Vegetables in pots 2009

(Latest developments)


VEGETABLES IN POTS (Latest developments)

I wrote in this blog last year of my experiments with growing vegetables in pots in my London garden. Now, in the spring of 2009, a new idea has come about with the purchase and delivery of 3 plastic sacks for growing new, salad, and main crop potatoes (the bags being 17” or 43 cm. tall and 14”or 36 cm. in diameter, and supplied with 5 seed potatoes for each sack).
As my London garden is small (4 paces by 16 paces) and with potatoes not to be planted in the same soil for several years, the compost filling would have had to be replaced each year. And where would I put the spent compost in a mostly paved garden?
So I decided to use the sacks for (roughly) the rotation of crops, retaining their compost filling – being a mixture of my home-made compost mixed with the contents of grow bags – the latter being excellent in quality and obtained at a minimal cost.
Wanting only new potatoes, which are very special to eat and hard to obtain early in the season, I will use the 3 bags for: sack 1 (BEANS) for dwarf French beans, radishes and dwarf Italian courgettes, sack 2 (ROOTS) for early potatoes (Swift) followed by a planting of carrots and beetroot, and sack 3 (BRASSICAS) for radishes, Swiss chard and leeks. The correct rotation has been plotted on paper for the next 3 years.
I will write on the results and conclusions.
Although this summer’s experiments will be dealing mainly with the success or failure of the three rotation sacks, these can not be divorced from other vegetable-growing in the garden. Even flowers are connected to the ensemble, providing colour, light or shade, and flexible design.
So, beside the sacks, I am experimenting this year with growing potatoes in ordinary black plastic buckets (with drainage holes and crocks). As last year, there will be broad beans in buckets, asparagus in a large pot (mainly for the foliage), parsley in a pot, thyme in a pot, sorrel in a pot (having over-wintered well), salad leaves in pots, leek seed in a pot (to be planted in sack 3 when handleable), tarragon in a pot, fennel in a pot, a globe artichoke in a pot (decorative), tomatoes in last year’s ground (now soaked with dilute Jeyes Fluid because of possible blight), mint in a sunken bucket, rosemary in a pot, sage in a pot and, new this year, autumn-planted garlic in the ground and shallots in the ground (both in a limited space – but they do not need much.
For fruit, there is the productive and trouble-free black wine grape (Triomphe d’Alsace) giving shade beneath an arbour and fruit along its 73 metres length around and about and back and forth around the garden’s walls, an espalier-trained Morello cherry growing on the north-facing wall from daffodil-planted ground and, in pots nearby, a fig, a pear and an apple.
I am trying yet again to grow mistletoe on the apple, binding in the seeds beneath bark with string. These experiments were coated with rubber solution as protection from the elements. To blend the pale string bindings in with the colour of the bark, they were then coated with soil before the rubber solution set.
For the decorative aspect, there is an earthenware trough of spring crocus and snowdrops. Pots of tulips and lilies will give small blocks of bright colour. Impatiens (busy lizzies) will give masses of colour throughout the summer months, with fuchsias and geraniums (pelargoniums) providing the same.
Roses (The Reverend F. Page-Roberts and Typhoon – the latter, in my opinion, being best rose ever) grow from earth in a corner of the garden.
The winter-flowering cyclamen will become dormant in their pots, as will the generously-flowered mahonia.
On the kitchen window sill is a splendid jalapeno chilli (having flowered and fruited summer and winter), the last year’s Bolivian begonia corm to grow again (it did not), and an aloe vera.
So, as spring appears and leads to summer, there will be a lot to watch and look after. What an interesting year of pleasure lies ahead.

THE BEGINNING OF MAY 2009
It is the rotation growing of vegetables in the three sacks that is my main interest – not only as information for those with limited space on a balcony or small patio, but also for the pleasure and interest of the blind.
To make good use of the compost soil in my three bags I planted radish seed in about one quarter of bags 1 (BEANS) and bag 3 (BRASSICAS) for an early crop They have made rather too much leaf, and thus taken up too much room. I have only harvested a few radishes so far. They were sliced and effectively added to a lettuce salad.
In bag 1 (BEANS), two dwarf courgettes and three dwarf French beans have established themselves well (having all been started in pots on my kitchen window sill). So, having bought a new packet of dwarf broad beans to replace those in a bucket that had either failed to germinate or been eaten by mice, I put three seeds in among the radishes to grow through and provide a crop later than those growing in buckets.
In bag 3 (BRASSICAS) The Swiss chard seedlings do well and will be thinned. Then, when radishes have flourished and been eaten, leek seedlings (doing well in a pot) will go in where the radishes grew.
In bag 2 (ROOTS) not all the early variety of potato (Swift) came into leaf at the same time. So at least three layers of compost were added to cover those early enough to push leaf upwards through each layer as it was added, and also on those as yet unseen. The interest now for this bag will be to see how productive will be the “pushy” potato plants as opposed to the “un-pushy” ones.
Carrot and beetroot seedlings do well in a pot. Some will be transplanted (with newly sown seed) into the 2 (ROOTS) sack after all the new potatoes have been harvested. Just when that will occur will depend, I am told, on when the potato plants start to produce flowers. So I may have to delve down to harvest the “pushy” new potatoes before the “un-pushy” ones. We will see when the time comes.
Everything else in the garden, as mentioned at the start of this piece, is doing well – except for the asparagus in a large pot. We should be harvesting one or two edible spears by this year, but none appeared, except for four seedlings that I planted, as seed, in the pot last autumn. I often wonder why more than one variety of a plant in a pot only produces one of those varieties successfully. Is there a fight beneath the soil where the strongest prevails?
There will be a future reports.

THE THIRD WEEK IN MAY 2009
I will abandon the growing of radishes in rotation sacks. They make too much greenery and not enough radish. They just take up too much room.
We harvested one bucket of new potatoes (Swift) by turning the bucket upside down on the garden table to harvest the spuds and return the compost to the bucket for Butternut Squash plants. Its four spent potato seeds were composted with their haulms (an action discouraged in the gardening world as it might propagate blight).
The crop was surprisingly good, giving a feast of new potatoes for two. But I will look for a tastier variety than Swift for next year.
So, growing potatoes in a bucket is a success. I will leave Swift potatoes in their ROOTS sack until later, to gain size and, I hope, taste.
Dwarf courgette and dwarf French bean plants do well in their BEANS sack.

FIRT WEEK OF JUNE 2009
We tipped out the second bucket of (Charlotte) potatoes. From its four seed potatoes we obtained 2 ½ pounds of splendid new potatoes. Half of them we boiled and, with melted butter, mint and a little vinegar, served them to guests in the bowl above their hot cooking water. Warm and buttery, and held by guests over paper napkins, they were a huge success.
So planting new potato seed in ordinary black plastic buckets (with crocks and drainage holes) is a real success story.
Having composted the radish from the BRASSICAS sack, I planted leek seedlings next to the young plants of Swiss chard.
I found that planting these young leeks deep in holes (made with the handle of a wooden kitchen spoon) was difficult because of their dangling roots. My sister (who knows about these things) told me to trim the roots with scissors and cut off the tips of the plants. This I have done, wondering if there will be any difference between “dangly” and “trimmed”.
` Now comes the most interesting part so far concerning my rotation sack experiments. Delving down through light compost to harvest new Swift potatoes, grown solely in my ROOTS sack, I was surprised to find, instead of a much larger crop than those grown in buckets, a much smaller one. And, as rather expected, more potatoes formed where compost had been added several times when green haulm showed through than where the seed potatoes had grown straight up through compost before green leaf ever emerged.
Elsewhere in the garden all proceeds as hoped for. Dwarf beans and squash plants do well in the buckets of soil previously used for growing new potatoes. Dwarf broad beans are flowering well, also in buckets. There are several pears and apples fruiting well. The Morello cherry crop is a small one. Lilies are about to flower. Lettuce, rocket, and sorrel leaves are harvested as wanted, and when a variety of lettuce is about to go to seed its stems have been composted and new seed planted in their place. Tomatoes grow well on a wall.
Main summer colour is provided, as always, by masses of busy lizzie flowers. Herbs do well, except for tarragon, which does not seem to like life in a pot. The pieris, Forest Flame (oh, what a wonderful small garden bush), changes its costume month by month. Two fuchsias come into flower to add colour. The lavender in a pot grew rather lopsidedly, but makes growth from its base and from the cuttings put in beside it in the spring. When it has flowered it will be cut right back. I should have been fiercer last autumn. The globe artichoke, grown in a pot for its leaf will be abandoned. As will the fennel plant.
A great success has been the campanula, ever since it was given to me as four plants and then crush-planted in a small trough. Each time it has flowered profusely and then been sheared right back. And after every cutting-back it has taken almost no time to grow more leaf and flower again.
I will add to this survey later in the summer.

FIRST WEEK IN JULY 2009

Although my crop rotation sacks do well, with French beans (courgettes and broad beans not so well) in one of them, good Swiss chard (White Silver) and leeks in another, and fine carrots and beetroot in the third (planted after the potato “crop”), I have come to the conclusion that next year the three rotation sacks will be abandoned in favour of six black plastic buckets with crocks and drainage holes. They will be more moveable, easier to handle, separating the crops and, for decorative purposes, will not necessarily need to be near to each other.
It is interesting to note that the plastic sacks were bought last year solely as sacks for growing potatoes, and were no good at it – those grown in buckets doing much better. I was not alone in being greatly disappointed in the sack method.
I learn that in medieval times rotation of crops had already been discovered to offer great benefits, but in a four-year rotation, with one being a fallow year.
Changes in the rest of my small garden have been the abandonment of strawberries in their elegant, open top clay pot with lipped holes in the side. The straggly strawberry plants have been replaced by ordinary pelargoniums (geraniums) in the open top, and trailing pelargoniums in the side holes. This has already become a colourful, central focal point. The strawberry crop was never much to speak of, and will not be missed.
I have bought more grow bags for their peaty compost filling, and found, when bringing them into the house that they fitted very snugly across the doorway, so might be ideal for house flood-protection should that ever be necessary.
My two-year-old jalapeno chilli plant started to form irregular-shaped chillies and will be abandoned (it recovered). It will be replaced with a chilli plant (of unknown parentage) bought at our local fête/dog show (this was abandoned).
I keep ginger root in a fruit bowl. Two of these lumps started to produce growth in the form of green spikes. So they have been planted in compost outside in a pot. Will they flourish?
A self-sown common foxglove was a great success, growing from a pot of pelargoniums. Bumblebees loved it, falling out of its flowers like drunken sailors out of a pub. After seed pods were formed in place of its flowers, I cut it into sections and attached these to vine wires above where I grow foxgloves on purpose – hoping that its seeds will dry, fall, and self-sow like its parent.
The mahonia that flowered and scented the garden in winter, formed clusters of blue berries. These have now all been eaten and enjoyed by blackbirds. The plant’s only drawback is its spiky leaves which, when fallen and dry, can penetrate the skin when handled.
Children love to watch our robin feeding on cheese bits from my knee. When living in the country I always grew a sensitive plant (mimosa pudica) to amuse child visitors. Touch the fern-like leaves and the plant reacts immediately by folding up its leaves tightly together. I must try to find a packet of its seeds, but I may be too late this year. Having grown it in the past in a lean-to greenhouse, will it grow outside in a London garden, I wonder?

MID AUGUST 2009

I was disappointed early in the year with the asparagus grown in a pot. But seedlings, possibly planted two years ago, have produced a fine crop of fronds. These have been tied to a centrally placed bamboo to forma whispy tree. So I have regained hope in harvesting a few token spears next year.
I was told that transplanted carrots would not do well. And they have not. Some did turn into stunted carrots with a bent-up root tip. Those planted from seed (after the potato failure) look well.
The new potatoes that did so well in black plastic buckets were replaced with French beans (fair, but not great) and butternut squash (making lots of flowers).
Soon after we ate our good but rather bland new potatoes, some early English-grown ones appeared in the market. These were delicious. They were Maris Bard. I will grow that variety next year. They even did well when slow-cooked in a stew, holding together well. They are of a nice oval shape with pure white flesh.
Lettuces, though satisfactory, have been replaced by rocket, which has already provided me with plenty of seed for next year.
As for those much-vaunted sacks, French beans and courgettes were a complete disappointment. Swiss chard has done well, though. And leeks might work.
The garlic and shallot crop, planted close together in garden soil, produced a poor harvest.
It is noticeable to every gardener that certain crops do well in some years and not in others. This must depend mainly on climatic conditions. So a failure this year might produce a success the next. It looks this way with my tomatoes (which caught the blight last year).
A kitchen window sill chilli plant (Naga), bought in Brick Lane (so favoured by the Bangladeshi community there) has grown into a fine looking mini-tree, and is covered with embryonic chillies. It looks, though, as if these might all mature at the same time, when one really wants a plant to provide a constant succession of chillies, like my jalapeno bush.
This year’s large crop of grapes mature unevenly.
The sensitive plant failed to germinate from seed outdoors, but has done so on the kitchen window sill.
Two ginger plants thrive in a pot outside, forming good spikes of leaves.

EARLY SEPTEMBER 2009
I usually cut vine leaves away to expose wine grape bunches to sunlight. This year I left a top hamper of leaves, partly in the hope that passing birds would not see the fruit, and partly because the compost bin was too full to cope with all the extra material.
Fusker the cat had reduced the pigeon count, as he is particularly partial to cornering them and extracting their feathers. Other major grape predators are starlings, of which there are few about this year. Even our robin (Hoverbird) has been grabbing a small red grape or two – with his expert hovering technique being ideal for the job of extracting a small ripe one from a hanging bunch – later to cough out the pip.
So the prospects of a good harvest were excellent, weather conditions throughout the spring and summer having clearly been ideal. And so it turned out to be.
From red grapes (Triomphe d’Alsace) in near perfect condition we made 5 gallons of must, which even showed signs of fermentation as we stripped the grapes from their stems. Our dunnock, for some reason, enjoyed the harvest, running around beneath us as we were cutting off bunches of grapes and filling fermentation bins.
The remainder of the grapes, consisting of the later-to-ripen white Seyval Blanc, Fragolino (Strawberry Grape) and a few still-ripening reds, should all blend well to make a good rosé at a later date.
Elsewhere, tomatoes flourish, as do salad leaves. Busy Lizzies have recovered from an unusual set-back, with the pink variety taking over from its companions of several colours.
The pot of asparagus continues to please me in its tied-in-tree-like form. Its flower buds are now in evidence, so we should get a later display of red berries.
We harvested our three pears, but not yet the fivet green apples – both from single-stemmed trees grown in pots.
I’m thinking of using those pretty useless potato sacks for climbing beans next year.

To Dieppe, 24 July 2009

A few days before leaving for foreign parts one begins to think of what to take in the luggage, and to look at a list of “reminders”.
A glance before leaving this last time revealed, quite naturally, no mention of “teeth”. Had there been I might have taken more serious notice of a slight tooth ache that was being subdued by the application of neat TCP.
At the same time I should have connected the facts that, even to me, my breath smelled strange, and that I had a bad tooth.
A day before we were due to leave it felt as if the offending tooth was rising from its painful socket. Moreover, whenever I closed my jaw the protruding and painful wisdom tooth was the first to make contact with others.
We go to France to eat – among other things. So to be unable to enjoy French food without pain was a prospect not to be contemplated.
Margreet almost forced me to visit the dentist for an emergency appointment. She was absolutely right to do so. The tooth was extracted to my great relief.
Less one tooth (the first ever to have departed my jaw) we set off the following day for, unusually for us, a summer crossing of the Channel.
Because of the crowds of parents and children, coupled with the sea of rollers being funnelled into the Channel from the Bay of Biscay on a westerly wind, for Margreet to have booked a cabin was another piece of wisdom aforethought.
I write about Dieppe quite often, the changes over the years, the restaurants, people and history, because the town is really our second home in France – a home without the hassle of actually owning a house abroad.
We were last there barely four months ago. The changes in that short space of time were considerable for such an unchanging port. The recession had arrived. Shops (many) had closed and been re-opened by other hopefuls. Sales were in progress everywhere – and at the height of the holiday season. The place, mid-week, seemed to be only a little busier than in winter months.
The cancaillerie, where we bought Pro Ven Di soap, taps for our mother of vinegar jars, and accoutrements for winemaking and bottling, had closed for good.
Piles of scrap metal sat waiting on the dockside, waiting for times when steel would be more in demand – the gathering rust not making a lot of difference to its value. And on the quayside near to where the ferry pulls in to dock, the usual few piles of ballast were now enormous, with aggregates unwanted for building work.
And yet, a change of quite unnecessary expenditure was to be seen outside our favourite bar, the Café de la Paix, at the very hub of port and town activity. A monstrous bronze sculpture had been placed where before had been a hump roundabout. It depicts three mutilated women. Perhaps an awful disease had struck down the females of France in our absence and been commemorated. Or is it that, as I have been told, French men rather fancy crippled women. Who knows?
On the optimistic side, bars and restaurants were doing great business, like the New Haven, where it was necessary to book a table at week-ends or take a chance and arrive before 7 o’clock or after 9.
As a spectator sport, to see human kind and sheer efficiency of waiting and restaurant organisation, I can think of few places better to do it than at the Tout Va Bien Brasserie on a busy week-end evening or lunchtime.
On market day (Saturday), the main thoroughfare was packed with people and goodies. So there was certainly no sign of recession there.
And to relax after a good meal on a still summer’s evening, there are few more spectacular places for food to settle than to stand on the rounded seaside stones to watch an orange sun slide slowly into a deep blue sea, leaving behind a few coloured clouds. But in Dieppe it is often windy, and wet, too.
That dark blue sea must have been full of mackerel, because Maqueraux Mariné was on most menus. But scallops (the speciality for the seamen and diners of Dieppe), were resting safely on the sea bed, being out of season (15April – 15 October).
A bonus point on this visit was that a small booklet, called “The Taste of Dieppe”, was back, with its original author, Peter Avis, in command.
The booklet told us each year about where to eat and much more about the seaside town and its environs.
For some reason or other he had been no longer the author of it. Now he had regained his rightful place as a genuine informer of vital information for the interested tourist. Copies are available at no cost from the Tourist Information Office in the centre of town.

Wine Age

We buy low priced Champagne in France and leave the bottles untouched for at least a year, if not several more. This modest laying down of wine works wonders with Champagne.
But, when celebrating something the other day, a bottle had slipped through the net and had become oxidised (loss of charm and a bit heavy, coarse). So the wine was turned into excellent Champagne cocktails (usually made with cheaper fizz) with the addition of sugar, Cognac, Angostura Bitters, and one drop only per glass of real vanilla essence – and ice.
So the subject of laying down wine surfaced.
Most wines nowadays are made to be drunk soon after being purchased. This means that they have been made quickly in stainless steel at minutely controlled temperatures, micro filtered and sulphured. Those with a high alcohol content will keep longer, but most might as well be drunk right away.
Wines that will improve by being laid down are distinguishable by their region (mainly Bordeaux and Burgundy in France), price (high), and cork.
Close inspection of the cork may tell you more about the wine than bottle shape, price or label. Wines that the producer considers to be worth ageing will use long (real) corks that will be branded with the maker’s name, château, and often date (classy white Burgundy is sometimes an exception, where unbranded corks and swapping can occur).
A bottle with a short cork, granular (agglomerated) or horrible plastic, will tell you that you might as well swill down the contents right away.
Laying down wines will have been made with longer contact between juice, pips and skins, rested in oak barrels, and barely filtered, if at all. This all costs money and people’s time – hence the cost. The reds will contain raw tannins that pucker the mouth.
So, for how long should you lay down these wines, and in what conditions?
The conditions do not matter a great deal – whatever you are told to the contrary. I have kept wine for years in many places and conditions, but have never allowed the temperature in which they have been kept to rise or fall quickly.
In February 1968 I imported a hogshead of Bilbainas Rioja from Spain and bottled its contents – 350 bottles when I lived in London’s dockland. It may already have had up to 4 years in cask. Cellar book comments that I made in ’69, ’70, ’73 and ’77 all note that the wine, delicious when bottled, improved splendidly. At 10 years in bottle it was as good a wine as first class claret. For its second 10 years it remained a good wine but faded away slowly.
In 1968 I bought 8 dozen Château Cantenac Brown 1959 from J. Lyons Wine Cellars at the Hop Exchange, London, where all bottles were returned to be cleaned, filled again, and labelled by a little old lady with glue paste and brush. (She also labelled cheap Hock with grand labels for royalty.)
The wine was the best I can ever recall having tasted. Tested for note-taking in ’68, ’70 and ’72, it was still wonderful and with years in hand. In 1979 (20 years old) it was “…still a good glass…” But in 1993 (32 years old), commenting on the very last bottle, it was “…way beyond its wonderful self, still smelling nice and with good initial taste, but a lost finish”. I added to the note: ”Farewell dear old friend”.
These wines were part of my wine learning curve, and before many of the modern style wines entered the market.
Serious laying down of wines has now mainly become a rich person’s game. But it is worth an experimental try by buying a few bottles of the same wine and making notes when consuming one of them each year.
I have seen Australian reds, and especially whites, improve with bottle age, but mainly before they started to ape the lighter wines of Europe. It would be well worth the experiment of keeping some full flavoured and alcohol-ridden wines from both new and old worlds.
I count myself most lucky to have lived through and been interested in this product of the grape in an age (certainly the 1960s) when good claret was still a modestly-priced, everyday wine.
The choice of wines presently available is huge and wonderful. There must be plenty that won’t break the bank and be worth testing over time.

Potato Pancakes

A Jewish method is one of the quickest, easiest, most economical and delicious ways of cooking potatoes. So the recipe is very useful if you have reached home late, nothing is immediately available to eat, and you are hungry. Use these potato pancakes on their own, with other vegetables, with fried eggs, bacon, chops, hamburgers, cold meats, corned beef or fish fingers, etc.

POTATOES - POTATO PANCAKES

For these you will need:
Potatoes
Pepper and salt
Oil, dripping or oil and butter
Onion (optional)
Cheese (optional)
Egg (optional)
Nutmeg (optional)

Heat a generous quantity of olive oil, cooking oil, or a mixture of oil and butter in a frying pan. Now, on to a plate or into a bowl grate well-washed potatoes. It is not necessary to peel them. Add pepper and salt, and a little grated onion if desired. Do not at this stage delay or the potatoes will discolour.
Spoon the mixture into the hot oil and flatten into small, thin pancakes. Make absolutely sure that each is separated from its neighbours. Cook until brown beneath and then turn them over until glowing brown on both sides. Drain the oil from each and, if thought necessary, place on kitchen paper to drain further.
Some grate the potatoes into a bowl and add salt, later squeezing out the moisture before dealing with them. Others grate cheese into the bowl before adding an egg and the grated potato. Nutmeg is sometimes added to these pancakes.
Serve with what you will.

*****


The following is, like the pancake recipe above, simple to make, and delicious to eat with drinks.

POTATOES – POTATO PANCAKE FOR DRINKS

You will need:
An egg
Grated cheese
Olive oil
Pepper and salt
Flour (plain or self-raising)
Tabasco (optional)
Dijon mustard (optional)
A grated potato

Into a bowl break an egg. Add a little water and whisk. Now add half that volume of plain or self-raising flour. Whisk again. Now add half the present volume of grated cheese (any). Put in some milled pepper and salt. Add a little Dijon mustard and a shake of Tabasco, if they are at hand. Now grate in a peeled, medium-sized potato.
Mix what you have together and put it into a frying pan containing hot olive oil. Flatten it out with a spatula and turn down the heat to its lowest. When the underside is glowingly brown, toss or turn the pancake. Cook until quite done – about 20 to 25 minutes in all.
Place the pancake on to a board and cut it into small squares. Eat the morsels when hot.

Meat Loaf

My first experiences of eating meat loaf were in America early in the war when I was a refugee and not yet old enough to join the RAF. Those experiences were not happy ones.
My kind hosts ate meat loaf about once a week, cooking a rather solid lump of compressed, baked mince.
When I found myself with some frozen minced steak, and wondering what stroke of genius I might apply to it, meat loaf came to mind. Would it be possible to form a recipe that might become a regular and delicious dish for the house menu’s repertoire?
What turned out was quite delicious when hot, but very dull when cold. So the problem was not so much about how to make meat loaf as how to use it up when cold.
Frying it crumbled with mashed potato was not at all bad.
Frying thick slices in flour, beaten egg and breadcrumbs turned out to be a splendid way, and delicious.
Cooked rather as one would use corned beef in a hash proved to be excellent – especially when the taste of caraway seeds came to the fore.
My sister, who had been to the dentist for an extraction and was advised not to chew solid food for a while, found that the meat loaf melted in the mouth.
And my last experiment was to turn thick slices into a mousseau – by resting them in a vinaigrette with added chopped onion, capers, chopped cornichons, pickled peppercorns and chilli.

MEAT LOAF

You will need:
Minced beef
Butter
Bread crumbs
Pepper and salt
Dried herbs and spices with which you feel happy (I used oregano, paprika and turmeric for colour, methi leaves, chilli, celery salt, dill, thyme, caraway seeds and Dijon mustard). The choice was made only because they happened to be handy at the time.
Eggs
Milk
Ice

Grease a bread tin and, if you feel like it, line the bottom and sides with something like Parma/Serrano ham or bacon.
Into a large bowl put minced meat (it does not have to be beef. It could be a mixture of minced meats. Add half its volume of breadcrumbs (the bread I make crumbles well, but crumbled crumb from a drying sliced loaf would be fine).
Add dried herbs, with a little turmeric and much more paprika - both for colour. Add a dollop of Dijon mustard, pepper (milled if possible) and salt.
Now add beaten egg (probably two). Stir it well. I start with a spoon and then use the hands. You may need to moisten it all with milk - to form a soft paste.
Place the mixture in the bread tin and flatten it.
Now, apart, press into the heart of the mixture two lumps of ice (about the size of small walnuts). Cover them over. These will keep the loaf moist.
Bake the meat loaf for about two hours in a medium oven - with foil on top to keep in the moisture.
When cooked, turn it out on to a board. Slice it, to be eaten with mashed potato or pasta.
This is a very economical dish.

Note:
Making a meat loaf happens to be a giant leap toward making a splendid Paté/terrine. Just substitute minced fat pork and liver for the breadcrumbs. Use thyme, or something else, instead of the herbal mixture, and moisten with a spirit instead of milk and ice cubes. I bake it in a bain-marie (tray of water) uncovered. This is a great dish for a party.

Age

I have been watching cricket at Lord’s ground with two friends. One complained that I had not written a blog recently, except for an update on growing vegetables in pots for those with little space and for the blind (sorry, but I have been on a roll with painting). And they both, I feel, are curious about the vigour of someone of my age (84) and are pleased to see me still alive each year.
I still run to catch a bus (with a rather stiff and creaky gait it is true), am artistically productive and imaginative as I have ever been, do all the cooking in the house, write, and enjoy life to the full. Having written a lot on wine, the drinking of it remains a great pleasure and, in the process, absorbing much healthy goodness from it.
As I think of these matters, it must be stressed that I am an extremely lucky person and, I suppose, possessed of an easy-going nature.
A matter that has been much in my favour has been the ability to chop and change careers, with one leading seamlessly to another. This successful switching depends mainly on having a creative mind.
From schooling (what there was of it) I became a pilot. And when the war ended I started in medicine (scotched by TB), stage designer, landscape artist, traveller and illustrator, sculptor, writer of books and articles, and back to being a painter – with lots of little bits in between.
And all along I have brought up children, run gardens, run houses, cooked for all and sundry, as well as creating two small, experimental vineyards.
And I have been lucky with marriages. In the first I was expected (and delighted) to run the home and family as my then wife fought for fame and fortune, and for the second I found myself with an absolutely lovely person.
I was born (1925) at just the right time. I remember the great depression (which has left me with a sense of parsimony) and how to live through it in the country, where we grew our own food and learned country ways and lore.
In my most virile years, contraception was beginning to be mastered and venereal disease temporarily conquered.
My life at that time might now be termed promiscuous, but it wasn’t. One simply went to bed with girls as a nice way of getting to know them. That was the way of it. I had what others called my mini-marriages.
My sex life has continued unabated, though recently declining with age – Viagra having extended it.
Of course, being my age means that health issues have come and gone. As a young man I had TB, which returned later when I was a medical student. Cure had to be left to nature, which didn’t work for many, but did for me – there being no remedy at that time. And in my later years I had prostate cancer (cured by radiotherapy), heart disease (cured by pills, with digitalis once being the key to success), and one eye going phut.
Since being left to look after myself in a country cottage during school holidays I learned not to be afraid of the dark, to walk silently, and to cook – a skill that continues, with hardly a dish repeated in favour of experiments. Exceptional successes are added to my sizeable computer-held cookbook, to accompany the best from my two published cookbooks.
Besides writing a blog, which is mainly on cooking and travel, I continue with an autobiography, started many years ago when I began writing and had capacity beyond a weekly column and still a good and fresh memory to rely on.
My paintings, done in the 1950s and 1960s sell at Christie’s – sometimes for a lot – and my recent work in bold pastel have started to sell well – mainly through the internet. With these I consider that I am not greedy, with postcard size at £50, up to A4 size at £195 - £250, and A1 at £1,950 – all with reductions for friends and family.
I take less pleasure from travel, hating airports, and great pleasure from my small London garden and the birds who use it (a robin eats from my knee).
So I say to my Lord’s friends: here is a new blog, and being 84 is wonderful (fingers crossed).

Hulls 2009 from Series Ship Shapes

Ship Shapes

Endive and avocado salad

I often wonder why endive (chicory) should be so expensive in England and so cheap in France. So on our mini breaks in Dieppe (usually to buy wine and eat well for a few days) we bring back a quantity of this crisp, blanched vegetable. A popular dish is to wrap ham around a piece and braise it. I like to dip the pieces into a variable vinaigrette mixture and eat it that way. This salad method of using endive maintains its crunch and adds another flavour and texture. It looks nice, too.

ENDIVE AND AVOCADO SALAD

You will need:
Endive
Avocado
Vinaigrette

Make a vinaigrette in a bowl, using oil, vinegar (or lemon or lime juice), salt, pepper, and a little icing sugar, and possibly dry English mustard, Dijon mustard, or horseradish. Mix it well.
Cut across the endive(s) and add the pieces to the vinaigrette. Toss it all around.
Put the coated endive on plates or in bowls, and on the top place slices of peeled avocado.

Chorizo and Mash

I was in the Portuguese quarter of London to buy capers and, after an excellent coffee and two of those lovely custard tarts in which the Portuguese specialise, carried on to buy the spicy edition of chorizo sausages.
These have a high paprika content, are spicy, very red, and shiny.
At home I made a rather liquid mash with floury potatoes, using plenty of butter and milk, as well as pepper and salt.
Pushing the chorizos slightly into the mash in an ovenproof dish, I baked the combination for about half an hour.
The result was chorizos at their best and mash that had been infused with the paprika colour to form a delightful pattern.
This is a simple, tasty and exotic dish, and is a favourite.

CHORIZO AND MASH

You will need:
Spicy chorizo sausages (one per person)
Floury potatoes
Butter
Milk
Pepper and salt

As described above, make liquid mash and into it press chorizo sausages.
Bake the resultant dish in the oven for about half an hour.

Meat and decoration in France

In early 2009 one can say without hesitation that France is an expensive place in which to eat and drink. Of course the current exchange rate is of no help to those from the UK travelling to mainland Europe for a break and, especially, to enjoy good wine with good food.
Even without the reckoning of an almost parity exchange rate, prices in France are noticeably higher than in 2008.
Be that as it may, one goes to eat and drink well, and if one is prepared to eat the best food, the price of it is probably a lot less than comparing like with like in England. And when eating out in France there is no point in not making a good meal of it – especially in Dieppe, where the fish landed is so fresh that it may well be jumping around a bit on the fishmonger’s slab.
Moreover, if not used to eating so heartily, a good lunch will fill one up so much that a modestly priced picnic is all that is wanted in the evening.
The price of restaurant wine is always on the high side, but carafe wine is still not exorbitantly priced – though a good bottle certainly is.
For picnic wine and wine to take home, the best buys by far are in German owned supermarkets. There it is possible to buy wine from French abroad for very little – the French deeming that wine from elsewhere is not drinkable, and is priced accordingly.
But I am getting around to French meat, which is nearly always on the tough side, but tasty.
You wonder just how to tackle a piece of meat on the plate that is interlaced and surrounded with stringy bits. Quite rightly, a sharp, serrated-blade knife is always supplied when steak is ordered.
The first operation is to cut away all the connective tissue and put it to the side of your plate. Then there is no point in trying to eat a normal sized piece of what remains. No. The meat must be sliced as thinly as it is possible for you to contrive it. This has the advantage of making the meat both edible and tasty. And it will tide out the meal as you will surely not be in a rush – or shouldn’t be.
We have now eaten and returned to our room – in our case the same room that we have booked for years.
I have always thought of our 3 star hotel as a bit seedy and not really up to its star rating.
Perhaps since we were last there the star-inspector had called and demanded an update. And so it had occurred.
French ideas of decoration are not quite the same as ours. Plumbing, for instance, is done in the main by sculptors, not plumbers. Pipes are liable to weave about a bit, sometimes forming real works of – well, amazement in the eyes of a spectator.
Our room has only a vestige of this order of pipework. But the tragedy of this upgraded change is that the landlord (who should have retired, but hadn’t) had all the bidets in the hotel torn out and cast away. If you are used to the hygiene offered by this ancient and most sensible French invention, it was a tragic idea.
Well, out they went, but the pipework holes they had once used remain as holes. Surely they were not left for – well, rodents. No, of course not. But it looked a bit like it.
Radiators remain as before – useless. In the cold weather one must order auxiliary heat in the form of an electric stove. The passageways outside the room, on the other hand, were really warm.
The bathroom floor had been re-laid with what appeared to be black marble or slate. And very handsome it was. But the surface was also as cold as the previous tile flooring. This meant that wherever one stood on it with bare feet in cold weather it was necessary to place a mat or towel on the floor for comfort.
Paintwork had been done immaculately. But the bathroom door, which had always been too large for its frame and never closed properly, was at last free of peeling paint and re-done – except for where it met the floor. There nothing had changed. Broken ply facing still remained – and unpainted.
New curtains were splendid, and up to its 3 star rating, as was the new mattress and properly filled (bits of rubber) pillows. But instead of blankets that could be added or subtracted according to the temperature of the time of year, lay a duvet. Now, am I the only one who finds that a duvet provides too much warmth when covered by it, or none at all when one escapes it?
The old television screen that was liable to impede one’s path in the middle of the night had been replaced by the flat screen variety, which tucked away nicely. But although there were now many more television channels to watch, all were in French or dubbed French. In a hotel that caters for so many foreigners, how is it that no other programmes in other languages are made available? But we must remember which country we were visiting – mustn’t we? Vive les Français. Vive La France.

Butter Brilliance

We were about to embark for France when I noticed that the cap of one of the gas burners in the kitchen was slightly misplaced. I put my finger on it to return the metal disk to its rightful position, only to find that the burner had not been extinguished and the iron casting, heated by its surrounding flames, was crisis hot.
I jumped in agony as the tip of my left index finger burned to a frazzle.
Now, when I was young, in the early 1920s, and our doctor. Dr. Daley, lived several miles away and made up all his medicines in a shed in his garden, the home cure for burns was butter. And the results were magic when this every-day substance was applied by my mother.
So, without hesitation, I stuck my finger into a slab of butter, and kept it there for a few seconds to make sure that the burn was coated thoroughly. The pain was considerable. I worried about possible inabilities for our stay in Dieppe.
Every so often I returned to the refrigerator to re-butter my finger.
In an hour or so the pain had subsided and I saw that the end of my digit was almost white. It had a hard covering of dead and senseless skin.
Would it be possible to use my hand in the normal way? Yes, it would.
The pain went and, instead of a blister and a painful end to the finger, I had a hand with a perfectly useable and painless extremity.
There was no blistering, no pain, and the finger, now without sensitivity at its tip, was in use as normal.
Five days later the dead skin of the burn started to fall away. Scissors, deftly used, cut off the dry edges attached to living flesh.
Now, in place of the dead skin, newly exposed pink skin started to firm up and regain sensitivity.
There may be lots of solutions to burns, but by God, for this immediate cure, butter, as an ancient country recipe for pain relief and recovery, could hardly have been bettered - even in this medically advanced age of ours.

Vegetables in pots (latest developments)

I wrote in this blog last year of my experiments with growing vegetables in pots in my London garden. Now, in the spring of 2009, a new idea has come about with the purchase and delivery of 3 plastic sacks for growing new, salad, and main crop potatoes (the bags being 17” or 43 cm. tall and 14”or 36 cm. in diameter, and supplied with 5 seed potatoes for each sack).
As my London garden is small (4 paces by 16 paces) and with potatoes not to be planted in the same soil for several years, the compost filling would have had to be replaced each year. And where would I put the spent compost in a mostly paved garden?
So I decided to use the sacks for (roughly) the rotation of crops, retaining their compost filling – being a mixture of my home-made compost mixed with the contents of grow bags – the latter being excellent in quality and obtained at a minimal cost.
Wanting only new potatoes, which are very special to eat and hard to obtain, I will use the 3 bags for: sack 1 (BEANS) for dwarf French beans and dwarf Italian courgettes, sack 2 (ROOTS) for early potatoes (Swift) followed by a planting of carrots and beetroot, and sack 3 (BRASSICAS) for Swiss chard, leeks and lettuce. The correct rotation has been plotted on paper for the next 3 years.
I will write on the results and conclusions.
Beside these sacks I am experimenting this year with growing potatoes in buckets (with drainage holes and crocks). As last year, there will be broad beans in buckets, asparagus in a large pot (mainly for the foliage), parsley in a pot, thyme in a pot, sorrel in a pot (having over-wintered well), salad leaves in a pot, leek seed in a pot (to be planted in sack 3 when handleable), tarragon in a pot, fennel in a pot, a globe artichoke in a pot (decorative), tomatoes in last year’s ground (now soaked with dilute Jeyes Fluid because of blight), mint in a sunken bucket, rosemary in a pot, sage in a pot and, new this year, autumn-planted garlic in the ground and shallots in the ground (both in a limited space – but they do not need much.
For fruit, there is the productive and trouble-free black wine grape (Triomphe d’Alsace) giving shade from the arbour and fruit along its 73 metres length around and about and back and forth around the garden’s walls, an espalier-trained Morello cherry growing on the north-facing wall from daffodil-planted ground and, in pots nearby, a fig, a pear and an apple.
I am trying yet again to grow mistletoe on the apple, binding in the seeds beneath bark with string. These experiments were coated with rubber solution as protection from the elements. To blend the pale string bindings in with the colour of the bark, they were then coated with soil before the rubber solution set.
For the decorative aspect, there is an earthenware trough of spring crocus and snowdrops. Pots of tulips and lilies will give small blocks of bright colour. Impatiens (busy lizzies) will give masses of colour throughout the summer months, with fuchsias and geraniums (pelargoniums) providing the same.
Roses (The Reverend F. Page-Roberts and Typhoon – the best rose ever) grow from earth in a corner of the garden.
The winter-flowering cyclamen will become dormant in their pots, as will the generously-flowered mahonia.
On the kitchen windowsill is a splendid jalapeno chilli (having flowered and fruited summer and winter), the last year’s Bolivian begonia corm coming to life, and an aloe vera.
So, as spring appears and leads to summer, there will be a lot to watch and look after. What an interesting year of pleasure lies ahead.

Artichoke Soup

The following is a wonderful soup, but with a snag to it - or perhaps you might think it to be an amusing bonus. The fact is that this particular root vegetable (Jerusalem artichoke), when cooked in almost any form, creates a great deal of air in the stomach and gut. (I am told that we produce, on average, 3-5 litres of internal air in 24 hours.) And as this air has to escape somewhere, and as a rule choosing to exit in the downward direction, it can cause embarrassment, laughter, or pain. However, I read somewhere that asafoetida (or asafoetide), if used in the cooking of artichokes, would prevent the usually excessive egress of air from the body. Powdered asafoetida, gained from the dried resin of a plant, is used in Chinese medicine and Indian dishes. I owned some, tried it, and threw it away, mainly because of the foetid part of its name. On hearing about its wind-reducing properties I tried to buy some more, but Indians in three shops visited had never heard of it. Eventually I did manage to buy a packet from a Greek grocer. Volume experiments using a minimum quantity were disappointing. Using the maximum recommended ruined the soup (which afterwards was turned into a strong mulligatawny satisfactorily) and might have reduced flatulence. Asafoetida may, however, respond more happily to your own metabolism and help to reduce artichoke-generated air.

ARTICHOKE SOUP

You will need:
Butter
Jerusalem artichokes
Onion
Potato
Pepper and salt
Stock, or stock and milk

To make it “special”, you will also need:
A few scallops
Milk
Egg yolk
Single cream
Paprika

Melt a large lump of butter in a saucepan, and in it cook a chopped-up onion until it is soft and transparent. Add a dozen or so well-scrubbed and cut-up artichokes (they are usually knobbly and difficult to free of adhering soil) and a chopped potato or two. For a pale and finer soup, peel these vegetables. For a rustic one, don't bother, just chop them up. Season with pepper and salt. Cook for a little longer and add stock, or stock and milk, to cover generously. Boil this very gently for about half an hour. The vegetables will then be soft.
Now you have the choice of eating the soup as it is in its rough and ready form, liquidising it in an electric blender, or putting it all through a hand-operated soup Mouli. I prefer the last method. Test for seasoning and serve.
To turn it into a special, dinner-party piece, peel the vegetables before making the soup. Then poach a few scallops in a little milk for only a few minutes. Add the milk to the soup. Cut up the scallop meat. Add this to the soup. Thicken with an egg yolk whisked with some single cream. Then heat it to the desired temperature, but do not boil. Serve with a sprinkling of paprika over each plate full.

Chocolate enhancement

I sometimes feel that milk chocolate is either too sweet or has not enough nuts and raisins in it. Here is what to do. The result is both filling and satisfying.

CHOCOLATE ENHANCEMENT

You will need:
A large slab of milk chocolate or one with nuts and raisins in it
A smaller slab of plain chocolate
Nuts of your choice, like peanuts, roasted cashews, almonds, pecans, or others
Sultanas or currants

Into a basin resting on a saucepan of boiling water put broken-up pieces of plain and milk chocolate.
Add nuts, whole, or broken up in a pestle and mortar, and sultanas or currants.
The chocolate will take a little time to melt. When it has, stir it all together with a spatula and scrape it out from its bowl on to greaseproof paper (or its like) in a baking dish. Spread it out to the desired thickness with the spatula and, if you feel like it, press the edge of the spatula into the chocolate to form rough squares when it has begun to re-set.
Allow the chocolate to cool and set, ending by placing it in the refrigerator.
When cold and solid, lift the chocolate mass from the greaseproof paper. Then break up the chocolate into smallish pieces. Keep them in a lidded box in the refrigerator until wanted.

A Simple Soup

I think that it is almost essential to have a winter soup on the go. This one is warming, filling, nourishing, economical, and simple to make. Like most soups to which you may later be inclined to add bits and pieces over days, or even weeks, it is best to get into the habit of bringing it to the boil every day, as some items tend to ferment if left in a warm environment. If the glorious world of soup-making is new to you, start with this one.

VERY SIMPLE WINTER SOUP

You will need:
Butter
Onion
Potato
Stock cube
Pepper and salt

In a saucepan or pressure cooker put a large lump of butter (be generous with it). Melt this and add chopped onion (quantities will be according to the final volume wanted).
Cook the onion slowly until it has given off its initial strong smell and become transparent.
Now add potato, chopped into small pieces.
Crumble in a beef stock cube or two (again be generous).
Add pepper and salt, then liquid to about twice the volume of your ingredients.
The liquid used is generally water. Start with it. But tea (from the pot or unadorned) is a fine addition, and non-wasteful. Leftover water from boiling vegetables or pasta is good and, again, non-wasteful.
Boil the soup until the potatoes are thoroughly cooked through and soft.
Later on you may want to make soup with other things, but start with the above. Then, hopefully, if not already addicted to soup-making, you may have been converted to the pleasures it has to offer.

A Chicken Dog

Two dogs enlivened our lives as children in the late 1920s and early 1930s. They were a cairn, called Bunty, who gave birth to Kennel Club pedigree puppies that we were loath to part with, and Ben. He was a black cocker spaniel.
My father, though badly wounded in the recently ended First World War, ran a chicken farm at Silchester, a walled Roman town in the south of England, positioned between Reading and Basingstoke on the Hampshire/Berkshire borders.
Ben was not only a much-loved house dog but a working dog, too – a chicken dog.
When my father wanted a bird for the oven or sale, he would herd chickens into a corner of their run, where they would squawk and flap, probably knowing that one of their number was to end up as food in the near future.
Having selected the required bird, my father would point it out to Ben with his finger – rather as a pointer dog would point with his nose. Ben would then slowly and quietly enter the mêlée and rest his paw on the selected bird, pinning it gently to the ground. Off would scamper the rest of the flock. My father would then gather up the desired chicken from beneath Ben’s paw.

Hot Avocado and Tomato Salad

Having bought a quantity of avocados in the market and made a very successful soup with some of them, I noticed that a bowl of tasteless, out-of-season tomatoes were in the kitchen waiting to be used up. So this dish came about. And an excellent salad/hors d’oeuvre it is, too.

HOT AVOCADO AND TOMATO SALAD

You will need:
Vinegar
Tomatoes
Pepper and salt
Garlic
Avocado
Toasted breadcrumbs
Olive oil

Into a nice-looking ovenproof dish pour some vinegar. On it place sliced tomatoes. Dust with pepper and salt.
Now press at least two cloves of garlic over the tomatoes.
Take the flesh from an avocado, and dot small pieces of it over the tomatoes (you might need more than one avocado – depending on its size and the size of your dish.
Sprinkle toasted breadcrumbs on top, and dribble olive oil over all – coating the breadcrumbs.
Shove the dish into a hot oven for half an hour – preferably when you are cooking the main course in it (for economy).
Up until the avocado bit you can prepare the tomato part well before wanted. But after dotting the just-opened avocado flesh over the tomatoes and completing the crumbs and oil addition, do not delay in putting this hot salad into the oven.

Avocado Soup

This soup came about after I had been shopping in Shepherd’s Bush market and found ten avocados for sale at £1. This being an unbelievably good bargain, in winter, I thought aloud, wondering if perhaps the thick-skinned avocados might have a touch of frost in them and be black inside. The helpful Indian stall-holder took out a large machete (the kind used for cutting through jungles) and with it sliced through an avocado to show me that they were in edible condition.
With the idea that the avocados might ripen at the same time and be too many to use, I decided right away to turn five of them into soup. The result was slightly yellow, creamy, and quite delicious. Moreover, it was a simple soup to make.

AVOCADO SOUP

You will need:
Ripe avocados
White sauce (milk and water, butter, flour, stock cubes, pepper and salt)

Make a white sauce in the usual way by melting a good sized lump of butter in a saucepan, stirring in flour and, in this case, two chicken stock cubes. Add milk and water, whisking the result until quite smooth (being careful to dislodge thickened flour from the bottom angles). Cook the sauce slowly until it bubbles, stirring all the time.
Thin down the sauce with water and milk until it has formed soup consistency – possibly putting it into a larger saucepan. Now add the avocado flesh.
Press down on the avocado with a potato masher to break up the large pieces, and continue to whisk until the soup is smooth, yet still contains small avocado pieces. Test for seasoning.
Garnish the offerings with a little chopped coriander leaf – if you have any at hand.
(Coriander will keep for weeks if washed and sealed in a plastic container with a little damp kitchen paper beneath the stems. Keep the container in the vegetable storage part of the refrigerator.)

Recipe: Beef and Brussels' sprout stew

I was making a winter beef stew and found some Brussels’ sprouts in the vegetable part of my refrigerator. They were there for no particular reason. So I used them in my stew. Now, Brussels’ sprouts are a vegetable that you either like or loathe. In this dish, those who like them will love them cooked this way, and those who don’t, will, I think, come around to liking them. But be warned. They hold in the heat in a strange way, so a burn in the mouth is possible when biting into one.

BEEF – BEEF AND BRUSSELS’ SPROUT STEW

You will need:
Beef (shin, chuck or other)
Oil or fat of your choice
Onions
Garlic
Flour
Pepper and salt
Carrots
Brussels’ sprouts
Stock

In an iron casserole make a stew in the normal way by frying chopped onions and garlic in oil, or fat of your choice, until browning.
Throw in cubed beef, and cook until it changes colour.
Sprinkle over it some plain flour, and stir this in. Add pepper and salt.
Now add a layer of cleaned carrot pieces and a top layer of trimmed and washed Brussels’ sprouts.
Pour in stock, made with tea and a stock cube, to almost cover the contents.
Depending on the type of beef used (shin or chuck, say) cook slowly on top of the stove (or in the oven) for an hour for chuck, or two hours for tastier and cheaper shin. Keep an eye on the liquid level.
You might like to add a chilli or half of one.

Avro Lancaster drift scale

Vickers-Armstrong Warwick Lifeboat Release

Pheasant meat in general

In winter, when the pheasant shooting season is in full swing, so many of the birds are shot that sometimes they cannot even be given away. And I have heard that unwanted carcasses are sometimes even buried, having provided the “guns” with their sport. It is then the time to buy several pheasants at a good price – often at a Farmers’ Market. At this time, pheasant becomes a reasonably-priced meat. Where I buy them, the birds are offered in prime condition, fresh from the shoot, plucked and trussed, and presented in cling film wrap.
Buy some, take them home, and slice off the breast meat and as much as you can cut from the thigh. The leg is very sinewy and best left untouched. Feel for shot in the meat and extract any (they are now usually No. 7 shot and very small), freeze the breast in pairs, and bag up and freeze the thigh meat for a future casserole or terrine.
Break up the carcasses and turn them into delicious game stock by putting them into a pressure cooker with some salt and pepper and just a little extra flavouring, like two cloves, two cardamoms and a bay leaf. Pressure cook for 45 minutes. Strain, and allow the stock to cool in a bowl before taking the fat off the surface with a spoon.
The stock is excellent if used as the liquid for a leek and potato soup.
When roasting the breast meat, wrap it in bacon.
When cooking breast meat with chopped up green cabbage, in which you have used your hands to coat the greens with olive oil, white wine, pepper and salt, place the meat just below the surface of the cut cabbage. Put peeled potatoes above and oven-cook for an hour or two.

Amsterdam Restaurants 2008

Our choice of places to eat and drink in Amsterdam come from past experience, “nosing out”, and the advice of locals. Here are some, in haphazard order.

The most amusing place where we had a drink (one was enough) was outside a bar on the Singel Canal, not far from Centraal Station.

In front of us was a pissoire with perforated ironwork at the occupant’s eye level. It was so popular that one man would often be waiting for another to finish. Next to our bar was a glass-fronted, red and blue lit basement for two ladies – one dressed skimpily and the other in part leather gear. The latter offered, via a notice in the window, S&M services.

Hardly a pedestrian walked by without a glance or two at the ladies. And from the pissoire it was possible to penetrate the perforations with the eye for a good view of the goods on offer. What entertainment it was. Theatre for free.

To really eat a “Dutch “ lunch, you could hardly beat enjoying a raw herring, or shared one, standing at the raw herring stall on the bridge at the start of the Singel Canal near to Centraal Station, and then to cross the road to the Kobalt Cafe. Inside this old warehouse (where presumably they once stored cobalt) are huge and impressive floor-supporting beams that rest upon granite feet. The wooden beams were hued for industrial support rather than for visual finesse.

To choose uitsmijter from the menu would be right and proper. Its fried eggs rest on ham, which rests on slices of plain bread, and all covered with a cheese sauce. Drink beer.

In the Haarlemmerstraat, close by, are two places we would recommend. Stout, on the left, is modern, with modern food, and with fashionable diners.

Beyond Stout on the other side of the road, stands Dulac. Should you think that the interiors of Dutch houses are small, this will surprise you with its large size and minimum use of it. A pink cloth pool table is the focal point. This is surrounded by a theatrical collection of strange structures and objects. Separated at a distance from one another are tables for clients. We dined well off four tapas dishes and a bottle of South African red wine from Franschhoek.

The above places are on the edge of the Jordaan district, which is now smart and fashionable. But when I worked on coasters some 60 years ago it was a slum area where lived the family of the stuurman of our vessel. I remember that we sat on the stairs to peel the skin off smoked eels and to eat the flesh from the bone like sweet corn. We slept on the floor, possibly listening to Johnny Jordaan, who was the popular singer in those days. Times have changed somewhat.

A bar that is light, and where one might read the newspaper, is the aforementioned Kobalt Café. Another is farther away in Spui (pronounced Spow) Centraal. It is Café Hoppe. This ancient bar, that purveyed jenever and much else, is divided into two. You could drink and possibly have a snack under cover outside (bitterballen here is good), or enter the atmospheric darkness inside (the corner one especially) to experience a Holland of the past.

Move to the red-light district, to the left as you leave the Centraal Station, to see a vibrant, exciting and architecturally delightful part of old Amsterdam.

Warmoesstraat runs through its heart and is the most popular, we hear, with gays. But all around are ladies for short rent in gaudily lit windows. They display much of what they have to offer, and might tap on the window to beckon you in.

On the street is an entrance to the “new” Heffer bar. It is an object lesson in clever bar design – colour, lighting and decoration. And to move customers on, it is uncomfortable.

In the same street, at the station end, is a very Dutch restaurant whose chefs specialise in cheese fondue. You can choose from several blends of cheese. The place is called Karbeel, and an excellent and civilised place for lunch or dinner it is, set among some rather seedy establishments.

Returning to central Amsterdam and the Damrak (main street), you will pass the other (old) Heffer bar, just behind the “new” one. This is housed within a defunct customs building. It is not as theatrical as its compatriot nearby, but more comfortable and more “established”. It is a good place for food. But be careful. You might be propositioned by a lady, house relation, who will try to tell you your fortune by numbers. She is persistent. I think I frightened her.

Behind Centraal Station are the landing stages for ferries to the other side of the wide IJ (pronounced Eye) river. And on that other side are two fine places in which to eat – after a nice river crossing – and the ferry crossings are for free.

Take the one that will state on the back of the ferry and on the illuminated sign in front of the landing – NDSM Werf. The trip down river toward the North Sea Canal will pass docks, ships loading and unloading, possibly a liner, a disused submarine and lots of shipping going about its business. This will give you an appetite for a meal or snack at the Kantine, a spacious, light and happy place, at the bottom of what looks like a dull block of flats. You can eat and drink there, watching shipping on the river through high and wide windows. You might well take sunglasses on a sunny day.

When taking the ferry back to the Centraal Station dock, choose the modern variety. There is an older, smaller ferry that simply crosses back and forth across the river, finally depositing you back by the Kantine, from where you set off.

If you take the IJ Plein ferry to cross the river, turn right immediately after disembarking to walk along the riverbank until coming to an orange-coloured building that is the Wilhelmina Dok restaurant. It perches out over the river, putting you right among the shipping. Have your drinks and food outside in summer and inside in winter. It is our favourite restaurant in Amsterdam.

Above are the places where we have enjoyed food and drink. There are not many, but we recommend them.

FOREIGN PLACES, FOREIGN CUSTOMS

In one’s reflective mind it is usually the large objects that define a foreign country – the Eiffel Tower, the Chrysler Building, the Bank of China Building, the Taj Mahal, Hilversum Town Hall and all the rest. But when abroad it is often the small objects, scenes, smells, food, drink and customs that make the country a foreign one. The following observations come in random order.

I have just been to Holland twice (October and November 2008) to think about it.

On the Eurostar train, through the Tunnel and into France and Belgium, I saw, in the middle of a ploughed field, a small patch of possibly a dozen or so orange pumpkins. I was in a foreign country all right.

In Brussels Midi Station, the escalator appeared not to be working. But on approach, off it went.

One hears nothing but complaint about public transport in England – though not having to use it in rush hours I approve of it. In foreign Holland, however, they have always had the reputation of running a reliable and wonderful public transport system – no longer. The actual trains worked well and were clean and comfortable. But to pay for a rail journey was often confusing, with either a long queue for buying a ticket or a time-consuming struggle with an automatic, touch-screen ticket machine. Having bought our tickets, confusion reigned. For a one-change journey from the countryside back to Amsterdam we were diverted, for an undisclosed reason, and had to change trains three times. For another journey we were directed to one platform and then, with the other hopeful passengers were told that the train would leave from another. This involved an arduous climb up stairs with our heavy luggage. The long-distance train then arrived at the platform to collect its passengers half an hour late, and finally stopped three stations short of its destination, with instructions for passengers to change platforms and continue aboard a local train – involving another climb up and down stairs with luggage.

Public transport does a lot from country to country. In Holland, where the tram and bus services continue to be excellent, a “strippen card” is needed for both busses and trams. This involves buying a strip of numbers, folding it at the needed number of tickets required for your journey, and then poking the strip into a machine on board, that stamps it with a “ping”. It is difficult for the stranger to know how many tickets to offer the machine. At tram stops this can be worked out (with difficulty) from a map. But it is easier to go to the train station and buy the required demarcated map. Locals know, but foreigners don’t. The validation is for one hour, presumably for more journeys within your ticket’s stamped compass. I understand that a pre-paid card, like the English Oyster Card, will be introduced in the near future.

International hotels give no indication of foreignness. They are “anywhere” places. The design of their rooms and bathrooms, though, can cause confusion for all. Plumbing is often the main problem to solve. Without the arm length of an orang-utan, to close the bath’s “plug” needed a climb into the bath. Then, with two large, chromed wall knobs for the control of water heat, bath water flow and shower, it came as no surprise to have an arm soaked from above.

The size of beer glasses and how much is in them determines the country you are in. The Germans may favour litres and half litres, we pints, the French hardly a half pint, and the Dutch, where one orders a “pilsje” (small beer), a few decent swigs beneath an inch or more of foam may come your way. A repeat order might contain more or less beer. An ordered pilsje sometimes comes as a vaasje (slightly more). Or one can order ½ pint or a pint (groot). All are served with a variable size head of foam. I find Holland to be a country of dehydration, which is an excuse, I suppose, to drink more beer.

I have noticed a distinct change in the drinking habits of the Dutch since I was there as a supernumerary on a Dutch coaster in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Then the sailors had a taste for sweet liqueurs. And people drank jenever. Now I only saw one person drink jenever, most drinking beer or wine. And the wine drinkers chose mostly white wine. This is now much more in line with the rest of Europe, except that they also drink milk with their meals.

In France the bill for drinks is put on to your table, so you can leave when you feel like it, having left the money with the bill. In Holland you wait until ready to leave, try to catch the eye of the waiter or waitress, and then pay before leaving.

Which brings me to tipping. At last (I suppose with the advent of the EU and Euro), tipping on top of the bill is unnecessary – certainly in France, Belgium and The Netherlands. A little “rounding up” is an option, and one usually leaves any small copper coins that come with the change. For excellent and pleasant service one could add 10%, but no more. Many do add this in Holland. In England you have to scrutinise the bill to see if service has been added or not. When added, it is often on the high side and includes the full service percentage on the cost of the wine, which a waiter has only had to withdraw a cork or twist off the screw-top. This does seem greedy to me – especially as the wine has usually been overpriced in the first place. But in England it is sometimes the case that the tip is the main form of income for the often-underpaid foreign waiters or waitresses. It is difficult to know exactly where the tip ends up without engaging in that controversial conversation. The system is more professional on the continent where waiting can be seen as a vocation.

And in what country might you see a man with a long pole, mop head and hose pipe, cleaning the blank side of an ordinary brick-built house? Holland, of course – in the centre of Delft.

In Delft I wanted to take a canal boat trip, especially to see from where Vermeer painted his landscape of the city. But four passengers would be the minimum number acceptable before the voyage could begin. I returned twice on the appointed hour. Eventually I was taken – alone. But the businessman pilot of our shallow draught vessel, said that if tourists saw our boat in operation they might think of taking the trip. And true enough, on our return quite a few people were waiting to board.

The sights of Delft from its canals are of a perilously leaning church tower, and splendid houses, mainly from the 17th century vintage. Very Dutch, and so very foreign, the houses are beautifully proportioned, and exhibit the wealth derived from naval and commercial power related to East India trading. West India trading (slaves) is much less mentioned. We were not the only baddies. Many of the greater houses were also built by the brewers of beer, Delft once being the centre of that industry – until the canal water used became so foul that no one would drink the end product. Today no breweries exist.

Do not hope to take the canal trip in Delft after the university students’ graduation romps. Far too much junk is thrown into the canals to make navigation a safe exercise.

One canal boat does ply its trade of keeping the narrow canals clean. A plodding boat, with a solitary man aboard, is provided with a scoop and an enlarged butterfly net at the end of a long pole. The pilot’s autumn catch seemed to be of leaves only.

You would not imagine that staircases define a country. But they do in Holland. Space has always been at a premium, especially in the cities of the 17th century. Staircases then took up unnecessary room where money might be made. So they were constructed to be steep, confined, precipitous – and dangerous. Large objects were lifted up on pulleys attached to a strong beam projecting from the upper part of the gable. These gables are straight, stepped, bell/neck shaped or elaborate/flamboyant. They were designed originally to hide unsightly roofs.

Rain is treated differently abroad. In Holland, for instance, umbrellas are used, yet many people seem to rather ignore the precipitation. In England I don’t believe that I have ever seen a cyclist riding beneath an umbrella. But in Holland it is commonplace. Many of their bicycles have back-pedal brakes, operating only on the rear wheel. This braking method frees up both hands – one to hold the umbrella.

Which brings me to a small but cumulatively large, unique and astounding sight. It is the thousands upon thousands of bicycles, parked, day and night, outside railway stations. If mothers know their babies, owners their dogs, so the Dutch must know their bikes. To the outsider they look much alike – saddle, wheels, handlebars, frame, and nearly all black. Cyclists there can do no wrong. At any accident scene the cyclist is right. So they ride like maniacs, both ways on the cycle paths that edge every street, and sometimes not on their rightful tracks at all. It is hazardous for pedestrians to cross any street, or even alter direction. Every vehicle or person gives way to bicycle riders.

The herringbone brick-on-end, bronze-coloured pavements and sometimes roads in Holland are a delight – except when it rains. The attractive undulations then create puddles, before the water seeps down into the sand below. These lovely bricks, however, seem often to be being dug up and re-laid. French pavements have too much dog mess on them for safety or pleasure when viewing anything above pavement height. England is becoming better in that respect.

In passing through Belgium and Holland it is very noticeable that graffiti lives – and in a big way. This disfigurement of the townscape seems, mercifully, to have declined in England. It lives and thrives elsewhere.

A charm of Dutch cities is to hear the joyful chuckle of jackdaws. Just why they do so well in their cities and not in English ones is a puzzle.

Another puzzle concerns eating in the quite splendidly simple Fat Kee Chinese restaurant in The Hague. They offer a dish called chicken, pepper and salt. What arrives at your table is a huge pile of very crisply coated morsels containing pink chicken meat and bones. The puzzle is to deal with what is inside the coating. What is chicken meat? What shape are the bones? What is coating and what is bone? This offering seems to be the speciality of the house, and great fun. Many foreign dishes are poorly adapted by the Dutch to please their own taste. Kip, peper en zout, if Chinese in origin, is splendidly Dutch. At the Nam Kee Chinese restaurant in Amsterdam I tried the same, out of curiosity. It was pale, not nearly as good – but without bones.

In France one may enjoy several courses, none too large or filling. At Simonis in Scheveningen (a seaside suburb of The Hague), set in a warehouse among others right next to a dune and the sea, you will enter, queue past the menu and food on offer (I ordered plaice), pay, receive a number, sit down and wait for that number to come up on a large screen. What came for me was a huge plate of chips and one excellent large fried plaice, on top of yet another. The Dutch have hearty appetites.

During my two quick stays in Holland I was looking for small items that differentiate one country from another. So it was really not my intention to remark on the largest thing visible – the sky. The sky and clouds in Holland – seen near to and never too far from the North Sea coast – have a distinctive look and colour to them, that is, when it is not raining. The windy sea air is crystal clear, often dotted with one shape or other of scudding cumulus clouds and, in the evening, with lovely sky colours in the background – very much as seen and depicted by the Dutch masters of old.

French restaurants do not get going until at least seven o’clock in the evening, with people often turning up to eat much later. All customers will have had an aperitif around six o’clock, when the bars are full. It seems that there is a national pattern to it. For office people it appears to be much the same in Holland.

In England, if invited for drinks, the start time is usually 6 to 6.30, leaving the guests to eat out or at home by 7.30 to 8 o’clock – which is about the time invitations are made for dinner. The English drinks party is an ideal way to meet, exchange information and views, and then leave. This can all be done with the minimum of trouble to the hosts by simply producing a few “bites” and plenty of white and red wine. But not everyone knows the “rules” about leaving.

The Dutch seem to close up shop early, and eat early. A party at a friend’s place might start at 5 o’clock in the afternoon with coffee and cake, going on to wine and food. Guests stay a long time, with plenty to say. To bid farewell takes an age, with handshakes for men and three kisses for women, with each parting in need of the politeness of a small conversation. The English might even leave quietly and unnoticed, without giving offence (filet à l' Anglaise).

The foreignness of a country is also determined by what one brings home from it. From France we take home mostly wine (usually from other countries than France), cheese, paper tissues, smoked chicken and lavatory paper.

From Holland we return with toothpaste (9 tubes from Hema for the same price as one glass of excellent de Koninck beer), my winter socks (Hema, Ski), young white goats’ cheese, cut from a wheel, and Hema’s famous smoked sausage (rookworst). I’m pro Hema.

In England and France I have never thought of meat and vegetables tasting other than they should. But in Holland there seems to be an underlying blandness in the flavour of food. Coatings and sauces offer flavour, but beneath them there is lack of taste. Is this, I wonder, because being a small country and also a highly productive one in vegetables, dairy products and meat, many of their products are forced – often out of their natural season (tomatoes for one). In my mind I see greenhouses, North Sea gas heat and hydroponics in use. But perhaps I am alone with those thoughts. Margreet says that products lack salt because too much is considered bad for the health.

I needed to buy butter in Holland, a country famed for its dairy produce. It seems that after the war when the nation needed as much foreign currency as possible, they exported most of their butter, providing substitutes for it, like margarine. The habit has continued. On the “butter” shelves in a supermarket were so many of these “spreads”, many flavoured, that I was lucky to have chosen the real thing from the many lookalikes on offer.

Approach to ice-cream is another item that defines foreignness. In France it can be good, and varied, in Belgium, splendid. But in Holland, restaurants rarely provide any flavour other than vanilla, sometimes with a smidgen of chocolate sauce when ordered as a dame blanche – and this from a specialist dairy country.

The English eat quite a lot of bread, usually in the form of sandwiches. The French eat sticks of bread, freshly baked, and throughout the day. The Dutch eat an enormous amount of bread, mainly for breakfast and especially for lunch, when dishes are often mostly bread (often in large hunks) with some tasty bits added. I counted 18 types of bread in one bakery shop.

The Dutch eat cheese for breakfast, the French and English don’t.

In the roof girders of The Hague’s art deco railway station, Holland Spoor, two pairs of crows croaked and flew menacingly to maintain their territorial rights.

In Holland those in charge of public conveniences demand 50 cents for entry.

In the autumn countryside, large fields of leeks decorate the ground with the blue of their leaves – far more impressive than the colour from fields of brassicas.

Despite the attentions of plough and harrow, some maize stalks were refusing to be buried beneath the autumn-tilled black soil.

In Holland and Belgium important and expensive houses are actually built right next to railway lines, by choice, when one might have expected them to be positioned farther away.

These staccato impressions of foreignness are from only two short stays in Holland.

Warwicks

I am engaged in a series of paintings of aircraft shadows and am presently working on the penultimate one of a Warwick aeroplane dropping a lifeboat suspended beneath parachutes.

I am taking the shape of ingredients from memory during the time when I flew during the war in these – not very good – and sometimes dangerous machines.

I had reached to ten preliminary A4 paintings (pastels) when I realised that the undersides of these particular aeroplanes must have been white, not camouflaged green and brown.

So I was about to visit a library in the splendid RAF museum, Hendon, to do some research into parachute numbers for the under slung lifeboats that we were prepared to drop, camouflaged patterns, general colours and shapes, etc., when Margreet said she’d look it all up for me on the internet. I bet her 10 P that google hadn’t even heard of a Warwick. I lost. There was a mass of information.

The person who runs a museum on the airfield from which I flew in Cornwall became an internet “contact”. So I thought I’d be of help to his archive and supplied him with the following email:

Dear Rod,

In the course of my training to become a pilot I was posted to RAF Davidstow Moor from 15.03.1944 to 15.05.1944.

As part of my flying experience, I was taken up in Warwicks as an observer next to the pilot.

I did 20 hours in the aircraft, once doing a nine hours sortie over the Bay of Biscay with a lifeboat beneath.

The only excitement that I can recall was that, with others looking downwards, my job was to look skywards.

I was fortunate to see a German Focke-Wulf Condor before any on that aircraft saw us.

I got on to the intercom to tell all aboard (the noise in those aircrafts was enormous) but the communication broke almost as soon as I spoke.

Pointing out the German aircraft to the pilot, we dropped down to sea level (being vulnerable from an attack from below) and headed back (at full throttle I image) to Davidstow.

Another point I remember and tell to incredulous ears is that back in the mess (canteen) we were guaranteed an egg.

Another incident, this time on the ground at Davidstow, is that I inadvertently entered a ladies’ lavatory and was delighted with its cleanliness, when I heard a lady cough nearby. To be found in a ladies’ convenience would have been (probably) a court marshal offence.

I left like a rocket and (most thankfully) no one saw me leave.

This is not much, but small vignettes like this help to build up a picture of the time.

With best wishes,

Jim Page-Roberts

Soap Reclamation

I do it every few months, and think nothing of it - except that the whole process is a rather satisfying one.

Soap (cakes of it, that is) is much wasted. Hotels provide small tablets of usually inferior soap, which may be used once or twice and then thrown away. At home, when we have come at last to pieces so small that they are useless, we, too, throw them away. I don’t, and have not done so for years.

In my bathroom is a drawstring, net bag, at one time used, possibly, for something like Chinese garlic bulbs. Into it go the odds and ends of used soap – all to be enjoyed again later in a much larger, blended form.

Here is what you do.

Save meshed, plastic bags – the kind used for shallots, garlic, plums and much else.

It is wise to coat the surface on which the following operation takes place with a few layers of newspaper.

Take your used pieces of soap from the (bathroom) storage bag, and put them, higgledy-piggledy, in a meshed bag, cutting large pieces, if any (they might be cakes of soap that you did not like particularly and have become dried and cracked), into smaller pieces. Tie a knot in the bag, or close it with a freezer bag wire tie, to keep the pieces as close together as possible.

You will need a press of some sort. I use a squeezer for half oranges – which is ideal. You could use the like, or a deep bowl, or perhaps a section of tubing – like plastic drainpipe. In the case of something like a bowl or pipe it will be necessary to have a disk that you will press down on to the soap when it has been softened by steam. A potato masher would do.

You will also need a plastic bag, like a freezer storage bag. This will stop any very soft soap from escaping the press.

Now put an inch or two of water in an appropriately sized saucepan (i.e. a deep one to prevent soapy water from bubbling out over the saucepan and on to the stove). On the saucepan place a metal colander. Put the tied bag of soap bits in the colander and heat the water beneath to a low, tick-over boil.

To concentrate the resulting steam, rising from the water and passing up through the colander holes to the bag of soap pieces, place a saucepan lid over the bag to fit the inside of the colander.

Prod the soap pieces every so often (with the point of a knife or skewer) until they become soft (some will be softer than others, with some transparent varieties sadly melting into the water below).

When you think that all the bits of soap will cling together (some may still be fairly firm), lift out the bag of softened soap and drop it into the freezer bag (rolling down the sides of the bag beforehand to facilitate the operation). Be extra careful in doing this as the soap will now be very hot and can cling and scald.

Do not tie up the freezer bag, as air must be allowed to escape from it.

Now press or squeeze the meshed bag within the freezer bag until the bits of soap unite and take the form of your press and future cake of blended soap.

Allow the bagged soap to cool for a few minutes. Then extract the meshed soap from the freezer bag.

Using scissors, cut away the mesh bag from the pressed soap, and put the hot cake of soap on to a plate.

There will be rough joins and crevices in the new cake of blended soap. Bits of soft soap will cling to the bag mesh.

Prise away the soft soap bits remaining in the bag’s mesh and use it to fill the cracks and holes in the large cake. Again, be careful of the hot soap. Do not worry about any final odd protrusions or unevenness. These will disappear with use.

Allow the soap to cool. Keep it for several days, or longer, before using it.

The chances are that you will now have a large lump of lovely soap that you will use and enjoy - luxuriantly.

Washing up afterwards is easy. Everything used is soapy.

FUSKER THE CAT (continued)

I use an old, updated (to ’97) computer that is unconnected with the ether. It is quick, simple, has few knobs to press, is unconcerned with viruses, and has a good memory. I do not have to tear out my hair over it, or have a day ruined by glitches.

So when I write a blog, it goes from my computer on to a 3 ½” floppy disk, and then into an attachment on Margreet’s latest machine to be blogged, if that is more or less the correct expression.

In her computer is a very clever system whereby she can tell when there are “hits” on the blog, about which blog, the key word, and from where the hits originate. These hits come from all over the world.

One of the popular requests is for people to read the piece I wrote on my fight (and victory) with Fusker the cat.

Bloggers have wanted to know the current position of our relationship. Even Fusker, himself, wrote to apologise, being grateful that I did not choose to have recourse to the law over the matter (I do not reply to animals).

For those who would like to know, Fusker has accepted that I am “Boss Cat”. He skulks away when our paths cross, and hides, usually, beneath a car.

However, although he knows full well that he is in uninvited territory, my garden is a haven for birds, and Fusker sees birds as his natural and rightful prey.

So when I saw a black shape disappear from the end of my garden (it is only 4 x 14 paces in size) and the flagstones of its surface coated in wood pigeon feathers, I guessed who might have been responsible (no corpse was to be seen).

So I blocked off his approach and escape route with my secret solution, and expected there to be no more cat-intrusions. My small family of wild birds should then have been safe.

So it was a great surprise to both of us when, about to leave the house and lock the glazed back door to the garden, I saw Fusker just outside, clawing at a cornered wood pigeon.

On seeing me he scampered off.

I was left with a feathered garden and a wood pigeon that had had enough of its wing feathers extracted to make flight impossible.

A decision had to be made. Obviously I could not leave the wounded bird to be subjected to further torture. So I had to return to my old country ways and dispatch it.

But I suppose that Fusker had done me a good turn. Wood pigeons are a nuisance in my garden. They foul the flagstones with their not inconsiderable droppings, needing the mess to be swept clean, or, if missed and trodden on, being brought into the house on the soles of shoes. Now, at least, there are two fewer wood pigeons. For that, thank you, Fusker.

FLOWERPOT VEGETABLES IN LONDON

Although this piece is to do with growing vegetables in pots, allow me first to picture my London walled garden. It measures 4 paces by 14 paces. So by most people’s standards it is a very small garden.

The ground surface is paved with concrete flagstones, except for a narrow strip of soil at the north side of its length.

At one end of the garden is a small, two-seat summerhouse, known as “the shed”. In it, summer and part winter, we spend a lot of time. Blackbirds enter to eat crumbled Scottish oatcake on the carpet floor, and robins fly in to eat cheese bits from either our hands, from my knee or from the top of some birdseed boxes next to where I sit. A dunnock likes small cheese bits thrown out to it. Goldfinches (who seem to be the only birds that eat niger/nyger seeds, but drop a lot for mice and the creation of seedlings galore), great tits, blue tits, green finches, wrens and dreaded wood pigeons all visit the garden for food and drink. Rare visitors have been parakeets and a great spotted woodpecker, the latter robbing our robin’s nest of young.

On the house wall at the other end (west end) of the garden is wall box accommodation for swifts, sparrows, house martins, flycatchers, wagtails, blue tits, great tits, robins, bats, butterflies, bumblebees and other bees. Not many are used, but they are there – in case. All are hand painted to roughly match the London stock bricks behind them. Beneath these potential summer homes is a large tank for collecting rainwater from the roof.

VINES. When I left living in the country some 19 years ago (1989) I brought with me several varieties of vine from my experimental vineyard. The experimental part was to find disease-free or certainly disease-resistant vines – and other tests, mostly regarding fertiliser, methods of pruning and vinification. So there had to be a place made for the transported vines.

I found a blacksmith who made for me arches, made of 1” (2.5 cm) reinforcing rod that were attached to the north and south walls of the garden to form an arbour. These arches were braced diagonally with fencing wire that was also used to form intermediate arches.

Having once designed scenery for the theatre, I created this arched arbour in perspective – making the near arches (to the house) higher than the far ones and positioning the far ones closer together than the near ones. The intermediate wire arches, the bracing wires, and the rod arches themselves, were then painted with black mastic paint for preservation.

There are now several disease-free vines covering the arbour and trailing along wires on walls. The white grape grown is Seyval Blanc, and the main red one, Triomphe d’Alsace. The white is there for the pleasure of seeing its lovely bunches and making a little white or rosé wine. And the red one (Triomphe d’Alsace, which now runs for 73 metres (say 220 feet) over and around the garden can produce from a dozen or so to a maximum 88 bottles of excellent wine each year. Birds love the red grapes, and are a constant threat to a good harvest. They leave the white ones until last. I am unable to net the vines, so have to rush out to rattle a bamboo on hard surfaces to deter the birds. They are quick in learning to be careful, but love to glide in quietly and deceive me.

ROSES. Grown along the strip of soil beneath the north wall are roses (one Reverend F. Page Roberts and, in my opinion, the best of all roses, Typhoon).

SCULPTURE. A 4’ 6” (137 cm) high elm sculpture of lovers stands beneath the arbour. It is inclined to split in the summer and close up in the winter. That is the way of elm wood. Done by me in 1981 (as discovered from the sculpture link in my blog), it is sprayed occasionally to combat rot and woodworm. Few people are brave enough to get on their knees to look beneath after I have told them of the generously carved action details that I added after creating it.

FLOWERS. In pots of various colours, shapes and capacity, are flowers, grown on moveable brickwork, organised at different heights to form of a peninsular, almost dividing the paved garden. This configuration is altered throughout the year.
The flowers grown are two kinds of fuchsia, three large pots of impatiens (for a constant blaze of summer colour), hibiscus, Bolivian begonia, hydrangea, mahonia, pieris, geraniums (pelagoniums), potentilla, cyclamen, lilies, camellia, tulips, foxgloves (gratefully, as digitalis once saved my life) and calendula.

TREES. From the soil exposed by extracting a flagstone beneath the south wall grows a morello cherry, trained in espalier fashion on wires. The cherries are harvested in late summer for céries eau de vie, to be enjoyed at Christmas time.

The trees grown in pots are two bay trees (one given to us as a cutting by a dying religious lady, now trained to point to heaven), an apple and a pear (both more decorative than productive). A fig tree and ivy share a pot. A horizontal, pot-growing juniper, rises to cover the surfaces of both apple and pear pots.

Cuttings of Triomphe d’Alsace grapevines are grown, not in pots but in a corner of the garden as gifts to those locals who want to collect them in early December each year.

HERBS. Since coming to London I have had a collection of herbs in pots – some being more successful than others – depending on soil, light and shade, and the weather conditions during the year – not to mention neglect when on holiday. In these pots I grow parsley (from the supermarket), rosemary, chives, French tarragon, and thyme. I have had trouble in growing sage, but having obtained one with variegated leaf, it has done well. But the leaves are not as strongly flavoured as “vulgaris”. Initial coriander growing was a disappointment. I should have known better, having written on the subject for the Financial Times in November 1988. Sometimes rocket, grown in a corner of the garden, has done splendidly. It did not do well this year. But I saved some seedpods, from which I obtained summer-dried seeds to plant in a pot in September - for autumn harvesting. Mint, grown in a large, sunken pot to keep it within bounds, does well each year. But this year, many of its late leaves were eaten by some bug or other – probably flea beetle. I should have harvested them earlier and turned them into mint sauce for winter use.

Inside, on the kitchen window sill, I grow a new lot of sweet basil each year (obtained in a pot from the supermarket, thinned and replanted in good compost), a small “tree” of chillies (they turned out to be jalapino this year – and very successful), and an aloe vera. I give branches of this spiky and fleshy plant to a West Indian lady, who uses it in cooking and for healing purposes.

SOFT FRUIT. To grow strawberries seemed a real possibility when I saw a special earthenware pot for them, made with an open top and holes at the side. Several varieties were planted, working from the bottom up, keeping their potted roots in place and sticking the foliage out of the holes as the pot was filled with compost. The outcome was disappointing despite plenty of watering and fertiliser. What runners developed were pushed into already-occupied holes. We await better results next year. The pot looks quite decorative – and fun. The gift of a blueberry bush has produced fruit – mainly for the birds. We expect brilliantly coloured leaves on it in the autumn.

VEGETABLES. It was in 2007 that my sister, June, thought about giving up part of her allotment and growing vegetables in pots in her little London garden. It was about this time that people were becoming more conscious about using some of their town gardens for growing vegetables – sensing that the financial pinch was on its way, seeing that self-sufficiency was becoming popular and fashionable, and wanting to reduce the import of foodstuffs. Her initial experiments with carrots were a great success, as they were with her mixed lettuces.

For me, growing vegetables in pots started in the spring of 2008 with, of all things, ASPARAGUS. I was given a very large flowerpot by a near neighbour and did not know where it might go in the garden and what to plant in it. Asparagus came to mind, not as a large crop for future degustation, but to be able to eat one or two spikes and enjoy the sight of its ferns and autumn berries. So into the big pot went a lot of composty soil and two bought asparagus crowns, claimed to be two years old.

In spaces around the crowns I planted seed, with considerable expectation, having once established a large asparagus bed, all from a packet or two of seeds. The rest of the seeds were planted in a small pot.

The crowns produced one thin spear each. The seeds planted near to them grew and subsided quickly. But the seeds in the small pot did splendidly. Their little crowns will augment the larger crowns in the big pot, and the rest, I think, be put in the soil beneath the cherry tree, where a short row of mini daffodils flower each spring.

I wanted a globe ARTICHOKE for its foliage and possibly a fine flower or two. Given an off-cut with a little root, it started well, died away, but has now (almost October) started to produce new leaves. Not all is lost.

CARROTS were an obvious choice. My gardening sister told of the delicious thinnings to be enjoyed before the main crop could be harvested. Our thinnings were very small, but delicious. And those left to grow fatter never became much larger. I will experiment with other varieties, as hers were far better than mine.

BEETROOT made a decorative pot, and the leaves were used in salads and omelettes. But the bulbs were never large enough to count as beetroot.

FENNEL, grown as a single plant from a garden centre pot, provided fronds as wanted in the kitchen and a good crop of fresh seeds. In a way it was a success.

DWARF FRENCH BEANS. These did well, but I did not plant them thickly enough in their pot.

CLIMBING FRENCH BEANS (Blue Lake) provided several dishes, but as the garden is not really large enough to grow them, despite a “cat’s cradle” of string for them in a corner. I will grow more dwarf French beans on a high shelf next year, and add a few climbers to them see if they will trail.

BROAD BEANS. I grew two buckets-full in a darkish corner. They grew well, but produced no more than half a dozen pods. I intend to persevere, planting a dwarf variety very soon (autumn).

SORREL, from seed, has been a success. We have harvested the leaves several times for omelettes.

TOMATOES have usually been most productive, beside being a decorative and delicious crop. All went well this year, until I came into the garden one morning to find that blight was spoiling the entire lot. The leaves had shrivelled and patches of rot had appeared on the tomatoes. It was a disheartening and disgusting sight. But I will persevere.

COURGETTES (zucchini) were both a success and failure. We harvested quite a few courgettes and they were delicious to eat. But the failure was mine, in not realising that the plants would crowd us out of our small garden. They will not be tried again – due only to lack of space.

GARLIC has already been autumn planted in the area where rocket grew. Rocket has now been consigned to a pot.

SHALLOTS have been planted with the garlic. Both are from magnificent French “seed”, sold for culinary purposes in the Dieppe market.

LAMB’S LETTUCE will be planted in a pot as soon as I buy some seed.

MIXED LETTUCE will be planted in the spring.

SPINACH will also be tested.

That is as far as my London garden experiments have got. I recommend anyone to join me for the fun and upward learning curve.