writing, ideas, food, utopia
I was so excited by last night's autumn leaf broth that I needed to taste more - thank goodness I'd not used all the leaves in the first experiment! Even better, just a few pages on in the same book was another recipe with leaves at its heart: 'Vegetables cooked with autumn leaves' (p 194).… Continue reading The glory of cooking with autumn leaves – part 2
I'm still working through the Fäviken cookbook, and armed with the weekend's forage of autumn leaves in various stages of maturity tonight seemed like a good moment to try the 'Broth of autumn leaves' (p190). I wasn't convinced that I had exactly the right moss (or the perfect leaves), but I was confident that they were… Continue reading The glory of cooking with autumn leaves – part 1
Nasturtiums are one of those fantastic plants that combine ease of growth with good looks. Their big tough seeds always come up and the plants seem to survive whatever you or the weather might throw at them. I plant trailing nasturtium seeds around the edges of the pots on my small London terrace every year,… Continue reading Capering around with nasturtium seeds
Damsons are the most delicious plum to cook with. Sharp and deeply flavoured, in my opinion they make the very best chutney you can eat, and the strongest flavoured plum jam. I was overjoyed to find them in my local Borough Market a few years ago – but not so overjoyed by the exorbitant price.… Continue reading Damson Chutney
The only blackberries that really taste of anything are the ones you find in the hedgerow in late summer and early autumn. They are usually much smaller than the ones in the supermarket punnets, but their flavour is intense. When I was little we’d spend weekend after weekend filling buckets with fruit from the fields… Continue reading Bramble (blackberry) chutney
Almost all the chutney I make ends up looking a dark brownish black, mainly because it is made with dark fruit and/or dark brown sugar. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that even though the different versions might taste different, they do all tend to look the same. This time, I was… Continue reading Apricot chutney with a touch of wild cherry
Jane Levi 