A cracked-egg omelette is not cracking idea

Living is learning, so they say. And the latest lesson is simple: if an egg is cracked, don’t use it.

It was a pleasant enough bank holiday Monday. I had spent the morning pottering around the garden, with a certain sense of pleasure as various plants finally look like they're going to grow properly.

And if the weather in general has been dismal for the last umpteen months, May’s two bank holidays have been uncharacteristically good.

Monday wasn’t as glorious as Sunday had been – there was more wind and more cloud, and it was never going to be a second successive day spent sitting out with a book, getting the beginnings of a tan – but let’s not complain given the generally dire situation otherwise.

And it was good enough to feel inspired to sow salad leaves and courgettes.

So in the early afternoon, hungry from labour in the potager, I headed into the kitchen to look for some much-needed lunch.

I was contemplating hard-boiling an egg for a quick salad or sandwich, but then I spotted that two in the tray were cracked. One was so much of a mess that it went straight out and the ceramic tray needed cleaning.

The second had a cracked shell, but the membrane was intact. Having not seen these cracks before and having known that the eggs had only been decanted into the tray a day or so earlier, it seemed reasonable to assume that the breaks were new.

Instead of wasting the second, I decided to use it for part of an omelette.

All of which seemed perfectly fine – although a point here: I like my omelettes lightly cooked.

A few hours later, as a piece of lamb was roasting in the oven, I started to feel twinges of nausea and a growing gut ache.

By the time that dinner was ready, I didn’t want anything at all – that's right, I didn't want roast lamb with Jersey Royals and asparagus.

I went to bed early, struggling to get comfortable between visits to the bathroom.

The worst was reached at about 1am, when I was perched on the throne, beaded with cold sweat and desperately grasping the one receptacle within reach – a spare litter tray.

Yesterday was spent almost entirely in bed – unprecedented – and even today, I still feel a little like a wrung-out dishcloth.

Now it could have been a bug, but if so, it bypassed The Other Half completely.

So, remember: if an egg is cracked, don’t assume it’s only just been cracked and is therefore safe to eat.

I have only myself to blame, but I like to think that I experience such things so that you don’t have to.

A steaming pile of something or other

On a somewhat different note – but every bit as cracked – in an effort to aid my recovery last night, I sat down to watch the first episode (well, the first one being shown in the UK) of Jo on Fox.

Now this had been anticipated for some weeks because it’s a cop show, starring the watchable Jean Reno and set in Paris.

Just over a week ago, I watched Buddenbrooks, the 2008 film version with the wonderful Armin Mueller-Stahl. It’s only available in German, but fortunately I know the story so well it was not wasted on me.

And besides, there was the sheer joy of being able to sit there, going: ‘been there’; ‘seen that’; been down that street’; ‘know where that is’ for substantial amounts of screen time, since it was filmed in Lübeck itself.

Yes, yes, I’ve done it watching reruns of Van der Valk too, and in more than a few other films and programmes.

But here was an opportunity to do the same with Paris – combined with Reno and a genre I am far from immune to.

Oh. Dear.

There are problems right away in that it’s a joint Canadian and French co-production. So most of the cast were north Americans – in some cases playing north Americans and in others, French characters.

The only bona fide French person in it – and with the only French accent – was Reno.

So that’s confusing to start with.

Second, though: if you’re really going to go for the already-clichéd idea of the top cop with a troubled private life, make some effort to take it into territory beyond the cliché of booze.

Example?Wallander – and not least in the English-language version with Kenny Branagh, which went seriously existential.

Third, if you’re going to spend a lot of money making your location one of the stars of the show, then use it well.

Fourth, for god’s sake give the cast at least five minutes rehearsal time. It’s entirely bad enough Reno sleep-walking through it – at least he’s got some presence – but everyone else cannot simply rely on that.

Fifth – by the time I get to considering the clichéd plot, I’m in need of cliché detox.

Honestly – I’d looked forward to this, but it did my fragile health no favours.

So there you have it – a rare TV review. And the message is simple: don’t waste your time.

Eggs and Mrs David and snow

This morning, I cracked open an egg when making my breakfast omelette to find a double yolker.

To be fair, I had expected it, setting aside the egg in question until I was cooking something for which it would be better suited than being prepared to sit in an egg cup.

It was a vast thing, that egg – XL to start with – with an elongated shape, so that it was hardly the stuff of rocket science to guess that it would have two yolks.

In which case, I had a three-yolk omelette without breaking more than two eggs.

I follow the venerable Mrs David’s instructions on omelettes – well, to be more accurate, the instructions from someone else that she reproduces, crediting them and saying that she can do no better.

Reading and following those instructions was the point at which I finally learned to make an omelette – albeit further aided by investment in a proper heavy-duty, copper-coated omelette pan from across the Channel.

So you start by melting a good knob of butter and letting it just reach the foaming, might-be-about-to-start-turning-golden-at-any-minute stage, before you lob in your lightly beaten eggs: two plus one yolk, if you’re following many traditional recipes. Double yolkers excepted, I usually just use two: it’s quite enough for me.

From then on, it’s going to take about 40-45 seconds, as you raise the pan from on one side and then the other, gently lifting the egg mix to allow the uncooked, liquid egg to reach the base of the pan. But not much longer – you want it to still be silkily soft.

And then turn out carefully onto your plate, season and consume – although not with Mrs David’s glass of wine at that time of the day.

Actually, this morning’s omelette had a new seasoning: I wanted to use up some lumpfish ‘caviar’ and decided to garnish it with that, which added quite enough of a salty taste to the egg.

I remember seeing double yolks way back in the days when the family eggs came from one of the farmers that my father knew.

It’s funny how you forget such things, and only remember when something actually jumps up and slaps you across the metaphorical chops. When we started getting our eggs from Matthew was the point at which I remembered how good eggs can be.

And when I cracked the first double yolker from an egg I’d got from the same source – Black Rock hens, organic and free range, if you’re interested – it was as a case of: ‘oh gosh – I’d completely forgotten that such things occurred’.

But memories of eggs and farms also mean memories of snow for me, which is equally apt, given the UK weather forecast right now, and that I am due to be northbound for work tomorrow.

When we lived in Mossley – in the top half of that small mill town of 10,000, which was spread along the east-facing side of a Pennine hill, the valley and up into the opposite hill, we entirely expected to get cut off for a day or so once or twice a winter.

But one year – I cannot recall whether we were cut off at the time – the road up to a farm near Hartshead Pike was impassible for my father in his car. So I was sent, on foot, to collect the eggs.

I yomped up the road to opposite the parish church, before breaking away into a field and up a steep hill that was several inches deep in snow.

On the way back, I slipped, and ended up careering down the same slope some way on my backside.

When I got home, my mother (who, these days, is slightly embarrassed by this story) was only concerned about one thing – whether I’d broken any of the eggs! They were all intact, as it happened – just as I was. But I did feel a certain sense of being piqued at the priorities revealed.

Not that that was the only time that snow left me with a story to tell in those times.

I’d probably only been at Fairfield High School for Girls – some eight miles from Mossley, near the centre of Manchester – for a year or slightly more, when the white stuff had a big impact.

It was a Thursday – you’ll see later why I know this. There had been a trifling hint of snow at school. Only when I left for home at the usual time did it become an issue.

Indeed, it only became an issue well beyond Aston-under–Lyne, which was where I changed buses and, therefore, the halfway point of my daily journeys.

I was three quarters of the way home, then, near the old Ladysmith Barracks, when the bus stopped and the driver announced that he could go no further.

The reason was the snow, which had fallen heavily and drifted across the road that hugged the hill for a mile or so before dipping into top Mossley – near where I’d left the road to head for the farm and those eggs.

I was on my own.

Pulling the hood of my Air Force blue duffle coat up, I headed on up Mossley Road, the hill to my right, the fall away to Ashton Golf Club to my left, Hawkshead Pike ahead, and cars stranded in the deep drifting snow.

I reached a stranded bus and took a break inside, where I met a woman who took me – and a couple of other girls – under her wing.

We plodded on, taking a further break in another bus, before hitting the top of the town.

Almost the first buolding you hit coming from that direction is – or at least was – a pub. She took us all inside and the landlord gave us hot blackcurrant drinks.

From there, it was a short way home, albeit over icy roads.

I remember getting back, covered in the snow that was still falling thickly, and standing at the front door, ringing the bell, waiting to be let in.

When my mother opened it, the first thing she heard from this short, stocky yeti was whether Top of the Pops had started yet.

I had no watch; we had no mobile phones or tablets or computers. I had no clue as to the time. But that was why I know that it was a Thursday.

Thereafter, for my remaining time at Fairfield at least, the first hint of snow on the school fields would see the Mossley girls sent home straight away.

Nearly 40 years later, I remember that adventure with pleasure. I don’t think I was ever scared during it.

And perhaps it also explains why I never think of snow with anything other than relish.

Keeping well fed

Eggs taking centre stage.

Knowing what a good-hearted bunch you all are, it occurs to me that some of you may be worried that I’m currently eating poorly – or at least less enjoyably – than previously.

Well, you need have no fear on that score.

Eggs – good eggs – are a delight, and for breakfast, they have to be better than some ‘bread’ product and whatever filling is available, or even a bit of Chorleywood toast and some spread.

Likewise, lunch is often now centred on fish or cheese. And you know me – I love both.

Tinned sardines (olive oil only) are not to be sniffed at, while proper smoked mackerel is something I love. Now, it’s as though I actually have more opportunities to eat such things.

And oh, I have discovered that Ocado supply tins of duck confit from the south west of France: the only ingredients are duck, duck fat and salt – exactly as it should be.

We had some on Monday night, with a few baby new potatoes (a tin) drained and rinsed and dried, then finished in a little of the duck fat (the rest gets stored in a tub in the fridge).

The duck goes in the oven at 160˚C (fan) for around half an hour – for half of that, it was joined by a tin of rinsed and drained cannellini beans.

If you think that beans and duck sounds a bit bonkers, then think of a cassoulet, where they come together with other ingredients to create a perfect dish.

But on Monday, we also had some red cabbage, done as per Joël Robuchon: slice thinly and blanch in boiling, salted water for two minutes. Drain and plunge under cold water. Then cook in more boiling, salted water for 15 minutes.

You can then drain and cool again, finishing in a sauté pan with butter when you’re almost ready to serve, but I served (with butter) straight after the second boil.

Robuchon says that the blanching improves digestibility. Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know that this method produces a super result – cabbage that is tender but still retaining texture.

I had just a very few of the potatoes.

On Tuesday, it was lamb chops, grilled, and served with carrots and peas. For The Other Half, I did a few potatoes, but I decided to forgo them myself and see how I felt.

Now I love potatoes, but the result was undeniable. What I have, in the past, thought was ‘fullness’ could well have been bloatedness. Because on Tuesday night, without any starchy carbs in my main meal, I felt sated but utterly unbloated.

Now that I’ve recognised this, the difference is really quite dramatic.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying I’m not going to eat potatoes or pasta or rice again, but it seems sensible to think of limiting them.

But two more things have struck me.

Shopping earlier on Tuesday, I was hanging around in a shop while they refilled by washing up liquid bottles, and I spotted some Suma organic tinned sweetcorn.

I was instantly tempted – I love sweetcorn – but suddenly I remembered something. Corn – that’s a bit like wheat, isn’t it? And I cannot digest sweetcorn. I know this because, to put it as politely as possible, it exits my body in pretty much the same condition as it enters it.

The second moment of revelation came yesterday at lunch time. The Other Half and I usually have a couple of lattes at a local café. I have no sugar or sweetener.

But for various reasons, this afternoon was the first milk I’ve had, at all, since last Thursday.

Now I’ve noted before that those two glasses of milky coffee would leave me feeling ‘full’, but today I realised that it’s the same bloatedness. Perhaps the very fact that it’s been almost a week since I last had milk accentuated the impact, but it was certainly there.

And when considered in light of that Mars attack, it makes more sense.

Am I becoming a faddy eater almost overnight?

I don’t think so.

I have heard – although I have nothing to back this up – that whole milk is the form of cow’s milk that human’s can most easily digest. In his most recent book, Dr John Briffa says that it’s more digestible if it’s raw (unpasturised) or if it’s sheep or goat milk.

It’s increasingly easy to believe this.

The evening’s dinner was just as easy: minced beef, onion, a tin of (organic) tomatoes; a dash of HP sauce, a dash of that Daylesford organic ketchup again; voila!

It’s becoming clear from conversations with a number of people that I’m far from the only person to have noticed such responses to certain foods.

It does, however, beg the question of just how many people experience similar things, but don’t realise that fullness and bloatedness are not one and the same thing and have simply become used to the latter.

Breakfast club, redux

The Great Breakfast Conundrum hoved into view again this month, with the Lesser Spotted Lunch Teaser following hot on its heels.

For all my whinges on the former – and some of you may remember this post from spring about the dire state of breakfasts in general and mine specifically – when we arrived back from holiday at the beginning of the month, the likelihood was a reversion to a continuation of previous practise after a few weeks of French respite on that front as well as many others.

And the same applied to lunch.

There was no particular decision; no eureka moment. But the change started when I thought I'd try, once more, to make lunch to take to work.

There’s been no shortage of encouragement before – George sent me two books of packed lunch suggestions – but they fell by the wayside.

What I found myself doing this time around was simple enough: for instance, mixing up a little couscous with some softened sultanas, a bit of sliced chilli, a few olives and other bits and pieces.

It worked fine, it was easy and quick, and I enjoyed eating it.

And then one morning, when I was up really early, I decided to have breakfast at home. Beans on toast, as it happened. Hardly something that takes long to fling together. And it cooked while I was doing other things.

A couple of days later, I did it again.

And then, one morning, I had a couple of soft boiled eggs instead. Lovely.

It was only when I was on the bus that I realised that the lunch I’d packed that morning didn’t include any starchy carbs – no couscous that day or rice or pasta or bread.

It was cheese, with some olives, some pickled beetroot and some pear, and a drizzle of Balsamico.

‘Blimey,’ I thought, ‘I’m going to be starving by this evening.’

But surprise, surprise: that wasn’t the case at all. I was comfortable throughout the day.

So for the next few days, I did something similar, saving my starch for the evening meal.

At the same time, something else struck me. For some years, off and on, I’ve been aware of getting a very faintly rumbling stomach – usually in the afternoon, after lunch.

Nothing particularly drastic, though, at its worst, I’d find myself waddling quickly to the loo.

I did try some of those probiotic yogurt drinks. But that had little or no discernible impact.

And so I simply drifted.

Well, things are changing and what started out simply as a way of controlling my food for the sake of taste and a lack of boredom is becoming a different sort of experiment.

We eat, as a nation, vast amounts of bread – and most of it is made by the Chorleywood process, which involves (apart from anything else) ramming it full of extra yeast to cut the time that it takes to make a loaf.

A week or two ago, I remembered a relative telling me that they and their mother had a slight gluten intolerances.

I began to wonder if I was in a similar situation – or put slightly differently, had a very small intolerance to Chorleywood. With no bread products at breakfast and no bread products at lunch, the rumbling stomach seems to have disappeared – at least at present.

In the mornings in particular, I’m also feeling lighter. Breakfast has become a couple of eggs, whether soft boiled or as an omelette, with a banana and a glass of fruit juice.

Back in March, I’d asserted that, getting up at 6.30am, I wasn’t ready to eat.

Well, I’ve sorted this out by rising at around 6am instead.

Now, I sit down to eat properly, and I’m actually enjoying it. Really good eggs are worth paying a bit more for. Really good eggs are gorgeous.

The lunches have been varied, but it remains the same basic idea of a couple of portions of fruit or veg, plus a source of protein. And easy and quick to put together in a morning.

I haven’t checked out the respective costs, but I suspect that, by and large, I’m spending less too – particularly if you factor in the waste that used to occur with food that was bland and boring and generally uninspiring.

And after three full, uninterrupted weeks of packed lunches, plus almost three weeks (barring a couple of days in the first week) of breakfasts at home, hopefully that’s a habit well on the way to being established.

As a special treat (I hope) this weekend, tomorrow's breakfast will involve something I haven't eaten in decades – a kipper.

Breakfast is on the way to becoming the feast that it should be.

Two ways with French black pudding

Sitting on our tiny, high-walled patio last night, as the wind whipped and whistled above, nursing an espresso and a glass of rosé, it was hard not feel a great sense of satisfaction.

Most immediately, perhaps, because I can drink coffee after a meal these days: it no longer seems to upset my stomach. Or perhaps that’s just when I’m in this neck of the woods.

But second, because I was enjoying rolling round in my mind a feeling that something, somewhere, has clicked slowly but decisively into place.

The other day – I have lost track of time a little – my revamped eating plans saw me nip into one of the village’s little alimentations after we’d finished with everything else for the day, and picking up an utterly essential packet of coffee, plus a pack of two boudin catalan.

Boudin noir is the French version of black pudding, although it’s moister than ours in the UK – possibly down to its still being prepared with raw blood. Boudin catalan is a lightly spiced regional version.

One of the recipes in the little book I’d picked up at the beginning of our holiday had stuck in my mind when mulling what to cook.

It was an omelette, with boudin, bacon, artichoke hearts – and various other ingredients.

Actually, it was more what we’d call a frittata, but let’s not be pedantic.

Since we hadn’t had any boudin at this stage – and we usually have it at least once while here – I decided to cook something along these lines.

Simply, I softened a large and finely chopped banana shallot in olive oil, before adding a couple of finely chopped cloves of garlic.

The local rose garlic is absolutely wonderful: I carried a kilo back to London last year. It was gone in six weeks. The intention this year is to double that.

Anyway, back to the frittata.

The shallot and garlic were allowed to cook very gently for a long while – probably far longer and far more gently than I’d normally do at home.

Into this went three of the remaining cooked potatoes from the duck a few days earlier, drained, dried and sliced.

A touch of paprika and a very generous grinding of black pepper were stirred in. Then the skinned and sliced boudin was added, before everything was topped with four large eggs, beaten and lightly seasoned.

It was cooked very gently for around 10 minutes (and checked to see if the egg had set enough that it would fall easily away from the side of the frying pan) before being popped under a pre-heated grill until it was just starting to turn golden.

Now I really don’t have the best record with frittatas – they’ve been, in the past, too solid and probably over-seasoned.

But that’s another thing that’s happening here, without any deliberate intent: the amount of salt I’m using has decreased. And I’m not finding that I need to add any when I get to the table.

What also appears to be happening is that I’m cooking at a less rushed pace – and this is almost certainly helping too.

But fast forward a couple of days. There was a boudin and a bit left over in the fridge, and it needed using up.

Popping into the alimentation again at the end of the day, I was wondering what to accompany it with, browsing the shelves, when I spotted tins of haricot beans.

The germ of an idea took root.

More shallot and garlic, chopped finely again and then softened just as gently in plenty of olive oil.

Then a couple of roasted peppers from a jar in the cupboard, sliced and popped in the pan, along with some of the beans, rinsed and drained, the remaining two potatoes (drained and dried) and a sprinkle of paprika.

And leave for a further 10 minutes of very gentle cooking.

Two teaspoons of Catalan tapenade (olives, tomatoes, peppers and spices) were stirred through, before the remaining boudin, skinned and sliced thickly, was added, and the whole given a further 10 minutes, so that meat could warm through.

It didn’t look particularly pretty, but it tasted pretty good, and all it needed on the side was the usual bread – not least to mop up the juices.

The feeling, though, was that something had clicked about cooking – slow and gentle particularly, but also in terms of a little bit of an understanding of and feel for the cuisine of this area.

Of course, sausage and beans is a classic combination, but I seem to be managing combinations better.

And all without a hundred cookbooks to hand – although I will stress that those books have helped me learn a very great deal: arguably a huge part of the foundation of what I’ve been doing here.

On a grey salad day

The rain, having stayed away for most of the day, chose the very moment I stepped down form the bus and turned for home, to announce its return.

By the time I’d changed, the cats were sitting at the door to the patio and complaining at my slowness.

The girls are great believers in the merits of empirical evidence. I can stand there all I like, telling them that it’s wet under paw, and they will not believe me until they get to experience it for themselves.

So, briefly, I opened the door. Boudi hopped out and hopped almost straight back in.

Otto had a sniff around before concluding that I hadn’t been telling porkies, while even nominally determined Loki didn’t bother to attempt to dive into next door before running back into the flat.

But I had to go out, because the evening had been slated for the first salad from the garden.


So I donned a cap (keeps the rain off my specs), accepted that I was going to get a bit damp and headed outside.

Rolling back netting, I snipped the biggest leaves of lamb’s lettuce into a bowl, followed by some American land cress, a few young nasturtium leaves and then some sorrel.

There didn’t seem to be very much, but in he case of both lamb’s lettuce and cress, anything more would have been silly.

I also very gently dug up the most developed radish, but since there was no radish there, I carefully popped it back into the soil and returned the netting over that planter.

It might not have been much, but it was good. Rinsed and spun, it was later served with the simplest dressing, of just a little olive oil, whisked to an emulsion with a few drops of cider vinegar and salt.

It was an accompaniment to tiny new potatoes, scraped (even though that took time) and then simply boiled for 20 minutes, dotted with butter and good salt.

The centrepiece was an omelette – two extra large eggs each, whisked at the last moment and then cooked in butter that is foaming and just (but only just!) beginning to turn a nutty brown.

The Other Half’s was done first – he prefers it a tad less ‘wet’ than I do. Mine takes little more than a minute before folding out onto the plate.

And my ability to make omelettes (and pancakes) has increased massively since I invested in a really good, French omelette pan – copper-bottomed and heavy, it really does make a difference.

The other thing that really made a difference for me was reading Elizabeth David on the omelette question. Now admittedly I don't use two full eggs plus an extra yolk, but my basic method remains the one that she repeats.

We’d spent years buying cheap eggs. In the end, you don’t use them much – and certainly not as the centrepiece to a meal.

But – like the bacon I mentioned last week – if you can get quality, then it becomes worth making a meal of just such simple produce. And indeed, the moment you make eggs the heart of a dinner, then it's not expensive, even when you get the best eggs you can.

However, while everything was good – this really was a day for feeling rather chuffed that I could put together at least a small salad with fresh ingredients straight from a (rainy!) garden.

Roasted lamb, herbs and a windy garden

The Easter food didn’t stop with fish ‘n’ chips and pie, in case you were wondering – just as the weekend’s gardening didn’t stop with potting three small catnip plants.

For starters, there was the small matter of Sunday’s big dinner to celebrate the arrival of spring.

Roast lamb; there were no two ways about it – it just had to be roast lamb. Never mind the tradition thing: if it isn’t actually my favourite meat, it’s pretty near I and I’m struggling to think of what I’d actually put above it in such a list.

But in my dentally-challenged condition, would I be able to cope?

I had wondered about lamb meatballs or even a kleftiko, but I really did want my lamb to be roasted.

There was one possibility that came to mind, and Bill King – regular reader here and alumni of Darina Allen’s famous Ballymaloe Cookery School – supplied the technical data.

The answer was a long, slow cook to produce meat that was roasted but perfectly tender and still moist.

Bill recommended pre-heating the oven to 230˚C, putting the meat in, immediately reducing the temperature to 160˚C and letting it cook for four hours.

So that’s what I did – in essence.

Since I’ve got a fan oven, I initially checked to see what 230 would equate to, but since it was only about 190˚C, I just whacked the dial up as far as it went and then turned it down to the oven’s equivalent of 160˚C (150˚C) when the joint went in.

I’d picked up a lovely leg from Matthew on Broadway Market on Saturday and, after letting it come back to room temperature, rubbed some mint olive oil into the skin and seasoned it before cooking.

In the event, it didn’t get quite four hours – simply because it didn’t need it, as a little taste test after two and a half hours revealed.

It was served with new potatoes and peas (frozen at this point), both of which were cooked with a few sprigs of mint from the crop in the garden.

The meat was tender and moist, and had produced a glorious jus. Most important of all, it was utterly gorgeous.

And if anything it was almost better the day after, served cold with more new pots and peas. Wonderful.

So a big thanks to Bill.

It wasn’t the only use of fresh cropped herbs this weekend, mind.

Earlier on Monday, I’d carefully snipped sorrel leaves, flat leaf parsley and chives, washed them all – there were greenfly on the underside of all the sorrel leaves – and after chopping finely, added them to an omelette that was inspired by the descriptions of a childhood Easter day lunch in Elisabeth Luard’s European Festival Food.

It was delightfully tasty, with the bitterness of the herbs combining beautifully with the creamy egg. It looked pretty too, and it had the added benefit of offering cause to be very chuffed with my developing herbs.

All in all, it was a very simple Easter in food terms – but enormously satisfying.

And the gardening continued too. Indeed, it proved to be the weekend when I moved out of the comfort zone of pottering around, potting plants in the sunshine to the rather less dilletanteish business of potting plants under chilly cloud and with incipient rain in the air.

I’d mostly brought pretty things on the morning’s visit to Columbia Road, but not entirely.

There was the catnip and then some herbs for humans. In this case, more sage and some rosemary.

The sage was needed because the first lot had developed a sort of mould on the leaves. It had been one of the first things to be planted in the newly revitalised garden and I potted it using a substantial amount of very rich ‘manure’ (plant matter).

Now that had been perfect for the mint, but I suspect it had hampered the drainage for the sage.

This time, after the pot and the crocks were washed thoroughly, the crocks went back in, with some gravel and then followed by lots of sand and only a little compost. Let’s see if that sorts it.

The rosemary had finally been bought after the means to protect it from those shiny beetles had arrived. There was mesh pegs and rubber corners to build a bamboo cage.

Which all sounds wonderful, but isn’t really designed for a single pot, as I rapidly found out.

With help from The Other Half, a rather wobbly cage was improvised.

Unfortunately, by the next morning, it had collapsed. In a woeful comment on our efforts, it couldn't even cope with a spot of traditional March winds and April showers in brief combination.

And so, rather than leave it lying around, I donned a cap and went out into the wet to clear up. The rosemary is probably not under any major beetle threat in this weather, so I’ll look at possible solutions this coming weekend, when considering protecting the catnip.

But one of the things I’ve discovered in recent weeks is that I love potting things with my hands. Oh yes, they get messy and it’s absolute death to manicured nails and a pretty big challenge to my skin, but I really enjoy digging into the compost.

The smell and the feel is just so enjoyable. And doubtless there’s some rather airy fairy sense of being ‘in touch with Mother Earth’ that I could make too, but I’ll resist that temptation.

Oh. And one of the other things I’ve discovered is that box has a smell like cat pee.

And gardening is a learning curve.

So there. Don’t let me hear you saying that this blog isn’t educational.

Perfect pasta with a Perpignan twist

If you Google ‘spaghetti’, the third result that you get, after ‘spaghetti bolognese’ and straightforward ‘spaghetti’, is for spaghetti carbonara.

It’s one of the most popular pasta dishes there is, but like so many other things in the world of food, there are plenty of different ways in which this dish with bacon and eggs is made.

A 20th-century arrival amongst the pantheon of great pasta dishes, according to Wikipedia, it’s traditionally made with Guanciale, an unsmoked Italian bacon that’s made with pig's jowl or cheeks. But if your local butcher or deli don’t happen to have any in stock, then worry not: pancetta or some generic lardons or some decent streaky bacon will do just fine.

Last night, I settled for some of the pancetta I'd bought at Lina Stores – opening it was a thrill, seeing such a beautiful piece of bacon was yet another cause to celebrate that trek to Soho for food shopping.

It isn’t common to find cream in the Italian version, although that does feature in versions in France, the UK, the US and Spain, amongst the other countries where it’s popular.

Another matter is that of cheese. As regular readers may recall, The Other Half does not like cheese, but he does like a carbonara as long as it is a cheese free zone.

Many recipes suggest adding cheese, not simply grated, as a garnish on top, but as an integral part of the ‘sauce’. In other words, you whisk the eggs and cream together and pop your grated cheese into that.


Which is interesting, since I’ve known The Other Half order a carbonara in a number of places over the years and I don’t recall him having to request that it have no cheese. I suspect that the restaurant norm is to offer cheese as a garnish.

As it happens, Felicity Cloake, writing recently for the Guardian, was exploring the question of just what makes a perfect quiche lorraine.

It shouldn’t have cheese in, which as Cloake muses: “makes the custard rather salty, which in turn detracts from the bacon, and distracts from the more delicate flavour of the egg.”

So presumably, you could apply much the same theory to a carbonara.

But once we get beyond the cheese question, the main technical issue is that of avoiding scrambling the eggs over the pasta.

There’s nowt wrong with scrambled eggs and pasta – it makes great pre-football brunch fodder – but it isn’t a carbonara.

The usual approach is to take that beaten egg and cream and, at the last minute, add to the pasta and meat after they’ve been removed from direct heat.

But there’s another way – one that we experienced at Le Grand Café de la Bourse in Perpignan a few years ago and have raved about ever since.

Take your pancetta and cut into strips or dice. (If you’re using ready-made lardons you have nothing to do; if you’re using streaky bacon, simply cut it into smallish pieces)

Heat a frying pan and pop the meat in. Don’t move it around too soon or you’ll prevent it from caramelising.

And don’t put it on a very high heat, because you want this to take a little time. You shouldn't need to add any fat if the bacon itself has plenty.

Once you know that that’s well on the way, cook your spaghetti.

When the pasta is cooked, drain and return to the pan. Add some cream. Stir.

Toss in the pancetta.

Put onto serving dishes.

Take one egg per person, crack carefully and divide the egg. Put the yolk back into half the shell and serve on top of the pasta.

To eat, simply take the egg yolk and pour onto the past. Stir.

It will be warm enough to stop the egg being raw, but without any risk of scrambling. And it gives the dish a fabulously silky texture.

And that is that.

The best spaghetti carbonara going – and almost ridiculously easy. The only thing that is vital with anything so simple is to keep the ingredients as good as possible – and it’s particularly the case here with the eggs.

And you certainly won’t want to play fusion games, as Delia has with her oven-baked risotto carbonara.