3 tablespoons of maple syrup or honey
A pinch of sea salt
1 1/2 cups (175g) of organic buckwheat flour
2 large eggs lightly beaten

Put the buckwheat flour in a mixing bowl with the salt, then make a well in the middle to which you add the milk and the eggs and the honey or maple syrup. Whisk continuously to create a thick batter. Buckwheat is more absorbent than other flours, so you may need to add more milk – aim for the consistency of heavy cream. Cover and set aside for at least 30 minutes – this batter does better if chilled overnight and brought back to room temperature before frying.

Heat a dab of butter or a small glug of vegetable oil in a non-stick skillet or frying pan over a medium heat, and brush some of it off with a paper towel (unless you like your crepes swimming, which I profess I do). Pour about a 1/4 cup of batter (about a ladleful) into the middle of the hot pan. The buckwheat batter (in my experience of now having eaten the crepes every day for the last seven days) will not move around much but stay where it is; don’t attempt to swirl it as it’ll resist. After a minute or two, flip it over and cook for about 30 seconds. Aim for dark, blistered and crispy. Pile them up on a plate and douse with maple syrup or rest some fried eggs on them. Fried eggs go very well, oddly, with buckwheat crepes – perhaps it’s the egg’s sweetness.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Greenery & cold blue sky

05 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Christmas, England, Food, Herbs, Ingredients, Recipes, Stories, Travel, Yoghurt

IMG_1335I can’t have any more trifle. Is it me or is everything around this time of year yellow? Cauliflower cheese, the aforementioned trifle with its layers of custard and cream and small pillows of sponge soaked in a harrowing and unnamed alcohol. Potatoes, parsnips, pavlova, wheels of varicosely veined cheese, the sweating clay mantle of marzipan draped over a now moribund Christmas cake (thank you, Alan Partridge, for reviving the word ‘moribund’).

I would kill for something green and empty of any tracklements or gravy. Something, as a young friend said recently, ‘farmier’. So it is in search of the farmy – still showing signs of its former life in a field, a bit on the grubby side – that I am featuring horseradish and chives, and beetroot with the tops still on. Admittedly, horseradish is on the spectrum of yellow, but far from viscous, it is cleansing, almost brutal in its sinus clearing properties.

This has been our first English Christmas for four years. I had forgotten what happens; we have had no one there at all, just echoing voices down the phone and talking heads via Skype, that instrument of torture, all smoke and mirrors. Then, all of a sudden, here we all are, sitting in the same overheated room for five and a half days eating individually wrapped chocolates housing an unfamiliar nut combination. Watching films incessantly, grazing like cattle, and forgetting, consciously, all the people who have nothing, and saying that next year we will volunteer for a homeless charity, to try to counteract the obscenity of all the waste. And then watching another film.

019

But these have been the highlights: travelling across the country afforded us sweeping views; rivers running red with iron in Somerset, an orange-bibbed pheasant launching itself into the air like a kite, faraway hills lush and dramatic with greenery and cold blue skies, and then the lashing rain that pitter-pattered on our skylight windows at night and came down in zig zags during the day. Frosty exteriors and meltingly warm central heating. Watching my dad play in his jazz band in a pub called The Valiant Soldier and meeting by chance a writer I’ve loved reading in The New Yorker, and admiring her shoes (Tessa Hadley).

Dancing with mum in the kitchen, my uncle playing the ukulele. Pretending to be Pina Bausch. Sharing christmas cake recipes; to ice or not to ice? Feeling for the first time in a long time that I am a version of something familiar, not exotic or an anomaly. My accent no longer ‘adorable’. I am no longer adorable! It’s exhausting, and I’m relieved.

Horseradish (below, mine) is a member of the crucifer family, along with radishes, turnips and mustard and looks like a rather disgusting parsnip. Unpeeled it smells of nothing, but once it is nude, it will make you weep copiously. Open a window. It is best treated in the same way that mustard is – it loves roast beef, glazed ham and sausages – really any fatty meats do well. Fatty, oily fish do too. In fact, I have had so many versions of this beetroot-horseradish-fatty fish-or-meat dish in recent months that I may well be verging on the unseasonal.

IMG_1298

Grow your own horseradish with caution; it’s rampant and self-seeds and ‘wants to be’ highly invasive. If you find the root with the leaves still attached you can use them as a salad ingredient, or throw them into a saucepan with a glass of water and boil quickly, treating them as greens, though the leaves of my horseradish are always ravaged and ragged by the time the root is ready and go straight on the compost.

As for chives (Allium schoenoprasum), they add a lovely fresh, oniony grass-like taste – no surprise that they belong to the same family as the onion, leek, garlic and shallot. They have a natural affinity with anything creamy and/or with a nursery blandness such as eggs. Snip them with scissors rather than chop them with a knife. I see them growing ‘wild’ often though I suspect that it may just be a very vigorous, cultivated herb in someone’s abandoned hedge.

Horseradish & chive dressing with roasted beetroot

Adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The Guardian

About 500g small beets
4 garlic cloves, unpeeled but bashed
1 large sprig fresh thyme (optional)
1 bay leaf (optional)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A glug of olive oil

For the dressing
200ml thick yoghurt (Greek is good)
Large squeeze of lemon juice & one garlic clove peeled, bashed and chopped
3 heaped tbsp freshly grated horseradish (more if you’ve got a cold)
A small handful of finely chopped chives, plus more to finish

To serve
4 smoked mackerel fillets or scrambled eggs or an omelette
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Scrub the beets, but leave them whole, then place on a large piece of foil. Scatter with the garlic, thyme leaves, bay leaf and some salt and pepper, then dribble with oil. Scrunch up the foil to make a sealed parcel, place it on a baking tray and put in the oven. Roast until tender – about 45 minutes for small ones. The beetroots are cooked when a knife slips easily into the flesh. Leave to cool, then top and tail them, and remove the skin. Cut into wedges and place in a large bowl.

Whisk together all the dressing ingredients and season. Divide the beetroots between four plates and dollop the horseradish in the vicinity. Scatter on some more chives, season to taste and serve with lemon wedges and/or some scrambled eggs and/or mackerel fillets.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

In the street

24 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Christmas, Citrus, Dessert, Friendship, Fruit, Ingredients, Italy, Nonfiction, Recipes, Stories, Travel

img_0535

That’s how I met her. Running from a broken down train and away from a car crash, in Newhaven of all places. The last time I made a friend this way was twenty years ago in a bakery in Venice, and my accent gave me away. It was heady, to think that’s how it can still be done, meeting in the street and suddenly you’re friends. I ran after her. I wasn’t chasing her or anything, but she just said quickly “follow me” and so I did. It was like being in Borgen.

Her stepfather was waiting for us in a car, and she had to explain quickly who I was and what was going on. I didn’t wait outside because of the freezing wind. I threw myself into the back like a labrador, and we were away. All round the houses, because of the crash. There weren’t even any buses, so if it hadn’t been for her I would have been walking along the English channel for two hours trying to avoid the dog turds. I still feel bad we completely ignored her stepfather. I slipped in a thanks everso much at the end. But it was too exciting, meeting like this. And having so much in common, we even knew people from way back. A cinematographer meeting an actress. Zero degrees of separation.

The last time it felt like no big deal. I met Charlotte in a bakery in Venice, and the next thing I know (and because of her) I’m sitting in Trieste having an interview for a place at Warwick University with the head of the Italian department and his daughter over a bowl of penne alla vodka. I remember the pinky-red sauce and the fumes of subtle alcohol, and the sheer exuberance of the conversation. Actually, he was a monologuer, one of those people who talks in order to stay alive. But in those days, it felt normal, this happenstance. Maybe all young people feel like that – somehow touched by a higher hand. I just wandered into things and it all came out alright. 


This is a bit of a cheat. But it gives everyone a breather from all the stolid mince pies and Christmas pudding, and the sheer load of food consumed on the day. It twinkles and it’s orange. And it’s a chance to show off your extravagance in buying in some marrons glacés (candied chestnuts) which are bloody expensive so just one each (and completely unphotographable, sorry, they look like bunions). I like to think it’s a nod in the direction of Italy and heat and sun. I have doffed my cap in the direction of the Venetian stalwart aranci caramellizzati, which began life at the Taverna Fenice. Happy Christmas.

Salty caramel oranges with marrons glacés 

Adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The Guardian

Serves 4

4 oranges

4 marrons glacés

Peel the oranges. Use a sharp knife for cutting citrus, if you want it to look pretty. Take a narrow slice off the stem and blossom ends. Cut down the sides of the orange from top to bottom, slicing away the skin and the white pith. Now cut into rounds and put into a bowl. Or, if you wish, serve each person individually.

Crumble the marrons glacés on top, then trickle the molten caramel sauce (by which I mean warm) over the cool fruit, where it will form nice ribbons. Squeeze the juice that has spilled all over the place over the top and it’s ready to go. Delicious with a glass of chilled champagne.

Salty caramel adapted from Nigella Lawson, How To Eat

Serves 4

5 tbs light muscovado

50g unsalted butter

100g golden syrup

125ml single cream

1 big pinch of sea salt flakes

Melt the sugar, butter and golden syrup in a thick-bottomed pan with the salt. When smooth and melted, let it bubble away, gently, for about 5 minutes. Then take off the heat and add the cream. Add more salt at this point if you like it lip-smacking. You can pour the sauce into a jug and serve hot, or do it in advance, refrigerate and reheat. It is truly stupendous.


Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

The branch line

31 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Breakfast, England, Fish, Sea, Storm, Sussex, Trains, Travel

001

Monday was a day apart. Perhaps that day in 1987 was a similar sort of day, when I wasn’t actually here to see trees felled, and the sea clamber up into houses like a white-fanged monster. Here the doors whistled all night. But it was the sea, endlessly rolling, throwing out the birds, spitting and frothing and covering the beach with spume and creeping ever nearer. At times it was a wall of water, rising up, drawing back. A boy was swept off the beach, just up the road at Newhaven. He’s still missing. There’s something sad and ghoulish about it, with sparse details (his age, 14, not much more), the sea with cruel intentions.

I tried to get a train. Up to London and down to Somerset. Off to see my dad after two years – down to the West Country, the Bristol channel, the other side. No one had slept because of the sea and the wind battering at our windows. 80 mph winds, the papers had predicted, and chaos on the roads and rail, and everyone had smiled because there’s always a joke about weathermen here. It’s either hysterical (the wrong kind of snow!) or underplaying things, like a blushing maiden shy of the clouds. Who can forget Michael Fish and his 1987 blunder about the hurricane that reduced Sevenoaks to one oak – “Don’t worry, it isn’t”, he said, in response to a lady phoning the BBC, worried there might be one on the way.

The taxi didn’t show up, so we hailed a cab in the street. The wind made me feel very light in the loafers. At one point a huge gust ripped open my coat, dragged my scarf on to the street and was unbuttoning my shirt in the manner of a really proactive first date. I had to hang on to a lamp post.

001

The waiting room at the station was full. My mum worked the room as if at a party. She wasn’t coming with me but was there to ‘see me off’ which normally means posting ten pound notes through the window as the train moves off, followed by a jar of peanut butter. But there were no trains. Sheila worked in Brighton and had been up since 5am ‘because of the wind’. Francoise was going to Liverpool where she was expected by a group of friends. Another lady in a strange hat wasn’t travelling at all and seemed to be there purely to socialize. We joked about drinking so much tea to pass the time that we’d end up murdering people ‘because of the caffeine’. There were no trains, it was clear. There had been no train at 9.25, 9.58, 10.25, 10.58, 11.25 and 11.58. Sheila was going to give it til 12.25, and if that one didn’t turn up she was going back to bed.

We went to a cafe round the corner to wait. When I saw what was on the menu, something in me softened. Beetroot and potato rösti with Weald smoked haddock and a poached egg. You can’t rush a poached egg. I watched him gently spooning it through the water. Could I leave it another day? The predictions had been right for once. The storm, known as St. Jude, had been tracked way back when it was just a few wisps over the Atlantic. They knew it was coming. They warned us: unless it’s essential don’t travel on Monday. It had exacted the kind of damage that brings public transport to its knees, with branches strewn on tracks (we were on a ‘branch line’ fittingly), a bus rearing up like a distressed pony. Gas explosions, wild seas, a lost boy.

I ate the rösti on the platform, the lumbering behind of the 12.25 still visible as it made its way to Lewes. Too full, too few carriages, too early. I got there as the doors were closing. I didn’t bother to protest. No one looked particularly jubilant inside. And it was suddenly a beautiful day. I sat and ate the best breakfast ever from a cardboard box made for the purpose. Ruby patties, fresh and clean, with a hint of horseradish. I think they must have cooked the potato and possibly grated the beetroot raw. The poached egg was rangy as a jelly fish, the yolk meltingly tender. Clumps of haddock fell away. I ate it all with my fingers. It didn’t occur to me, for once, to photograph it. The photo of the sea above was of a quiet day, the moon a quiet night. It was good to give up. I’m here for a while.

Beetroot and potato rösti

Inspired by Sea Salt in Seaford, East Sussex.

Heavily adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The Guardian Weekend, 5th October.

Rösti are Swiss, from Bern, and began life as a substantial dish for farmers, but this one below is not a ‘trad’ recipe. I’m not convinced about the egg. You could experiment. If you’re not a fan of beetroot, you could grate apple instead. And I suspect this recipe could be happily adapted for parsnips. Parsnips and apple are good bedfellows.

300g firm potatoes

2 medium beetroot

1 egg, lightly beaten (optional)

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Olive oil and butter for frying

Put the potatoes (unpeeled) into a saucepan and add cold water just to cover. Salt lightly, bring to a boil, then cook for seven minutes and then drain. They should still offer some resistance to a knife. Once the potatoes are cool enough to handle, coarsely grate them into a large bowl. Peel the beetroot and grate it, raw, into the same bowl. Add the egg (or as much of it as you see fit) plenty of seasoning, and mix. Cook the rösti in batches. Heat a nonstick frying pan over a medium heat and add oil and a knob of butter to come up about 2mm up the sides. When the oil is hot, take a heaped dessertspoonful of the potato mixture and drop it into the pan and use a spatula to form it into a rough patty shape. Add several more spoonfuls without overcrowding the pan. Cook for eight to ten minutes, turning carefully once or twice, until golden brown and crisp all over. Serve nicely warm with horseradish, smoked haddock and a poached egg.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Rum & Raisin

23 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Alcohol, Autumn, Dessert, Food, Fruit, Ice cream, Ingredients, Recipes, Stories, Travel

IMG_0352

The last of the bewildering hot weather. Nights where one cotton sheet feels like being shrouded in carpet. Talking alone brings on the vapours, sweat beading on our foreheads as we nod sagely at someone we’re not listening to. Everyone drives like Vin Diesel, ramping up the volume on their car stereos, burning rubber as they overtake me on blind corners, tyres squealing like guinea pigs. And all I can think is how rude they’re being. That’s my version of a riot. Because I can’t complain. Because I’m English, and that’s all we do, while saying that we can’t do it. “I can’t complain” is our watchword. And I have been drawn to this detail of Englishness recently, perhaps because it’s so absent in LA.

Our English guests never complain either. We dance around each other in pained politeness. It must be akin to observing some ancient ritual – like conversational Morris dancing  – with no one able to say exactly what the problem is, or even if there is a problem. “Do you have a parrot?” our English guest asked me today. “Er, no. Why?” “No, no, it’s fine. I just thought I heard a parrot at around five o’clock this morning.” I knew what it was because it had woken us too. “It was a coyote.” “Really?” “Yes, they live in the hills here and when they’ve killed a deer, they make a kind of ‘yipping’ sound. They do it with car alarms and fire engines as well.” “Oh right.” We all imagined a decapitated deer. “Great, well, see you around then! Thanks for breakfast.” “Don’t worry, it’s really safe here. They very rarely come down into the complex.” As I said this I remembered the coyote in the hallway and the mountain lion up by the tennis courts. They tranquillized it and carried it off somewhere. I wish I’d just said: “Yes, we have a parrot. We’ll kill it for you.”

I can’t imagine this conversation between Americans. I still don’t know what it was really about, but I felt in strange harmony with it. I’m leaving soon for England and it helped me get into the rhythm of things again. It was nice to talk to someone from Eastbourne, knowing that in a few days I will be walking the Downs, talking about the weather, bemoaning the end of summer, arms folded against the wind.

IMG_0357

I would be happy if there were only five flavours of ice cream in the world: vanilla, chocolate, hazelnut, pistachio and rum & raisin. And raspberry ripple as a bonus flavour (for nostalgia purposes). But no cookie dough, rocky road or banoffee pie. And ‘sugar free’ vanilla – what’s that? Rum and raisin is a classic, and much underrated in my opinion. I know there are people who don’t like alcohol in sweets, but we will forge ahead regardless.

And this ice cream also lends itself to subtle doctoring: round and treacly Flame raisins, seeded Muscat raisins (sticky and crunchy and used traditionally in old bread recipes), meaty, soft, pale gold raisins (above) and Thompson seedless down below, still with their tails on, drowned in a saucer of rum – they are all so Californian, dried from the grape by our endless sun, and yet weirdly invisible, except for a few market stalls with their lumpen quarry. But I never gravitate there. Does one ever crave a raisin? But plumped up juicily in some searing alcohol and it’s quite a different matter. You could substitute the rum for sherry, if you like, and go for Pedro Ximénez if it’s available. This is a very ‘raisiny’ sherry, treacly and intense and good for a grown up ice cream such as this.

IMG_0866

Rum & Raisin Ice Cream

Adapted from Ice Cream! by Pippa Cuthbert & Lindsay Cameron Wilson

The soft brown sugar creates a darker, more complex flavour, but you can use caster sugar instead if you like. Sherry works well in place of rum.

100g (¾ cup) raisins

100ml (½ cup) dark rum or sherry

300ml (1¼ cups) whole milk

4 large egg yolks

100g (¾ cup) soft brown sugar

200ml (scant 1 cup) heavy/double cream

Put the raisins and 75ml (¼ cup) of the rum or sherry in a bowl and set aside to soak overnight or until the raisins have absorbed almost all the liquid.

Heat the milk and cream in a heavy-bottomed saucepan to near-boiling point, then remove from the heat. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together, using an electric whisk, until thick and pale. Loosen the egg with some of the milk/cream mixture, then pour the eggs and sugar back into the saucepan. Stir well to mix everything properly and then return to a low heat. Stir until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. Remove from the heat, pour into a bowl and place over iced water to cool. You will need to stir it from time to time to avoid the custard developing a skin.

When the mixture is completely cold, churn in an ice cream maker, adding the remaining rum/sherry and all the raisins towards the end of churning. The raisins have a tendency to sink to the bottom before the ice cream can harden and suspend them, so you may want to give it a stir after half an hour or so in the freezer to distribute the raisins more evenly. Serve with a glass of either rum or sherry, or just pour it straight over the ice cream.

Other recipes with raisins:

Banana and raisin bread

Sticky toffee pudding

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...
← Older posts

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,369 other subscribers

Top Posts & Pages

Walnut bread
A Word About Dates
Chocolate marmalade slump
Small Crumbs of Comfort
Nasturtium-leaf sandwiches
A mess of meringue
Apple and sultana cake
Soft-boiled egg and soldiers
His favourite butter
A word about cherimoyas

Recent Posts

  • Mulberries
  • We are nature
  • Leaving home
  • A treacherous herb
  • Just stop it
  • Why I swim
  • Semi-derelict
  • Onward

Great books I’ve read

Blogs/Websites I read

  • Letitia Clark
  • Nigel Slater
  • Otter Farm
  • Penelope Lively
  • Room to heal
  • Samantha Harvey
  • Stewart Lee
  • The Idler
  • The Marginalian
  • Tom Cox
Follow Stories from the Stove on WordPress.com

Archives

  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • May 2022
  • February 2022
  • December 2021
  • August 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • January 2021
  • June 2020
  • November 2018
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • May 2016
  • October 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
"A WOW piece!" Claudia Roden on Walnut Bread

Walnut bread

Lucas’s chocolate marmalade slump

Tags

Afternoon tea Allotment Almonds Art Autumn Baking Bread Breakfast Cafes Cake Childhood Chocolate Christmas Citrus Claudia Roden Cookbook Cooking Dessert Devon Dinner Elizabeth David England Exmoor Fish Food France Fruit Gardening Gelato Gluten-free Herbs Home Homesickness Honey Ice cream Ices Ingredients Italy Jam Jane Grigson Lemons London Los Angeles Lucas Hollweg Marmalade Meat Mediterranean Meyer lemons Nature Nigel Slater Nonfiction Nuts Onions Patience Gray Poetry Pudding Reading Recipe Recipes Salad Sea Seasons Soup Spain Spices Spring Stone fruit Stories Summer Sussex Travel Vegetables Winter Writing Yoghurt

A WordPress.com Website.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Stories from the Stove
    • Join 2,080 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Stories from the Stove
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: