The windows are open

I think I can say it now. It's summer.

IT. IS. SUMMER.

It's summer because my toenails are blue.

All my socks are in the drawer.

Chotto-ma went to school in her pyjamas and bedroom slippers today (It's Pyjama Day)

Our clothes are drying on the clothesline instead of the radiators

Everyone's eating on pavements. And smiling at strangers.

Our room is all happysillysummery.




The evenings look like mornings.

We decided to move house. (Yeah, it's our summer thing)

D has a heat rash on his neck (A heat rash. Hear?)

We spent an hour at the V&A, and the cool felt good. (Cool? Good? In England?)

 We had ice-creams and beers by the Serpentine. That felt good too.

We're sleeping with the windows open at night.

There's jazz in the park, and hampers on the grass.

And the most that I have cooked lately, are things that cook by themselves.

Sujoc spiced chicken & summer vegetables

It's a one-dish, so all you do is put it in the oven and let it cook. You read a book. You watch the light outside go from four-o'clock-yellow to six-o'clock-white. And then you take it out. And you sit in the morning-like-evening, with a bottle of chilled Pinot. And you tuck in.

Summer makes me hungry for more. Of everything.

. . . . .

Ingredients ( I used vegetables I had in my kitchen. Feel free to add the ones you have in yours.)

4-6 chicken thighs
8-10 slices of chorizo
2 carrots, diced diagonally
2 potatoes, diced in circles
6-8 plum tomatoes, whole
6-8 shallots, whole
6 cloves garlic, crushed
A sprinkle of raisins
A drizzle of white wine (about 2 tbsp)
1 tsp sujoc (Or, soujok/soujoukh is available in most Middle Eastern shops. If not, the spice is a blend of fenugreek, cumin, garlic, black pepper, paprika, red chilli)
A few springs of basil (I used the fragrant, small-leafed Greek Basil)
Sea salt

Pre-heat your oven at 180 degrees C.
Put everything into an oven proof dish, and mix. Turn the chicken skin-side up. Tuck the chorizo under the vegetables.
Cover with foil, and put it into the oven for an hour-and-a-half.
Take off the foil, and put the dish back into the oven till the chicken is done, and the skin is crispy.

Paris at night

I'm a little bit in love with Jacques Prévert at the moment. His words are so simple, and complicated. Separate, and tangled. Ordinary, and magical. Like water in a river.

Here's the first of a series of his poems that I must share with you.

Paris at night


Three matchsticks lit one by one in the night
The first to see the whole of your face
The second to see your eyes
The third to see your mouth
And complete darkness to remember this all
With you locked in my arms.

 _ _ _ _ _ 

And the original...


Trois allumettes une à une allumées dans la nuit
La premiére pour voir ton visage tout entier
La seconde pour voir tes yeux
La dernière pour voir ta bouche
Et l'obscuritè tout entière pour me rappeler tout cela
En te serrant dans mes bras.




Jacques Prévert
(1900-1977)

Under the floorboards

I went underground on Saturday.

Off the face of the earth. Into a room under the floorboards. Here, a few brave people stooped over a common cause. To tame a beast with sharp fangs and a fickle foot. A foot that changed shape. And fangs so extraordinary that it had a name of its own. Feed Dog. Like an order. Feed Dog, or else.

As we gathered in the room under the street, Cambridge walked over our heads, and carried on as usual.

It would've been the perfect setting for a dark, Poe-ish play if it were not for a scrumptious Victoria sponge cake. And colourful, stripey mugs of coffee. And swathes of fabric printed with strawberries and scottie dogs. And Jill - the very antethesis of Allan Poe.

Even the room was cheery! All lovely painted furniture, and polka dot oilcloths.

And to kick the last of my edgy atmosphere, the beast that needed taming was called Janome. Rhyming with salami. Origami. I love mummy.

Here, meet Janome.

And meet Jill. Who has the nicest smiles, and many words a minute. She lives on a narrowboat. And spent the day teaching us a bit of magic.

Of invisible hems and instant buttonholes. Of rick rack, and triple zig zag. Wing needles, and bias tapes. All in the course of a day's sewing. Thanks Jill. And thank you, ladies, for a Saturday very well spent.

And what do you know, by the end of the day, my beast had begun to purr. It even wrote my name. And made a little cushion for Chotto-ma.

So. Who's the mummy, Janome?

Porridge

According to a friend, a really good porridge, apart from that big pinch of salt, has a little secret added in the end. Butter - melted in a pan till a nice brown. Drizzled onto the warm porridge. And stirred gently in. It's the best porridge tip I've ever received.


And here's porridge according to Spike Milligan.



Porridge

Why is there no monument
To Porridge in our land?
If it's good enough to eat,
It's good enough to stand!

On a plinth in London
A statue we should see
Of Porridge made in Scotland
Signed, "Oatmeal, O.B.E."
(By a young dog of three) 


Spike Milligan

The promised bread

So here it is, the bread I promised last week. It's a bit of an odd bread, this. In fact, it might not be much of
a bread at all. Maybe it should be called a loaf. It's a bit undecided, even in its disposition - not wholely sweet, nor stubbornly savoury.

But in that I-don't-really-know-who-I-am demeanour, the unsureness, lies its real charm. I am still talking about the bread.

This bread is a quirky one.

I like things quirky.

Quirks make me feel comfortable. Like a patchwork blanket where the squares don't perfectly meet. Quirky blankets, quirky bread, quirky people. They are who you put your feet up with. Even if your sock has a hole. Hell, sometimes it's all about the hole.

I can make my daughter happy just by cutting a hole in a piece of paper, and having her look through it. Suddenly, the world looks a little bit quirky, a little less regular. And it makes her giggle and giggle.

And, I am still talking about the bread. The loaf. The loafy bread. Oh, call it what you will, but I promise it will make you put your feet up like quirky things do. And it'll surprise your mouth with bits of sweet pear and salty cheese and crunchy seeds.

It's odd in such a good way. It's the bread that thought outside the bread box. Square loaf in a round hole.

Yeah, I know it's not really square.

Cheesy pear and pumpkin seed bread

This bread is gloriously good straight out of the oven, when the pieces of pears are folded up in gooey, melted cheese, and the pumpkin seeds are all toasty and crunchy. I chose cheddar because I wanted a no-frills, robust cheese cosying up to the sweet pear. But you can posh-up the bread by replacing the cheddar with gorgonzola, or any other blue-veined cheese. That works wonderfully too.

The other thing we discovered with this bread is that it tastes great a day later, when toasted in a flat pan till lightly browned on both sides. Buttered, or not.

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups plain flour

2 soft pears (3 if small), peeled and cubed

1 cup grated cheddar (or gorgonzola cut into small pieces)

2 tbs pumpkin seeds

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

2 eggs

1/2 cup olive oil

1 tbs butter melted

1 tsp olive oil to grease the bread tin

1/2 cup cold milk

Some grated cheese to sprinkle on top

In a big bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and sea salt. To this, mix the pear, cheddar (or gorgongola) and half of the pumpkin seeds. With your hands, or a wooden spoon, mix them in well.
In a separate bowl mix the eggs, olive oil and melted butter. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well. Add a bit of cold milk if the mixture feels too tight.
Grease your bread tin. Spoon the mixture into the tin. Sprinkle the remaining pumpkin seeds on top. 

Bake in the oven, at 160 degrees C, for 45 minutes. Then take it out of the oven and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top. Put it back in for another 5-10 minutes. 

Insert a knife in the centre of the bread. If it comes our clean, the bread is baked.

Slice, and enjoy!

 

Walk, and you shall have bread

Having lived in England for some time now, I have come to hang different shades of grey on different pegs. Today is SoftSilverGrey. That's grey, dipped in a fondue of white, gooey light. And it would be as delicious if the trees were not bending over like pliant servants to a despotic wind.

You know I have a thing for pale light. I've beaten that drum before. But not when the wind cuts through my clothes. That's when I cover my toes, make myself a very big cup of coffee, give myself a piece of chocolate, and burrow in.

And I write a post about another day. A Saturday. When we went for a walk around Ely. A little old town, with a big old cathedral. A short train ride away from Cambridge.

Some time ago, I took photographs of Ely covered in snow. So, now that the season has turned (or, darn well should), I thought I'd show you some of what lay under all that white.

Right in the middle of the town stands the cathedral where Colin Firth stuttered through his King's Speech. And around the shadow of that cathedral lies a meadow with ponies and wildflowers.

The town has a little 'courtyard', where the bustling Saturday Market sets up its stripey stalls. Stalls with coloured pots and cured meat. Tea leaves* and table cloths.

From here, a road slides down to the River Ouse, where boats bob with flocks of greedy geese. Often, these boats are homes to artists. And come summer, they sometimes open up their little doors and turn their tiny floating room into an art gallery. You can walk in to paintings propped up on the bed, on chairs, and next to the window through which a duck peeps in.

Next to the boats is a pub with views of the water, and taps full of good beer. And a riverside restaurant that cooks lovely, seasonal British food.

After the cathedral, Ely's next claim to fame might just be a tearoom called The Peacock. With it's wall full of Wisteria, it's sublime almond tea and the softest, moistest apple & walnut cake. All soaked in old world English charm. It even has a toilet that's worth a queue.

Walk back up to the high street for its charity shops and coffee shops. Turn the corner to the King's School where kids walk in with their violin cases.

All around town are dogs on a walk. And heads of white hair.

But here's my best bit of Ely - the loveliest little bookstore, like the ones that used to be. Three floors of books, signed first-editions shelved in nooks and crannies, a charming children's alcove, the narrowest wooden stairs, coffee table books under old oak tables, large sashed windows, and cups of tea.

Yes, it was a long walk, wasn't it? A full day's walk. The kind of walk that should, could, end with a fruity-savoury bread, warm out of the oven. A bread that's sweet, and salty, and very melty-cheesy.

And I did mean to lay it all out for you. Really I did. Complete with a pot full of tea, gingham napkins and flowers on the table.

But this post has stretched so very long, I'll have to keep it for next time. Walk you did, and bread you shall have. I promise. And it'll be worth the wait. I promise.

I'll have the bread baked, and recipe written. And maybe, when you take yours out of the oven, the clouds will part, and a grey day will turn sunny.

Yeah, it's that kind of bread.

(* To the lovely girls at Samovar Tea House, if you're reading this: I tried emailing the photographs to info@samovarteahouse.co.uk, but they come bouncing right back. There might be something wonky there. Sorry!)