BSG anniversary

It’s been a year since the partnership between the BSG and his beloved Magimix was formally validated by the church of John Lewis. To celebrate this, we headed back to the scene of the festivities, to Norfolk for a long weekend. After the prolonged spell of warm dry weather the place seemed a whole season ahead of a usual May (and perhaps two ahead of what was last year’s May 8^th – 9 degrees and horizontal drizzle). The hedgerows were festooned with lacy swathes of cow parsley, gigantic fishbone leaves hung from the horse chestnuts and a sweet smell pervaded the warm breeze. True, the ground looked parched and in desperate need of rain, but I was glad to miss it this time.



To celebrate this first anniversary, our first thoughts – naturally - concerned food. This is how we express, spoil, console and refresh ourselves and the prospect of concocting a feasting menu was terrifically indulgent and exciting. Yes, even more so than a roll-top bath and hot and cold running room-service in a sandy-bricked village in the Cotswolds…

Given the weather, how could we not visit Cookie’s Crab Shop? It was packed full of happy seasiders in their pack-a-macs. (NB: if you are shellfish-averse, tell someone before ordering the Royal Salad – the BSG spent half his lunch carefully halving his lunch, ending up with a mountain of smoked mackerel and rollmops opposite my crab and crayfish monolith.)

Impossible as it was to imagine ever eating again after such a feast, we managed an Italian beef stew, melting over some polenta laced with Fontina (thank you Antonio Carluccio), followed by something rather exciting we’d stumbled across in an abandoned Olive magazine (thank you Rosie’s mum): Pimm’s jelly. This one’s definitely for grown-ups, and will prove a winner for pudding at any barbeque. Furthermore, as if this wasn’t fun enough – it was still fizzy.

Pimm’s, lemon and mint jelly

(It doesn’t matter if you use sachets or leaves in this recipe – the below is leaves but I used a sachet of powder – whichever you can find. If it makes a pint rather than a litre, split the ratios accordingly, 7 lemonade: 2 Pimm’s: 1 water.)

10 gelatine leaves
Small bunch mint leaves
200ml Pimm's
700ml sparkling lemonade
Chopped cucumber , strawberries, orange and lemon slices, to serve

Soak the gelatine in a bowl of cold water. Heat 100ml water in a pan, drop in the mint leaves and leave to infuse for 5 minutes. Take out the leaves, reheat, then stir in the gelatine until dissolved. Add the Pimm's and lemonade and cool. Skim off any remaining foam. Pour into a 1-litre jelly mould and chill overnight until set.

Turn out onto a plate and surround the jelly with the traditional Pimm's garnish.

Steep hills and sloe business

The BSG’s ‘motherland’ is the Isle of Wight, so what better place to spend the August bank holiday than on its beaches in the sun - during those ‘sunny intervals’, at least.
And this is exactly what we did, along with his mum and some of our great friends.

Steephill Cove in the south coast of the island is like a scene plucked from a Blyton-esque seaside adventure. Reached solely by a path or two (anything big comes down in a wheelbarrow apparently), there stands a small cluster of houses, beach huts and shacks. As you pick your way along the seafront around the lobster pots and gaily coloured buoys, small cafes and restaurants become distinct among the nooks and crannies in the weather-worn wood – it couldn’t be more quintessential had a film set-dresser gone wild on it.

At the café at the end, and out of the cool south-westerly wind that had, I discovered, acted as the burning sun’s accomplice that morning as I lolled idly in my deckchair, we feasted upon shocking pink prawns (to match our sunburn) and fresh crab baguettes. Completing the spread were doorstop slices of brown bread and butter, which would have been oh so Milly-Molly-Mandy if it hadn’t all been rather decadently washed down with a lovely sparkling wine. All very jolly, which absolutely has to be the right word, and although the allergic BSG had to make do with coronation chicken, there were no complaints from him.

It being a UK bank holiday, the weather then set in slightly, so we embarked on another mission, to be completed in May next year, at our wedding. We had been thinking for ages about putting our own stamp on the reception as we love making things, so sloe gin seemed the perfect answer. Ruby coloured and syrupy, it always strikes a festive note, and goes well with cake and cheese.

The BSG makes much of the island’s special ‘microclimate’, so when his 101-year old great aunt - still going strong and as sharp as Paxman – told us that sloes would be out and where to find them, I could well believe that she’d be right. As their location must remain secret for posterity I am stopping here, but needless to say Auntie Pad hasn’t lost her magic - the crop was abundant, and there is still a lot more for picking later on, if you know where to look. We soldiered through the bushes as they did their best to fight us off – ouch.

Once frozen overnight, pricked (sweet revenge), sugared and sloshed, those 5 kilos (!) of sloes are working their jewelled magic. As a bonus, we have found another use for them, once they are out of the bottle in a few months’ time. Flicking through a book on preserves, we came across a recipe for a sloe gin and juniper jelly – great with game apparently. It’s all feeling rather rich and autumn-y to me. Surely summer's not packed its bags just yet?

Well-dressed lobster and phantom meringues

Hmmm, the jury’s out on the cheat’s hollandaise…I had to make an apology to the fish, as time-efficient though it was, it was a different sauce altogether. I also learnt a valuable lesson about making Eton Mess ahead of time – don’t add the meringues until the last minute, after an hour in the fridge they had completely vanished into the cream! Last minute nerves I suppose – nonetheless the evening was great fun, the ambient volume knob inched up by a bottle of delicious Dom Perignon 2000 (a present, wow!), and an amazing Chassagne Montrachet. Not bad for a Monday night.

Foodwise, the evening’s quiet star had to be the amazing buffalo mozzarella we had to start with, along with fragrant plum tomatoes and avocados the size of grapefruits, all from our local Italian deli, Olga Stores on Penton Street.

Dad lives in Norfolk, but work keeps him mostly in New York. When he is here, he does a lot of giving, and not great deal of taking, so when my brother and I saw a chink of daylight in this busy giving-schedule we seized upon the opportunity and staged a Dad-napping for Thursday afternoon. For the most part of last week, he had been looking rather longingly seawards every morning, alas to no avail – there were other things to be done, so Dave and I knew exactly where to take him that day.

Very early this year, on a fruitless (or rather crab-less) mission to Cromer, some friends and I had stumbled upon a secret shrine - a shack if I am honest- to all things crustacean, and fishy, somewhere along the north Norfolk coast. Aptly, it sits in a place named Salthouse. I am deliberately vague about its name – their wares are fresh and bountiful and smell of the sea, it would be too easy, and you need to feel that you have discovered it to compound your joy at what you find within. We plumped for the lobster salad, which not only comprised a day-glo red half-beast, but a generous smorgasbord of other wonders: cockles, herrings, smoked mackerel and prawns – the greatest hits from the Norfolk shores. The pot of mayonnaise and warm boiled new potatoes bathed in butter are a must. They are not licensed, but it seemed all the more Blyton-esque accompanied by a can of eye-wateringly fizzy ginger beer.

I think it is safe to say that this feast, preceded by a breezy walk along the nearby pebble beach at Cley, meant that the sea rushed into all the reaches of Dad’s soul that afternoon – enough to tide him over until the next time he’s here.

P.S: usually a nothing-on-toast-but-marmite girl, I have been bowled over by a gift from my 11 year old goddaughter, who has recently become and apiarist. Contrary to what one might think, this is not a lover of monkeys, but a bee-keeper. Words cannot describe quite how proud I am of this little person in general, but the thought of her in her suit, braving the bombardments of stingers while she collects their hard-worked treasure, just amazes me. Watch this space, the Nacton gold stuff will be on everybody’s Christmas list…