Now, two weeks cooking for a family in Norfolk. They
have the most incredible aged walled garden. It feels like the secret garden. The espaliers
have long since escaped, their gnarled limbs wrenched away from wire 'guy ropes', and the peach trees have burst through the top of the elegant glasshouses. Raspberries are rampant, ripe and ramble everywhere - liberated from Victorian corset-like stringency. A turn-of-the-century spade decays in what seems like the spot it was thrust into all those years ago. It’s moving and poignant. But, it goes without saying, that in August there grows gallons of glut. I’m here to help turn it to goodies fit for jam jars, bottles, the freezer and hungry tummies. Mostly, there is soft fruit. And herbs. Right now mostly blackcurrants, redcurrants and raspberries, so here’s how I made a start: Blackcurrant cordial, blackcurrant bunny-shape-jellies, Ballymaloe blackcurrant sorbet, blackcurrant pavlova with fudge sauce, gooseberry and elderflower cream crumble, raspberry ripple meringues, raspberry soufflés, raspberry and white chocolate ice-cream stars, raspberry jam, chocolate & blackberry mousse and a cherry mousse cheesecake.
Ready for the freezer...
One Sunday lunch there was good old fashioned roast
ham and parsley sauce (it’s nice to use parsley in it’s own right, especially
as there’s so much of it), and vegetables pretty as a picture - rainbow chard, new
born carrots still with their tops, studded with precious podded peas and the
green green insides of broad beans.
There’s a brilliant little fish shop (The North
Norfolk Fish Company) tucked away in Apple Yard, Holt. They had glistening
Dover sole so fresh they looked (taking a fish’s memory into account) as if
they still remembered the sea. They were baked whole and once the top skin was removed bearing juicy
bright, snowy white flesh they were spread with a jewel-green garden herb salsa
verde and courgette flowers stuffed with courgette risotto.
One evening twenty people came over. For them a huge
Thai green curry with handfuls of purple basil leaves and black onion seeds and
lemon rice served in brilliant huge pottery bowls. For pudding; whopping cocoa
meringues with whipped yellow cream and plenty of juicy just-picked raspberries.
Another evening there came forty teenagers. A
‘gathering’! For them, half a dozen gratins of lasagna with homemade cottage-loaf
garlic bread stuffed with more emerald green parsley. For pudding; a stacker
box of blackcurrant ripple ice-cream with 'white asparagus’ meringue wands and
stewed silky blackcurrants.
