End of the Allotment

Now, where was I? The answer to that is in a rather more (but by no means strictly) vegetarian place than before.

For health reasons more than economy (though I love a bargain), and because we produce a lot of our own fruit and veg, I have over the last two or three years cooked far fewer meat-based dishes than used to be the case. I have a new hero too, the cookery writer Ursula Ferrigno, who appears to be of a similar mindset given I have two books of hers that are solely vegetarian, and a third on trattoria cooking that has plenty of meaty stuff in it.

As the Dear Leader (may her enemies perish in despair) and I near our second 30th birthdays anno domini looms far larger in the imagination, so we pick up more readily on the health-page articles than previously, and getting five-, seven-, ten-a-day is a fixation there, and thus now with us. We have also both made successful efforts to lose weight, part and parcel of the new view of our diet.

The big thing, however, as ever as far as I am concerned, is taste and pleasure. The two big things. Amongst our weaponry. It is now mid-July, our soon-to-be abandoned allotment (fed up with people nicking stuff, have lost strawbs, broad beans and blackcurrants this year already) is producing loads of wonderful and next-to-free produce, and our garden likewise. The broad beans (we have still had the majority of what we grew, but I hate being abused by thieves) are picked small and some eaten raw they are that good. Our fennel, likewise picked when tiny, is packed with more flavour and of a texture that is silk to supermarket worsted.

There are gastronomic possibilities too in growing your own that are pretty near impossible in this country otherwise. We have for example had lots of artichokes already, again taken small and sweet. And for the first time ever we have beaten those far more relentless produce-thieves, the squirrels, to our walnut crop, still only perhaps a dozen picked green, but now macerating in a Kilner jar with spices and a bottle of unwanted clear spirit, nocino for Christmas 2019.

The Dear Leader (may those who fail to bow before her suffer endless agonies) is expanding our kitchen garden, already quite a size, we spent a happy Sunday last week building a second small greenhouse (my how they laughed at the instruction book, apparently a surrealist statement of merely possible realities) and we have plans for more trees - this morning's smoothie contained three of our homegrown plums - to add yet more unbuyable varieties to our basket. We seem to be looking forward to the best ever quince harvest too.

I will miss the allotment, and wish the two users who will inherit our ground (and trees, and artichokes, and fruit bushes, and...) well of it. But I fear that as we head into uncertain political times, and very probably poorer economic conditions thanks to a generation of politicians of all stripes who couldn't organise a fart from a can of beans, we will see more and more desperate people reduced to raiding allotments to keep from hunger. I'd prefer it if they had an allotment of their own though.

In case anybody thinks I'm a heartless sod begrudging food to the desperate, I regularly donate a bag of tins and packets to the Sally Army. I do wonder if those stealing things are desperate, or just greedy idle bastards - a while back the plot next door lost a giant pumpkin just before Halloween; and another guy had an entire row of spuds dug up.

Fashion in Food

Fashion in food is responsible for some vile things. Food presented on bits of slate - thank you Mr Flintstone but no. The word jus. Flavour combinations that were never meant to be, but which are supposed to have us saying: "How clever." Certain celebrity chefs.

Chefs take themselves very seriously, and rightly so as it is a real skill or set thereof, but some go beyond professional right back into their own rear ends, and few critics ever tell them so, thus we continue to be peppered with daft dishes, and new trends. One thousand ways to make cupcakes etc, when one is more than enough, cupcakes are dull.

The most ridiculous combination I ever ate was in 1989, I can still recall the precise day. At the time it was probably the epitome of food fashion. I had driven from Dusseldorf to a hotel in a village near Sneek in the northern Netherlands, and needed comfort food for a particular reason beyond the lengthy trek. The menu was in Dutch, my mind was elsewhere, so I ordered what I thought was simply steak. It was steak, but surrounded by blackcurrant sauce. The meat tasted of blackcurrants, the few veg likewise. I pushed the plate aside and moved on.

Food should lift us. But that day even the best steak in the world would have failed to raise my spirits. On the journey I'd tuned to BBC radio to listen to the football, the voice of Peter Jones normally so bright immediately registered as devastated. It was April 15th. He was commentating, if that is the right word, on the unfolding of the Hillsborough tragedy. I had to pull off the road as I started to sob. There are so many more things more important than provenance, jus, and cupcakes.

Summer Bread and Butter Pudding

Best food idea of the summer so far, on about the only summer's day. Doubtless it has been done before, but I hadn't heard of it - and my wife was the one who suggested this way of using our limited crop of black- and redcurrants, about 250 grammes in total. Birds and bad weather did for the rest - last year we had perhaps five times as much.

I used some cheap and cheerful brioche rolls, but it could be made perfectly easily with sliced white bread, buttered well (both sides if you wish) layered bread-fruit-bread-fruit-bread, with a sprinkle of sugar on the fruit each time, and again on the top. A custard made with four of our eggs (small ones from the newer chickens), a pint of milk, and about eight teaspoons of sugar all whisked together was poured over the rest, then the pudding popped in an oven at 180 centigrade for 40 minutes.

The fruit burst, colouring some of the custard purple, and the top was glazed with sugar. Left until it was just warm it was delicious.