When there were no almonds to be found for Gertrude’s fruitcake she ground hazelnuts instead “and that is alright because a recipe is poetry, not a timetable”.

Among many other quotable bits in this brilliant and funny monologue this is one I will come back to. My recipes are possibly not as poetic as some of Alice Babette Toklas’ but I believe in the essence of that sentence.

“Poetry (from the Greek word poiesis, "making") is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings.” Replace literary with culinary, language with foods and meanings with feelings… it’s a bit of a stretch maybe, but a recipe can be a poem of sorts, don’t you think?

They are after all simply stories, or poems if you like, of how to feed people in whatever circumstances they find themsleves in, handed down through generations, sometimes written down, sometimes told or simply shown. Adaptations of recipes can create a whole new wonderful dish; or ruin one. The setting, the people, the giving of the food can turn an everyday recipe into a feast, or a fancy dinner into an ordeal to be got through. My mother, when noting the kind of food the mothers in the shelter she worked in often gave their children, suggested that the food became nutritious because it was made with that intent, and with love. I am not wholly sure that is the case with chicken nuggets, but I almost believe it.

Recipes represent the history of place, family, diaspora, feast, famine, pleasure or punishment.

Imagine the recipe for workhouse gruel in Dickens’ London, or the unleavened bread of the wandering Jews, or try this recipe for Gazan famine bread (I did, it’s weird but actually not bad).(Renad is now living in Europe and is safe, for the time being, and still cooking.)

Recipes change with every cook who makes them, with every different oven or knife. They are a guide to the experienced cook, a teacher for the less so.

The thing is that if you cook a lot, and if you enjoy it, it becomes instinctive and you can make additions, substitutions or indeed change the whole recipe because what it did was inspire you to use what you had to hand, which is precisely what I did when making Stuffed Swiss Chards from Alice B’s book. I had no chard, and I had no left over roast meat so it became this total other thing - Recipe for stuffed courgette or small marrow in the style of Alice B Toklas. Click this link for this recipe and also for the haschich fudge for which she is unjustly most renowned.

Blackcurrant Compote.

• Take one cast iron enamelled pan (le creuset for example). Cook some black currants in it with a little sugar on a low heat, forgetting that you have done so about 20 mins in.

• Remove from the heat when the smell reminds you of its existence. Remove the jammy bit which remarkably does not taste of ‘burnt’. Then take the pan with its new lining of solid carbon and let it sit with water to cover the carbon for 2-3 days. This will do absolutely nothing.

• Look up on you tube how to remove this layer of carbon because you’ll be damned if you’ll throw away this, your favourite little green pan with its charming wooden handle. The endless videos remind you that bicarbonate of soda is always just the thing for such emergencies. Add some to the pan with boiling water. That will do very little. Add some more to the pan with vinegar and washing up liquid. That too will do very little.

• Do not give up, remember this is your favourite little pan. About 4 days later add the remaining bicarb to the pan, cover with water and leave over night. You will see some mild action after this which encourages you to think that there may yet be a solution to this dilemma. Put the pan with its contents on the heat. It will bubble furiously so turn it down to simmer. Once more, and here clearly is the key, forget about it.

• Having a husband or partner who has retired is a useful thing at this point as they may well be loitering around the house and will turn the heat off when they espy a dry pan with a whole new layer of interest over the carbon. On being called to return to the pan you hail the success of the project and scrape off not just the new layer of soda crust but also the offending carbon. The little green pan is saved.

• In the meantime you can use the tiny little bit of ‘jam’ that survived the cooking in your morning museli, or to top some vanilla ice cream, but to be honest it is almost irrelevant.

  ---

Chocolate & Date Fridge Cake

My last cooking session with Ein Cegin was a week or so ago, with my friend and colleague Maya (Maya can more often be found making butter for Caws Teifi which is very special stuff and should really not be used for this recipe!) in Goodwick for about 30 people including 16 or so kids. Time was limited and we both knew the kitchen from a previous session and were unimpressed with it so knew we needed something for pud that didn’t need baking and Maya came up with this, adapted, as all good recipes are, from a Hodmedods slightly more wholesome version. It’s easy, really yummy and more chocolatey than you might imagine. I scrimped on the butter because I didn’t have enough to hand so the one in the photo is a bit crumblier than it ought to be, but it’s also great crumbled on ice cream or with some yoghurt on that old muesli that you don’t have any black currant compote for, so no waste here.

Ingredients (makes 1 x 25cm square tin)

• 250g Butter

• 100ml Milk

• 250g digestive biscuits

• 175g rolled oats

• 60g rice krispies

• 85g sugar

• 85g finely chopped dates

• 40g cocoa powder

Method

1. Line your tin with baking parchment.

2. Melt the butter gently until completely liquid.

3. In a big bowl ash the biscuits until they are rough crumbs.

4. Add all the other dry ingredients together, then the milk and the butter

5. Scrape the mixture into the tin and press down firmly.

6. Refrigerate for at least an hour then cut into squares and serve with your favourite cuppa.

In the spirit of adapting and changing you could use any dried fruit for this, figs would be really good I think. Hodmedods suggest puffed quinoa but I felt a nostalgia pang for rice krispies and they work really well.

Rookery Books News

Plans progress, a website is in the offing, some kitchen bits have been ordered and delivered, we have shelving up and ready, a counter, tables for books, a chair for sitting on, painted walls and visits from important personages (family) to give their blessings.

In reality Yorkshire hasn’t been my home since 1974 and the long hot summers of my memory are most likely just a few days dotted here and there when I got to wear my summer dress. I only have one blood relative living there now, the rest of us spread far and wide within the United Kingdom - all on the same land mass at least. My Mum’s partner Nancy still lives in the cottage she shared with her, and we visited her there and had a little jaunt of our own to Bolton Abbey which is very beautiful.

It was a good visit, as the Americans say. I was surrounded by Americans, the best sort of course, while there, as Nancy’s great nephew, Timothy, is staying too. It was odd being in the cottage where Mum died. Seeing her garden blooming but knowing she would have been out here dead heading the roses, pulling up unruly weeds and blessing the ones she liked, or inside making blackcurrant jam, or standing on a stool, reaching for something on the highest shelf oblivious to the danger of falling.

Everything is as it was. Everything is totally changed.

Next stop was my brother Nic and his wife Pauline. The best of people. Nic should be canonised really, but he would scoff and laugh and order a pint of bitter at the thought. That too was good visit. Nic wants to buy a massive house in Hartlepool so that all the family, in its entirety, can live there come armageddon or Nigel Farage. It’s a lovely thought, except for the Hartlepool bit. No offence to anyone from there, and I haven’t been so am not dismissing it outright, but I don’t want to live there, sorry. I suggested he buy (with what was a question we didn’t quite get to) out here in Wales, but he said it rains too much. The cheek of it.

Anyway. I’ve got some busy old times coming up as me and the American get our little shop all gussied up and ready for custom, plus welcome a branch of the family to Wales (see Nic, most people think it’s a good idea), last cooking workshop with Ein Cegin, heartbreaking but also good, massive catering gig (which I have absolutely nothing to do with organising, I will just do as I am told - heaven) for the Beacon Farms event, then more family arriving, painting the shop, finalising travel plans to France… well, you can see, I am a bit distracted.

I am also distracted by the fact one of our cats has one missing. I am hoping so much she has just gone walk about - the last time she did that was 11 years ago and she came back pregnant. Since that outcome is no longer possible for her I am hoping she is enjoying a dalliance with a family who is feeding her fresh fish and combing her fur. That is my hope. I can’t quite bear to think of the alternatives. It’s ok if a pet dies, if it’s at home or at least with its owner, hard, but ok, but it’s the not knowing I am real finding difficult. Keep your fingers crossed that the matronly old baggage that is Spooky comes home soon.

Keeping this short but here’s a lovely idea for salad addition, which is all we can eat in this heat.

Bagel and chorizo croutons.

• 1 bagel, sliced widthways and then in to bite size pieces

• 1 cooking chorizo sausage, skinned and crumbled or cut into little pieces

• Mix in a bowl with a splash of olive oil and put onto a baking tray.

• Bake for about 10 minutes in med/hot oven (I used the air fryer - brilliant), or until the bagel bits are crispy and the chorizo just beginning to go brown at the edges (you want it sort of caramelly, if that makes sense).

Use any way you like - as a snack with something cold and fizzy or sprinkled liberally on a lovely crispy chopped salad.

Big love to you all - especially new subscribers.

So I know you will all be agog to know where these walls are that I have been painting, since the kitchen is of course now finished, and I will tell you. They are the walls of what will be Rookery Books, Cardigan’s soon-to-be book shop, with cookery objects on the side. Cookery objects covers kitchen ware and table ware, which are words I find clumsy in this context, so cookery objects it is. Or they are.

Words were on Tania Kindersley’s mind too, people turning perfectly good nouns into verbs, journal to journalling (“‘Someone will say: I have a question about journalling. And I say: I want you to write down, and I give the date, and I say I want you to remember this - this is the last time you’re going to use the word journal as a verb.’” - David Sedaris from Tania’s post).

Vibration to vibe to vibing and so on. Gifting is my bugbear. I give gifts (I actually really do, to deserving folk), I don’t gift things. When did it start being a verb? I hate it, it’s ugly. I gift you a gift. Just no. It was gifted me, or to me? It was GIVEN. If you must qualify it add AS A GIFT.

Tania used to dislike the word gorgeous, thinking it a “big, blowsy, vulgar word”. It is big and blowsy, faintly vulgar too in an eyes wide big knowing, smile sort of way, and that’s why I love it (and she does too now so that’s alright). It’s velvety and peach coloured. Anything peach coloured other than a peach is in danger of being reminiscent of crocheted toilet (another contentious word for the middle classes) roll covers and therefore to be avoided at all costs. But sometimes a piece of fabric, a paint colour or a word can get away with it - gorgeous is a deep, rosy peach colour in my mind.

Anyway. I love Tania’s essays. She has lots of horses and lives in Scotland which sounds dreamy to me, even though I don’t have a horse, and wouldn’t know what to do with one if I had.

I have just finished reading a book called On Earth We‘re Briefly Gorgeous, talking of gorgeous, and words. It’s incredible. I have never come across a novel written so poetically (without falling asleep anyway). It kept me engrossed while desperately wanting it to finish because of the weight of the sadness, and also never wanting to finish it. It covers racism, Vietnam war, sexuality, coming of age, the opioid epidemic, parenting, loss, beauty - all within the most extraordinary sentences.

This book and all the other books in the world (well, none of Trump’s) is why I am so happy to be opening a book shop with the American. We are kicking off signing the lease by painting the walls, marking our territory as it were. Then on Saturday 4th July we are having a tiny shindig to ‘celebrate’ the 250 anniversary of the declaration of independence, which is a very interesting document that has been used countless times by other nations in their attempts to get free of their colonists. I referred to it as America’s birthday in an instagram post, but of course it is not America’s birthday, because of course America was not born 250 years ago.

I was pulled up for using the word celebrate for such a thing, rightly so, but it was not intended to negate the America that came before the colonialists, just bad wording on my part. That subject is so big that an evening in a little shop in Cardigan town won’t suffice, but this particular American (let’s call him Russ, because that’s his name) knows his history and is on the right side of things and will provide an interesting talk, discussion and of course some music because that is his way. I will provide some food, because that is my way. Do come along if you’re local - kick off at 7.30pm (49 St Mary Street, currently still under the sign of the Seagull).

This space here, this substack place, will be where I will keep you all up to date with all things Rookery Books as they unfold.

So many people have said to me over the years, oh, I would love to open a cafe, and I say, you must be mad, don’t. Others say, oh, I would love to open a book shop, and I say, oh, how lovely, what a great idea, go for it.

This is us, going for it.

Tonight’s dinner involved courgettes (aka zucchini), which you may have noticed are now around in abundance. I love a courgette - so versatile. Queen of courgettes of course is Claire Thomson aka 5 o’clock apron so if you have a glut look no further for inspiration. I actually made one of hers from instagram last night but being impatient as ever didn’t follow the recipe properly and ended up with a mess - it was a delicious mess, but a mess nonetheless. Lesson there is to actually follow the recipe when making for the first time. Mine below, however, you can mess about with all you like, couldn’t be more simple in its essence.

Spaghetti & courgettes

Ingredients

• 1 large courgette, cut into chunks

• 2-3 tomatoes, cut into chunks (only add if really good and delicious tomatoes - supermarket rubbish will not do - do without rather)

• 1 clove of garlic, crushed

• 1 handful pinenuts or sunflower seeds, lightly toasted

• 1 handful fresh basil, shredded

• Parmesan cheese, finely grated, as much as you like

• good olive oil

• spaghetti, cooked, as much as you like

Method

1. Fry the courgette chunks in olive oil, not too high a heat, until they are golden brown.

2. Add the garlic, pine nuts and tomatoes, stir well and keep cooking gently for about 3 minutes.

3. Add a handful of the grated Parmesan and stir well.

4. Take off the heat and add the spaghetti, mix and serve with more Parmesan and a nice crisp green side salad.

   ---

Most people who live to this sort of age (65 if you must know) just get there, many trying to make it easier by going to the gym occasionally or getting in some forest bathing, many just hoping they have good genes and don’t break any bones along the way. For those that don’t there is generally a sad story and a big loss. So I don’t feel proud to be here, just grateful, while still being grumpy. You may think I am a sour puss for thinking like this. The derivation of this expression is pretty obvious, although the addition of a ‘y’ to puss takes it in another direction altogether which I choose not to explore. Wiki says : From sour (“bad-tempered”) +‎ puss (“slang for mouth”). I accept that. Vinegarish even.

However, I am not like this all the time, nor especially often about birthdays. I expect I am being hormonal (side note - everyone is hormonal, all the time, actually). But anyway, it got me thinking about sour and what a useful thing sour foods are in our diets and how we need it to feed our good bacteria and gut health, the gut being our second brain and therefore in need of some tlc just like the main brain rattling around our skulls (hence forest bathing).

Vinegar (from Old French vyn egre 'sour wine') is an odorous aqueous solution of diluted acetic acid and trace compounds that may include flavourings or naturally occurring organic compounds. Vinegar typically contains from 4% to 18% acetic acid by volume. God bless wikipedia (and nuts to ai).

I have a book called 1001 practical uses for vinegar, which is frankly too many and I am fairly certain that not every claim could be verified, but I can definitely say I use it for cleaning things, windows and the like, as well as dressings. Note - do not use balsamic vinegar to clean your windows or white spirit vinegar for vinaigrette.

Vinegar is a two part fermentation process - so part one is wine, cider or beer, all delicious and lovely, but then maybe you leave the lid off, or the wine wasn’t that lovely and you just allow it to go off, ferment again and hey presto, vinegar. Nowadays it’s all done very systematically and in controlled environments. Accidental vinegar isn’t really very good for anything other than cleaning your oven.

I have to think if you used every one of the cleaning tips in this book your house would smell very vinegary but there are some good ones. Oddly enough almost all the same claims are made for bicarbonate of soda, cleans, freshens etc. If you mix bicarb and vinegar you get a great fizzing chemical reaction which you can then use as paste to clean ovens, fridges, chopping boards and all sorts. Basically pretty much anything you use one of the endless cleaning sprays for (why are they different for different rooms? answer me that) you can use a diluted basic vinegar (not your organic white wine precious stuff) solution. For windows 45ml vinegar to 550 ml water with a ½ tsp washing up liquid. Spray on, clean with a damp cloth and dry with scrunched up newspaper. Yes, I have done it, and yes it does work, and leaves no marks.

A more general, anti bac cleaning solution from this book is equal thirds basic vinegar, rubbing alcohol and water, with a few drops of dish soap. Haven’t tried that one as I don’t generally have that kind of alcohol lying around and I really don’t think Bourbon would work.

Veering off from vinegar entirely to just bicarb, here’s a top tip for cleaning silver (jewellery, cutlery, urns). Line a ceramic, plastic or glass bowl with slightly scrunched silver foil, add 2-3 tablespoons of bicarb and add the pieces of silver you want cleaned. Pour over just boiled water to cover the silver and leave for a good half hour. Empty the bowl and see the tarnish moved from the silver to the foil. Wash the silver in hot soapy water and dry with a soft cloth. Hey presto - sparkly silver bits and bobs!

Back to vinegar. Having vinegar before a meal can lower your glucose spike by up to 30%, apparently. This is a claim I can’t verify as am not a scientist and I can’t remember now why this is important, but it is, apparently. Anyway, we took to having salad before the main event at supper, with lots of vinegar dressing and it does make a difference - you feel less bloated and tired after. It could also just be that by filling up on salad I don’t eat so much pasta.

It doesn’t matter how simple or complicated your ingredients are, organic leaves or supermarket iceberg - you can make any salad sing with the right dressing. Here’s two very simple ones - the first is one my Dad used to make, only he would add a teaspoon of sugar because that was in the 60s.

Classic Vinaigrette*

(*soon to make an appearance in the Ein Cegin Cookbook or Llyfr Coginio which will be gracing the shelves of Rookery Books just as soon as we get those doors open!)

Makes about enough for a salad for 4-6

• 30ml white or red wine vinegar

• 90ml really good olive oil

• 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard

• 1 shallot, finely chopped (optional)

• pinch each of salt and freshly ground black pepper

  Put all the ingredients in a jar with a well fitting lid and shake well.

Honey Mustard Dressing

Makes about enough for a salad for 4-6

• 20-40ml good cider vinegar (with the mother, we all need a vinegar mother in our lives)

• 90ml deliciously good olive oil

• 1 clove garlic, minced

• 1 tsp honey

• 1 tsp dijon mustard

• pinch each of salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put all the ingredients in a jar with a well fitting lid and shake well.

Top tips:

Don’t dress leafy salads until just before serving, and once the dressing is in mix well with salad servers so every leaf is covered.

Both these dressing will keep well for a few days in the fridge so make more than you need so you always have some on stand by.

Add fresh herbs at the last minute and mix in well - dill, basil, mint, coriander - all the soft leafy ones work really well.

If you happen to have a jar of sauerkraut in your fridge (and if not why not?) add some to your salads - delicious and extra good for the gut. Likewise kimchi but be prepared for it to dominate the flavour.

I have shaken off my vinegary mood. I would like to thank recent sign ups and encouraging messages and especially new paid subscribers - you make my day, all of you.

If you want some good vinegar recipes, and indeed all sorts of fermented food ideas look at my lovely friend Caroline Gilmartin’s book Fermented Foods - it’s brilliant, or Mark Diacono’s book, Sour.

Photos, clockwise from top left -

• My hands, showing off my beady bangles, second podding some delicious broad beans.

• “Mickey’s hands whilst stripping thyme for me for a dish when cooking in Ibiza. I liked the roughness of his tattooed hands whilst delicately stripping fresh thyme. He was an ex magician.” - From a new series of chefs cooks and friends - @selinasnowpaintings

Note - Selina’s paintings - they are gorgeous and vital and make you want to be at the table with this food and these people.

• Dimpled knuckles of a small child’s hands mixing coleslaw in a workshop with Ein Cegin.

• Grandma’s Hands. My mother’s hands - she was grandmother to so many I have lost count, and while she wasn’t really the sort of grandma this song and beautiful animation is about, similarities are there as both mother and grandmother. These are her hands stripping homegrown black currants to make jam. I still have a jar from 2023. I can’t bear to open it as there will never be another one.

Hands are like faces, they have character and show the voyage of the human attached in dimples, scars, veins, liver spots, wonky knuckles, neat manicures and missing digits.

My brother Barny once said that a cook’s best tools are their hands. In fact he has said it many times, he’s a chef and a food educator and so has had many students to say it to over the years. I suppose you could argue that they are an artist’s or mechanic’s best tools as well, and that would also be true. They are a human being’s tools, with our opposable thumbs giving us precise pincer movements and ability to use the index finger to point at things we want, we are streets, maybe, ahead of our nearest ape relatives.

A mechanic has permanently oil stained nails (or they used to until cars became computers to be fixed with an ipad), a carpenter will have roughened hands with probably at least one bashed in finger. Writers used to have writer’s bumps on the top knuckle of their middle finger (right or left depending on how they were designed), but now they have sore finger tips from bashing the qwerty key board. Painter’s hands, both of the artistic and more practical kind, are always paint splattered.

My hands are getting quite gnarly these days, with arthritis, fat old veins and age spots, finger nails invariably grubby with soil or whatever food I’ve been peeling or chopping (I do wash them in between, rest assured). My mum’s hands became gnarly too as she aged, swollen knuckles and wrists. She had a very distinctive thumb nail on her left hand because it had been shut in a car door decades ago, I remember it from when I was very small, when it had already healed but into a strange new shape.

Children’s chubby hands have delicious little dimpled knuckles. My little sister’s hands were like that I noticed when I held them, pulling her up as she clambered up the end of the bunk to my bed from hers, soggy nappy swinging .

So anyway, I have been musing on hands because I get transfixed by them when I see them working. They are so capable and strong, even when they are losing both those attributes little by little. My hands have done a fine job so far, and while they are not serving me quite so well these days I will still decorate them with rings and pretty nail colours, even while I continue to sink them into the soil or the guts of a chicken.

I spent this last weekend with my sisters. A weekend with my sisters always fills my cup with love, total I-get-you-ing, wine, chat, support, inspiration and endless food. We do this periodically and it’s always a time out of time, a reminder of our luck in having each other and a place to be together. We were never the kind of sisters who shared make up (voluntarily anyway) as the gaps in our ages didn’t make us exactly contemporaries, but as we have become older we seem to have become closer in age, and those gaps that took us in very different directions through our lives are now lessening.

I will talk more about these fabulous woman another day but for now I want to talk about the food - there is always so much of it when we get together. My idea of a snack is a packet of crisps, theirs is a tossed salad, a cheese selection, crackers, chutneys and a glass of wine. We decided to call it lunch, because that’s what it really was.

It was dinner that was the spectacle - salt baked sea bass buried in a sarcophagus of salt, bound with egg white. Neither my sisters nor I can take credit for the recipe but it was Emma who found it, so kudos to her. It is here on substack, by Nicola Fairbrother in her stack called Olympian Kitchen. She doesn’t seem to have posted since 2024 so I am copying and pasting the recipe rather than just linking, just incase she disappears from this platform (I couldn’t paste the video so watch it there if you’re interested). I will make this again - I have never had such delicious sea bass (except once in a restaurant on the border of France and Switzerland but that’s another story for another day). Fish of this quality is a rare treat and its worth seeking out and treating very simply and with appropriate quantities of awe. And yes, we did raise a glass to the beautiful creature.

Bass was from Torbay Fish - a family company from Brixham who sell in Bruton on Fridays. Despite living by the sea and there being fishing villages all over the place there are very few fresh fishmongers in my area, although we are lucky to have Cardigan Bay Fish locally for crab and lobster. I have recently discovered Pesky Fish - an online fish market which delivers, I haven’t used them but will do at some point. Sustainability is always an issue with seafood, and it’s often hard to know where to turn to be sure - but check your sources as far as you can.

Salt-Baked Whole Sea Bass

by Nicola Fairbrother

Crack it open at the table. Peel back the skin and reveal the moist white flesh underneath. The salt-crust acts like a mini-oven, trapping in all the steam and juices of the fish. If you’ve only ever roasted fish before you are in for a real treat. Very juicy and moist. And no, not salty. (especially if you don’t knock the salt crystals in to the fish as you peel back the skin)

Pescado a la sal. You can use this method for many types of fish; trout, turbot, corvina, bream. Here, I’ve used whole sea bass, and you can get an idea of how easy it is to do in this 28 second video.

And I assure you - that’s it. It really is that easy to salt-bake a whole fish.

Use coarse salt. Table salt is too fine and will be absorbed by the fish making it salty. Maldon will bankrupt you. Just use ordinary coarse salt. Out here, in Spain, it costs around 1 euro for a 2kg packet.

The salt, when mixed with egg white and heated creates a crust, encasing the fish, stopping any juices evaporate. It keeps the fish steaming in it’s own juices.

How long to cook the fish for?

Depends on weight. Work on: 20 mins per 1kg of fish at 180°C / 355°F.

You can use a thermometer to make sure the internal temperature of the fish has reached a safe 63°C / 146°F. But be aware of carry on. Take the fish out a few degrees earlier as it will continue to cook in the salt crust as you mess around cracking it open.

But don’t sweat it too much. Salt-baked fish in Spain, dates back to the pescaderos who would cook the doradas they’d caught, encased in salt scraped up from the salt flats. I’m sure the fishermen neither had timers or thermometers. Nor recipes for that matter.

Salt-Baked Whole Sea Bass

• 1 whole sea bass (you can use whole turbot, trout, corvina)

• 1 kg coarse sea salt

• 100 g egg white

Step 1: Fish

• Get the fishmonger to gut the fish.

• Note the weight of the fish (this is important to know for cooking times.)

• Rinse the fish under cold running water and pat dry.

• Lightly oil the surface of the fish (this helps the salt slip off later.)

Step 2: Salt

• Mix the egg white with the coarse sea salt until the mixture feels like wet sand.

• Line a tray with baking paper (makes clean-up easier, you’ll thank yourself later).

• Place a little of the salt on the baking tray and place the fish on top of the salt.

• Cover the fish with the rest of the salt mixture. Pack it in tightly.

Step 3: Oven

• Place the dish in a preheated oven at 180°C / 355°F for fifteen to twenty minutes per kilogram of fish.

• You can use a thermometer to check the internal temperature of the fish which should reach 63°C / 146°F.

How to serve it?

• With aioli, braised leeks and dill

• With herb mayonnaise and buttery, minty new potatoes

• With hollandaise and steamed asparagus

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We served it with absolutely plain, brand spanking new potatoes, a green salad with slivers of fresh fennel and the most glorious hollandaise ever (made by Sue). The fennel fronds in the picture were pointless but looked pretty - they added nothing to the flavour, although we thought of it they might have if we had stuffed them inside.

1. Beautiful, clear eyed fish

2. Wrapped in eggy salt (we tipped off excess water)

3. Baked

4. Glass of something while the fish rested

5. Thwacking it with the back of a spoon

6. The fish emerges from its sarcophagus

7. Expert (ish) carving up of the fish (and talking of pretty nail colours look at these beauties!)

8. Silky Hollandaise, matching the nails and the candle light

9. The sunset before our return to normal life

No push or pull or vying for head chef - pure intuitive collaboration, seamless, if a little forgetful at times.

I have decided that I have to make this substack more than just wafflings, so while this may not be the very last of it’s kind, my hope is to create a real focus to my writing, make it more regular and hopefully more interesting and even sometimes useful, always of course with food at its core. I have a few hugely kind and generous patrons out there who I would like to prove worthy of, and the rest of you too natch. I have some ideas but if anyone has any thoughts on this I am agog to hear them. Agog is such a ridiculous and excellent word. Until next time muchachos.

I get up abut 7.45 (6.15 today actually), drink coffee, think about doing yoga then don’t do it. Russ gets up at 6am (5 today actually) and leaves the house at 6.30 to drive fifty miles to Aberystwyth. The milkman, who delivers next door arrives, leaves his truck chugging out diesel fumes while he ambles over to leave the bottles on the doorstep. The sun comes out, goes in, there’s a downpour of biblical proportions.

Somewhere between the huge events of the world, like the wars that scar the population and planet so deeply, and the insignificant events that disappear without a trace like a sneeze or finding another pee puddle left by the cat, lies this day.

My husband of fourteen years, he who is known as Russell Walker, is working his last day of twenty nine years as an NHS worker. He is a speech and language therapist, senior, it says on his lanyard badge. Alongside the training and work he did in the USA he has been in this business for over thirty years. While many of you may think, as I did before being re-educated, of speech and language therapy as correcting stammers or helping children sound out words, it is, as it turns out, much more than that. The bits in your throat and mouth that create sounds and words also help you swallow. Think about the process of swallowing, what is your tongue doing? That biscuit you just crunched and moved about your mouth, how does it end up in your stomach and not your lungs? This is his area of speciality

I now know more about the act of swallowing than any civilian wants to (pass over the crude jokes please), and possibly more than some of the doctors that Russ has worked with over the years. Russell knows more than most of his colleagues put together, which is not an insult to them as most of them are half his age.

When we moved to Wales we did so on a wing and prayer that he would get work out here. I am less reliable as an earner so it really was down to him. And it worked. Three months before he left Southmead Hospital in 2021 he was offered a job here, on his birthday, to set up a video fluoroscopy clinic in Carmarthen hospital. You can look it up if you’re interested but essentially it uses moving X-Rays to diagnose what is going on when a person swallows. Or can’t swallow, more to the point. This he has done here in Wales, alongside general clinical work on the wards of three hospitals, for the last nearly five years.

He carries a wealth of knowledge that has helped people in real physical distress. His patients have mostly be the very elderly and frail. He comes home with stories about fascinating characters with horrendous problems, and with details no one really wants to know about the interiors of people’s mouths.

Because of this huge knowledge he may carry on with running a few more clinic sessions, helping train up newbies, passing on of the wisdom and the Walker eye roll when faced with yet more bureaucracy and NHS blinkeredness. But basically this is it.

My pride in this man is huge. Our sunlit horizons are now focused on setting up our book shop, and for Russ a lot of guitar noodling time, podcast listening, substack writing, walks with his brother-in-law, band practice, some light travelling, sleep and well deserved lie-ins.

Stay tuned for further news.

Apologies for not adding a recipe to this post.

I received a package of underwear type items that I had ordered from a company I haven’t used before. My usual trepidation set in before I pressed the pay button, so I checked and double checked sizing, returns policy, did I really need these things etc, which naturally enough involved hitting the back arrow key, or whatever you call it. In doing so I lost my new customer discount code and by the time I realised that I had paid. I had a brief and disappointing conversation with an ai bot resulting in me shrugging it off because really life is too short and saying well at least I got a free pair of pants.

The package arrived super quick, I’ll give them that. I left it on the kitchen table overnight as nowadays I gear myself up before opening parcels, readying my soul for the wave of disappointment that will surely come, unless it’s books of course.

And so it did. One bra fits ok, the other (same size, different style) didn’t. The leggings had a waist band so tight I felt I might go numb from the waist down and my lower half would then fall off, like poor little lambs’ tails do. The baggy ‘lounge pants’ fit ok but of course were too long (that isn’t their fault, I am very short), and did not cut the blood off from my nether regions despite being the same size as the leggings, so that’s good enough. The other bits were ok, nice fabric (bamboo viscose mostly), so ok. So then, it’s off the to the post office I will go to return the unwanted items, which is what mostly happens with clothing bought on line. I will do this while knowing that most returned items of clothing bought online end up in landfill. I don’t know exactly why this is the case but I have to assume that someone/ai has done the maths and decided it’s cheaper to chuck than to repackage.

The second disappointment is bigger and sadder than my undergarments issues. It’s about baby food. The issue was brought to my attention by Lizzie Wingfield, who had brought it also to the attention of Bee Wilson, who had written about it previously in the Guardian and again more recently, and so word got about.

Word did indeed get about and one NHS website (Gateshead) took down their advice on what to offer your child if they are struggling with textures as a result. This advice included, I kid you not, Wotsits, Skips and Pom Bear ‘crisps’, and Cadburys chocolate buttons. All brand specific mind you. The page also helpfully reminded parents not to give children food they are allergic to. Top tip.

I went on to read Bee Wilson’s pieces and became more and more despondent. It seems this battle with the Food Giants (Lizzie Wingfield’s term) will never end. A small win on the Gateshead NHS website (the section is now being ‘reviewed’) but all the others, including Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, that beacon of excellence, are still there. It has to of course be said that in some circumstances these bite and dissolve foods can help with speech and language, as well eating, issues and they do include disclaimers. It’s the bandying about of brand names that worries me as much as anything else.

Then there is the ubiquitousness (tricky word to spell) of baby purees, cluttering up the aisles of baby stuff and nonsense. It’s awfully easy in my dotage to seem judgemental about it all, look askance at mums and their bugaboos (or whatever the trend in buggies now is - mine was a Maclaren umbrella buggy which was excellent, finger tip amputations notwithstanding) as they load up on promises and the knowledge that they are doing right by the little bean, but I am really not. I remember well the lure and comfort of those aisles, the safety offered in the jars of Organix baby food because, well, it was organic, and therefore good. I used them when travelling or tired or feeling lazy or just needing reassurance that I was feeding my baby the right foods. Other times I mashed a banana, some carrots or cooked tiny pasta stars and mixed them with tapenade (I know, what can I say, he had exotic tastes even then). Those aisles told me that professionals had done the work for me so what I was buying was safe and good for my baby, from the nappies to the formula to the laundry liquid to those dinky little jars of brightly labelled nutrition.

But, back then there wasn’t quite so much of it. Now you can’t move for pouches of purees and dissolving ‘crisps’ with prices that per kilo rival wagu beef. Somewhere it says babies are not supposed to suck on the pouches, but the portability and design of the pouches of them totally encourages just that. And don’t get me started on ‘toddler milk’. It is unnecessary, in the extreme, but it is being marketed as the next stage for child to help with brain function and yada yada. It’s like cat milk, as in milk for cats, not milk from cats you understand - marketed as safe for cats because it’s lactose free, and never mind that lactose free milk exists in the human milk section at half the price, should you ever wish to give your felines a treat. When I was small our cats all drank full fat milk, it is just what we did (why not water? I don’t know), and they were fine (well, they weren’t but it had nothing to do with the milk). I digress.

Families will pay the prices for these ultra processed foods (UPFs - this is Bee from a year ago), and milks and special baby things, because, like I did, they believe the pat reassurances and clever packaging showing that the producers have our babies’ wellbeing at heart. Which would imply they have a heart, which they don’t because ‘they’ are simply corporate money making entities, aka Food Giants.

Anyway, you can read more and better about this with both Lizzie and Bee, but my disappointment is big with this. Humans cannot seem to learn and then put the learning to use unless it makes the corporations more money, so only the bad stuff gets made better and more efficient. This cycle will continue forever, until we make ourselves extinct from sucking our dinner through tubes down while scrolling on Zuckertime while wearing underwear that doesn’t fit.

Talking of feeding children, I firmly believe that children can and will happily eat what ever the family is eating, for the most part, with obvious modifications depending on age. However, in yet another life, pre Wales and in fact neatly spanning the four months just before we left Bristol, I was commissioned to write some recipes for a children’s TV programme which were not necessarily what the family might be eating of a Tuesday.

The recipes had be accessible for children, with an adult supervising, and due to the nature of the show involved making food to illustrate stories, often fairy tales, and a link to an ingredient which was explored by the one of the presenters - an interesting and clever idea. It was also an interesting and well paid job (pretty much the only time in my life when the work was commensurate with the pay!). It stretched my imagination in all directions but I did come up with some pretty good ideas, I think, only to see them changed in the final editing and ‘cooking’. Because I didn’t see the development the whole way through I had no control over what was done with the recipe once it left my hands so changes were made that in many cases I didn’t like. I know people with kids who think it’s a great show, and I believe it is too, but I wonder how many of those kids end up cooking the recipes with their (endlessly patient) parents. And I wonder if we really have to put faces on food to make children want to make and/or eat it. Anyway, for better or worse here are two versions of a child friendly (to make and eat) bean burger. and some pictures of some of the other story characters

Wolf Burger

(from the tale of the Three Little Pigs - the bun was referencing a bakery that was featured in that episode)

Ingredients

• 1 x 400g tin back or kidney beans, drained

• 1 small onion, finely chopped (Grown up)

• 1 tbsp plain flour - plus extra for dusting patties

• Cooking oil

• 2 x Brioche buns, halved lengthways

• Slices of cheddar cheese (optional)

• Tortilla chips - for ears

• Chives - for whiskers

• Black olives - for eyes and nose

• Yellow pepper - for eyes

• Cream cheese (to use as ‘glue’)

• 1 lettuce, washed

• Mayonnaise

• Ketchup or any other burger condiments you like.

Method

1. Tip the beans and onion into the bowl and mash well together.

2. Add the flour and mix in with your hands or a wooden spoon - season with a little salt and pepper to taste.

3. Divide the mix into 2 and shape into balls with your hands.

4. Flatten the balls carefully, shaping it into a burger patty and dust with a little extra flour - this helps give a nice crisp finish to the burger when fried.

5. Put the patties aside.

6. Take the tops of the buns and cut slits into the bun where you want to place your tortilla chip ears and fit the ears in.

7. Cut the olives into almond shapes to make the pupils of the eyes.

8. Cut the yellow pepper into large almond shapes to make the rest of the eye and dry them on a piece of paper towel so they stick better.

9. Using a dab of cream cheese stick the yellow pepper and the olive pieces into place as the eyes.

10. Cut an olive in half length ways to make the nose and stick on using cream cheese glue.

11. Using the cocktail stick make three holes on each side of the nose for the whiskers.

12. Cut the chives to the desired length and carefully poke them into the holes.

13. Choose 2 nice lettuce leaves (make a delicious green salad with the rest of the lettuce!)

14. Spread some mayonnaise (optional) on the base of the bun, place the lettuce leaf on top and place on plates.

15. Heat some oil in a frying pan on medium heat and carefully place the burgers into the pan. (Grown up)

16. Let them fry for 2-3 minutes and then check to see if they are browning and crispy - if so turn them over using a fish slice or spatula and cook on the other side.

17. When the burgers are cooked place them on the lettuce leaves, top with some ketchup or what ever you like on your burgers and then top it all with the wolf face lid!

18. If you are using cheese place the slices on top of the cooked side and carry on frying for another 2-3 minutes or until the bottom of the burger is nice and crispy. The cheese will melt a little - if you want more melting you can place a large lid over all three burgers for 2 minutes which will help contain the heat and so melt the cheese some more.

To be fair to myself I was only told half way through the job that I needed to keep the ingredients and process to a minimum, this is an early one, so mine is a bit maximalist by comparison. Not sure where the carrots came from thou

Who wins??

I’ve had a very introspective morning this morning. One spent looking at bits of my past, reading letters, real, hand written ones, between me and my Mum from when I was in Sicily, cards from my Dad when I was pregnant, crazy typed letters from one my brothers when he was left in charge of a typewriter and some silly-simon mushrooms. And faxes between me and the father of my beautiful son, faded, barely readable now, but records of times gone, relationships changing.

There are letters and notes from people who have gone, some through death, some just through not being in my life anymore. I physically ached when I read the letters from my Mum telling me how wonderful she thought I was and how much she loved me, and how I dismissed her because she said it so often, because she would, wouldn’t she? It’s what mums do. I refused to hear it - I was too busy feeling resentful and sad because she wasn’t in the UK anymore. To be fair neither was I at that moment, but in mitigation I was 18 and had little thought for anyone other than myself.

So, I was thinking about death, how it removes people from us so completely that all we have left is letters (emails now) and photos, if we are lucky. It’s such a huge subject, so personal and impersonal, inevitable and yet we fight it at every turn as though there actually is a way to stop it. Look at the nut jobs who have their remains cryogenically preserved - Walt Disney is the most famous, although that apparently is yet another alternative fact to come out of the USA. We accept it, often with sadness and feelings of loss for old people as nature’s way, or respond with shock and sadness when someone is taken instantly, too soon, too young from whatever cause. That cause more and more, at the moment, is war and the fanaticism of lunatic men whose religion is violence, power and stupidity. But sometimes it’s something as banal as a bike accident or a heart attack. Or a fall. Any number of reasons. Sometimes we get the chance to know in advance that someone is going to die, and they get to have a ‘good’ death, or at least a chance to say goodbye, at whatever age, sometimes.

Many years ago I was a big dinner gathering, celebrating the birthday of a dear friend. It was in a restaurant where there was a long table seating about 20 of us. I was at one end and at the other was a man with a dark blue beanie hat and sky blue eyes looking for all the world like some moody, 50s beatnik type who may at any minute might stand up to recite some sort of weird poetry or make a drunken speech. I couldn’t actually see the colour of his eyes down the length of the table but I knew they were blue because I knew him, had known him a long time. He was the flirty barman in a bar I frequented, he was a friend, not close and in no way romantic, and he was married.

This particular night we looked at each other down this long table and something changed. I knew he and his wife were separated and I knew he had brain cancer and that knowledge seemed to give us permission, to do what, I don’t know, but the tectonic plates of my life shifted, an abyss opened up and we both fell in. What is it in two people that makes a spark where there was none before? Twenty months later he was dead.

A lifetime was lived in those twenty months. Joy, love, laughter, damage, confusion, misunderstandings, travel, connection, disconnection, romance, fear, acceptance. The words to describe that time are endless and inadequate. As they are of any lifetime, or indeed minute.

In March 2002 we went a road trip in the USA. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, I didn’t want to leave my son for three weeks, it felt too much, but Stuart (for that was his name) gave me an ultimatum and I chose to go rather than lose him. He went out before me with his sister and his son to visit people I didn’t know. His sister then took his little boy home and Stu went on to Victoria, in Canada where I was due to meet him. I had flown to Seattle, staying over night in a hotel where I decided to keep my coat on, hood up, rather than risk skin contact with what seemed like very definitely used sheets. It did have rather wonderful art deco bathroom fittings though, I would have happily ripped them off the wall and taken them home were they not so bulky. From there I took the ferry to Victoria.

We met at the end of the ferry gang plank - ridiculously excited to see each other, massive rolling suitcases all over the place. We had lunch somewhere or other and I had the first of what would be many Caesar salads on this trip, it becoming a big favourite for both of us as the craving for fresh salad and vegetables grew over the next weeks - this one memorable because it had whole cloves of roast garlic in it, a thing unknown to me til this point.

We hired a beast of a car and drove uneventfully across the border into Washington State, this being pre 9/11 which with all the horror that followed, among so many tragedies, changed the travel landscape for good the world over.

We drove down Route 101 to San Francisco, stopping at motels along the way, just turning up and making deals on the prices, since internet booking was only a glint in some tech bro’s eye then. I acquired a taste for motel life, in particular the ice machines in the corridors. We touristed in San Fran - ferry under the Golden Gate Bridge in the mist, round Alcatraz; Fisherman’s Wharf, China Town. I had been there with my Dad about 15 years before and it was interesting and poignant to revisit, and smell the smelly seals in the harbour. I continued in my eat-a-Caesar-salad-in-every restaurant project, noting vast differences in the size, quality, style of them. Everything from a couple of leaves drizzled with something white to full on with chicken, bacon bits, croutons, the works.

From there to Las Vegas. I did all the driving because Stu was prone to epileptic fits and therefore not a good candidate for that job. In Las Vegas we went to Caesar’s Palace, where I did not eat a salad in his name, or any other kind come to that. We had a riot on the fruit machines, joining the alcoholic bag ladies and louche lower echelon gamblers of LV, gleefully giving ourselves £100 each to lose, all the while being plied with free drinks by young women in skimpy uniforms, collecting coins in buckets and putting them all back in the machines until there were none left. We had two nights in Las Vegas which was as much as either of us could take - the glitter and fakery is awe inspiring, the insanity of it actually being a real place where people live and work mind boggling. Two nights was enough.

We drove to the Hoover Dam. It is spectacular. It really is one of the wonders of the world. Once again the bathroom (loos to us British) fittings caught my attention - glorious art deco, black marble and brass everywhere, bronze sculptures of epic proportions.

We flew in a plane the size of my sewing machine over the Grand Canyon. Stu was up front and agog, turning to me to ask if I saw that, and this and the colours and the river until he realised I was no longer answering and just smiling weakly as I tried not to throw up.

We headed back north from there up a different a route, across the Devil’s Golf Course, a salty moonscape where, bizarrely, we found a real golf ball. Past Mount Shasta and then on to Mount Hood near the border with Canada, with so much in between, motels and diners, listening to Dolly Parton and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, drying laundry in the back of the car, clicking into cruise control and sitting cross legged in the driver’s seat eating peanuts.

As we neared the journey’s end we became more reflective and talked about what the future might hold, and, the big elephant in the room, how long might that future be. One night in a pretty, folksie style motel near Mount Hood, we talked until Stu fell asleep. I couldn’t stop thinking so put the TV on and watched ‘Stepmom’. The story is about a mother whose husband has left her for a younger model. The Mom then develops cancer and dies. The relationship between the Mom and stepmom, children and ex husband changes and grows and it’s well written and very sentimental. I cried and cried and cried. It was then I knew I was in for the long haul, how ever long, or short, that might be.

Over the next couple of months Stu had more treatment and the recovery time each time took longer while the being well bits in between grew shorter. After an appointment at the hospital I went to pick him up. He was sitting outside on a bench so I went to join him. Time slowed to a stillness as I watched him roll a cigarette and turn his head to look at me, left eye crinkled against the smoke. He had decided enough was enough.

I was with him at the end. In a chair next to his bed, in my home which is where he chose to be. His family was downstairs sitting around the kitchen table or trying to get some sleep on the sofa; everybody smoking, we all smoked then. My little boy had been taken to relatives by his Dad. One of our friends, one of his most beloved friends, had made tea and toast for everyone. She came up to say bye, put Nora Jones on the cd player and left. The morphine pump clicked gently. I had a blanket round me and his hand in mine, his breathing changed. His sister came in and sat with us. That’s when he died.

I am not writing this for sympathy or drama, but simply because I have never written about it before and I feel I need to tell that bit of my story. This is incomplete, of course, the twenty months was so all encompassing at the time that there was no way to see any before or after and yet, here I am, 24 years later, looking back and wondering if he actually liked Nora Jones. On Friday 17th April he would have been 60 (I was his older woman, as he liked to remind me, often).

Caesar Salad

Named after Caesar Cardini, the Italian-born restaurateur who invented it in 1924 in Tijuana, Mexico.

In American this passes as a health food. I have made it slightly healthier still by using yoghurt instead of mayo, but if you’re feeling decadent then go ahead, use mayo, or a mix.

Ingredients

• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled

• 3 anchovy fillets

• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

• 1 tsp dijon mustard

• 1 cup (250ml) low fat plain yoghurt

• juice of half a lemon

• 1 handful finely grated parmesan cheese

• salt & black pepper - as you like

Method by hand –

Bash the garlic and anchovies to absolute surrender with a pestle and mortar or the end of a rolling pin in a a very solid bowl, then whisk thoroughly with all other ingredients.

Method by food processor –

Pulse all together – boom, job done. Don’t over blend if you like a bit of texture in the dressing.

You can add about 2 table spoons of lovely olive oil into the mix if you like (I like), but that defeats the low fat factor.

Serve over crispy Cos lettuce, or any other leaves you fancy, with croutons and extra grated cheese on top.

Since this is not an authentic version of a Caesar salad it gives you licence to add any other bits you choose, like some sprouting seeds, chopped courgette maybe even some nuts if you feeling like really going a bit wild.

Croutons - these are absolutely vital for a proper Caesar salad.

Slice and dice (about 1.5cm diameter) old bread - doesn’t matter what sort. Put into an oven dish with a good slosh of nice (but not your best) olive oil, some crushed garlic if you like, and a bit of ground black pepper. They shouldn’t need salt because bread already has salt in it. Throw the cubes around in the oil until they are pretty much covered on all sides.

Put the dish in the pre heated oven, gas mark 6/200C, for about 10-15 mins or until the cubes have all got a little toasty look, then remove and allow to cool before using. If they have been toasted right through these will last quite a while in an airtight container but they probably won’t make it into a container because they are so yummy, and not just on a salad - use in soups too, or just as a little nibble with a glass of wine.

We can do all that awfully well, that talking things out, in a way that seems to be inaccessible to men, at least to most men. I haven’t seen the manosphere thing that’s on the telly at the moment (I kind of want to and don’t want to in equal measures) but it seems to me, and probably quite a lot of other people (women), that if men could do what we do, for example wander through a conversation about football, have it lead it gently and naturally into a conversation about, perhaps, how lonely they can feel at times, or the fact that they don’t actually like beer, or that they feel unattractive and unseen sometimes, meandering gently into a bit of a shoulder bump, a nod of understanding and a laugh. Maybe the world would feel less alien, women might seem less scary and therefore maybe the need to dominate and scare them might not be seen as the only way forward.

Talking of groups of women and what they talk about, last February I was in Morocco on a yoga retreat. Given the state of my body the yoga was less easy than the previous year but the company, the conversation and, it has to be said, the food, more than made up for that. And that company has kept up with a whatsapp group and since most of us are local we planned a meet up with a pot luck dinner with a loosely based Moroccan theme. I went off piste immediately and made a seedy focaccia (it hangs around in doorways in a raincoat).

Although in this country women don’t cook groups so much we do still gather to eat together, and making it pot luck is halfway cooking together, isn’t it? Discussing the menu on whatsapp, who’s bringing what, the menu getting fancier by the minute until we realise it isn’t a competition, it’s a community thing - it doesn’t matter who brings what, or anything at all. It all came together, of course it did, seamlessly and deliciously.

We touched on world news, obliquely, and then moved on. Inescapable and important as it is to keep up, it is good to park it for an evening, keep the blood pressure balanced and listen to stories of other people, places, ideas and in this case in particular, women friends. So, topics were : art (our host’s house is a work of art in itself, her incredible work everywhere and yet so comfortable and cosy and liveable - definite vibes of green monster from me), and, to mis-quote slightly from the whatsapp group, “men, 11 day muteness (meditation retreat), food, India, food, over sharing, yoga, men, fetish clubs, wild parents, good films, crap films, selling art to pop stars wives, boyfriends, divorces, ex wives, recipes with miso, divine desserts, living funerals, festivals, oh and yoga”

Being in a group like creates an alchemy (“a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation”), an invisible weaving of threads of all colours and textures that lift and support you, like a deep breath. If you have ever been in the ladies loo and needed and received a safety pin, a tampon or a just a sympathetic nod then you know what I am talking about. Any men reading this, I am not sure what would equate but I hope so much there is something that does it for you too.

Here in West Wales the rooks are yelling like proverbial fishwives as they argue about which twig is best for the nest they are building, have a tussle and then watch said twig fall to the ground and disappear in the undergrowth below Rookery Towers. The care they take over the choice of twigs is fascinating, often, rather than picking one up from the aforementioned undergrowth where they lie around aplenty, they will balance on a thin branch and select their twig which is still attached to that branch. The tugging of the twig then unbalances the branch and the wobbly dance begins. Sometimes the twig is freed, sometimes it isn’t. A ruffle of the feathers, a little scoot about in the air and the selection process starts again.

This is our fifth spring in this house. We entered it as it was in full swing on April 25th 2022, so a little further on than it is now. It was the first time I realised we were to live beneath a rookery, and just how noisy that can be. At that moment I chose to love them, knowing that it would only make my life miserable to want them gone, and not impact them one whit. There have been the odd moment that I wish they would just shut up, but that’s true of most people and noise makers in my life.

So we embraced our neighbours, naming our little garden cabin after them, and now of course our shop-to-be, Rookery Books. These ungainly, shouty birds are communal creatures who mate for life. They are not pretty, with their scruffy plumage and grey beaks that look like they are still covered in their breakfast porridge. Doves or blue tits are pretty, their songs soft coos or little trills of delight. Rooks sound like they are being strangled while eating said porridge. And, yet, here we all are living in harmony. They sometimes deign to visit the deck outside the kitchen to scarf down scraps of bread or seeds that I put out for them, or whichever birds get there first. They are wary, as mentioned before - maybe they will trust me within the decade, and bring me gifts of shiny bottle tops.

A noteworthy mention is the collective noun for a group of rooks is a parliament, building, clamour, congregation, or storytelling. A storytelling. A story telling of rooks. Couldn’t be much more perfect could it?* They are all brilliant though, a clamour is almost onomatopaic. My love for the flying weirdo rag bags only grows.

*Thank you Di for that juicy little number.

Seedy Focaccia (grubby rain coat optional)

Ingredients

• 500g strong bread flour

• 1 heaped tsp dried yeast

• 1 heaped tsp sea salt

• 1 handful each hulled hemp seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds

• 1 handful wild garlic, washed and cut into strips (optional)

• warm water & olive oil

• 1 big clove garlic, crushed and 1 small handful fresh rosemary finely chopped, mixed with some olive oil for brushing.

Method

1. Mix all the dry ingredients, including wild garlic if using, together in a big bowl.

2. Add the water, until you have a sticky dough, adding glugs of oil to make it nice and sloppy, like a thick pancake mix. This all needs a good beating to release the lovely gluten and incorporate all the ingredients evenly, so either use a strong arm (yours or some passing builder’s) or the dough thing on your mixer if you have one.

3. Cover the bowl with a clean towel and leave in a warmish place to double in size (about an hour).

4. If you are worried about the dough sticking to the t towel put a later of greaseproof paper between them.

5. Pour the dough into an oiled and lined baking dish

6. Using wet fingers poke little holes into the dough to help spread it out and to kick start the bubbles that a good focaccia needs.

7. Brush the surface liberally with the garlicky rosemary oil and leave to rise again until bubbles start appearing on the surface - about half an hour.

8. Pre heat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/6 gas

9. Bake the bread for about 40 mins or until golden and hollow sounding when you tap it.

I realise this is probably a really annoying recipe for anyone who doesn’t make bread or bake much. I apologise but I made it without writing anything down and so this is what I have.

Also, this is the only recipe in which I will include wild garlic, despite its current abundance and the national obsession with it. I am not a massive wild garlic pesto fan, but love using the leaves in all sorts of things, just added to sauces where you would normally use garlic, although the flavour will be less intense, or in salads with the gorgeous flowers too. But that’s it.

I have been trying to get some good close ups of the rooks in ‘our’ rookery, bribing them with expensive nuts and old sourdough, because Cardigan rooks understand gentrification just like the rest of us. I haven’t got any good shots though. They seem very frightened of humans. Perhaps they read the news and understand that we are the source of the end of the world, so they are right to be frightened. I will persevere - I am determined to make them trust me, while instinctively feeling they shouldn’t as humans cannot really be trusted, except when they can.

While spring is dragging its heals out here in Ceredigion, in the westest, almost, of West Wales, my life is gearing up for a big change, my own version of spring perhaps, little ideas sprouting instead of crocuses (or colourful snowdrops as the American refers to them), plans making shapes rather than the leaves on the trees.

I am at a pivot point, along with the American whose pivot will much more dramatic than mine. He is set to retire from many years with the NHS in May. He will be set adrift on the acres of free time that are currently taken up with driving approximately two hours each day, there and back to which ever hospital he is assigned to, seeing mostly elderly patients who are struggling with swallowing and all the tricky and sad horrors that can entail, and dealing with the complicated a minutiae of the NHS’s labyrinthine admin procedures, writing reports with his long old fingers which are being bent by the painful forces of arthritis, just as mine are.

He is itching to finish now that the actual date has been set, but must plod on through the next two and bit months, up at 6am, washing and wearing the most god awful uniform ever ‘designed’, although at least, as he pointed out, it’s not the nail technicians smock that the female therapists have to wear. We would like to ceremonially burn the uniforms but won’t as we respect the environment and the toxic smoke from the burning polyester would probably kill the rooks (so proving their point that humans cannot be trusted). Any thoughts on what to do with five pairs of gray polyester trousers with inadequate pockets?

He could, by his own admission, while away his days noodling on his many guitars, writing dark and cynical songs about the state of the world, pulling weeds in a Sysyphusian (?) effort to clear the garden or shuffling into old age, feeding the cats and getting in my way. When I am not working my days are not that dissimilar to that, and so getting in ‘my way’ just means he would be witnessing my habits in the home that I don't want anyone to see, wandering room to room wondering what I went there for.

So, anyway, back to the plans. As with most partners who are faced with the retirement of the other when they have been used to having the house and their time to themselves, I was worrying at a little knot of anxiety about it. The knot becomes frayed with all the scratching and pulling and yet somehow also grows. This is possible because the knot is imaginary. That said, it wasn’t and isn’t a huge knot. I knew we would sort something out, and so we have. We are going to open a book shop. Rookery Books. Rooks are a big feature in our lives given that we live under a rookery, hence wanting to tame them. The cabin in our garden that we let out in the more clement months is called Rookery Cabin (← you can book in using this link), the name serving as a warning to anyone who thinks it’s quiet around here, so it seemed only right to carry the name on, and also it sounds good and can be turned in Rookery Bookery, specialising in Rookery cookery books. Imagine a family of rooks, little aprons on, shouting at each other and stealing each other’s spoons.

The book shop will actually specialise in history, politics, music and film (him), and cookery, all things food and a small but perfectly curated selection of kitchen and tableware (me). We will also have a good range of fiction, poetry, nature writing, local authors of all kinds, art, travel, oh you know, the stuff they have in all good book shops. Our books will mostly be new although we plan to carry a small selection of second hand as well (a marvellous way to clear some space on our own shelves maybe).

We have visited lots of independent books shops in the last few weeks, chatting to the owners who have been universally generous with their advice, encouragement and support, with the caveat, every time, of ‘you know you won’t make any money?’.

We have learned what we would like our shop to look like and what we absolutely don’t want it to look like. We have discovered a huge community of book sellers and support from the Book Seller’s Association. I feel we are part of a revolution, resistance fighters in the war against the digitalisation and distilling of literature. I want people to smell the books when they come in, to feel the possibility of whole new worlds opening up with the purchase of a new book.

I had precisely that experience when going in to the Penrallt Bookshop in Machynlleth recently where I discovered a Welsh author called Kate Roberts and book called Feet in Chains, first published in the Welsh language in 1936. A world I knew nothing about grew in my imagination around the landscapes I had seen as we travelled through North Wales, through slate quarry towns like Blaina Ffestiniog, one of the American’s favourite places up there, with tumbling slates beside the roads, mountains of it looming at the edges of town glowering and sharp edged. Now I know what it was like to work in the quarries, how hard and badly paid it was and how families scraped by at the whim of the ‘masters’ who owned the quarries, about local pride and local traditions. This is what books can do. This is why we need books, and story tellers, and poets, and thinkers, artists, designers, cooks and farmers all putting their lives into words on a page in a book, for you to read, so you can be in the same room, field or slate quarry with them, if only briefly.

So, dear readers, this is where you come in. I would be so grateful if you could let me know maybe five of your favourite books and/or authors, either as a list or send me an essay on what you think about it all, I’d be delighted with either. What is the book shop of your dreams? What does it smell like? How does it feel? What colour is it?

Respond on here, email me, send a pigeon, whatever your favourite method of communication is I can’t wait to hear your thoughts.

On the subject of lovely smells here is recipe for those cookies I mentioned back in January when the weather was cold and wintery, just like now.

Peanut Butter-Miso Cookies

This is adapted from a New York Times recipe - credit where it’s due. They are just the best thing ever.

Ingredients

makes about 18 cookies

• 225 g plain flour

• ¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda

• ½ tsp baking powder

• 115g butter, at room temperature

• 220g light brown sugar

• 100g granulated sugar

• 80g white miso paste

• 60g crunchy peanut butter

• 1 large egg

• 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

• 105g Demerara sugar, plus more as needed (this is optional but makes a lovely crunch)

• 1 bar of the best dark chocolate you have

Method

1. In a medium bowl, combine flour, bicarb and baking powder. Set aside.

2. In another bowl beat the butter with the light brown and granulated sugars with a wooden spoon, or in a stand mixer if you have one, until light and fluffy.

3. Add the miso and peanut butter to the bowl, and continue to beat, making sure all of the ingredients are evenly incorporated. Add egg and vanilla extract, and mix until just combined.

4. Add ⅓ of the flour mixture to the mixing bowl, and mix well until flour mixture is incorporated. Repeat with remaining flour mixture in two batches until all of it is incorporated.

5. Put the Demerara sugar into a small bowl. Working with one piece at a time, scoop out about 2 tablespoons of dough (about 50g per cookie), and roll between your hands to make a ball. You can make them bigger or smaller as you like, but remember you may need to adjust cooking times if you do. (If the dough is too soft to roll, you can put it in the fridge for 10 minutes to firm up a bit.) Drop the ball into the bowl of Demerara and turn to coat. Transfer each ball to a parchment-lined baking sheet, arranging them about 3 inches apart. Repeat with all of the dough.

6. Refrigerate for 2 hours or even overnight, to help the flavours meet and greet each other.

7. When ready to bake, heat oven to 180°C (160°C fan). Bake cookies for about 15 minutes, until crisp at the edges and slightly puffed in the middle. They should still be a bit underdone in the center. Pull out the tray and *tap it against a counter to ‘knock back’ the rise. (I found this* to be kind of unnecessary but if you want to stick with the original recipe this is what they suggest)

8. Place back into the oven to finish for about 3 to 4 minutes - they should be firm at the edges and slightly puffed in the centre.

9. Let the cookies cool on a baking sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.

10. Break the chocolate into squares and put in a heat proof bowl then either microwave it until it’s melted (taking care not to burn it), stirring half way through, or make a bain marie by floating the bowl in a pan of simmering water, stirring gently until all melted.

11. Using a tea spoon drizzle chocolate over the cooled cookies on whatever patterns you like. Allow the chocolate to cool and put them away in an airtight container. Or make a cup of tea and eat the lot.

    ---

    Bonus poem coming here (poem is such a funny word if you look at it too long)…

Wonderful, by Harry Baker

(and yes, we will stock his books even though I disagree with him on the subject of celery)

May you always picture where you are as where you’re meant to be.

May you take in your surroundings like you visited especially.

We all end up in the soil eventually, so may you

carry such goodness that it nourishes for centuries.

May you see life as a show and may the entry fee be empathy,

sat front row with an empty seat for friends in need.

When you’re on form, be generous and spread that energy.

When you’re not sure, be gentle with yourself

and don’t forget to breathe.

You need not be defined by your many feats; you are not a centipede.

There is a joy in doing something terribly.

May you share brews and bruises and may you do this tenderly.

You are the most improved you there has ever been.

Of all the words you’ll ever hear, remember these:

life is too short to eat celery.

Life is too long to feed jealousy.

Life is likely just the right length to need therapy.

May you be seriously silly, may you be wickedly kind.

May you be brilliantly dumb sometimes and yet stupidly bright.

May you certainly have doubts, may your weirdness be the norm.

May the coolest thing about you be your warmth.

May you be powerfully vulnerable, or at least mightily soft.

May you be a contradiction, and yet at the same time not.

And, whether you are any, none or all of the above,

above all, may you know that you are loved.

May you understand that it’s okay to change your mind.

And thank you in advance for all the ways you’re changing mine.

May you always make room for playfulness.

It may just save your life.

And trust whatever makes your heart grow cannot be a waste of time.

It may not make you money. It may not even make sense.

But if it makes you happy it is worth it in the end.

And it is worth it at the time, and it deserves your very best.

And you are never too busy to catch your breath.

Just as you cannot be in traffic without being traffic,

life is not something that you are stuck in while it happens.

There is more in you than you could possibly imagine.

The very fact that you exist makes everything a bit more magic.

When it all feels too much and there is little you can do,

may you still see the best in people and may people include you.

May one thing match the gravity of all you’ve ever done.

This wonderful reality: the best is yet to come.

Going to bed with wet hair is the only way I can get it to not frizz post washing, but it’s always a gamble, a fun one, but a gamble nonetheless. I am a very low maintenance hair person, no blow drying, no brushing, a bit of oil to stop it flying about like candy floss. I care about the cut (big issue since moving here) and whether it can hold its own without any fannying about on my part further down the line. It’s hard to tell straight after a cut because no matter what you say a hairdresser will always put stuff in it, blow it about, tweak and twiddle, so you need a immediate rinse and scrunch after, and then two days before you know the final result. No one but me ever notices the difference, especially the American who notices absolutely nothing, so you may wonder why I bother, but I can see the difference and that matters to me.

I wash my hair about once a week. If I could get away with less than that I would, but my scalp gets itchy. My hair now is almost uniformly bright white. I think some dark bits still lurk at the nape of my neck, but I can’t be sure. I have a few dark strands that add a little je ne sais quoi to the curls about my ears, but that’s it. I miss my dark hair. It was very, very dark brown, and wavy. Very fine, but a lot of it. My dad’s hair was white too, with little yellow tinges to the sides in the 70s, when he wore it a bit longer, due to the constant stream of nicotine from his cigarettes. I never knew him with dark hair, I think it began to turn in his 30s before I was born. My hair started the change around that time too, but access to home dye hid that for a long time. Eventually, in my late forties I got fed up with having to disguise the increasingly white roots and began to dye strategically, always leaving a streak at the front, like the Mallen streak, that got bigger and bigger over time until I chopped it all off and became Judi Dench overnight.

• Me aged about 9 with white haired Dad and glamorous Mum (she absolutely loved capes) and ruffian siblings. Unruly hair held back with an elastic hairband. Aunt Fanny (tantafanni), the German aunt of the family next door, used to pull my hair bands to cover my ears. She also used to pull my hair sometimes as she thought I was far too scruffy and would huff and puff over the state of me, always trying to get me to look like a young lady. It didn’t work.

• Me aged 14 - unruly hair in unruly life in Scotland.

• Me aged 30 - short cropped but undyed hair - poseur (also thinnest I have ever been).

• Me aged about 45 - beginning the undying process.

• Me aged 50 getting wed, giving the streak it’s final outing.

• Me aged 50 someink - letting the grey flourish (super flattering photo by super talented Rob Wicks as part of Spike Island Cafe publicity thing)

• Me aged whatever… trying out long hair again (not good idea) and playing with pink rinse, also not good. But excellent mohair coat and borrowed crocs ensemble, don’t you think?

• Me giving in to the scruff once more (never gave it up to be honest) no dye, all white, here I am.

So, that’s enough of that nonsense. I thought Betty Marmalade was all about food? Well, she is. But behind the food, the recipes, the random thoughts and ranty political posts on here is me and sometimes I get really interested in the me that was, the previous lives of me, what I was doing, what I looked like, what I felt. I find me pretty interesting, as I find most people pretty interesting. My life hasn’t been wow and adventure or neat and normal, something in between maybe, but it’s all interesting in a socialogical study kind of way.

Maybe you don’t find this interesting and so I give you leave to unsubscribe or just skip on by. I do have to add that while I have mostly picked photos of myself that I don’t hate (I mean, a little vanity here), this is about simply being seen, by me, by you, not hiding. I think hair dye, which I throughly approve of by the way, is a way of hiding, delaying time a little. It’s not a face life, or botox trout pout or anything serious, but it becomes a crutch to rely on, and I wanted to stop relying on it. Also I think dark hair on me now would actually make me look much older and frankly weird.

With access now to skinny making drugs and facelifts (if you have money), filters and ai to enhance your online looks (but what about reality, going down the pub… what then?), endless ads telling us how we can have six packs by doing tai chi - it’s all about making us fearful of who we are and who we become as we age. I am not immune and I don’t judge those who feel the need to use everything in their power to stay looking young (much, anyway). Honestly, a six pack on me would be hilarious. Anyway - like I said, enough of that nonsense.

So, what are we eating?

Breakfast, or lunch, or supper. I do yoga on Wednesday evenings and so don’t sit down to eat dinner - can’t do downward dogs on a stomach full of macaroni cheese. I get home about 9pm and don’t want to eat much then either so a bowl of lovely toasty nutty flavoured granola with yoghurt does the job beautifully.

Here’s one from the archive - 2014, when I was a baby blogger on wordpress. I have adjusted it slightly, and the version I am actually making now has chopped dates as the only fruit as they are all I have to hand, but I will probably add some gojiis later as I love the ping of pink tartness they bring.

Knitting with granola

MAY 13, 2014

Or weaving yoghurt, or wearing Cornish pasty shoes… all signs of imminent hippydom and selling up to open a health food shop in small, unsuspecting Welsh village (oh the irony - I am not opening a health food shop but me and the American ARE opening a book shop in an unsuspecting Welsh town). But what was once laughed at by the moneyed-up city types as earthy incense saturated nonsense is now revered by the hipperati of Hoxton, vegans can be bankers and Hollywood is wearing Birkenstocks – it’s an absolute free-for-all out there. What was hippy is now hip. Granola is the new black. So, I made some.

Tired of paying over the odds for glamorous packaging (100% recyclable of course), with butterflies and grains artfully scattered in muted, natural ink colours I decided to buy a big jar and make my own to put in it.

Here is my version.

I use American cups for measuring this because it’s SO much easier than weighing everything, especially when you don’t have to be that accurate. If you haven’t got any use a tea cup as it’s mostly about ratios in this recipe.

• 2 cups jumbo oats and/or barley flakes

• 1 and half cups chopped nuts, whatever you like

• 1 cup pumpkin and/or sunflower seeds

• 1 cup maple or date syrup (date syrup MUCH cheaper) - or less depending on your taste for sweetness

• good glug sunflower oil

• 1 and half cups mixed dried fruit (I used sultanas, chopped apricots and *goji berries)

Here’s an interesting fact about goji berries, also known as wolfberries, not to be confused with wolf apples; they are said to have great health benefits which you can google/believe/not believe as you wish (protect the liver, help eyesight, improve sexual function and fertility, strengthen the legs, boost immune function, improve circulation, promote longevity – so, life nice and tidy right there then). They are quite tart on their own but in this granola recipe they work perfectly with the sweetness of the sultanas and apricots and add some lovely colour.

Pre heat the oven to Gas mark 2, 150C, 300F.

Mix the oats, nuts and seeds well with the oil, maple syrup and egg white in a large baking tray, making sure the mix is spread out well. Put into the oven for about 20 minutes. Remove and stir the mixture. Put back in for another 20-25 minutes or until just beginning to brown.

Remove from the oven and add the fruit. Stir it all up and when completely cool put in jar with a good seal. Then eat it with plain yoghurt, or by the handful, with milk or almond milk, chopped banana and big cup of coffee. Feel better about the world.

Russell, that well known gourmand (if you click this link you will be taken back to 2014 and when Russ is discussing good and evil in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Breaking Bad, his example of people we might choose to illustrate as evil are Ronald Reagan and George W… oh my god, they seem like positive pussy cats compared to what’s in the White House now) loves it and becomes quite animated at the thought of breakfast even if he has to eat it at 6.30am.

That last one is key because here I am again. The sunshine is less steady and interspersed with cold winds, some clouds and even rain. It’s impossible to begrudge rain in Morocco. To see a rain drenched lemon tree or the argan trees coming alive after years of dormancy during their long, long drought was a joy. As were the faces around us, as the rain fell on to our unprepared clothing.

It is not the same this time. I think I am more jangled by the world so finding it harder to let go, give in and allow myself to be held in the way I was last year. But I did visit the public hammam this time (as opposed to the private one on site) - lordy that was an ice breaker. Getting nekkid with a bunch of women and scrubbed by another, complete stranger, is bizarre, but it really didn’t take long for all inhibitions to disappear. The few locals who were there (it was a week day so it wasn’t crowded) sorted themselves out, except when a back needed a scrub, sitting on the floor with a bucket of water, some sloppy henna or argan oil, scrub, scrub scrubbing away, toes, bum, washing hair. There was a woman across from our group on her own, absorbed totally in her ritual and unaware that she was lit by a shaft of sunlight coming through a tiny high up window, unaware of the beauty and timelessness of that picture.

Also, I am a year older. Each year adds at least one more woe to my list of physical damnations. Yoga is harder on my hands and wrists, and poor old hips. But I did it, and loved it, mostly, and the company and the amazing food and the sunshine when it arrived. This place, La Maison Anglaise, is magical, an oasis, almost literally, sitting on the outside edge of the mediaeval city wall of Taroudant, about an hour inland from Agadir. It’s an eco lodge, built using traditional methods and materials - it feels like it been there centuries when in fact it’s only about 10 years old. For anyone travelling in this part of the world I recommend booking in for at least a night or two, no need to come with a hoard of middle aged British women wearing yoga pants and HRT patches (although you’d be very welcome).

This city was once the capital of Morocco (don’t ask me when, I retain historical facts in tiny, unspecific nuggets)and was the centre of sugar growing, manufacturing and exporting. Old queenie Vic was rather partial apparently. Now the area seems to manufacture only cement with which it builds most new buildings, however unsuited this climate is to the poor qualities of that material - it’s cheap and quick and needs less upkeep than the traditional adobe homes, so I get, but it’s sad nonetheless.

The souk is a warren as you might expect, full of colour and treasures and tat. I have resisted buying more pots and feel smug about that.

The above was written on Monday 19th, second to last day in Taroudant. I got home after a marathon journey of 9 hours by bus, plane and car on Thursday at 4am, and now am nursing a horrible sore throat and sandpaper lungs. It’s raining. I wish we could send some of our rain to Morocco.

So anyway, here I am, back and making soup.

I recently read a lovely piece by Tania Kindersley (she writes lovely postcards from Scotland) that really struck a cord with me. She was talking about the realisation that people are not actually basically the same, and that even if you are introduced to soup making and, in her case, horses too, that may not make you see the light, and you might still prefer your cold hard city ways, or whatever ways you have that we don’t ‘get’. I can’t quite remember when I realised that people didn’t necessarily think the same way as me, but it was a bit of a shock. I assumed, without verbalising it or even thinking it clearly, that given the right information, education or upbringing that we would all think the right way, that is of course, my way, you only had to be told, surely? We would all think that fairness and honesty and justice was the best way, and that once the information is absorbed it’s all a no brainer.

I was very wrong, obviously. Duh. But until now I did not really understand just how different we can be, that I can look at a thing and see what I see and interpret it my way, and that the person next me sees something totally different. Sometimes it is a different view point, sometimes it’s indoctrination and gaslighting. Looking at what is happening in America and understanding that there are still people who do not see the shit show, that only see the starry spangles and gold plated White House souvenirs and promises. They are looking at the same videos as I am, but still they do not, or choose not to, see what I see.

The trauma, the deaths, the fear that is felt by so many citizens in that country I once felt was my second home has me paralysed with disbelief sometimes. And if I am paralysed what about the people who actually experience this altered reality? I try not to keep scratching the sore that is the endless news feed, try not to doom scroll. Half of me wants to shut it all out, but then I feel I must witness this moment in history. Not sure why, or for who, but as citizens of a slightly precarious democracy ourselves maybe forewarned is forearmed? Or am I not looking at things the right way after all?

I do believe that if more people made soup, from scratch that there would be more harmony in the world. Perhaps that is my message here. Rather like Tania I am not entirely sure what my point is, but here is recipe for the soup I made which I served at the Cardigan Farmers Market last Friday. It is a true cockle warmer and perfect for this damp clime.

Coconut-ginger soup with greens - makes 4 servings

• 2 tbsp coconut or olive oil

• 4 large spring onions or 1 leek, thinly sliced

• 4 garlic cloves minced or grated

• 2 tbsp minced or grated ginger (no need to peel)

• 2 tsp ground turmeric

• 1 lt vegetable stock

• 1 can coconut milk

• 200g soft greens (spinach, chard, kale) sliced into ribbons

• 2 tbsp soya sauce

• 1 tsp miso (optional - gives a bit of extra welly)

• 1 small handful chopped fresh coriander

• juice of 1⁄2 lime

• chilli flakes (optional)

• handful of your cooked favourite grains - rice, spelt, barley... or orzo

  pasta

  Method

• Heat the oil in a large pan and add the onions or leeks, garlic and ginger.Stir until onions are soft then add the turmeric and allow the flavours to meet while storing for a minute or two.

• Pour in the stock, coconut milk.

• Bring heat up to just under boiling then turn it down to a simmer for

  about 10 minutes.

• Stir in the greens and the grains and cook for a further 5 mins or so.

• Stir in the soya sauce, miso and most of the coriander.

• Taste for seasoning and add a little salt and black pepper as you like.

• Add the lime juice just before serving.

  This soup improves by being made a day ahead - if you do this don’t add the grains or coriander until just before serving.

I have given up, given in, been hustled and bustled into allowing my body to just stop pretending and rest. Two weeks, more maybe, of grumbling cough and sleep deprivation has culminated in deciding to spend the weekend being horizontal, watching the clouds pass by my window, the cats curled and snoring gently at my feet (I won’t allow them nearer, unlike my soft touch husband) and simply allowing the grumble to pass. At least that’s my hope because I am due to go to Morocco on Wednesday, to repeat the week I spent last year at a yoga retreat in the gorgeous setting of Taroudant. It’s a middle class, middle aged, middle income sort of thing to do in winter and I am acutely aware of the privilege I have in being able to go. But first I must be well. I will be staying at The Maison Anglaise which cannot recommend highly enough - check out the brochure HERE.

On Friday I attended the first Farmers Market of 2026 in Cardigan, serving ‘Good Luck’ soup to the populace who had braved the weather to get in. About half the traders were missing because outside of our microclimate here in Cardigan apparently there is much snow in which they were stuck. We just got hail storms and some watery sunshine. Despite that, attendance was good and as usual some lovely conversations, transactions and exchanges were had. The tradition of farmers markets is as old as farming itself. You grow or make something people want to eat, you sell it to them. Simple. Now of course this has morphed into supermarkets with about 1000 middle men in hair nets between you and the original product, and everything watered down to the lowest common denominator, extruded, re-shaped, brightly and cleverly packaged and called Food. This apparent answer to the 1950s housewife’s dream has led to ultra processed foods (UPFs) dominating the average weekly shop, leading to diseases like obesity and Donald Trump.

I went to the Farmers Market in Nashville once, it was glorious. It was the middle of July in 2016 (before everything went to hell), so it was hot, the kind of heat we have no real concept of here - it slows everything down, even the talking - if you’ve ever heard a real Southern drawl you’ll know what I mean. The stalls were eye pingingly colourful, groaning with peaches, cabbages, squashes and pies. There was a corn shucking contest and a bluegrass band, kids jamming on guitars and watermelons the size of 9 month old babies.

I visited Nashville with my husband a lot back in the day because that’s where my in-laws lived. We would go at least once a year and I came to love that crazy, tacky, beautiful city with it’s incredible music and food scene, the arrival at the airport never complete without a little sit down and a rock in one of the many rocking chairs dotted about the arrivals hall. I miss that America. I miss too the old in-laws who have since passed on to a higher plain. (I am sure the market there is still thriving because despite the best efforts of the current regime people will always want good, taste-full, nutritious food and to hang out with other humans and have fun.)

Our Farmers Market here in Cardigan is no where near the scale or as sun filled as Nashville’s, the size of the town and climate both being at opposite of ends of their respective scales, but we have the same human vibrancy of community and incredible foods, and colour, perhaps of a slightly more muted kind, that reflects the land where the produce is grown and made. It is a new venture, only a few months old, but already feels established and set to blossom and grow. I am there as the face of Ein Cegin as part of the warm spaces initiative that offers warmth and shelter to those who may need or want it in the winter months, hence the offering of hot soup for free.

This week’s soup, as I mentioned, is called good luck or good fortune soup. It is very loosely based on a traditional Southern American new year soup made with black eye peas and collard greens, both ingredients which I was unable to find here. Collard greens are from the brassica family, a brief research at the Bodleian Library suggests that they went to America from Africa with the stolen people of those lands. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it would make sense. Why the greens or the beans are known for luck I have no idea, but here’s hoping they bring some because god knows we could all use some.

Given the lack of authentic ingredients I made it my way using carlin peas and chickpeas (for the black and white) with spring greens. The traditional recipes all have pork sausage or bacon in them but the soups I make for the market are all vegan so I was liberal with miso and yeast flakes to get that deep umami flavour, and added chipotle chilli flakes, smoked and sweet paprika for the warmth and smokiness I felt it needed. I must add that carlin peas are really good, grown in the UK by the wonderfully named Hodmedods - nutty, firm and delicious.

The soup did its job beautifully, warming the hands and tummies of all takers until it was all gone. The recipe is here, but no photos as I was working very much on minimum battery so forgot to take any.

I was going to make hush puppies to go with it but my aforementioned battery was flashing a red warning light so they didn’t materialise. Hush puppies for those who don’t know are not just suede shoes, they are also little golden balls of cornbread, sometimes with onion, cheese and jalapeño peppers, deep fried to perfection. Next time.

New Year’s Good Luck Soup -

enough for 4

• 1 medium onion, diced

• 1 large carrot, diced

• 2 sticks celery, diced

• 250g spring greens, shredded

• 1 red pepper, cut into chunks

• 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

• 1lt veg stock

• 1 can of tomato passata

• 1 teaspoon dried thyme

• 2 cans black-eyed peas, carlin peas, chickpeas or whatever beans you like

• 1 tsp smokey chipotle chilli (optional)

• 1 tsp smoked paprika (optional)

• 1-2 tsp miso

• light olive or vegetable oil

Method

In a large pot, gently cook the onion, celery and carrots in a glug of oil on medium-low heat for 5-7 minutes or until the onions soften.

• Add the spices if using and vinegar

• Add the passata, stock, red pepper and shredded cabbage and bring up the heat to gentle simmer.

• Take one can of beans, and roughly mash with a fork. Add these and the other can of beans to the pot. Continue to simmer soup for about 45 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

This is a Southern American style New Year soup with ingredients designed to bring you luck for the coming year - greens for hope and wealth, black eye peas or in our case Carlin peas and chickpeas for good fortune.

When I make this again I will use some sort of pork sausage or smoked bacon and probably chicken stock, with cornbread or hush puppies on the side. I think that would be really delicious, but not necessarily better than this veggie version.

In one of my cafes back in the day I had this quote by Michael Pollan on the wall

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

It’s a good thing to remember, and to remember that UPFs are not food. It can be quite hard to stick to because sometimes there appears to be a fine line between processed and ultra processed, for example we have producers at our market who cook and process their products like sauerkraut, cheese or cakes therefore it is ‘processed food’, but then there is the jar on the supermarket shelf advertising itself as pasta sauce, for example, where you have no idea what half the listed ingredients on the label are and so, in my book, that is a UPF. Safe to say, I think, that if you are interested and/or concerned you will be guided by your gut, in more ways than one.

Coming soon - hush puppies, if you’d like to know more about them? And maybe peanut butter, chocolate and miso cookies, because while January is for resting it is also for a little bit of indulging in deep fried things and some sweetness and joy surely?

I know that if I want to be taken seriously as a writer (ha) I should plan my stacks, essays, or what will you, and that I should be making food from my own recipes all the time in order to share them with my valiant reader (I daren’t use a plural because the algorithm will think I’m getting above myself), but I don’t plan, and I don’t cook all the time. Well, I do cook all the time, and I do love doing that, but mostly it’s just getting creative with whatever I find in the fridge or the pantry cupboard (I have a pantry cupboard), especially this time of year when we are still eating the remains of Christmas and New Year feasting, and that can only a recipe if you have exactly the same leftovers (unidentified cheese ends, half a squash, something squished in tub with burnt parsnips, fancy chocolates in red wrappers).

So this post, stack, essay (what the ARE these?) is not planned. But it is angry and frustrated and just a little bit pissed off that the very start of a new year (which means what exactly? anyone? it’s not new, it’s the same as it was yesterday, day before etc, only we do have some sun today which is nice) we are already being subjected to the orange gorgon’s idea of a good time (kidnapping other dictators and killing innocent bystanders) while being fed information about all the other illegal things he has done and yet NOTHING happens. He hasn’t been arrested. Why not? WHY?

So, anyway. That’s out of my system, thanks for your time and attention.

Skimming the headlines in the Guardian this morning I saw this - “the tofu dip alone is worth booking a table for”. This is from a restaurant review for a place in London (natch) by Grace Dent. Don’t get me wrong, I am very partial to GD. She is pithy and funny and not a snob about food. But dear god, does anyone care anymore? I mean, since the vastness that is Jay Raynor left the Observer for the FT and everyone could breathe again without coughing up one of his chewed up opinions, I thought maybe restaurant reviewing might become something other than a free lunch machine for writers who ought to know better. Maybe they could actually write about the hospitality industry and help make people understand why it is so hard to run a restaurant, cafe or pub these days? But no, that’s not sexy and aspirational and the hunt for the perfect tofu dip must continue. That said, the restaurant she is talking about does sound lovely and I would quite like to go there one day, so I suppose her work there is done.

I have just been on the phone to EE (could have been any phone provider, or indeed provider of any ‘service’ these days). My son, beloved fruit of my loins, has once again got a phone issue. This time at least it is a gadget fault and it hasn't been left in a taxi or dropped down the loo. The battery is swelling and pushing the screen out and it can only be used while on charge. This seems a dangerous set of circs so we are looking at claiming for another on the insurance for which he pays handsomely (and to be fair, uses regularly). Now, I hear you all thinking, why does this involve me when this young man is a fully grown adult? I hold the account for his and my phones, a thing that was set up many moons ago. He does now pay for his phone, usually, but for some reason it always seems like a good idea to keep it like this every time the contract comes up for renewal. I’m damned if I can remember what the reason was last time but here we are again anyway, this last vestige of the umbilical cord being stretched to its limit by the relentlessness of having to call 150 and be told by some chirpy harpy, after the ear splitting pap muzak, that EE has won awards for x number of years in a row… but of course the insurance dept, when you finally get through, they have a computer there which has gone ‘down’. Just the one obviously, times is ‘ard. It’s the bit that can process the claim. I expect its battery is bulging and pushing the screen out and no one knows what to do because it’s Sunday.

Talking of important and pressing world issues I have decided that I will now and always return to Bristol to get my hair cut. When one reaches a certain age and one’s hair is white, one needs one’s hair to look as though there is intention behind the style. Gone are the days of tousled, dark, shiny locks, styled by getting-out-of-bed. I am resigned to it and now my hair will be cut by Anna who I met just before Christmas and despite having double booked me with someone else managed to cut my hair in time for me get on the road and home by 6pm. I am always dubious about new hairdressers, new cuts etc, and have to wait for a couple of days for it to settle. Well, it has, and while I can still look like a demented crone first thing in the morning I can tame it, make it look intentional, a little bit Dame Judi, a little bit Audrey Tatou, you know, pixie meets bob, age 64.

(There are other lovely reasons for visiting Bristol on a regular basis, they know who they are, so it’s about killing more birds with the same stone - which is a horrible image and I will never ever again use that term.)

As I mentioned at the beginning of this rant, this has not been planned, I have no new recipe of my own to share, so I am going to share my friend Rosie’s recipe of squash stuffed with lentils, partly because I have a chunk of squash to use so I plan (look at me planning and everything) to make this later, and partly because it’s a perfect recipe to soothe the over worked, post-Christmas/NY gut.

Squash stuffed with lentils

By Rosie Sykes (from the Guardian 9/10/24)

Tinned lentils are such a brilliant, quick cupboard staple, though dried ones would work here, too: replace the tin with 200g washed dried lentils soaked in 600ml water or vegetable stock, and extend the cooking time to ensure they are tender. You can, of course, leave out the lardons if you want to make the dish vegetarian. As for the squash, that’s more or less up to you – there are many varieties to choose from: I like acorn, kabocha, harlequin or red kuri. Here, I’ve cut the squash into rounds and removed the seeds, but you could also cut it in half and deseed to make a neat cavity for the lentil stuffing; shave a bit off the base, too, so the squash halves sit nicely on the tray. If you cook it this way, the squash will take longer to roast but, presentation-wise, it looks fantastic.

Prep 20 min
Cook 1 hr 30 min
Serves 4

5 tbsp light olive oil
100g lardons, free-range for preference (optional)
2 medium onions, peeled and sliced
Sea salt and black pepper
1 leek, trimmed, cut in half lengthways, then finely sliced (use as much as green as possible) and washed
3 sticks celery, trimmed, washed and finely sliced
2 carrots, peeled, cut in half lengthways, then cut into fine half-moons
3 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
2 heaped tbsp tomato paste, or 200ml passata
410g tin green lentils, undrained
1 sprig each thyme and rosemary, and 1 bay leaf (or whatever you have to hand)
2 tbsp sherry vinegar
200ml vegetable stock
1 small-medium squash (about 800g), unpeeled, cut into 2cm-thick rounds and deseeded

To finish
350g creme fraiche, or greek yoghurt or fromage frais
1 egg
200g grated cheese – this is a good place to use up any bits and bobs
50g breadcrumbs
1 small handful flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6. Put a tablespoon of the oil in a small casserole for which you have a lid, and put it in the oven to heat up. Once the oil is hot, add the lardons, if using, return the casserole to the oven uncovered and cook for five or so minutes, until the bacon is crisp.

Use a slotted spoon to transfer the lardons to a plate, leaving all the fat behind in the casserole, then add the onions, a splash more oil and a good pinch of salt to the pot. Cover and return to the oven for 10 minutes, until the onions soften and take on a bit of colour.

Add another tablespoon of the oil to the pot, then stir in the sliced leek, celery and carrot, cover again and return to the oven for 15 minutes, until the vegetables have started to soften and get some golden-brown edges.

Once the vegetables have softened, stir in the garlic and tomato paste, and return to the oven, this time uncovered, for five minutes. Stir in the lentils, crisp lardons (if using), herbs, sherry vinegar and stock, and return to the oven, still uncovered, for another 20-30 minutes.

Meanwhile, arrange the squash rings in a single layer on an oven tray into which they’ll fit snugly, then season and douse with oil. Roast alongside the lentils for 20 minutes, until tender to the tip of a sharp knife, then take out of the oven to await the stuffing.

Now make the topping: mix the creme fraiche, egg and all but a heaped tablespoon of the cheese in a bowl. Mix the remaining cheese with the breadcrumbs and parsley in a small bowl.

Once the lentils have had a good time in the oven and have a nice, spoonable consistency – they need some liquid around them – season to taste, then spoon into the roast squash rings. Pour over the creme fraiche topping, scatter on the cheesy, herby crumbs and bake again for 20 minutes, until the top is bubbling and golden. Serve with some greens on the side, if you fancy.

Ok, if you have come this far with me, then I love you more than you can know. I apologise for the ranting, but somehow it needed to be done, here and now.

I had a really lovely and laid back Christmas and New Year period. Small but perfectly formed, delicious people and delicious food, with a lovely empty-ish in between time despite still being wracked with the pesky cough. The in between time is always shorter in actuality than it appears when viewed from 24th December and this one disappeared very quickly.

I wish only good things for 2026 to you my readers (one more and I will have 300, although some of you are a bit suspect - middle aged men, handsomely grizzled, wearing camouflage outfits and holding puppies… I am not sure you are here for the recipes). Blessings on you and your loved ones. (Mamdani is a reminder that it hasn’t quite all gone to hell - here’s hoping he can fulfil his promises and inspire the rest of the states). Let’s pray, whatever form that takes, for peace and if you can afford it please donate to some cause that is working toward that end - this is one I have chosen.

There’s a lot of serious and moving posts on substack about the dark nights, and the dark feeling in the world that seems to have accepted some new unreal reality, or some people in the world, at least, have accepted it. But there is hope, I think. Easy to blithely say, but just as with the solstice comes the promise of shorter nights, the return of the light and the very tentative snuffling of the bulbs and seeds below the cold earth, so too a community of humans is growing in that same earth, metaphorically of course, reaching for the light and each other with little mycelium threads, recognising each other and the possibility of power in numbers. A community of people who care and do not accept this new world order. Here are two of them.

I was introduced to these two new writers recently, both of with whom I feel the mycelium connection. The first is Judith Dayal of ‘Sound the Alarm Girl’, who’s post on the fact that we are living in a moral inversion (the upside-down if you like and are a fan of Stranger Things, which I absolutely am) really resonated with me -

“I feel the exhaustion of caring in a culture that rewards cruelty. I feel the quiet ache of watching institutions falter while being told to trust them anyway. I feel the sadness that comes from realizing how many people have been taught to confuse empathy with fragility and conscience with inconvenience.

If this hurts you, it is because something in you is still intact. That matters.”

We are so numb to the atrocities, that come, one after the other, each one worse than the last, from every news source, that actually feeling anything has become radical.

Sita Brand is the second writer. She is a Zen Buddhist whose substack is called the the Story Teller’s Compass. My brother introduced me to her after he read the quote I re-posted above. He felt there was a link between the two posts and so I read a ‘Story About Refugees, Christmas, and Who We Choose Not to See’ - reminding us that Jesus was a refugee. All these faux Christians lining up to claim Jesus (Tommy Moron Robinson I see you) conveniently forget that he was hounded out of the country of his birth at the time of his birth with his parents, and fled to Egypt, as a refugees. If there had been a sea between them and safety no doubt they would have got in a small boat.

Sita also re-tells the story of The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson in 1846, which, if you had forgotten as I had, is about a little girl forced to sell matches on a freezing cold night, fearing to go home to a beating, unable to sell her wares, ignored and simply not seen by passers by hurrying to their warm homes, probably with their open problems and their own thoughts. The little girl freezes to death, lighting one match after another to try to keep warm and seeing within the flames visions of how life might have been if she had been born someone else. It’s not that the passers by were cruel people, they simply didn’t open their eyes to what was in front of them.

Both these stories reminded me that we need to see, we need to feel. To give in to the numbness is to give up and on no account can we do that. Who is listening? I have no idea, and it’s easy to feel powerless and want to look away. But maybe if we send out little mycelium messages to one another, through the forests under ground, we can find a way to defeat the monsters. (You might need to have watched Stranger Things to visualise that last sentence, and if you haven’t I apologise, but it makes sense to me!).

Christmas is almost upon us, had you noticed? I am feeling remarkably relaxed this year, which is really nice. It’s partly because I feel crap because I am an incubator for some evil germs and therefore require jaffa cakes, a sofa and roaring log fire to make me feel better.

I am also relaxed because we are being very low key this year, I took the pressure off myself and am going nowhere. We will sit down as a group of six and it will be lovely. We will count our blessings, every one.

Then will come the gap, the in-between (not the upside-down) where time dissolves and no one knows what day it is. And in that void might I suggest you make some crumpets? You will be tired of turkey sandwiches and bubble and squeak, and you can definitely put brandy butter on a crumpet if you have any left.

This is a first for me, inspired by rediscovering a book I was given on arrival in or new home in Wales back in 2022, Elizabeth David on English Bread and Yeast Cookery. The chapter on crumpets and muffins lumps both together, which I had to admit confused me at first as I now associate the word muffin with the North American style of giant cupcake. But of course an English muffin is very like a crumpet, same size, fewer holes.

Elizabeth David offered a few different recipe versions, all complicated and from various centuries, with little quotes on the subject such as “the batter requires attacking with vivacious turbulence”, which is a sentence I plan to use as often as possible from now on.

Dorothy Hartley (Food in England 1954) is quoted saying “Crumpets vary in size from a large dinner plate to ‘small, rather thick, very holey’ crumpets made in the Midlands.” All, according to Dorothy, “should be cooked on both sides, the smooth side first, then the holey side, since it is the holes which provide the concavity for the butter”.

From ED I then went to my sturdy friend the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book. It’s the copy I bought when I first set up my cafe business in the Folk House in Bristol. I couldn’t find a cook so I had to jump in and do it myself and this book helped me on the way - it is one of the best purchases I ever made. It’s not particularly exciting or new in its ideas, but the recipes are good, solid, clear and mostly turn out exactly as described, and they cover pretty much anything you need to know about the basics and includes, of course, crumpets.

CRUMPETS

This makes a lot of crumpet mix, about 24 standard size ones, so halve it unless you have a crowd coming over.

• 350g strong white flour (you could use half wholewheat if you want to be a bit worthy between the gluttony bouts)

• ½ tsp salt

• ½ tsp Bicarbonate of soda

• 1 ½ tsp dried yeast

• 250ml warm milk

• 300ml warm water

A little veg oil to fry and lashings of butter to serve.

1. Sift the flour, salt and bicarb into a large bowl (I didn’t sieve it), stir in the yeast.

2. Make a well in the centre and pour in the warm milk and water.*

3. Using a wooden spoon** beat the batter for about 5 minutes with vivacious turbulence (I didn’t do it long enough or with enough turbulence)

4. Cover and leave in warm place for about an hour until bubbly in texture.

5. Beat with more turbulence for 2 more minutes and transfer to a jug.

6. Put a non stick pan on a high heat and brush with oil. If you are using crumpet rings these will need to be brushed with oil inside.

7. If using rings place them in the pan and allow them to heat up for about 2 minutes, then pour in batter to about 1cm deep and cook for 5-7 minutes until the surface appears holey.

8. If not using them you have choice here - either pour small amount to make round-ish mini crumpets, or fill the whole pan for the dinner plate size version.

9. After a couple of attempts to use a ring, then make small ones, I plumped for medium dinner plate size, because that was size of my small pan.

10. This worked brilliantly.

11. Either way you are cooking them, after removing the rings, flip them over to cook on the top side for about 1 minute.

12. Eat immediately with loads of butter. Or cool on rack and re-warm later in the toaster, as you would with supermarket versions, which will, now and forever after, disappoint you.

NOTES:

• *Massive omission highlighted by Matthew Jones (thank you thank you) - stage 2 is the adding of the yeast, then the liquids, without which it’s just beating dry floury stuff. Edited 6/1/26

• My batter was bit lumpy so, lesson learned, do the sifting.

• **Beating such a liquid batter with a wooden spoon with vivacious turbulence can get messy. I moved on to a whisk which also helped sort some of the lumps out.

• You can keep this batter in the fridge overnight if you can’t use it all once BUT make sure the container has loose lid and only fill it half full as it will rise, like a swamp monster, and take over the entire fridge shelf. You have been warned.

  ---

  This will be probably be my last post of 2025. It’s been a really weird and not altogether good year for the world at large. But on a smaller scale, my local scale, here is some good stuff:

• I am involved in a newly set up Cardigan Farmers Market, working as part of Ein Cegin, where I get make soup and give it away, so everyone loves me. It’s a brilliant market packed with local producers of vegetables, cheeses, ferments, seafood, meat, honey, preserves, baked goods and loads more, all inside the Guild Hall in Cardigan so not weather dependent, and there is usually live music too!

• This is an add on to my other work Ein Cegin which is doing cooking workshops with kids and families using fresh, locally grown (as far as possible) produce.

• My husband, the fabulous Russell Walker, has achieved a life long held dream and joined a band (who has played at the market!). He will also be retiring next year (not to go on your with the band, although you never know with this lot) which will bring him great joy, and we have a plan for that - not telling yet.

• The house is still standing and is warm and water proof.

There is more good and positive stuff of course, although often it’s hard to see through the red mists of news coming from the US, the rest of the world and increasingly on our own doorstep, but we must keep looking for it, finding it within our tribes all over the world and locally, working together to make a difference, however small or insignificant it may seem.

Food resilience is crucial world wide. As a tiny weeny part of that world Wales is stepping up, with some magnificent growers and farmers getting to grips with the challenges of climate change and producing stunning vegetables, grain crops and fruits. I am a teenier cog in that step up, helping, through my work with Ein Cegin, to bring fresh, nutritious food and cooking skills to people who may not otherwise have access to them. For that, and the fact that it earns me an income, I very grateful.

Nadolig Llawen Pawb!

What’s ailing you then? Whatever it is I reckon this will fix it. It’s not quite ready but I have sampled some, as has my teetering-on-the-brink-of-ailing husband. I made this after reading a fellow sub stacker Sue Kusch’s post on winter remedies. Sue very generously offered her recipes for free and I have taken up her offer and made some of the Fire Cider Oxymel, not to be confused with oxytocin or oxycontin which would have very different results I suspect, adapted a bit due to lack of some of the ingredients and US/UK measuring. I will put my recipe at the end but full credit to Sue, and the link above will take you the original recipe, plus others which I don’t have the self discipline to make.

It tastes remarkably good, and, according to Sue, can be used to make salad dressings. So, medicine as food, food as medicine. So it should be. My favourite salad at the moment is shredded radicchio and other bitter and spicy leaves with large quantities of sauerkraut. The dressing is a simple cider vinegar one, but when the Fire Cider is ready I will definitely be using that - it will make a perfect winter salad, comforting and shocking in equal measure.

So what else ails you? Your cough/cold/winter gremlins have been taken care of, so what else is going on? For me it’s about balance, and I can’t seem to find it. I can’t think of what I want to say here and yet I have so much to say. Some of it can’t be on here because it’s not all about me, oddly enough, and it can’t be said out ‘there’ because personal/private/mind own business, all that jazz. So, balance becomes a bit askew, weighed down on one side with stuff that is thoughts wanting to be said, the other side light and fluffy and with it’s feet up and not a care in the world.

I look out at the rain and wish it wasn’t doing that. Everything is so wet. I worry about corners of the house which I know, or think I know, are likely to give in to its watery demands. I wish I had won the lottery the last two times I treated my self to a lucky dip for the Saturday night, like the chap in the Ballad of Wallis Island (please watch if you haven’t already, it will make everything feel better), then all my woes would vanish and world peace would be achieved, climate change halted and reversed, Musk would go to Mars and stay there, Trump would arm wrestle Putin and they would both lose and just die of shame.

At the weekend my friend Natalie and I pulled together an epic event in the form of a Jumble Sale. Except this had rather more glam jumble than those of the olden days that I would attend with my friend Lucy, age 14 (I always grow misty eyed remembered these treasure troves - silk shirts, stout shoes, bakelite phones).

Generalissimo Natalie got the ball rolling some time back and we accumulated an astonishing quantity of fantastic second hand clothing, filling every nook and cranny of outhouses and spare rooms - sorted, tagged, bagged and market ready.

Natalie rallied local cake makers, movers, shakers, the great, the good and helpers of every kind, and on Saturday between us all we raised nearly £4000 to go toward Medecin sans Frontieres’s work in Gaza.

If you feel you can give a little toward this cause please click on the link below. If you’re a tax payer our benevolent HMRC will add 25%.

Fire Cider Recipe

I have used cup measurements here because I have a set of them. A cup is 250ml or a Moomin mug full.

• 500ml cider vinegar

• 1 onion, chopped roughly

• ¼ cup fresh ginger, chopped finely - no need to peel

• 1 head garlic, peeled and chopped roughly

• 2 tbls ground turmeric

• 2 tsp powdered cayenne pepper

• ¾ cup honey

1. Combine all ingredients in a large jar and leave in warm place for 4-6 weeks

2. Strain the mixture and refrigerate.

3. Take 1 - 2 tbls daily at the first sign of a cold and continue throughout the illness (which will be very short of course due to benefits of Oxymel!).

I have just realised that Sue said to add the honey after the mixture is strained. Mine already has the honey in it. So, we shall see how that turns out but I have high hopes.

I went on to pinterest yesterday. I have used it in the past to create little mood boards for things I am thinking about, for example when I was planning the kitchen for this house I live in I entered ‘french farmhouse style’ (I know, I know) into pinterest and lots of gorgeous photos of gorgeous rustic kitchens appeared before my eyes. They were interrupted with a scattering of ads for whatever I might have been looking for at some point earlier on the great inter web, cat food for example, but mostly it was genuine photos from magazines or actual people’s houses. This was only four years ago.

Yesterday I put in to pinterest ‘independent bookshop’ because it’s something I am interested in and being in West Wales would mean that I would have to travel miles to see any of these rare birds. The ensuing tsunami of images were smoothed, soft coloured, sparkling, over stuffed, idealised vomit of what the AI fairies think we want the world, and in particular independent bookshops, to look like. And maybe it is what ‘we’ want it to look like, but it doesn’t. It only looks like that on pinterest, or instagram or any of the endless places where filters and AI bots roam, clicking the algorithms that feed the human need for love and cosiness. Look up from the screen and there’s the real world, even if you are actually in a book shop at the time. Dust balls under the shelves, a grumpy salesperson who’s had a bad night and is taking it out on the books and the customers and no coffee because serving coffee in a book shop is a hiding to spilt milk if ever there was one, and no one will buy a book covered in dried, sour milk from a sour shop keeper.

The reason that illustrators are so wonderful, so successful (if they are good) is because they lead our imaginations into stories, either written or that we create ourselves from the picture. AI does not do that. AI is the enshittification of the art of illustration. It has its uses in the way that clip art does.

So, enshittification. It’s a great word.

Noun

enshittification (uncountable)

1. (neologism, Internet, vulgar) The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements, recurring payments, and sponsored content, in order to increase profits.

   Antonym: deshittification

   See also

   • Noun

     paperclip maximizer (plural paperclip maximizers)

     1. A hypothetical artificial intelligence whose goal is to produce as many paperclips as possible and which achieves this by converting all matter in the universe into paperclips.

   • Muskification

It’s about making things that were dependable and good into things that are cheap (despite being expensive) and break. Hoovers, fridges, shoes, thermostats. Mobile phones and other tech gadgets that have “built in obsolescence” so they die and you have buy more, or you have to ‘upgrade’ for more money to keep exactly the same (crap) service as you had before.

It breaks my heart that my son and his generation and all those who are coming after have not and will never experience a world where things are made to work and to last, and if they break they get mended.

Ok boomer! Yes, I’m lost in the past where everything was rosy. It wasn’t of course, but at least the if you bought a fridge it might work for more that 1 year, and if the light build inside goes you could replace it without calling the fire brigade and the manufacturer’s own engineers who bring the wrong replacement bulb but still charge for the call out, and don’t get me started on the cost of the bulb.

I’ve only just got my head around the ok boomer meme thing. I still get confused by Gen X, Z, Millenial classifications. I don’t think I patronise young people but I do bang on about how much better the world was before tech got all up our orifices, because it was.

My parents gave one of my brothers and his newly wed wife our old family hoover. It wasn’t their wedding present, they weren’t that weird. The wedding present was a pretty little white, rocking cradle…

That old hoover was a beast. It had an enormous bag on it that expanded into a giant lung when you pressed the foot peddle and then emitted a fine puff of dust. It had headlights. It went forward and it went backward, shining a light on all the detritus of a household of twelve and counting. And it picked up all the dust, mud, cat hair, toast crumbs and the odd sock without complaining. It did complain one time when it sucked up one of my Dad’s ties. It wheezed, the lung threatened to explode and it ground to halt. I was distraught (because, dear reader, I was the driver of the hoover that day) having no idea that you could take this machine apart to retrieve lost ties etc.

Lebkuchen

This is a classic German Christmas cakey cookie, definitely not a biscuit (especially not in the US), being more akin to our famous Jaffa cakes (I made some of them once and they were to use a Gen z? term, bangin’) in texture than to any biscuits as we know them. I will say up front this is not an authentic German recipe. It’s adapted from one I found on t’internet, from a ‘mom of three beautiful boys’, as she continually reminds us, and who cooks with them as they all smile with their orthodontically arranged teeth while adoring each other. I have to admit I like some of her ideas as I have a weakness for American food, but I do draw the line at cheeseburger soup.

Anyway, I have changed this quite a lot so its mine now, and I’ve also included weights in grams as not everyone has measuring cups (although you really should).

I have always bought these kuchen (such a lovely word, kuchen) around this time of year and am instantly transported to Christmas, the Christmas of It’s Wonderful Life maybe. I bought some recently in a food giant shop that I shall not name and they were very meh. Underwhelming. My whelm level was below -11.

So, I thought, I shall make some, how hard can it be? As it turns out not hard at all, and easier than ‘mom of 3 beautiful boys’ makes it out to be.

The Bodleian Library isn’t sure of the etymology of the ‘leb’ bit of this word, but I think it probably comes from lebbe which means very sweet. Or possibly from leibe which means love. I choose that one. Kuchen of course means cake. So this is my love cake.

Ingredients

• ½ cup/160g honey

• 1 cup/170g dark brown sugar

• ¼ cup/50g unsalted butter (salted is fine too)

• 1 egg, beaten

• Zest of 1 lemon

• 1 ¾ cup/240g plain flour

• 1 cup/110g ground almonds

• 1 tbs lemon juice

• 1tsp baking powder

• ½ tsp bicarb

• 2 tsp ground cinnamon

• 1 pinch salt

• ½ tsp ground allspice

• ½ tsp ground ginger

• ¼ tsp ground cloves

• ¼ tsp ground nutmeg

• For the glaze:

• 1 cup/110g icing sugar

• Juice of 1 lemon

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Put the honey, sugar and butter in a heat proof bowl and melt together either in the microwave or in a Bain Marie, add the lemon zest and put to one side.

2. In a big bowl add all the dry ingredients, mix well then add the honey mixture and bring it all together with the egg and the lemon juice.

3. You should have a stiff and sticky (stop it) dough at this point.

4. Roll it into big ball, flouring your hands if necessary, and cover.

5. Leave in the fridge for minimum of an hour.

6. Meanwhile make the glaze by combining all the glaze ingredients in a bowl, cover and put to one side.

7. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (a little lower for fan oven) or gas 4

8. Divide the dough ball into 2 and roll out on a lightly floured surface until about 1cm thick.

9. Cut shapes using cookie cutters, or just into squares if you don’t have cutters.

10. Roll up waste and keep repeating until you have used all the dough.

11. Put shapes onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper (parchment) and bake for about 10 minutes.

12. Let them cool on the tray briefly then transfer to wire rack.

13. Using a pastry brush brush the glaze on the kuchen while still warm.

To jazz them up further you can dip them in chocolate, but on balance I have decided I like them just with the lovely lemony glaze.

A HUGE thank you to my newest subscribers, especially those incredible humans who actually put money into this odd little pot. I send you virtual love kuchens!

My friend and I are organising a big old rummage sale for Saturday 29th November here in St. Dogmaels. If you can’t make it and have a bit of spare cash please consider donating to our cause - MSF and their work in Gaza.

The elbows on it.

The voices raised above it.

The meals reheated,

The stories repeated,

the arguments never quite cleared away.

.

This is where family happens -

not always kindly,

not always clean.

But here.

Where someone shows up

with takeaway and tired eyes,

and calls that love.

.

The table has heard confessions

between spoonfuls.

Held grief

beside the salt.

Witnessed silence

as fierce as faith.

.

So if you’re looking for

a sacred place -

try the table.

Where we keep coming back.

Where we try again.

Where grace

is passed like bread.

.

Adam Maxwell Martin

My family kitchen table was huge, purpose made to accommodate a family of 9 and growing, plus guests, with matching benches and the matriarch’s chair at one end. It was topped with dark blue, heavy duty formica which grew worn, dinted and familiar. I don’t know what the wood it was made from but I do know it was solid and could more than handle all of us - the little one’s (that’s me) awful suppers of mince made by our ‘mother’s help’, the lovely, cuddly Eileen, the Sunday suppers with candles and chocolate mousse made with Carnation milk (so delicious), the sewing marathons, the ironing (we didn’t have an ironing board), the crafts (enamelecraft, plasticraft… children handling hot metal and inhaling toxic fumes - that’s how we rolled in the 60s), the tempers, tears and laughter. It is somewhere else now, in a different kitchen in Yorkshire. The table that holds all our early stories will be gathering new ones from a whole new family; or maybe it’s a work table, or in a little school - I love to think of it’s possibilities. It was also a climbing frame, perfect for practicing the art of the tummy spin.

I have my own, smaller, kitchen table now, one that was made for me when I moved in to ‘my own’ house in Bristol with my son in November 2001. It is made from American walnut, a beautiful, heavy, dark hard wood. My brother Luke made it in his signature style, so heavy you always break or squash something when moving it. The work tops in the kitchen were the same wood, as was the matching bench. It all felt very grown up.

I would move it from kitchen to sitting room, back and forth, my penchant for furniture moving being at its peak then, and also depending on how many people it needed to seat. It’s an office, a table for crafts, for writing, a sewing table, a meeting place, a storage place, a cat’s perch.

This table is sun faded, scratched, dented and in need of some serious loving attention, which more than likely it won’t get. It has witnessed all and more of the things in the poem. It holds the memories of my family, small though it was in its essence, just me and my son.

It had capacity too, to welcome wider family, new loves, old loves, friends, neighbours, strangers. Coffee was drunk there, tea, beer, wine and sometimes champagne. Pyjamas were worn at it, glad rags and school uniforms.

It could be, and often was, extended using ill fitting extra side tables, covering them with cloths in an attempt to hide the very obvious join (just be careful not to put your glass there), with candelabras, patterned china, glasses sparkling and heaps of food.

It was contracted to accommodate single dinners, the books, papers and accumulated detritus of life pushed aside to make room for a bowl and a plate.

It held a vigil for a dying lover upstairs, cigarettes rolled in bulk for him (because why not, now?) as we, his family and friends, sat and talked, smoked, made toast, remembered and mourned in readiness for the inevitable.

It held arguments and vicious words, slams of glasses and smashing of plates. Tears and recriminations, blame, anger, bafflement, love. Love, and forgiveness.

So many tears at that table, so much laughter. So much food. Gifts delivered in times of anxiety, hastily thrown together fridge forages, takeaways, American style cooked breakfasts, grand feasts, toast. How many slices of toast have been eaten off this table? How much bread shared?

Now this table sits in my kitchen in Wales. It still hosts solitary meals, mostly my breakfasts after Russ has gone to work at crack of sparrow fart. The most common meals at it now are dinners-a-deux where me and he pick apart our days, moan about various ailments, rant about politics, plan and dream for our third age future. Often too the table still welcomes small dinner parties, and occasionally large and fabulous feasts where my ridiculous collection of tiny mismatched glasses get to show off and sparkle in all their jewel colours.

It will absorb the rest of my life I expect, whatever it brings. It will offer space and a willingness to be the one that hears it all and silently accepts whatever happens on it and around it. One day it will be my son’s, if he wants it. And it will remember the times he sat at it as a child, flicking peas or blowing out birthday candles, as he serves meals to his friends and maybe his own family. And always with candles, even at breakfast time.

There is no single recipe today, but instead a free pdf copy of this sought after tome, much of it written at this table.

Written in 2009 by me and the Folk House Cafe team, then cobbled together into a printable form in one evening with the talented Mr Daniel Penfold (also known for his theatrical forays) in his little studio, with some wine. There are typos, only I know how many. Illustrations are by Olly White (of the infamous Dagger Brothers - “they’re not brothers but they’re not far off. The absurdist art pop duo that were always on the verge of getting slapped by an angry man at whatever pub they got duped into playing in”). I had 500 copies printed and sold all of them.

Fhc Recipebook 44pp Pluscoverv2 1 Copy

4.99MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

I used to think I was brilliant multi tasker. I still do actually, secretly. But more often than not I am multi tasking because I simply have to do a Thing before I forget it, having learned earlier that keeping it in my head doesn’t work, and that the list will never actually get written. So on my way to get the hoover, for example, I see a bag of flour and remember I am meant to be making bread. I get the flour and and get a bowl and put the flour in the bowl. Then I look for the yeast, and then I remember I need to get more yeast for my next workshop, or do I? And so it goes.

I expect you think I am going to go into a rant about the menopause now, because that’s what all women of a certain age are doing these days. Shouting about this thing that happens to them where they forget things all the time, which they weren’t allowed to mention before because it doesn’t happen to men therefore not important, where their bodies start to change dramatically - puberty in reverse, except instead of returning to baby soft, skin instead withers, cracks and develops crepey pockets. Well, I’m not going to rant about that. I am past the menopause, long gone, although its effects remain, it is true. Also, how old exactly is a woman ‘of a certain age’? Maybe I am past that age and now in to the territory of women who are past it, done, dusty and over.

Perhaps this is not a rant after all, let’s wait and see. The thing is the more I talk to people, and when I say people I mean women, the more I realise that we pretty much all get along like this. There are of course some super organised people whose lives run along well oiled tracks and of whom I am, naturally, in awe. But most seem a bit like me, just holding it together enough to appear sane and functioning while, like the proverbial ducks, paddling like crazy below the surface with their little webbed feet, wondering where the bloody yeast is.

I can achieve remarkably little in a day unless it is a day that is structured by work, a task list that I have actually managed to write (the JOY of ticking things off is unparalleled) or a project that absolutely requires my attention in a given moment, especially when accompanied by an audio book. One such project, which I have not started (quel surprise), is the painting of the stairs and landing, including skirtings and doors, in a deep and uncompromising red. I was going to keep it all quite mellow - the walls are a dusty pink, very badly painted, or painted to look as though they are badly painted, the shabby chic* distraction tactic. I really hate that expression* and apologise for using it. Anyway, I’m going bold because the paint was on sale and when you have 10 litres of uncompromising red paint you have to find somewhere to use it.

The red is not dissimilar to the deep red pink of radicchio, which segue brings me deliciously neatly to this recipe. Or cooking guidelines really.

I love radicchio. I first came across it when working at the River Café when one of my tasks would be grilling it. I never quite got the the grilling thing in those days, but now I am a proper grown up I do - a squeeze of lemon juice and some peppery olive oil it’s a kind of weird, charred, bitter heaven.

Finding this gorgeous leaf out here in Welsh Wales seems to be tricky. I see it appear on instagram feeds and get deep envy feelings washing through me, especially when the the rose pink version makes an appearance, looking for all it’s worth like a massive blousey peony.

To my utter joy Glebelands, our local market garden, has been growing it lately. This looks more like regular red chicory (also quite hard to come by here), but isn’t - it’s radicchio rosso di Treviso. Of course they are also growing squashes by the barrow load too this time of year and mixing these two colours in one dish makes for eye popping happiness. I was inspired, as ever, by a recipe Rosie Sykes has on her instagram reels as well (I can also highly recommend getting involved with her Friday Biscuit).

This is a bit more involved than most dinners I might attempt on a Monday, but what the hell, it fed three with some left over from my NHS hero husband’s lunch. This will feed 3 easily, but the quantities really are guidelines - you can add or subtract as you like, include other vegetables, or even some cooked chicken if you feel inclined. I had a large mushroom so added that. We ate it with massive potato wedges done in the air fryer.

Salad Jean Claude

• 1 small squash (this is a Hokkaido but you can use any you like), peeled and cut into wedges

• 1 red onion, peeled and cut into wedges

• 8 or so leaves of radicchio, or a whole round one if using that variety, cut widthways into fat ribbons

• 3-4 garlic cloves

• 1 bunch cavalo nero or curly kale, de-stalked and cut into fat ribbons

• 1 big handful parsley, picked and roughly chopped

• 100g spelt grain (or whatever your favourite grain is - brown rice would work well - it needs to have a nuttiness), soaked for about an hour before cooking

• 1 handful of toasted hazel nuts or walnuts (optional)

• some crumbled feta (optional)

1. Roast the squash, onion and garlic cloves (in its jackets) until soft and just getting dark at the edges.

2. Remove from the oven and when cool enough pop garlic out of jackets and chop roughly to mix with the other veg.

3. Meanwhile cook the spelt according to packet instructions and put to one side.

4. Steam the cavalo or kale until soft but not mushy and put to one side. (OR you could add it to the roasting veg about half way through which would save on washing up - don’t know why I didn’t do that)

Dressing - you can use a classic vinaigrette with this but it lends itself beautifully to the sweet salty taste of this Asian inspired dressing. It’s in cup measurements because I have copied from All Recipes. I always forget the ratios so go back to this American site for it, and I can’t do the maths today.

• ⅜ cup olive oil

• ¼ cup soy sauce

• ⅙ cup rice vinegar

• ⅛ cup water

• 1 ½ tablespoons honey

• 1 ½ cloves garlic, minced

• 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger root (I use a garlic press for this sometimes - works wonders but you need a hefty crusher)

Put all the dressing ingredients in a jar with a secure lid and shake it until blended.

Put all the other ingredients in a big bowl, pour on as much dressing as you like and mix well. Tip on to a serving platter or dish and serve, either sprinkling with the nuts and cheese or having them on the side.

I know you are now wondering why on earth this Italian Asian Welsh salad is called Jean Claude. Russell asked me what it was called as he was eating and I said I don’t know, what do you think to should be called? So Salad Jean Claude was born.

One of my favourite all time adverts is the salad leaf stand off, for Florette salad bags. I have to admit to the mincing frisée being my favourite but radicchio is a close second. Which is your favourite?

Thence to Cambridge and our lovely friend Rosie and her crazy little cottage with sloping floors and beams perfectly placed for Russell’s noggin to bash on a regular basis.

We visited the university of that lovely city, Downing College in particular because that is where my Dad (Algy Haughton - a great man - click the link and read my nephew Guy Dammann’s obit - it’s fascinating, warm and beautifully written) went after the war, and where he and my Mum lived when they were first married. I was wearing Mum’s raincoat, which I have inherited (long, unglamorous, functional). I picked up a beautiful shiny conker and put it in the pocket where it will probably stay for a while. My idea is to plant it. I worry about conker trees - they seem all have a disease which shrivels their leaves, and yet still manage to produce these lovely dark brown conkers.

I felt a deep longing to talk to both my parents over the last few weeks, just to check in with them, see their smiles again. In the gift shop of the Fitzwilliam Museum I perused post cards and bought a couple, as I would have for each of them back in the day. Post card recipients are diminishing, rather like the post offices where you can buy stamps for them.

Did you know that the ‘fitz’ in Fitzwilliam means bastard son of William? Fitz means ‘son of’ but came to denote one born on the wrong side of the blanket.

So, home again now, back to reality, the news, work, fleas (yes, again, makes me want to weep, truly), chaos of mind and inability to prioritise anything. Except getting the flea man in again. Another one this time as clearly the last one was rubbish.

And yet before I will get said chaos in order we will be off again, this time to London town. We are going to the Royal Albert Hall to see Billy Strings, bluegrass genius. Look him up, he’s a joy - looks 21, sounds 87, fingers that fly over the strings as he twangs guitars and banjos.

We will be going the march on Saturday in support of ending the genocide in Palestine, which may be a crime depending on whether I write Palestine or Plastecine on my sign, so next missive may be from jail. Astonishing, even in these days of nothing-can-shock-me-anymore, that we have to worry about being arrested for standing up and saying mass murder is wrong. If I am not arrested I hope to spend the evening with my only and most beloved son.

So that’s where I am up to. Still fumbling my way with this platform. Not sure what to write and who for, endlessly grateful to have any readers, let alone some that pay.

Food Bit

When we were at Rosie’s she made us the most delicious supper of Tamale Pie. I will be making it again when some very special VIPs come to stay soon and so will post my version of the recipe but you can find hers in her book Roasting Pan Suppers (it’s called Beef Chilli with Cornbread Top in there - tamale pie is much easier to roll off the tongue I think!). It’s a cracker of a recipe book for keeping it simple but never boring. Another recipe in there is for Chocolate Banana Tahini Brownie - I mean, just that line up of words is almost enough.

I made some when we got home to two over ripe bananas. It is a delicious combination of banana bread and chocolate brownie, both enhanced and made a little more grown up by the addition of tahini.

I am literally copying and pasting here except this bit * and I followed it precisely (which is unusual for me). Photos are of my effort, not quite as dreamy looking as in the book but just as good as you might hope. Next time I think I will put them in a deeper baking tin.

Chocolate Banana Tahini Brownie

Imagine this one warm with some cream or ice cream on top. The tahini gives the brownie a distinctive flavour, while the banana keeps it wonderfully moist. The brownies can also be made gluten-free by substituting the rye flour for a gluten-free version.

SERVES

Serves 8-10 (*or totally depends on how big you cut them)

DIFFICULTY Easy

TOTAL TIME 1 Hour

Ingredients

300g of dark chocolate

75g of butter

100g of tahini, plus a generous tablespoon to finish

3 eggs

200g of soft light brown sugar

2 ripe bananas, mashed

80g of rye flour

1 tsp of sesame seeds

Sea salt

Method

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan), gas mark 4. Line a small roasting pan or baking tin (approx. 30 x 20cm) with a reusable silicone baking sheet.

Step 2

Melt the chocolate, butter and tahini in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water.

Step 3

Meanwhile, whisk the eggs, sugar and a pinch of salt together until light and fluffy. Fold in the mashed bananas, then the melted chocolate mix. You will notice the mixture starts to thicken a little. When everything is thoroughly mixed, carefully fold in the flour until fully incorporated.

Step 4

Turn into the prepared tin and drizzle the remaining tablespoon of tahini all over the top. Then, sprinkle over the sesame seeds.

Step 5

Bake for 25–30 minutes until the brownie is just set – it should still feel soft and moist. Leave the tin on a wire rack to cool for an hour or so.

by Rosie Sykes

I recently saw a scrappit of video of a sesame seed pod being opened. I had no idea how they grew, although if I had used my spidey senses I expect I could have figured it out. The pod is roughly the size of the last joint of your index finger and houses, I’m going to guess, about 160 seeds. Think of the packet sitting with all that unassuming modesty in your store cupboard, think of the jars of tahini you have used willy nilly over the years, the halva you have secretly gobbled or crumbled on ice cream, the seeds you have toasted and sprinkled with abandon… those are mighty little seeds.

They originate from the Indian and African continents I believe, but are also of course a staple in Middle Eastern cooking. You can also sprout them. I haven’t tried it yet but as I type I am visualising a small forest of sesame sprouts as instructed by the wonderfully calming Marie in this video (honestly if it wasn’t for the ads I could watch her all day)

PS anyone waiting for the next instalment of ‘Sicily - an au pair’s tale’, huge sorries. Soon.