Spectator Life

‘Casseroles,’ Julia Child wrote to her long-term penpal Avi DeVotos, ‘I even hate the name, as it always implies to me some god awful mess.’ On this, Julia and I are in full agreement: I have a real problem with the word ‘casserole’. And ‘stew’ for that matter. Both of them sound so unappetising, so school dinners. But Child and I are also aligned in our hypocrisy, because actually, deep down, I love a casserole, as long as you call it anything else. Like me, despite her vocal opposition to the casserole, Child loved bourguignons and carbonnades, coq au vin and poulet poele à l'estragon, and wrote about them with enthusiasm and appetite. Of course, all of these are casseroles, just with fancy (or specific) names.

Hackney’s rise in the 2000s from dangerous and affordable to cool, cooler and coolest eventually made it a kind of Chelsea of east London, with the expensive housing – house prices have grown 281 per cent between 2001 – and glamorous dining establishments to match. It may have become a magnet for Fullham exiles but Hackney never quite lost its aura of cool, and its transformation into one of the priciest areas of London has come not with a dumbing down but with the refinement of a distinctive, creative dazzle. The payoff? A proliferation of yummy, interesting restaurants.

There are some fruits which, while lovely cooked, are probably at their best fresh: nectarines and peaches, raspberries, mango. But blackberries, as delightful as they are eaten fresh from the bush mid-forage, come alive when cooked. As you heat blackberries, and they break down and give up their juices, begin to smell like violets and wine. They become more complex, perfumed; their sweet-sour flavour is softened into something more elegant, even more irresistible than when fresh. Normally in a pie, those beautiful juices are a cause for concern. They’re a one-way ticket to a soggy bottom, something we try to avoid with careful blind-baking, or pre-cooking, or layering the base with something like ground almonds to soak up any liquid.

The UK has something of a reputation for butchering those classic European dishes on which entire cultures seem to be founded. Think spaghetti carbonara creamy enough to make an Italian weep or the kind of rubbery, watery beef bourguignon that is the culinary equivalent of our grizzly, grey weather to any self-respecting Frenchman or woman. But perhaps no dish is more maligned or widely miscooked than Paella. Certainly, we’re not helped in this respect by our celebrity chefs. And the usual suspects are at it again – Jamie Oliver reportedly received death threats for adding chorizo to his version and Gordon Ramsay followed suit, eliciting a similar reaction.

A funny thing happened in lockdown. Bars shut but they seeded a growing crop of bottle shops that, since freedom has been declared have either turned back into, or become, bars in their own right. And now that we can, there is pure pleasure in twisting bottles around in the light, mulling labels and wine lists first hand instead of squinting at them online. There is also a comforting intimacy to wine bars that sits at odds with the clatter of a pub: an air of sophistication, even if you have no idea what the sommelier is talking about.

More than new pencil cases, name tapes, and the smell of school halls, back to school season always makes me think of proper puddings. There’s a category of pudding that seems reserved for properly old cookbooks, a handful of old-fashioned pubs, and dinner ladies. Spotted dick, cornflake tart, and jam roly poly. Perhaps its ubiquity at school lunches accounts for its ghoulish alias: dead man’s leg or dead man’s arm. School children have a taste for the macabre, but to be fair to them when the pudding is unwrapped and before it is sliced, it does look fairly uninspiring, and not a hundred miles away from a pallid limb. This probably wasn’t helped by the fact that, before baking parchment and foil were widespread, the pudding would be steamed in a shirtsleeve.

Any avid gin drinker will know that botanicals are all the rage at the moment. From juniper to orange peel to lavender, the ingredients list on the backs of bottles are getting more elaborate by the day, and seemingly more exotic. But what may come as a surprise is the growing number of distillers who are sourcing all of their ingredients in Britain. Tom Warner was one of the first distillers to incorporate homegrown botanicals into gin - a craze that has now taken off across the market.

What do you picture when you hear the term Art Deco? Fantastical ideas of Baz Lehrman’s Great Gatsby, gilded brasseries and de facto extravagance  fail to capture the pastiche of styles making up this early 20thcentury movement. Somehow, what was once a collective word for the artistic expressions that followed Art Nouveau has morphed into a dizzying, dancing circus troupe of hairbands, flapper dresses and sidecars. In Britain, the lasting legacy of the movement has been in our architecture.

I’m not sure that many people would choose the unassuming garibaldi as their favourite biscuit. Garibaldis aren’t flashy: there’s no luxury chocolate, no pretty, brightly-coloured icing, no fancy-pants shapes. They aren’t squidgy, trendy cookies, or wholesome buttery shortbread. In fact, they’re often called squashed-fly biscuits because the currants baked into the dough resemble, well, squashed flies. And yet, they persist. Garibaldi biscuits have stuck around for 150 years, outseeing fads and fickle consumers, keeping their place on supermarket shelves for longer than almost any other biscuit. The biscuits have an unlikely namesake: Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian General, who fought for Italian unification.

There is surely no better way of passing the time than by doing nothing at all, fuelled by a large well-chilled drink. Nothing beats hanging out with a couple of similarly empty-headed chums in a warm patch of sun, glass in hand, watching the world go by. It turns out that those past-masters of taking it easy, the Barbadians – or Bajans – have a term for this excellent use of one’s time: liming. And given that Barbados is home to the world’s longest-established rum distillery – the peerless Mount Gay, in operation since 1703 if not before – it’s all but impossible to lime without the aid of plenty of rum.

When I was first playing about with the recipe, the sun was shining. Every day was hotter than the last, and I found myself seeking out dishes that were cooling, that were fresh, and made me feel like I was on holiday. Looking ahead to when this recipe might go out I was fairly confident that it would hit the right note at the height of summer: July might have a damp day here and there, but overall, it seemed a relatively safe bet for days and nights of heat, the kind of time where there’s a sudden run on paddling pools, and ice cream becomes near medicinal. But as I write this, August is letting me down. The early summer spells have vanished and it is looking distinctly autumnal outside the window. My neighbour has just run past the window in a raincoat.

When a dear friend recently was clearing out her dad’s house following his death, she uncovered a tin of ancient Harrods’ Madras Curry Powder – several decades old and emblazoned for some reason with the name 'Ameer' on the front. This sort of attic find is considered an offending item nowadays, if the recent ‘curry is racist’ furore is to be believed. Madras curry powder is an essential ingredient of Anglo-Indian cuisine. Indeed, the flavouring is as much a part of British cuisine as Worcestershire sauce and English mustard. And it is, happily, still labelled 'Madras' – the imperial name for the city of Chennai –  when bought today. 'Chennai curry powder' doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

I confess, the idea of a tres leches cake did not initially appeal to me. A dry sponge soaked in a variety of tinned milks sounds, at best, like bland nursery food and, at worst, tooth-achingly saccharine. ‘Milky’ has never been one of the words that I hope to see in connection with anything other than ‘coffee’ or ‘Way’. But I saw it likened to trifle and curiosity got the better of me – and I’m so glad it did. Actually, a tres leches cake is not terribly like a trifle at all, although I can see where the comparison came from. Soaked puddings are nothing new, and that’s really what a tres leches cake is.

I’m normally averse to leftovers: it’s not a trait I like in myself. I’d far rather be able to eat the same thing for days on end, especially when it’s seasonal veg, or an enormous, hearty stew that I’ve spent ages making. It’s a sensible way of cooking: healthy, seasonal, cheap, time-saving. But I’m easily bored, and the best laid plans of mice and men the night before, clingfilmed or tupperwared up, no longer appeal the following lunchtime. I end up parcelling those thoughtful, carefully prepared dishes onto my husband and plumping instead for so-called novelty in the form of toast, or a sandwich. For some reason, soup is the one dish that doesn’t suffer this fate.

Leg of lamb à la ficelle: 'First, inherit an ancient stone farmhouse lost somewhere in the hills of the Luberon, then string up a leg of young lamb over a smoky wood fire...' As I chuckled over this sardonic intro to a recipe in one of my favourite cookery books of recent years, Sardine by Alex Jackson, my laughter quickly died as I realised that not only will I never inherit such a farmhouse — but I’ll also never again go to the restaurant that launched the book. Sardine was one of my best-loved London restaurants of the last decade, tucked away in an unlikely and not especially salubrious corner behind a drive-thru McDonald’s in the unfashionable hinterland between Old Street and Angel.

The odd torrential thunderstorm aside, the summer is in full swing. Hurrah! Of course, most of us are going to have to enjoy it here in Blighty rather than sur le continong or in the Maldives or Mauritius, so ridiculously complex and uncertain does travel abroad remain. But, heck, if we can’t neck fine Provencal rosé by some sun-dappled French pool then we can darn well drink well here. France can come to us in vinous form and we can wallow with joy in our native vino too, with English sparklers and still wines better than ever. Transport yourself with my following suggestions for a great British summer.