in the soil

A day supposed to be dry with a moderate breeze manifests as grey and dull with flurries of not-quite-rain blown back and forth on sharp gusts from seemingly every point of the compass, an annoying day in short to spend outside but there is work to be done. I arrive dispirited thinking that I have left it too late to get the plot ready for the slow winter, I have no leeks or brassicas to put in, no cold-hardy salad leaves and no clover or other green manure to keep the soil covered but then I look again and think I have my garlic in (not yet growing), I have my agretti left to go to seed to save for next year, I have self-seeded fennel covering every spare gap, waiting beneath there is the wild garlic, the rhubarb, and there one trencher of fresh earth ready for the broad beans. Once I have torn down the skeletons of the summer’s cardoons the new growth looks clean and sprightly and so in a fit of optimism I bundle it up and wrap it in plastic against the light to blanch and force it, I hope, into bone-white ribs to serve as crudites or lightly fry, a welcome freshness against the soups and braises of the winter.

in the kitchen

One annoying side effect of the short days and low light is that I take far fewer pictures of food and therefore (since pictures of dishes are my main method of note-keeping) often struggle to remember exactly what I have been cooking. Lots of sausagemeat, it feels like, mainly as a white ragu with chunks of Crown Prince squash which collapse slightly and stain the whole thing a pleasant orange, and one day for staff lunch I siphon off a little of the raw meat to cook into a sort-of Korean stew with onion, ginger, gochujang, tomato and soy sauce, reduced into a dark smear to go on top of rice with pickled cucumbers and things. Good! At home umming and ahhing about what to cook for dinner (edging towards sausage again) I remember it is nearly Bonfire Night* which means baked potatoes and normally would mean soup too but I don’t fancy soup and we top them with mince of the genre that St John or Quality Wines would serve on toast, Worcester sauce and tomato puree and so on, another dark smear.

*Every year I remember that it is traditional to eat carlin peas on Bonfire Night, too late to buy them or to soak them even if I had bought them. Next year!

on the page

I’m having another week where I can’t really concentrate on books and I keep choosing ones which require more concentration – I am still working my way through Dreaming of Dead People and I started reading The Clerkenwell Tales which is a little more pacy although I am yet to really get into it. Instead in the evenings I browse through James Chatto and WL Martin’s A Kitchen in Corfu which is mostly anecdote / essay with recipes thrown in, easily the most appetising sort of recipe book if not always the most useful. Mostly it makes me wish I had a cool room at the back of the house in which to keep the year’s supply of olive oil and home-made wine, a few cheeses, perhaps a smoked herring or too, instead of several cupboards it is high time I tidied.