Strange Times

To balance recent posts that have been about the health side of food, this is about pleasure.

As the weather at the end of February - February - has been so warm and sunny, and given the Dear Leader (may her critics shrivel like salted slugs) and I are both freelances, and Sternest Critic is marking time to his departure to Gozo, we actually had a barbecue on the 26th. A barbecue in Preston in February. Donald Trump doesn't believe in climate change, but I do. 

Given we are avoiding processed meats there were no sausages or burgers, but that was no loss as we enjoyed turkey steaks and langoustines for all, plus lamb chops (for SC and me) and fillets of sea bass (for the Dear Leader). All of that balanced with a green salad, a tomato salad, griddled mushrooms, and both asparagus and (our own freshly picked) fine leeks baked over the coals in foil. 

We cooked and ate slowly, so the meal lasted a good two hours. We talked, we watched the birds feeding in the garden, and we relaxed. Not a single spoonful of raw cacao powder passed our lips, though a glass or two of Beaujolais did. It was life enhancing. 

Barbecuing well is not easily done. We went a year or so back to eat with some friends somehow new to the idea who, no exaggeration, lit the coals/firelighter, and put the food straight on. It was fireplace smoky and with a hint of plastic. On the way home we discussed forming a survivor group. SC got our fire going more than an hour before we thought of putting anything over the ashy-grey fuel. Timing is not easy either, though lamb is forgiving, so a skewer to test turkey doneness came in handy. I wouldn't bother with chicken joints. The fish you can just tell by looking and a bit of a poke with a knife-tip, the langoustines by the charring of the shells and the smell.

I feel we need a BBQ challenge. It's long been my ambition to do a whole (gutted and skinned of course) lamb over a fire pit, but DL forbids it. So this summer I aim to do beef short rib in the piece, with some strong flavours in the marinade to make it even more special. Prepare then for a wet summer wash out. 

Relais Routier as Touchstone

Much though I enjoy a wide variety of culinary cultures, like Brits many of my generation French remains the ne plus ultra. Of course French cooking covers another wide variety in itself: regional traditions; the haute cuisine of Escoffier and the like; cuisine bourgeoise; etc etc. But the sub-group to which I am drawn most is the cookery one finds (or at least used to find, my travels in France having been limited of late) in Relais Routier establishments.

The Relais Routier restaurant is a marvellously democratic institution. Along with the lorry drivers who form a significant percentage of their clientele you'll see lunch tables occupied by gendarmes, business travellers, maybe the local mayor being lashed up so he'll sign some permission or other; families en route to the coast, country or mountains. They're drawn to these places for several reasons, including that they offer great value for money; rapid turnover means the food is fresh; and the cooking is excellent (otherwise they fail and close). We counter these independent eateries with Little Chef. Worse, Little Chef after Heston Blumenthal stuck his mottie in.

I thought about Relais Routier yesterday because I cooked leeks vinaigrette, one of the great standbys of the RR buffet table. It's one of those dishes that needs no chefy spin. Good fresh leeks (in our case dug from the allotment an hour before they hit the pot) washed carefully of grit and dirt then boiled in salty water until tender; carefully drained, cooled (you can dip them in iced water to keep the green bits greener, but why bother when they get covered up anyway?), slit lengthwise and placed cut-side-up on a serving plate. Their surfaces are then given a liberal dose of chopped parsley followed by hard boiled egg grated over, and a very mustardy olive oil and red wine vinegar vinaigrette.

That buffet table would also include a regularly refilled dish of olives; cervelas or some similar charcuterie; lentil salad; tomato salad (made with tomatoes that taste of something more than water); potato salad; grated carrots squeezed until almost dry and mixed with herbs and salt; maybe salade nicoise. The list goes on, every entry on it both - relatively - cheap to make and delicious.

Simply Seasonal

In the civilised world, and Preston almost qualifies, nobody is truly self-sufficient but we can all be a bit more self-reliant. To that end we recently had solar panels fitted, something that will reduce our carbon footprint a bit more, though I am pretty sure that growing lots of our own food has a bigger impact on that front - but only if we actually eat the stuff.

The trouble is that certain foodstuffs tend to come in gluts. We have half a dozen apple trees of different types, the idea being to spread the season, but it's still pretty much compressed into a tall bell curve with September and October acocunting for 90 per cent of our crop. Cobnuts are worse, you have to harvest them before the squirrels (utter bastards with fluffy tails) nick the lot, so the yield from our two trees is now picked and drying in the conservatory. This year beetroot can be added to that list, as we got relatively few earlier on, but all the remaining ones have started to balloon in the last couple of weeks, and need using up before the frosts get them and/or they go woody.

For a cook situations like that are fun. I veer between thrifty and profligate, and both stances can be accommodated simultaneously in this period. An idea borrowed from HF-W - for a salad of boiled beetroot in apple sauce - led to a gratin of boiled beetroot and two sorts of apple, a cooker reduced to sauce (with a spoon of honey) and an eater chopped small and fried in butter before the lot was mixed together and baked with a cheese topping. It could have been a waste of good produce, but was very enjoyable, sweet and savoury in one blast.

It's good when the gluts can be combined like that. Another recent example was lettuces (oakleaf and cos) cut before the frosts start, made into a big salad with more boiled beetroot, boiled eggs (our chickens working overtime currently), and toasted cobnuts. I could have added chopped parsley and some chicory leaves, but wanted to keep it simple. It was doubly satisfying in both the filling-up sense and in being seasonal, and triply because beyond the dressing the Sainsbury family benefitted by not one penny from it.

Bacon and Cream Make Everything Better

I was reading the excellent 'Edible Seashore' book by John Wright the other day (it's one of the River Cottage series), and was amused by his comment about (if memory serves) a cockle recipe which included bacon, cream and garlic, making the entirely sensible point that with those additions, pretty much everything tastes good. Looking over one of Nigel Slater's tomes shortly afterwards, it was clear that the fringed fop has built much of his style on that very thought. [I enjoy his ideas, but his writing style can be a trial - not everything is comfort food for goodness' sake - though why goodness and rice wine should be linked I have no clue]. Nigella Lawson, it could be said, did the same with buckets of thick cream (and a considerable cleavage).

With our now well-established healthy approach to matters culinary cream is a rare treat, but I had a hankering for lardons during a visit to Aldi for fruit bushes (£2.49 for three, and they're in very good nick, top bargain), and incorporated the pack in what would normally be a vegetarian warm salad, bacon replacing mushrooms. Naturally it worked, the other ingredients of blue cheese, rocket, roasted butternut squash (yes, it's a take on an HF-W recipe) greeting the salty stuff with open arms. As I had the oven on for the squash I cut large toms into thick slices and roasted them too for 20 minutes, half the time the squash got, and included a handful of bashed unpeeled garlic cloves, which roasted to nearly burnt brown were the most garlicky thing I've had in weeks. Cold the same toms are tastless; cooked and warm they are sharp and pleasing, a nice balance to the rest of the dish. Some walnuts warmed in with the bacon proved a bit superfluous.

The question is, would the dish have been, though clearly different, as good or even (whisper it quietly) better without the lardons? I actually think that as they were the overly dominant flavour (the slightly caramelised squash and the garlic equal second), taking a bit of limelight away from the veg, this was something that actually would have been better without bacon. My world view is shaken to the core.

One Flame Cooking - Vegged-up Style

Vegged-up. Gosh, how demotic as a good friend would probably say.

My one flame cookery has tended to be a meat-centred thing, but inspired it has to be said by HF-W's veg book, and for reasons explored in another recent post, we've cut down on meat (not cut it out) and pushed the veg quota here. I'm a big fan of what our American cousins would call the dinner salad too, so put those factors together with the one flame idea and you end up with some substantial meatless feasts.

Best of those has to be the lentil-centric salad (lentil-centric being like London centric, but different in that one is concerned with a lot of rather greyish vegetables all looking alike with no space between them, the other has lentils. Boom-tish, I'm here all week).

In the trusty Le Creuset cast iron pan a chopped onion is fried gently, with a chopped red pepper for colour, some garlic sliced, then a posh sachet of lentils. Had some been available I'd have added a few cubes of bacon or slices of chorizo (people who pronounce that cho-ritz-o now quite high up my list of those due to die horribly when I rise to supreme power). So long as the onion and garlic are cooked it's just a case of warming the rest through, not even getting them hot (how very continental), as you eat this warm.

Lettuce or rocket or lamb's lettuce on the plate the lentil mix is added, some Parmesan shavings and walnuts put on top (with enough time then for the oil in the nuts to warm through a bit - I am not a fan of toasting them), and the lot dressed with a vinaigrette. It's the basis for further experimentation (adulteration?) - goats cheese or blue cheese are good, tomatoes go nicely, black olives and hard-boiled eggs fit in too. So long as there are not too many ingredients (in which case it evolves into another nice Americanism, the garbage salad) it remains a good solid filler-upper, and one that can be on the table in 15 minutes.

Does this count as austerity cooking? As Merchant Gourmet lentils (for 'tis he) only cost about £1.50, and the rest if no bacon or chorizo used would add another £1.50 tops, that's dinner for two or three for £3.

White Supremacy - Except for the Other Colours Being Great Too

Back to the question of colour in food. Not food colouring, something almost always to be avoided, but the colours on our plates. And the wonders of raw food.

For the hard of reading I should start taking photos again, it would help with posts like this.

Yesterday, prompted by a remark by the Dear Leader earlier in the week (I follow behind with a notebook to jot down every word of her infinitely wise remarks), we had raw cauliflower as part of what our American cousins would call a 'dinner salad'. I've also heard the phrase 'garbage salad' used for something similar, though there is a notable difference between them - the former more refined and planned, the latter a way of using anything and everything (within reason) to hand.

The cauli was bought that day, was a fine shining white, and looked beautiful on the plate - thanks in particular to the contrast with red pepper and cherry toms, and the green mixed leaves. It was superbly crunchy and crisp, and had all the flavour without that unpleasantly lurking reek of the cooked version. As we don't grow caulis (too much faffery) we don't eat many, but when we do I love them raw like that, something I first came across in a mid-range restaurant in the USA (California if I'm not mistaken, spiritual home of the big salad).

It is not the only vegetable that I prefer raw. Give me coleslaw instead of cooked white cabbage (memories of school dinners) any day. Grated carrot rather than boiled (though I do like glazed carrots). Raw beetroot over boiled or baked. Crisp uncooked celery sticks instead of soft casseroled chunks. The purity of flavour is one part of those preferences, but the brightness of colour is as significant.

White - rather than very pale green, or dull gray/grey - is a rare thing in the kitchen unless significant quantities of dairy fat are involved. That scarcity made the raw cauli all the more enticing. But in case anyone wants to draw a point of political philosophy (or bigotry) out of that, alone it looked boring, only coming to life when set beside the vibrant red tomatoes and pepper.

Several of Your 103 a Day

We love our fruit and veg in this household. I'd rather eat a mixed salad than a plate of chips, especially if they are the soggy ones that chip shops now seem to specialise in (what used to be a treat at the Norfolk seaside has become something to avoid of late).

It's just as well we like them, as our alternative eating programme (SC and I have both lost 9lb or so) majors on F&V. Even we would struggle under normal circs, however, to get to what one fears is rapidly heading towards a dietary requirement of 103 portions a day. It was scary, btw, to hear during the recent spate of stories about such intakes that many Brits, and not just the economically challenged, don't manage a single portion in their normal daily routine.

Yesterday's pudding stood us in good stead for some sort of campaign medal. As we were eating lamb (slow roast in a raised rack to let the fat drip out) as main I made a fruit salad for pud. Not something I do often, as childhood memories of tinned versions - nasty plasticky cherries and all - served up at school and on occasion at home have left a scar. This was all fresh - half a tray of blueberries that needed using up, ditto strawbs, some oranges and satsumas, grapes, apples... all in orange juice not the vile syrup that accompanied 1970s versions. It was so good we ended up drinking the remaining juice.

When you do the sums that treat - for such it was - cost I think less than a carton of the beloved Ben and Jerry's Phish Food ice cream. Say 90p for the blueberries, same for the strawbs, £1.30 for the citrus, 25p for the apple and 20p the grapes, then 30p the juice. So £3.85 for something really delicious that also made us feel a teensy bit virtuous. Or smug.

I have no intention of posting a video online, leaving the beneficial effects on ones digestion this morning to the imagination. And stating that we have no need of colonic irrigation here thanks very much. Too subtle?

The Fire Still Burns

First BBQ of the year yesterday at the suggestion of our Dear Leader, and an excellent suggestion it was too.

The leg of lamb I was to roast was instead butterflied and cooked over the charcoal, having spent a couple of hours in a garlic and garlic marinade. Not a complex recipe, you crush six cloves of garlic and rub them over the non-fatty bits then leave for as long as is prudent. With the meat varying in thickness between say three inches and half that there was something for everyone in there. Everyone who doesn't like lamb horribly overdone.

The meal fitted the health kick we're on at present. I didn't use any oil in cooking the lamb, nor a parcel of prawns steamed in their own juices and given an edge with lemon-grass, chilli and cumin. Patatas Bravas (nothing if not eclectic this) or Braves if you are Catalan had a few drops of the chilli-infused stuff that packs a massive punch, and the skewers of mushrooms and peppers needed none either.

In fact cooking over charcoal is a good way to remove fat from meat, so is healthy. Yet you'll see a regular summer story run in the papers that eating BBQ food is akin to signing your own death warrant. Only if you burn stuff badly, or underdo pork or chicken. But why spoil a good scare with conditions?

A barbie in March. Salad from the garden in there too, or the green house to be accurate. March.

Small son and I have lost half a stone and more each with what we have now officially dubbed the alternative eating programme. It basically has involved avoidance of frying, keeping oil and butter to a sensible minimum, no sweet stuff except at the weekend, and going for good carbs, lean meats, and loads of raw or steamed veg.

I can see my feet again when standing upright. We feel better generally, and felt wonderful in the sunshine of semi-tropical Fulwood yesterday, glass of Rioja in hand, the scent of meat (and, well, garlic) wafting across from the BBQ, and the knowledge that our Dear Leader had made another brilliant call.

Austerity Light

I often wish I had not used the title The Austerity Cook for this blog, as in truth we have never had to face real austerity in this household. Never mind. Would Frugal of Fulwood have been better?

Currently a distant relative of austerity, the controlled regime (I refuse to use the D word) is in my culinary brain. We are looking forward to a summer holiday in the sun, the Indian Ocean sun in fact, and such thoughts have concentrated the mind on us toning up a bit before donning the beach gear.

One ruse to fool the body into feeling full without all those wonderful fats and starches is to eat raw food, so last night we started with a huge salad, to be followed by far smaller portions than normal of risotto. It was mushroom risotto made with my own herby vegetable stock, about five per cent of the usual butter used to give it a gloss at the end, and minimal olive oil to saute the chopped onion and celery. Just using the word saute surely must mean fewer calories are involved than if I called it frying?

The mushrooms that I would normally fry in oil or butter were merely cooked in with the rice and stock, and didn't suffer from that at all, in fact they were possibly moister than would have been the case cooked separately. Small things, and they will not be every day either, but if we all lose a kilo or two before flying off it will be worthwhile.

Such a programme if it can be dignified with that title is far easier and somehow more rewarding now we have started getting our own salad through. As last year (thanks to the idea stolen from neighbour Louise) we are buying 'living salad' from Sainsbury's and planting the lettuces out. A box that costs about £1.20 (I think) contains 30 or so plants, all of which have done well in the greenhouse in a big trough filled with compost. We went to a garden centre on Sunday (how grown up is that? - well, I had been allowed to watch all three rugby international the day before) and far fewer tiny and rather weedy looking seedlings - not at all tempting - cost £3.49. Definitely for ladies who garden in white gloves, so much better for indicating which bed the staff need to focus on.

Happily we all love green salad, whether it be as a starter, or to follow the main and mop up juices. Easy on the dressing. For the austerity cook (hmm) knowing that salad costs just a few pennies makes it more pleasurable.

Duck - no Grouse

When I invested in the Aldi Serrano ham I also bought and put in the freezer a stuffed duck that if memory serves cost £8.99. It was a standby, and a way of avoiding the shops as much as possible over the Christmas and New Year hols. I hate that mad crush, the irrational belief that the supermarkets may never open again, contrary to all experience and the message of major ad campaigns, so illogically you need to shop every day. 

It proved a luxurious bargain. With bread sauce (better than the version I made on Christmas Day), glazed carrots and a mash of spud and parsnip it was the basis of a good meal for four. But the bonus was the cereal-bowlful of duck fat that has since enriched several soups, and last night (a week on) made crispy golden cubes of potato. Only goose-fat can rival it for that quality of crisping stuff up. 

Half the bowl remains - a little goes a very long way, and it keeps for several weeks. So midweek we'll have a crispy potato gratin, not even needing cheese or onions, though I'll be tempted to slip some shavings of the enduring Serrano ham in there for interest and protein, and a thinly-sliced sliver or two or garlic. The spuds need to be cut as thinly as possible, probably on the blade on the grater, then fried quickly in the fat and tipped into a gratin dish and mixed with the garlic and ham to finish in a hot oven - it's done when it's brown on top. 

Served with a green salad or some home-made coleslaw and followed by the survivors from the box of Christmas mandarins it's a moderately healthy supper for pennies. Fewer than 250 pennies if you reckon on 60p of spuds, 2p of garlic, 50p of ham, 75p for the salad element (over-costed as a cos lettuce now £1 in the shops and half of one will suffice) and 50p for three mandarins. A bit more if I go for the slaw.

Over Christmas the most frequently spotted dish here was said coleslaw. There is a small bowlful in the fridge now. What can be easier than grating a big carrot and an apple, plus half a small onion for bite, cutting some white cabbage very finely, and mixing with Helmann's? We ate it alongside sarnies, with the inevitable (and wonderful) cold meat aftermath, and at a small party after New Year's Eve. We'll have more this week one way or another. By my reckoning a big bowlful costs say 10p for a carrot, 30p an apple, 30p for the cabbage, and 5p for the onion. Two big spoons of mayo runs to maybe 20p. So 95p for roughly five times the volume of a supermarket carton that costs more than that, and isn't as fresh by a long chalk. 

Adult Toffee Apple

My thanks to Hattie Ellis, a food writer I'd never come across previously but whose recipe in The Apple Source Book (my how we laughed) was a winner this weekend. It it rare to come across something new and different that is both easy, quick (relatively) and utterly delicious. Her apple toffee pudding is all of those. 

I was looking for ways to use our bumper cooking apple crop, and this one fitted the bill perfectly, needing three large specimens. They are peeled, cored and chopped, then cooked with a little water until starting to soften nicely. I did this in the microwave in the dish destined for the oven later, with clingfilm over so they steamed. In a pan heat about 8oz of golden syrup, just warming it, then stir in 150g of white breadcrumbs and the zest of a lemon (carefully washed and abraded with kitchen paper to remove wax). Spread the sticky crumbs over the softened apple - I didn't get an even layer, and there were gaps, but never mind, next time I'd use a narrower dish. Into the oven already on (this is pretty forgiving as the oven started on very high as I'd been crisping crackling, then turned down to 180 degrees for this) and cook until the top was showing signs of crisping, about 20 minutes. The lemon (you could doubtless do without the zest but it would be a less noble dish) somehow made it seem slightly gingery, but the whole thing was excellent with Cornish vanilla ice cream. The sharp soft apple contrasted with the crisping sweet topping, the hot pud with the cold ice cream.

That Apple Source Book was bought to satisfy my curiosity about using different varieties for specific dishes, a load of writers contributing their suggestions. It helps if you can identify what apples you have.

We have two cooker trees, one the ubiquitous Bramley, the other an unidentified type inherited on our allotment yielding smaller but richer-tasting apples. Two mature trees produce a lot of apples in autumn, so finding ways to use them without repetition (hesitation and deviation?) is at the front of the culinary bit of my brain at present. Apple sauce, apple pie, apple crumble, apple tart, salads various, apples in porky stews, apples in instant relish... It's the courgette thing all over again. 

Specialist Subject - Courgettes

If I ever get to go on Mastermind (too scared to ever try sadly) I have a choice of specialist subjects: Maigret; Wodehouse especially the Blandings novels - I have on my LinkedIn profile that I am the founder and Life President of the Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe Society, something that is nearly true - John Buchan, and bloody courgettes.

The courgettes one is a bit narrow, as it concerns ways to cook them. I love their fecundity, a good healthy plant producing maybe 30 fruits in a season. Look away and a twee little tube the size of a pencil is suddenly a marrow, flavourless and to my mind almost useless in culinary terms, but keep an eye on them and you have lots of healthy and tasty material to work with in the kitchen.

This year I have done plenty of sweet and sour versions, both Sicilian and Chinese. Last night we had courgette and cheese quiche (actually cheese and courgette the way it worked out, went a bit bonkers with the grater). I get requests for 'courgette muck', the sliced fruits cooked down in olive oil till they are a mush, then loads of garlic added for a minute or so before the lot is served on thick toast. They go on pasta either as the aforementioned muck, or cooked with chopped toms from a tin. Courgette soup is easy. Little ones straight from the plant slice well raw for salads. I've made courgette and apple cake. Courgette omelette. Ratatouille. Steamed whole they make a good vegetable course with soy sauce and sesame oil as part of a Chinese meal. Cooked with chopped apple in apple jelly and cider vinegar with a tsp of sugar to make a rapidly prepared relish to go with sausages. If all else fails they can be simply fried in slices and served as a vegetable accompaniment to a lamb chop.

The point of this post, if there is one, is that with such plenty you need to use imagination (and some good cook books) to get the most from your glut without driving yourself and those eating with you mad. It has been such a good year for courgettes, however, that I'm now reasonably convinced I am Napoleon.

The Kindest Cut

Preparing various dishes recently has brought home how the way vegetables are cut affects their taste.

That's something most cooks will be aware of as regards garlic - whole it gives a mild and deep flavour, sliced thinly it is somehow sharper, smashed beneath a blade it's pungent and fiery.

But it applies to certain other foodstuffs too, for example raw beetroot: grated it seems sweeter by far than when it is cut into the old pound-coin slices which emphasize its earthy side, and made into tiny matchsticks (I have a device like a peeler with teeth that is a faff, but safer than a mandoline) the flavour is halfway between those two.

I am not sure if this is some chemical effect, like what happens with the crushing of the garlic, or perception, or how surface area to weight influences what we taste (grated you maximize the surface area). Something to bear in mind when making up salads though. My wife this morning took to work something on the sweet side, grated beetroot and apple, a boiled egg cut up, and walnuts, dressed with Helmann's.

The apple beet and egg were all home grown, sadly not the walnuts, though one day... We planted a tree here when we arrived in 2000, and it is at the very start of giving nuts now. One last year (one) and two this, all nicked by squirrels, the bastards. They didn't get our cobnuts this year though, I tried one this morning - sweet as a etc. Some of them will be in another salad tomorrow, cut into small pieces and mixed with cheese, diced apple and the thinnest slices of raw courgette. Diced apple is apple-ier than the supersweet grated flesh, sliced courgette is nutty, to blend with the cobnuts.

I think about food too much.

One Flame Cooking - Student Elegance for Pennies

Personal circs meant I had to cook us a quick meal last night, and having four small lamb chops to hand I resorted to a de Pomiane classic: he was a doctor, nutritionist and gourmet in Paris in the first half of the last century, and his books are a delight of unpretentious sense and no little style. Check out a dramatised series of his French cooking in 10 minutes on You Tube.

The dish is simple: heat a wide and deep frying pan; sear both sides of four lamb chops (not neck chops or chump, which need longer), then turn the heat down medium-low and add the drained and rinsed contents of two tins of flageolet beans, four cloves of garlic chopped finely, a few (several) dabs of butter and a small glass of liquid - white wine, cider, light stock or water all fine (not red wine). Let this cook through gently for five minutes or so, then season and serve. It needs no spices or fancy touches, it's perfect in itself, the liquid, meat juices and butter make a sauce that must not be left in the pan.

With a roll or some French stick to dip up that juice you have a sustaining and tasty main course. The same thing works with good pork sausages, though they need to be cooked through before you add the beans etc, and as there's less meat juice the banger version requires more butter. The lamb dish for four would be about £5.50, with a large pork sausage each just £3.50.

As de Pomiane writes (and the actor playing him in the series shows), while that is cooking through you can make a salad to follow it, dressed with salt, oil and vinegar, slice a little cheese for each diner, and wash some fruit for pudding. The French btw don't share our obsession with cheese biscuits, enjoying un fromage is just that.

Four courses in 10 minutes, or if you offered a few slices of salami and a handful of olives at the outset it would be five. With just one pan involved. We had Parma ham and olives, the lamb and bean dish, a tomato salad with basil, and cheese, which eaten outside in tropical Preston with a large glass of wine was thoroughly enjoyable thank you.

So that's French elegance with little effort, and something that a student who shopped intelligently could do for friends for a special occasion. They could (should) bring the wine, or chip into the kitty for the ingredients. Or both.

It's All Kicking Off

From despair at how slow everything was in the kitchen garden and allotment to a sudden abundance in just two weeks. With the summer weather (worth noting again, summer weather) we are having to water lots of the crops, but that's a small price to pay for within the last two or three days a glut of strawberries and redcurrants - now seven jars of jam; the first small courgettes, tender enough to eat raw; loads of tiny turnips, our most under-rated vegetable; more lettuce than we can handle, so the chickens are happy; a pick of little artichokes for a starter; handfuls of spring onions nothing like the hard ones you get from supermarkets; and reasonable pickings of broad beans, again picked when small and tender and sweet. And above all, lots of new spuds.

We are not vegetarians by any means, but when you have veg that good there is less call for big lumps of meat.

We pick things young and tender, whereas commercial growers and outlets want to maximise the weight. Take those turnips: we have four varieties, each with their own characteristics. The purple top Milan are my favourites. Great raw in crunchy salads; as half-starch half-flavouring in last night's chicken dish; as a soup (creme a la vierge, lovely with small sweet roots, horrid with overgrown woody things that smell like school cabbage when cooked), or glazed to accompany a little lamb chop.

It's nice to have your menu dictated by the season too. A Navarin of lamb is now called for, with the broad beans instead of peas, and those little turnips stewed gently with new potatoes. Salads various, but the plain green (for which read green, red, bronze and pink with the different lettuces we grow) at least every other day. There is no reason to limit yourself to one salad with a meal when the crops are so full of flavour.

Getting There

Normally by this time we are pretty much living off our allotment and kitchen garden. The foul spring has set everything back this year, so however much we look at the beet, turnips and potatoes we should be eating they are not yet ready.

Some produce has made it to the table. Lettuce as per previous posts has been plentiful, along with rocket, land cress, mizuna, mustards various and spinach. So no shortage of green leaves. I pulled a clump of shallots two days ago (still got it) to liven up a salad, and today made a gooseberry cake (brilliant recipe in Jane Grigson's Fruit Book) half of which went in making sure it was alright. We have had a couple of fennel bulbs.

The fact remains, though, that nature is struggling here this year. It brings home the danger that the change of climate (we now seem to have a wet season where once we had a summer) brings to this country and our ability to feed ourselves.

I hope that as regards our own food it is delay rather than disaster. And not just on economic grounds - fresh is so much better. In my opinion nothing in the world tastes as good as a plate of new spuds dug out of the ground less than an hour ago. Salt and butter and an appetite are all that's needed to enjoy them. A Michelin-starred chef would perhaps team them with aniseed, crumbled pumpernickel, banana ice-cream and orange-juice for his restaurant, but at his home would have them as we do.

Foams, Flutes and Filling Up

Yesterday we had as a separate course a plain green salad fresh from the garden. Except that it wasn't green or plain. Plenty of green in there, but with oak-leaf and other lettuce varieties included it had brown and purple too.

There can be few simpler or more perfect combinations than fresh lettuce and a sharp vinaigrette, the crispness of well-grown lettuce resisting any descent into sogginess. Yet which name chef these days would have the courage or humility to put them together without further adornment?

This prompts the further question, what do we actually want when eating out? Are we in a restaurant to be amazed at innovation, dazzled by technique, or to enjoy really good food perfectly prepared? There are other reasons for going to specific restaurants: fashion, being seen, bumping into the rich and famous and watching them assault their wife, to name but three.

Not forgetting the fuel aspect of the whole thing. Except plenty of chefs plainly do. On my recent Michelin-starred tour of Midi-Provence I only felt really replete at breakfast - nobody buggers about with that - and after the last meal of the trip, which also happened to be by far the best, and after lunch at an un-starred place. Though I am undoubtedly a bloody peasant, I am not solely concerned with filling up. But it should be part of the deal, part of the chef's skill and judgement. Diners should be satisfied with the standard, freshness, interest, tastes, combinations, contrasts, variety and volume of food.

Missing out quantity in a main meal seems like an orchestra without the brass and the percussion. Personally I can do without the flute (it's just a personal prejudice) which I'd equate to the stupid foams decorating cheffy dishes these days. I'd not be sad never to hear another twittering flute piece for the rest of my life, or to forego those foams forever.

And in case that seems to have nothing to do with austerity cooking, our massive homegrown lettuce and vinaigrette course maybe cost us 15p for the oil, vinegar and mustard.

Thick Pickings

A week or two on from enjoying salads made with the thinnings from our salad beds and the results of a task well done are clear to see: luscious growth of mizuna, lettuce, pak choi (I think) and mustards various. So last night we had the polar opposite of that earlier offering, a load of mature greenery, so mature that I decided to cook it.

Actually Ruth steamed it, having followed the noise to find out where the kitchen is. Dressed with salt, olive oil and garlic (the greens, not Ruth, though...) and served as a course in itself warm rather than hot they were excellent, though next time the stems will need to be trimmed.

Yet again this is something that would be hard to duplicate if the supermarket was our only source of veg, or even the market. Yet again I wonder what the health benefits could have been of spending one tenth of the money used for London's Big School Sports Day on buying land for allotments.

The Other Benefit of Good Food

My English reticence fights against what I want to say here, but the topic is one worth mentioning, so apologies and onwards.

Good food isn't just about the minerals and vitamins that it puts into our bodies, but the way it helps take out the unwanted stuff.

On the Michelin-starred restaurant trip last week we ate some very creative and superbly cooked food, drank excellent Gaillac wines, and lived well. Except that my innards felt left out of the fun, and though they didn't strike they certainly worked to rule. No wonder, as though I was eating perhaps 15 different fruits and vegetables a day, one leaf or a paper-thin shaving of asparagus doesn't hack it on the fibre front.

Yesterday I calculated our evening meal alone - Salade Nicoise of a sort, and fish baked in a crumb and Parmesan crust - had seven full portions of good f&v. French beans, lettuce, peas, sweetcorn (ok it's a grain, but...) tomatoes, peppers, cucumber and a few other salad leaves into the bargain. The plates did not resemble late period Monets, but they did satisfy stomach, soul and my digestion.

It isn't just the posh plates that lack fibre. On a long airport bus trip in Florida in 2007 we were horrified by an early morning phone-in programme. A 'nutritional expert' was promoting his expensive wonder-tablets for American women who only troubled the sewage-system once a week.

This chap's pitch was the miracle drug would solve all their problems. Having watched such women eating nothing but meat, starch and sugary stuff during our stay in the sunshine state it was clear they actually needed an occasional piece of fruit, or a salad worthy of the name. If they'd only opened their minds it would have opened their bowels. And it's all in the best possible taste, as Kenny E used to say.

Austerity Feast

Wonderful weather prompted us to invite a few friends over for a mid-afternoon meal to be eaten in the garden on Sunday. The same weather had kept me from shopping, so I had to improvise with stuff from the garden and stores. Not exactly an austerity feast, but we resisted the temptation to rush out and buy a ton of ingredients to feed the five thousand - well, seven.

Last of the Swiss chard made a good soup with a couple of onions, some potatoes to thicken it, and liquid from a roasting chicken (defrosted from our intervention stock the day before). Same chicken (covered and stuffed with herbs to lift it) with a load of lettuce and other leaves fresh from the garden went farther as a salad than it would have as a chunk of meat each. And in between those courses three pizzas with different toppings, cut into slices and presented on a huge plate, filled stomachs and interested palates (especially the anchovy and chilli one, hot hot hot). 

On a perfect sunny afternoon you can get away with a lot. No pudding - just cheeses - met with approval instead of violence, as we could cut and nibble away while talking. Maybe we are going to have the first proper summer for about six years. The sunshine makes a huge difference. Our guests brought some good wines, we added to the list, made sure everything was well chilled (only whites and roses in evidence) and the warmth turned them into something special. 

One more 'course' preceded the above, a cheap and cheerful Cava chilled to death and made into rhubarb bellinis. Hugh F-W's idea, 500g of rhubarb stewed with sugar and orange juice for 15 minutes then the syrup (once chilled) sieved off and used 1:4 with the fizz. Surprisingly it was absolutely lovely, but then again we did have that sun.