Back to basics and a spot of deduction

A very small kitchen for very tall people

Arriving in new holiday rental accommodation is always an intriguing prospect – not least when you have important questions in mind such as: ‘what is the kitchen like?’ and ‘will the knives be sharp enough to fillet a fish?’

The kitchen this year is small but very nicely designed. Except that it was clearly designed for the Scandanavians who own the house and not for a shortarse like me, who would require a step ladder to get to anything more than the front of the bottom shelves of the cupboards above the sink, cooker etc.

And then there’s the electric bin. Yes, that’s right – a battery-powered bin. With no batteries in it. So it doesn’t work. I have, therefore, had to leave the bin bag inside it – because I am most certainly not going out and buying batteries to power an effing bin – but with the top training out through the lid, which at least means I can open the lid manually, rather than have to pull the entire top section off every time I want to throw something away.

There is also no cafetière, but one of those rather old-fashioned machines that requires a paper filter each and every time you wish to make coffee.

The important stuff

And there’s an over-complex orange squeezer, which will probably not be moved from its spot while we’re here.

The other big question on arrival is what provisions or basics you need to buy to get going.

In this case, there were some loo rolls and some kitchen paper, but no decent oil or vinegar (unless it’s hidden at the back of a cupboard way above my head), only the sort of salt that has additives to make it run, two eggs in the kitchen fridge and two and a half small bottles of tonic in the wine fridge on the third floor, next to the roof terrace.

The terrace bit is, incidentally, a key reason we picked this particular address this year.

Not just any old tonic, but Carrefour tonic. Which was pretty flat, so we watered the geraniums with it. Cut flowers love crappy lemonade, after all.

The Other Half, employing a modicum of Holmsian deduction, reasoned that the previous residents had therefore been Brits, whose idea of rooftop boozing involved gin.

More important stuff

I, perhaps a tad cynically, observed that the lack of any decent condiments or cooking items and the dominance of Carrefour’s cheapest label on anything that was still around rather bore this out.

Indeed, when The Other Half later checked the computer to see if he could work out whether the router was on, it was to find that the most recent internet pages that had been opened had been for used car dealers in Essex.

Perhaps our cynicism was not far off the mark.

We sat down and debated the best approach. It was mid-afternoon and, after a morning on the beach, we’d enjoyed a pleasant lunch at Fort St Elme – a traditional start to our holiday. In my case, calamari. It was advertised as coming with rice, but I asked for, and received, frites and aîoli instead.

All quiet as I head to Sunday's market

Once the unpacking was done, we headed into the centre of the village.

My plan was to pick up a small can of the very best virgin olive oil that (in my opinion) is to be found in the area.

It’s made not far from Collioure, from olives grown in the region. And one of the pressings is made with the stones still in it, adding a particularly pepper quality to the green, grassy oil. Absolutely gorgeous stuff.

Memory served me well and we found the shop easily (not that you can get lost here). We bought a small can that will do us well for dipping bread and for dressings over the coming weeks.

Not far away is Barry Blend’s gallery, so we nipped in to say hello to his wife and make a date: I’m interviewing Barry later this week – so watch out for that.

Now these are what I call tomatoes

A rapidly necked cola light by the beach was followed by a far more leisurely sangria, and then a wander back to the alimentation near the house, where we did a substantial stock up, and finally the boulangerie for a freshly-baked loaf.

Coffee, water, wine and bread – how much more basic can it get?

Some fruit too, some patés, a piece of cheese and a little pre-packed saucisson; some pamplemousse rosé (pink grapefruit juice, but isn’t pamplemousse’ a wonderful word?), a few cherry tomatoes and a cucumber.

Nothing complicated at all. And a repast that was quick, easy and entirely adequate to our needs.

Sunday morning saw this year’s first visit to the market and the chance to get even more essentials.

Fish for this evening – confusingly, it was labeled ‘sar du pays’, which is not easily translatable via Google, but which seems to be something along the lines of ‘regional fish’.

It looked very like dorade to me, but what was certain was that it was immaculately fresh.

Supper gives me the eye

More tomatoes – glorious, misshapen organic ones in a multitude of colours and sizes: the ones I dream of for the rest of the year; the ones that taste of the sun.

More cheese and then some serious charcuterie from a stall where I almost breakfasted on the samples the man there hands to customers to try.

Additional bread and a croissant for The Other Half went in the bag from a very good boulangerie in that part of the village, plus a quick visit to the little Carrefour provided bin liners and a big pot of yogurt for my breakfasts.

Or not yogurt this time, but fromage frais, which is a little like the German quark, and will be consumed with rhubarb compote, which was found in a large jar in the same shop.

The fish didn’t prove too difficult to fillet – if I do this once or twice the rest of the year, it would be a miracle: in other words, I’m far from well practiced.

And I also need to remember to scrape of scales before doing anything else – even if just with a knife.

As simple as it gets

And it was another of the episodes that made me really consider bringing over a fish knife and my pin-boning pliars next time. There’s no knife sharpener either.

Anyway, the fish, once filleted, went skin side up under a hot grill, on a lightly-oiled, foil-lined grill tray.

It took around eight minutes before I turned it and gave it another three.

Having forgotten to pick up a lemon, it was served with a ‘salad’ of sliced tomatoes, salted, and bread, with Balsamico and oil to dip.

Food like this is pretty much as basic as it gets. But when the ingredients are this good, who needs anything more complicated?

From real food to processed horse lasagne

'A proper tomato,' thinks Monty Don. And he's right.

Last night, as near-freezing rain continued to fall outside, we hit catch-up TV and the second episode of Monty Don’s French Gardens.

This was the episode looking at kitchen gardens – or potagers, as our Gallic friends would say.

In fact, since my little bit of stolen space fits neither the usual understanding of a ‘garden’ or an ‘allotment’, I may just adopt this term to describe it.

Indeed, having realised that the tatty old spade I possessed was woefully inadequate for the job of digging in compost and manure, I wandered down to Columbia Road this morning and bought a new, considerably better one. Tools do make a difference.

As I was paying, the man in the shop asked: ‘Have you got an allotment or a garden?”

Being a tad on the pedantic side, I had to say that I would call it neither – which then, of course, demanded a lengthier explanation.

Later, christening that spade by digging trenches in the grey drizzle – god, I was determined to get outside and do something – I found myself deciding that that French words best fits my little patch.

And it is a patch, I admit, that is sneakily growing. After all, when the boughs of a tree are so low that only a rather small dwarf could stand up under them, there’s no point putting communal decking there, now is there? Which means it must be part of my growing space instead.

The digging-in is going in mixed fashion. Roots and stones are the main things that hamper more rapid progress, although the soil itself – before it has anything dug into it – is incredibly dense. It’s not difficult to dig, but the minute I walk on it in this weather, it is clumping heavily.

Still, we made some more progress, even if not a great deal. And now that the evenings are lightening, I can do a few minutes after work in the next fortnight.

I’ve decided not to sow anything yet – even in the growhouse – because it’s still so cold.

Hopefully, by next weekend, matters will have changed and we’ll be beginning a genuine upswing in temperatures toward spring.

But let’s go back to Monty Don. The programme was a joy.

Just one of things that struck me with force, was the idea that vast numbers of French people try to grow at least something for the kitchen.

And this in a country where, as he pointed out, one in three people still shop regularly at markets, and one in two shop regularly with a sense of the seasonal and the regional.

Try and take those figures in. They're worlds away from the situation in the UK at the moment.

Don explained the concepts of terroir – an idea that I love – aswell as what a paysan means. Just think, we use 'peasant' as a derogatory term.

Yet what we discovered in his explorations of both of these terms were the ideas of a sense of region and soil and climate, and of people who grow for themselves to live off the land.

I’m sure I’m not moving toward some form of Ludditism, because I certainly have no objection to technology or science per se – not remotely – but there are times when I look at programmes like that, and recall also what we’ve seen ourselves in the south of France, and I do really long for something simpler.

And yet here we are, instead, with stories of horsemeat lasagne from Findus.

At this point, it no longer really matters what company is hitting the headlines.

The key point is that big businesses are trying to increase profits at the same time as driving down the prices on the shelves, and apparently without realising that their suppliers/producers also need to make a profit too – or at least break even – or caring.

And in all this, nobody seems to give a damn for what the customer might actually end up eating.

So then you get things like this, from the responses to an Observer editorial today, in direct reply to a point about us (the UK) actually growing our own food:

“… we’d be vastly worse off, in a way that would disproportionately affect the poorest in society by forcing them to buy expensively produced domestic goods, while also diverting people from more value-generating activities back onto the land (which would be the opposite of the history of human progress).”

Someone find me a wall to beat my head against.

It’s actually pretty much at the heart of what is wrong – how can you regard food and food security etc as not having enough value?

Where do we begin to look at the wrongness of those sentiments?

Well, I’m not going to do it right now. But what I am going to post is something a little different.

Here are the ingredients lists for six supermarket-branded, ready-made lasagnas from three supermarkets. Each pair includes a premium one and an ‘economy’ version, plus prices/weights per product.

Waitrose own brand:

Minced Beef (18%), Cooked Free Range Egg Pasta (15%), Chopped Tomato, Water, Milk, Onion, Mushroom, Tomato Puree, Single Cream, Grana Padano Cheese (2%), Cornflour, Red Wine, Beef Stock, Butter, Wheat Flour, Garlic Puree, Basil, Salt, Olive Oil.

£2.39 for 400g (£6 per kilo). 400g  the same weight as a tin of soup, so in essence, this is a single portion.

Waitrose Essential:

Minced Beef (19%), Chopped Tomato, Cooked Free Range Egg Pasta, Water, Milk, Passata, Onion, Tomato Puree, Single Cream, Mushroom, Mature Cheddar Cheese, Cornflour, Wheat Flour, Butter, Rapeseed Oil, Red Wine Vinegar, Garlic Puree, Olive Oil, Demerara Sugar, Salt, Basil, Caramelised Sugar Powder, Oregano, Black Pepper, Ground Bay Leaf, Nutmeg.

£1.79 for 350g (£5.10 per kilo)

Tesco Finest:

Milk, British Beef (17%), Tomato Passata, Free Range Egg Pasta, Pork (10%), Carrot, Onion, Tomato, Celery, Italian Merlot Red Wine, Tomato Purée, Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese, Mature Cheddar Cheese, Vegetable Oil, Sundried Tomato Paste, Wheat Flour, Beef Stock, Sugar, Basil, Garlic Purée, Salt, Thyme, Oregano, Black Pepper, Cornflour, Bay Leaf, Nutmeg, White Pepper, Mustard Powder, Free Range Egg Pasta contains: Durum Wheat Semolina, Egg, Water, Sundried Tomato Paste contains: Rehydrated Sundried Tomato, Vegetable Oil, White Wine Vinegar, Garlic Powder, Salt, Black Pepper, Rosemary, Basil, Beef Stock contains: Beef, Water, Cornflour, Sugar, Salt, Beef Fat, Onion, Tomato

400g for £3.50 (£8.75 per kilo)

Tesco Everyday Value:

Cooked Egg Pasta, Beef (20%), Tomato, Water, Tomato Purée, Tomato Juice, Onion, Milk, Cornflour, Mature Cheddar Cheese, Wheat Flour, Single Cream, Salt, Beef Stock, Butter, Garlic Purée, Oregano, Black Pepper, White Pepper, Cooked Egg Pasta contains: Durum Wheat Semolina, Water, Pasteurised Egg, Beef Stock contains: Beef, Yeast Extract, Salt

1.5Kg for £2.98 (£1.99 per kilo, so cheaper than the Everyday smaller size)

Asda:

Minced Beef, Tomato, Mushroom and Herb Filling (43%) [Minced Beef (51%), Water, Tomatoes (8.5%) [contain Acidity Regulator (Citric Acid)], Tomato Purée (5.0%), Mushrooms (4.9%), Onions, Cornflour, Garlic Purée, Vegetable Bouillon [Sugar, Concentrated Vegetable Juices [Carrots, Onions, Leek, Celery, Garlic], Salt, Corn Starch, Sunflower Oil, Nutmeg Oil], Beef Bouillon [Beef Stock, Corn Starch, Salt, Concentrated Onion Juice, Tomato Paste, Sugar], Salt, Basil, Oregano, Sugar, Black Pepper], Béchamel Sauce (25%) [Water, Single Cream (11%), Vegetarian Cheddar Cheese (5.4%), Cornflour, Mascarpone Cheese, Skimmed Milk Powder, Wheat Flour, Salt, Nutmeg], Napolatana Sauce (16%) [Tomatoes (42%) [contain Acidity Regulator (Citric Acid)], Water, Onions, Olive Oil, Cornflour, Garlic, Basil, Salt, Black Pepper] , Cooked Egg Pasta Sheets (14%) [Durum Wheat Semolina, Water, Whole Egg Powder, Egg White Powder], Vegetarian Cheddar Cheese (2.0%).

400g for £2.05 (£5.12 per kilo)

Asda Smart Price:

Minced Beef Filling (53%) [Chopped Tomatoes, Water, Beef (22%), Diced Onions, Concentrated Tomato Purée, British Beef Stock [British Beef, Salt, Flavouring, Molasses, Tomato Paste, Dried Onions, Cornflour, Concentrated Lemon Juice, Carob Powder, Black Pepper], Red Wine [contains Preservative (Sulphur Dioxide)], Whipping Cream, Cornflour, Salt, Sugar, Garlic Purée, Dried Basil, Dried Oregano, Ground Black Pepper] , Béchamel Sauce (35%) [Water, Whipping Cream, Mature Cheddar Cheese (7.6%), Cornflour, Skimmed Milk Powder, Wheat Flour, Salt] , Lasagne Sheets (10%) [Durum Wheat Semolina, Water, Pasteurised Whole Egg] , Mature Cheddar Cheese (1.0%) .

72p for 300g (£2.40 per kilo)

Did you spot it?

Setting aside the over-complexity of a dish that we all know needs nowhere near as many individual ingredients, did you notice that the cheapest product is the one that claims to have the highest percentage of beef in it?

And that the most expensive product is the one that claims to have the smallest percentage of beef in it?

And similarly, that the most expensive is the one with the least individual ingredients in it.

Now, what do you think all that might tell us?

Two seasons, two days, two dishes

For all that the sun has had his hat on several times this last week, the evenings are pulling in and the air is cooling.

It is an inescapable fact that autumn is on the way. And it seems that the record-breakingly wet summer, combined with the late burst of sun and heat, could conspire to produce a spectacularly colourful season.

But while we have a while to wait before we see whether that technicolour explosion actually transpires, an itch has started for seasonal comforts on the plate.

And the weekend gone provided opportunities and encouragements to straddle two seasons in just two days and two meals.

With tomatoes both ripe and ripening, a meal was needed that allowed them to take centre stage.

A pomodoro seemed to be the perfect casting solution.

But there was a complication, since doing a traditional tomato sauce requires far more tomatoes than I had.

There seemed to be one sensible way to deal with this.

So, for two, for a main course:

Take a medium onion and chop finely. Sweat gently in olive oil. Add some finely chopped garlic and continue to cook gently.

Chuck in a tin of chopped tomatoes – in just their own juice.

Let that cook gently for a while.

Check the seasoning.

Add the fresh tomatoes – mine were all small enough that they didn’t need cutting, let alone skinning.

Continue to cook gently until the skins have just split.

Serve over pasta.

Adding the whole tomatoes at the end freshens up the sauce and adds a different bit of texture.

It also allowed the chance to really appreciate the baby orange plums, which were light and sweet as anything. It’s almost a shock to the system to taste such tomatoey sweetness in the UK – and it was most welcome.

For Sunday, I’d decided to go down the slow, slow route.

So on Saturday evening, I sliced carrot and celery, cut some rump into large, bite-size pieces and popped everything in a bowl with a bottle and a bit of red wine, plus thyme, bay and juniper berries.

And it stayed like that until late Sunday morning.

The most fiddly part of the job that follows is draining everything – keep the marinade – and then drying the meat. But it’s worth taking a bit of time to make sure it is all dry.

Then take a cut clove of garlic and smear it around your casserole. Add a good knob of lard and melt.

Add the meat – in batches if necessary – and brown.

In the meantime, in a large pan, pop some diced, smoked streaky bacon, and cook gently until the fat is coming out of the meat.

At that point, add a couple of chopped onions and two or three cloves of garlic, and continue to cook gently until the onion and garlic start taking on a hint of gold.

Add a sliced carrot and a peeled, diced potato, plus two large tomatoes, skinned and chopped, and let it all cook gently for a minute or two.

Now add the marinade. Bring it to a boil and let it bubble and reduce a bit for five to 10 minutes.

Decant all of this into the casserole with the meat, and add further thyme and bay (and anything other herbs you fancy, for that matter).

At this point, I popped in a handful of dried mushrooms too. Then everything was brought back to a simmer, the pot was covered with foil and lidded, and placed into an oven that had been preheated to 120˚C, where it sat happily for around seven hours.

In essence, this is a daube. Strictly speaking, that means a particular type of cooking pot, but it’s come to mean a slow-cooked dish, of a style that’s particularly linked with the south west of France.

Previous experience had suggested that two or even four hours was not long enough to ensure that the gravy/sauce was sweet and the meat so tender that you could cut it with a spoon.

The majority of the recipe is from Elisabeth Luard, who suggests, in European Peasant Cookery, “four hours at least”.

I deviated from her recipe by adding the vegetables and herbs to the overnight marinade – and by adding the dried mushrooms later.

One of the joys of now having pretty much (as far as I know) every English-language book about cookery from the area is that you start being able to learn little details.

The dried mushrooms are popular in Foix in the mountains – we spent a couple of nights there last year. They also use white wine instead of red there, according to Paula Wolfert in The Cooking of South West France, but I decided to just take the mushroom aspect of that regional derivation.

We’d spent much of Sunday gardening and had trimmed a lot of herbs right back to encourage bushier growth. So when I put on some rice to serve with the daube, The Other Half suggested adding some of the mint he’d trimmed. To that I therefore added a finely-chopped orange chilli from the garden.

On Monday, it was simply a question of reheating gently for an hour and then serving with heaps of buttery puréed potato.

For yesterday, there was little meat left, but a very meaty and flavoursome gravy/sauce.

I chucked in a tin of chopped tomatoes, some halved, peeled spuds and some halved chestnut mushrooms, and gave it around an hour. And it did delightfully.

All of which also means four days of pretty easy cooking – and perfectly good eating. And what more can you ask for?

Back to basics

The plan, such as it existed, had been simple: there's a market in Collioure on Sunday and Wednesday.

So on Saturday, our first day, we'd eat out for both lunch and dinner, and then get the first food in this morning.

That started to unravel when we realised that the previous guest must have been a Mrs Hubbard. Because the cupboards were most certainly bare.

Etiquette, we have discovered since starting to self cater four years ago, is simple. People leave what is left over in terms of basics – and you do the same.

So on past visits, we'd found pasta, jam and cereals, plus a wide range of condiments, oils and vinegars. We'd used such as we needed – and replaced and added to the store.

This year, although we were returning to the house we stayed in last summer, the inventory was a tad on the stingy side.

There was a tiny pot of salt – the easy-running stuff that's easy running because it's laced with additives – a similar sized pot of fine-ground pepper, no oil at all. It's the Med, for goodness sake: how do you live here for a day or more without olive oil?

There was a bottle of Carrefour's cheapest own-brand Balsamic, which turned out to be about as much use as dyed water.

There was not even any coffee to get us going. No sugar, only the barest, embarrassed remains of a kitchen roll and only one spare loo roll.

There was, however, a draw full of teas and tisanes. Ten of them. Hercule Poirot would have been in his element.

But whoever had last lived here had presumably it eaten out pretty much exclusively. Our plans were different.

These discoveries were made after we'd been handed the keys, a short while after lunch at the brasserie behind the beach, Le Saint Elme, which we invariably use for the first few days, until I become very bored with the menu touristique and insist we seek out better fodder.

The menu had changed this year. Slightly. Which meant that they no longer do deep fried, battered squid rings – what we know by the generic term of calamari – with frites. And I usually ask for aïoli on the side. But the calamari is now only available as part of a large dish of 'tapas'.

So instead, I ordered a 'duo' of squid and gambas. Which turned up with a 'garnish' of six little mussels. Tempting though it was, since they were sitting there on my plate, I decided not to take the risk. It might have been years since the last 'episode', but it was very unpleasant indeed.

The baby squid were very nice, the gambas okay. The accompanying rice was dry. The half tomato, grilled with a few breadcrumbs and herbs on top, was as such things always are in France – a bloody miracle of a garnish.

A demi of rosé and we were happy – and ready to unpack.

Back at the beach a short while later, conversation turned to the rather obvious fact that we couldn't avoid shopping. So after our first sundowner of the holiday – sangria – we headed for the local Carrefour to stock up on basics.

We were also feeling the warm tiredness that comes from a day starting to unwind, and to be frank, neither The Other Half nor I really fancied going out again for a meal.

So we decided to make do with what we could find in the supermarket.

Carrefour, if you're listening, the till system is a mess. It's all well and good having decided to do away with the three individual checkouts and put them into one row, but it's incredibly cramped, and the layout of the shop means it's pretty much impossible to know who is on what queue for what till.

We found our basics - and picked up a small baguette, a couple of tomatoes, a little cucumber, some spring onions, half a garlic sausage, and the best virgin oil we could lay hands on.

A bottle of rosé had been left at the house for us, on the orders of the woman who owns it. Which was very nice, and it had gone straight in the fridge to chill and await evening.

The tomatoes were okay, the onions were huge but hardly dramatic in terms of flavour, while the cucumber was better than most of what you'd find in such a shop a home.

The garlic sausage was moist and garlicky and pleasant. The bread was fresh and worked well drizzled with a little oil.

I tried a bowl of the same oil with some of the Balsamic in it, but that was the point at which it became clear that better vinegar would be required.

And so to this morning and my first trip to market, currently sitting in the 'canal', which is dry at this time of year, as a little fun fair is occupying the village square for the annual fête – of which much more will follow in the coming days.

First stop, a stall selling soft fruits: strawberries from Elne, with blackberries and raspberries and redcurrants. Only redcurrents didn't make it into the bag. And oh, the blackberries, the blackberries ...

Then one of my very favourite stalls, an organic one, specialising in the tomatoes I dream of between trips. A large selection was joined by a small cucumber and a melon.

Another stall, and a big bulb of rose garlic for aïoli, a vast red onion for salad and some big banana shallots for the same thing.

Heading down the ramp to the canal, Caroline came over to greet me. She has met me precisely six, brief times, over three years – and yet she remembered me the second year we self catered; the second year the market became one of the joys of the holiday.

She had lovely charcuterie as usual: at three saucisson for €10, I picked up a boar one, a 'natural' one and a fig one, plus she recommended a firm goat cheese with garlic and pepper – which packs a lovely punch.

The nearby boulangerie provided a loaf for the day and croissants for breakfast.

Eating this evening, the very simplest of salads, accompanied by bread and wine, with cheese and fruit to follow, it struck me so forcefully, yet again, that if the ingredients are top notch, you really need to do so little with it.

If last night was better than we might have expected – or hoped – then tonight was in a different league altogether.

It was quite simply simple. And quite simply glorious.

The first harvest

With France approaching faster than Usain Bolt down the straight, the garden is finally starting to produce the first major signs of harvestable goodies.

It comes at an awkward time, of course, since we’ll be away for three weeks.

A few days ago, sitting outside, I noticed a seemingly vast number of seed pods had fallen from the nasturtiums.

Since there are still loads of seeds in packets bought earlier this year, there was no need to keep them for planting.

Instead, it seemed utterly logical to make nasturtium ‘capers’ – yet another way in which you can eat this extraordinary, peppery-tasting plant.

And it’s a doddle.

Take your seed pods. Pick through them – you don’t want any brown ones.

Then prepare some brine – approximately 300ml water to 10g salt – and let it cool.

Pop the seed pods in and leave for 24 hours.

After that, simply rinse, drain, decant into a sterilised jar and cover with vinegar.

Voila! Leave for three months before tucking in.

It’s a really rather exciting prospect.

You can obviously add flavourings. So I used a lightly crushed clove of garlic, a bay leaf and a sprig of thyme (the latter two from the garden). The vinegar was a good Italian chardonnay wine vinegar.

They even look so pretty in little jars.

The first tomatoes decided to be ready for consumption on the eve of departure: one small red one and two tiny orange ones. The Other Half had the former and reported that it was good and tasty. I ate the latter, which had an almost impossibly high flavour to size ratio.

The advantage of picking tomatoes when they’re absolutely ripe and ready for eating – and then eating them straight away – cannot be overstated.

There are a good 50-odd tomatoes at various stages of development: neighbours know that, if any get ripe enough, they can let themselves into the garden and pick some. There is no point in things going to waste.

The chilies are doing well too – indeed, they’re stretching out almost visibly (perhaps that’s partly because I gave them some of the organic tomato feed).

But they will take time to ripen – and even if they’re well ripe by the time we return, they can be dried.

The broad beans provided a remarkable harvest of four beans. Which still felt miraculous, under all the circumstances of this year.

But other beans – the borlotti and the fine beans, I think, are now flowering: such delicate, pretty flowers. How much we’ll get from them, I have no idea, but like the broad beans, anything will be a victory, frankly.

And the turnips, swedes and carrots are all growing well, safe under netting, and now with the leaves showing what they are, rather than simply being little seedlings.

So, for a few weeks, that’s it. What will it be like on our return? Only time will tell.

Newcomers in the garden

There they were; spotted suddenly, as though they’d appeared overnight; not seen before amid the leafiness.


Small, yes; but tomatoes all the same. Two small, green tomatoes. And a closer look revealed another pair, lower down, hiding in the foliage. All that was missing was a whistle-stop café.

Setting aside the wonderful Kathy Bates and the delightful Jessica Tandy, it was one of a continuing series of moments that have filled me with utter delight.

In truth, I feel as though I’ve done relatively little. I planted seedlings some time ago, have tied carefully on a regular basis to provide support, have sprayed a couple of times to remove aphids and have managed to pick out at least some of the tiny leaves sprouting between the main stalk and the principal leaves.

Mostly though, it has felt as though the plants have needed only the most superficial help.

But while the war with the snails – and now slugs too – continues to rage, it was a reminder of the rewards.

They’ve got about a month to ripen – because then I’m off to the south of France, which as regular readers will know, is tomato heaven.

Even in this most crazy of summers, when the sun has been only an occasional visitor, the harvesting has been a joy.

The strawberries are still producing fruits - fewer than before and small, but still bursting with a deep and deeply satisfying taste.

There are plenty of delicate, yellow flowers on the tomato plants, so there should be plenty more fruits to follow in the wake of that vanguard.

Tomatoes are a relative of the nightshade family, and are of the genus solanum, which word rather suggests that they need a bit of sun. Yet they seem to be coming on in spite of the semi-constant rain, which continues to make a mockery of the continuing drought.

And talking of sun, I have delicate white chilli flowers too - such a deceptively innocent flower for a fruit that will (hopefully) pack a bit of a punch.

The basil, helped by being surrounded with course sand and by the continuing nighttime patrols, is reviving. The sorrel is looking better and the lamb's lettuce and the American land cress are both pretty much ready for a first cropping - something that will happen after the weekend, to accompany cold meat.

There are plenty of nasturtiums too - and since I find the whole idea of eating flowers a bit 'funny' (yes, even I have something I'm irrational about) I'm thinking of deep frying a few in a tempura batter. Well, you can do it with courgette flowers, so why not?


The violas are still providing lovely colour – what great value bedding plants they are – and the wildflowers, which I sowed on St George's Day, have not flowered yet, but are reaching for the skies.


Whether I've done much or not may be a question, but regardless of the answer, the garden is a pleasure.


And that is a pleasure that will only continue to increase as more and more produce becomes ready to eat.


Indeed, the only real question seems to be why everyone wouldn't want to do this in whatever space they have available, be that a massive garden or pots on a windowsill.

My green and salad days

I have never been much of a fan of salad. And you can stop with the sniggering before you start – I don't mean I'm the stereotypical 'salad dodger'.

Actually, I need to be a tad more specific. My idea of a decent salad was something such as the one I picked up years ago from a running magazine, in the days when I pounded the pavements.

It involved slices of apple, sultanas (or raisins), chopped celery, walnuts, pasta shapes and a dressing of plain (low fat) yogurt thinned with orange juice and seasoned with black pepper.

Now that was a tasty salad.

One of the few recipe books I owned was an M&S book of salads – salads like that. Looking back at it now you realise how much we have changed in food terms in the intervening 30 years. What was considered ‘exotic’ then is hardly so now.

But a salad made up of lettuce and tomatoes and cucumber was, generally speaking, to be avoided.

In recent years, travel has broadened the mind on many things – and not least, on this matter.

Tomatoes in Collioure that taste of the sun have left me with year-long yearning for exactly that.

And salad pretty much anywhere across the Channel has been a revelation.

There was the one I had in a restaurant in Barcelona once (twice actually – going for a repeat the next year). It was a plate piled high with leaves, strawberry halves, nuts and more leaves, all dressed with the lightest touch.

I remember it, six (and five) years later, because it was so, so good, and because it introduced me to mesclun, the mix of small salad leaves.

There was the one in a café for office workers in Perpignan; another pile of leaves, this time with pine nuts and three different cheeses.

Everywhere we’ve been, what sticks in the mind is not complexity, but the freshness of the ingredients; these are leaves that actually have a taste and meaningful crispness.

In France generally, even the most cursory garnish is usually worth eating because at least it will be crisp and fresh. But this is far from being just a French thing.

In Brugge, it was the peppery cress that was almost obligatory – but, as we realised on the first taste, was far from boring.

Indeed, I eventually worked out what that was (thanks to George) and have subsequently sown a bowl of American land cress in the garden.

Many years ago, my first encounter with anything organic (insofar as anything labelled as such) was cucumber. An organic shop had opened in Lancaster. I was curious. Looking in, I was bemused by the range of what seemed to be rather scraggy looking fruit and veg.

This was in my pre-foodie days, but salad the sort of ideal, no-calorie stuff to fill up a constantly dieting individual. I bought a cucumber.

It was wrinkled and looked unappetising. But back at home, cutting in to it, I was astonished that it had a smell. And then it had a taste.

I don’t think it was the fact of being organic that gave it smell and taste. I suspect it was rather more to do with it not having been grown at an artificially fast pace. In recent years, I’ve bought my cucumbers from a farmer’s stall; they’re not organic, but the growth process is not artificially accelerated. And they do smell and taste good.


In fact, they taste so good that suddenly a cucumber sandwich becomes a pleasure.

But back in the UK, I rarely buy leaves and I almost never buy lettuce. Why would you? Water would be cheaper and taste about the same.

Last weekend, however, I spotted some small, tight lettuces on the Chegworth stall at Broadway Market. Organic, as it happens. I picked one up and sniffed. A smell!

I can’t remember what I paid for it, but it was gone by the following evening and I was pining for more. Not only had it had a smell, it had crispness and real taste too.

It wasn’t insipid stuff, pointless except as padding and a desultory nod toward five a day.

I managed to find an organic one during the week; that went in no time. Then another one at Borough Market yesterday. Gone quickly. Fortunately, Chegworth had a supply this morning. I came away with two.

My impressions about leafy, green salad have been changing – hence the planting of various salad crops in the garden. Although the baby salad leaves were destroyed by a snail, the nasturtiums are well on the way, the sorrel has recovered from the extremes of the weather, the lamb’s lettuce is developing and the land cress is starting to fill its pot.

The radishes and the spring onions appear to be on a go slow, but we shall see. The former have certainly not be helped by snails.

That’s without mentioning the tomato plants, which are soaring, with stalks thickening and flowers just beginning to develop.

And in the longer term, I hope to grow my own lettuce too.

Then there are the herbs, and the realisation that a few sprigs of mint or some basil can contribute so much to a salad.

My own salad days, in the Shakespearean sense, might not have involved much in the way of green salad – but I am experiencing a whole new period of salad days now.