Fusker again

I am rather devoted to the name “Fusker” because many of the hits coming through the ether to our computer arrive by that name.
Well, “Fusker” is, I believe, something Swedish. It may be a computer programme or even something a little more risqué. But hits come in.
I speak of hits without much authority because my own computer is not connected to the net, being an old-fashioned machine that I feed with 3 ½” floppy disks if I want to transfer anything from it to my wife Margreet’s very up-to-date edition of modern technology.
I suppose that many of these Fusker hits relate to neighbour James May’s cat of that name, an animal of considerable character but somewhat of a villain.
I recorded in this blog a fight that I once had with that cat which sent me to hospital for repairs and injection after a bloody conflict on my territory, which I won. Since when, the cat respects me as “top cat” and keeps his distance.
Many of us love cats. We just want to stroke them and hope for their friendship. That is why they are so popular as pets.
When newcomers come to live nearby we warn them of possible trouble if playing with Fusker.
Now Fusker loves houses more than people. Leave the door open and your back turned and Fusker is indoors – slipping in often unnoticed.
When inside he investigates the house from top to bottom, sometimes finding sympathetic hosts who allow him to stay – and even people who will feed him choice morsels (I believe smoked salmon to be one of his favourites).
But Fusker poses danger.
As we are frightened that he might turn on a child, we warn those who do not know him of potential danger. So we warned two new neighbours who have a young boy.
True to form, Fusker infiltrated their newly acquired home, prancing up and down stairs sizing up the place and its inhabitants.
The new master of the house managed to apprehend him and was pleased to stroke the quiet miscreant - as one is wont to do.
Then Fusker sank his teeth deep into the man’s hand.
At least the child was safe, who witnessed the attack and thought that it was hilariously funny.
Fusker is a villain of course. But at least he can make a child laugh.

Garden update Spring 2010

As spring turns to summer it is a chance for me to write a garden update.
From a large pot we harvested – and ate raw – half a dozen spears of asparagus. They were delicious – tender, sweet and juicy.
This brings me to almost conclude a theory.
I have tried several times to grow two or more varieties of a perennial shrub or plant of the same genus in the same pot. And each time, after initial apparent success, only one has survived.
The most recent example of this has been in that asparagus pot of ours.
In it I had planted, over several years, crowns and seedlings of several varieties. They all started well, but beneath the soil a battle was taking place, leaving only the strongest to survive.
This fight between roots beneath the soil in pots has occurred in this London garden between two types of viburnam, two varieties of lavender, and now asparagus. The strongest wins each time. The others die. I won’t bother to try this double or multiple planting again. Nature has taught me a lesson. She has spoken.
In the winter I dug out a pot of mint which had noxious weeds in it, and its plastic was, anyhow, beginning to break up. I replanted a few of its young, rooted strands in a new, strong, drained, black plastic bucket, filled with crocks at the bottom and clean soil above.
This has produced plenty of healthy mint stems, and is the happier for its regeneration. (In tipping out the old mint, I noticed that its roots spread out quite near to the soil surface, and not much downward.)
A success has been in the strawberry pot of geraniums (pelargoniums). From its top are growing three colourful varieties, and from the holes in its side grow the trailing kind. And from one aperture sprout the thin pointed leaves of a thrift plant that was given to us and had no other appropriate place in which to live. It looks a bit odd as it sticks out – rather like hair, favoured by modern youths.
Unable to keep the corms of the Bolivian begonia throughout the winter, I now have two young (gift) plants of its “Bonfire” variety growing well and flowering early.
I have written about my disappointment with plastic sacks for growing potatoes, and the lack of success when using them the following year for Swiss chard (not bad), carrots (poor), and beetroot (very poor).
Well, this year I constructed a frame of bamboos and string and, in the sacks with replenished topsoil planted broad beans (The Sutton) and climbing French beans. These are doing splendidly, with the broad bean plants now in full flower and the climbers climbing.
As for potatoes, I continue to plant three seed potatoes in each of two black plastic buckets (crocked and drilled for drainage). This year I chose the variety Arran Bard.
After 66 days we harvested one bucketful and enjoyed a feast of small, new potatoes (last year we harvested after 77 days). As the spuds were still quite small, we will wait another 10 days before harvesting those in the second bucket.
Potato harvesting is done by first composting the haulms, and then turning the bucket upside-down on a marble-topped table in the garden. Spuds are sorted out from the light soil, which is either to be rejuvenated in the compost heap or spread on the small areas of garden not covered by flagstones.
There should be apples and pears aplenty this year. Herbs do well, and the pieris continues to please. Roses are fine (Rev P-R and Typhoon), and our robins, having brought up young, continue to land in our shed next to us to eat morsels of cheddar cheese and dried maggots.

French Toast

This simple dish is ideal for breakfast, a snack, or child’s tea. It was certainly popular in my childhood. Yet now I find it to be a little dull. So, besides adding any leftover mayonnaise to the mix, I have been experimenting by spreading either Marmite or Bovril on to one side of the bread before dipping it into the egg/milk mixture. I have also been adding a shake or two of Tabasco chilli sauce as well. All these additions have been successful in invigorating French toast. The amount of milk to be added to egg in this recipe is a matter of experiment. With the texture of my home-made bread being denser than bought loaves I use a little less milk than the volume of egg. The recipe below is for about two slices, perhaps three.

FRENCH TOAST

You will need:
Slices of bread (with or without crusts)
Eggs
Milk
Tabasco sauce, possibly
Marmite, possibly
Bovril, possibly
Pepper and salt
Olive oil
Cinnamon powder or grated nutmeg, possibly

Break an egg into a soup plate. Add pepper and salt. Whisk with a fork or whisk, and add about the same volume, or a little more, of milk. Whisk again.
To add taste, consider spreading either Marmite or Bovril on one side of the bread, and adding a shake or two of chilli sauce (like Tabasco) to the mixture.
Soak slices of bread in the whisked liquid and fry them in olive oil on both sides until golden. Some then sprinkle over a little cinnamon powder or grated nutmeg.

Roquefort beurre

You will bless me for this information

ROQUEFORT BEURRE

You will need
Roquefort cheese
Butter

When I was in Paris as a student in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the offered items of restaurant and café food were still peasantly simple – staunch and traditional favourites of the natives.
Both radishes and Roquefort cheese were offered with a pat of butter. Why?
I never quite saw the reason why the taste of radishes would be enhanced by the addition of butter. And just how should that combination have been eaten anyway?
But I was soon to notice that customers used a knife to blend the Roquefort with the proffered butter. So I did the same.
The result was delicious. The salty astringency of the cheese was transformed into a blend of softness and creaminess – retaining all the wonderful taste of the cheese.
Roquefort may still be served with butter in French eating places. In Paris, the only restaurant that I know of that still serves that “traditional” menu, and at a reasonable cost, is the enormous and fun Chartier, 7 Rue de Faubourg Montmartre.
The last time that I ate there, Roquefort was not on the menu, but Blue d’Auvergne was, and it was offered with beurre. Radishes were not featured.
So I recommend that for a cheese treat you put a lump of butter in a bowl, allow it to soften, add twice its volume of Roquefort cheese, and mash the two together with a fork.
Place the bowl in a freezer bag if keeping it in the refrigerator.

Ice-cream sauces

The STOP ME AND BUY ONE ice-cream man on his tricycle cart of old, served blocks of ice cream, wafers, cones and water ice in a triangular stick that you pushed out of its container as you sucked or bit. I do not believe that anyone thought of adding sauce to the blocks of plain vanilla made for home consumption. But there are lots of sauces for ice cream in the kitchen that are normally used for other purposes. They need no further preparation, or very little. So should you have dull ice cream to use up, have a good look around the shelves and cupboards.

ICE-CREAM SAUCES

You will need:
Any of the following:

After the most popular chocolate sauce (see below), a fine sauce is golden syrup, straight from its can or jar, or heated. When blended with melted butter it is even better. Chocolate spread is another potential sauce. Jams and marmalade, straight from the jar or heated and diluted with a little water are other ideas. Grated chocolate, nuts, sultanas, currants, green raisins and peanut butter (worked in and excellent), all make good sauces on their own, or mixed. Crumbled plain digestive biscuits may not strictly be a sauce, but the crumbs are delicious on ice cream. But top of my list comes hot or cold chocolate sauce, made simply by melting some butter, adding plenty of sugar, half its volume of cocoa powder, a little vanilla essence and water to form the consistency required. Whisk it all together as it heats through. If too much water has been added (it won’t need much) and the sauce too thin, just whisk in more sugar and cocoa powder. I let the mixture rise in the pan three times over heat – only to make sure that the sugar has melted completely. Put what you do not need to use right away into a screw-top jar, make sure it is cold, and refrigerate until wanted to enhance ice-cream at other times.

a French bathroom

A room contains, in the normal run of things, four vertical surfaces (walls) and two horizontal surfaces (ceiling and floor).
On a recent trip, our bathroom in France had 22 vertical surfaces, 13 horizontal surfaces (where dust could lie) and one angled surface.
It was a conglomeration of surfaces, mostly, or partly, blue tiled (ceiling part tiled).
Pleasingly held in my affection are the arrays of bathroom pipes and pipe work that can resemble a complicated knitting pattern.
With general upgrading, these open knots of copper tube have been much reduced over the years in which I have been to France, but still offer enough wonky pipe work to intrigue.
Beautifully exposed in that same bathroom (brought up to three star standards) were six horizontal pipes and eight vertical ones (some large to very large), all plain to see when lying in hot water.
And nearly always there is a little hole somewhere at floor level – presumably to please mice.
The surfaces, pipes and mouse hole contrive to create bathrooms of infinite enjoyment to the interested observer. And for that panorama of fun the French don’t even have to try.

String and a blue tit

Outside and near to my kitchen window are three plastic sacks of soil into which I am planting beans this year.
Broad beans are already growing well there.
To accommodate the climbing beans (Climbing French and Blue Lake) I have constructed a bamboo frame, giving each plant either a bamboo or a vertical strand of green, garden string up which to climb.
Looking out of the window one early morning in late April, I saw a blue tit struggling and swinging round at the top of one of these strings.
I witnessed its distress for a short time before planning to go outside and free the poor fellow.
Then I noticed that it was sliding downward. Perhaps the string had become wound around its leg.
Then, apparently still struggling, it fell lower still.
It was about to be saved when I noticed that the bird was not attached to the string at all, but holding on to it.
Lower it went, pecking at the string all the while.
By the time the blue tit had reached the bottom of the string it had harvested a beakful of short green strands, made of jute, sisal, hemp, or whatever garden string is made from.
Then off it flew to add decoration to its nest.

Rice salad

Rice was used in England’s past mainly for rice pudding. It was also added to soups and stews – especially in poorer households. Then the Indians and Chinese came.
Rice salad does sound a bit boring. But with a bit of imagination it can be turned into one of the very best of dishes as a first course or main one for vegetarians. A large bowl of this salad will make a summer's day feast - and be economical and easy to prepare.
You could boil rice especially for it, but why not cook more than will be wanted for, say, a curry or whatever you normally eat with rice. Then you could start to prepare the following day's salad with the surplus. Add oil right away and stir it in, otherwise the rice will dry out and some grains will revert to their hard state. I favour brown rice for this salad, although it takes almost double the time to cook.

RICE SALAD

You will need:
Rice
Oil
Vinegar
Pepper and salt
Various additions

Let us presume that you have cooked more boiled rice than wanted for a meal. Put what is left over in a bowl and add oil, vinegar (or lemon juice), pepper and salt. Give it a good stir. If the rice is still hot or warm, so much the better. Cover the bowl and refrigerate it when cold.
The next day, add some capers, possibly green peppercorns (I soak black peppercorns in vinegar for a month or more and use a teaspoonful of them) and a chopped gherkin or two. That's a good start - and finish. But there are other items you might like to add, like chopped nuts (I favour pre-roasted cashews, pounded), pine nuts, chopped onion, chopped garlic, chopped parsley or coriander, chopped fresh or dried herbs, chopped fresh chillies, a dash of chilli sauce, pounded coriander seeds, chopped hard boiled egg, diced cucumber, chopped green, red or yellow peppers, chopped cumquat pieces, green raisins, sultanas, olives and on, and on, and on - though not all together.
Whatever you choose to add, you can hardly go wrong. But start with a simple few ingredients - like nuts, capers and chopped gherkins. These give the salad some “bite”. Nuts and peppers will give it added colour and texture.
From plain and simple rice you will now have made a delicious salad. For a main course, decorate it with halved hard-boiled eggs, tomato quarters, sardines or anchovies. Add a few stoned black olives to delight the eye.
To elevate the salad to a much higher plane, skin a small knob of fresh ginger root. Cut this up into the smallest of morsels, or grate it. Add this and stir.
Before you have turned cooked rice into a salad, you might consider saving some as the stuffing for vine leaves, when in season. Soften the leaves with boiling water. Mint will be your main addition to the rice as stuffing, with cooked minced lamb.

Dieppe Travel 2010

It’s an age thing I suppose. Travel enlivens and freshens the mind and, when in France, fills the stomach as well. Travel means change, and change is a restoring stimulative.
But having to use airports is “out of bounds” for travellers like us if humanly possible. I find nothing at all to recommend them, despite having flown and still being fascinated by aeroplanes.
Which leaves holiday breaks in the UK as a possibility. But here, good restaurants tend to be over-expensive and their cooking often still horribly Nouvelle Cuisine. And English hotels and B&Bs, when last we tried them, would charge per person, not per room. The French are more sensible in this respect, and thus encourage return visits.
This leaves long voyages on liners as a possibility, where you might not like your fellow passengers (or those who want to make friends with you), put on weight, and possibly contract whatever virulent viruses are doing the rounds.
At least we are lucky to have France, Belgium and Holland in mainland Europe near at hand. All are foreign and well worth a visit without too much hassle or difficulty.
The tunnel to France, despite the occasional blockage or fire, is an ideal way to experience “abroad”. But Paris is now becoming prohibitively expensive, as is the more restrictive Brussels.
By ferry to reach nearby mainland Europe leaves Dover as the quickest crossing port. But it’s a long drive from London, and we are not enamoured with Calais.
Crossing to mainland Europe via Portsmouth and ports beyond, involves much longer sea crossings.
Which leaves “our” crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe as a good, all-round, best bet.
Formalities in Newhaven are minimal. There are no “Micky Mouse” approach roads to contend with, and four hours later you are in France – in an ancient port (which we once flattened and where we were flattened in turn more recently by the Boche). It is a port/seaside town where one hardly has to proceed further.
This maritime town is “walking” size. The restaurants are plentiful and good – with fish dishes superb.
The hotels are comfortable and far cheaper than in England. (I have written extensively on most aspects of Dieppe earlier in this blog and try not to repeat myself.)
So, in a word, that’s where we go – for short breaks and the re-stocking of larder and cellar.
Now, this wine re-stocking is not, as you may think, with French wine (though we do buy our “house”, Pays d’Oc, wine there) but mainly bargain-priced New World wines which the French discount, thinking that by being produced outside France they are undrinkable. These wines are often distinguishable on the shelves by the layer of dust on them.
We also return with cheeses and other foods, though with the present exchange rates, this is becoming less financially beneficial. But many foods are cheaper than in England. Endive is one. Dijon mustard is another. Smoked chickens are good value and delicious. Paper goods are to be recommended. Garlic and shallots are always on our list, but were very expensive the last time we bought them (out of their season). Fruit and vegetables are so fresh that we invariably “top up” the car with them for our return journey.
We were there in the spring, and will return in the early winter (when scallops are in season once more) when children are in school again and the tourist season has subsided.
And anyhow, where in the world in 2010 can one eat a splendid four course meal with aperitif, unlimited cider and red wine, with coffee included. Of course you will lunch at shared tables with newly scrubbed-up workmen, and eat in a shed. And all this would cost you £10.80 per head. Where in the world could this happen? Surely only in France.

Cheese and garlic pancake for drinks

Margaret Costa, the well-known cookery writer at the time, was coming to dinner and my then girl friend decided to make a gougère. It was not a success, being rather flat and solid. But our culinary guest loved the result. There must, I thought, be an easier and quicker way of making such a delicious failure. A taste-alike, quick-to-make equivalent was needed for times when people were invited for drinks on the spur of the moment. The following was the result. Everyone loves it - especially children. It is not just a Shrove Tuesday treat, but one to be enjoyed at any time of the year.

CHEESE AND GARLIC PANCAKE FOR DRINKS

You will need:
Plain flour with baking powder or self-raising
Salt and pepper
Egg or eggs
Dijon mustard
Chilli sauce (like Tabasco)
Milk
Cheddar cheese (or a stronger kind)
Olive oil
Garlic

Sieve some plain flour with baking powder or self-raising (say 3 ½ heaped dessert spoons) into a large bowl. Add pepper, salt. Stir.
Break a large egg or two small ones so that their contents fall into a depression in the centre of the sifted flour. Add a good dollop of Dijon mustard and a shake or two of Tabasco sauce (or another kind of chilli sauce).
Break the eggs with a whisk and start to stir from the centre outwards, adding milk (1/4 pint). Keep stirring and beating until the mixture is thick, yet smooth and free of even the smallest lumps. Or I’m sure a blender would do the same job.
Add some grated Cheddar (done beforehand), or blue cheese to make a stronger taste (too much cheese may make the pancake oily). Stir again.
Put olive oil in a frying pan to coat the bottom and sides. Add at least a couple of garlic cloves, squeezed from a press. Spread these morsels evenly around. Cook them until they are about to brown.
Now pour in the mixture to coat the bottom of the pan evenly. Reduce the heat to very low and wait until the bubbling mix begins to dry out on its upper surface. This will take about 20 minutes (depending on the heat and the pan),
It is now time to toss the pancake - or turn it over as best you can.
Tossed, with its brown and garlic side now uppermost, with the point of a knife cut slits in the surface to allow moisture to escape from within.
Lift a corner to inspect the under side (cooking will take a further 10 minutes or so). When cooked and golden brown, turn the pancake on to a board. Offer it to your guests cut into small sections.
With my frying pan and gas heat source at just above its very lowest, the whole cooking process takes 30 minutes. So half an hour before guests arrive for drinks I start to cook the pancake.
It is a good idea to make quite a lot of the mixture if guests for a party will be arriving over the period of an hour or two. Then, as you leave the kitchen with the first hot pancake, add some more garlic and mixture to the frying pan - and so on. The success of this delicious pancake will surprise you, and delight your guests. Children love it, too. But don’t tell the young about the garlic, as some don’t like the sound of it.
Get children to hand around these pancake squares. Reward them. Like dogs, if given a job to do, they (and you) are happy.

Winter Socks

As with most people in cool climates, I like my feet to be warm in winter.
Ever since visiting Holland some years ago and discovering socks, called SKI Socks Extra Soft, my feet have been as warm as toast throughout the cold months.
Being woven in a soft, wooly kind of way, made for skiing and not daily walking, they are inclined, after a while, to get thin at heel and holey at toe – two pairs (darned a bit) surviving one winter.
Discovering in early springtime that I was now almost out of these miracle socks (sort of stockings, really) and finding my last two pairs to be near the end of their days, with next winter’s warmth in mind, I wrote to my sister-in-law, Henny, who lives on the Dutch/German border, asking if she would kindly look in at a Hema store to see if there were any left in my size.
Her husband, Bert, found that none were available, so contacted the manager of the shop, who very kindly telephoned the supplier (United Sox of the People’s Republic of China – with the slogan “We Knit for Europe”) to assess the position. Having obtained the number in China, the telephone was handed over to my brother-in-law.
The English/Chinese spoken from so far away was somewhat difficult for him to understand, but the gist was clear.
These particular socks were bought by some of their most revered Dutch customers, one by the name of Pates Lobbels (which, funnily enough, sounded a bit like my name) and also an Honellable Clown Plince, who used them the year round at his lodge in the Alps during the European winter and the mountains of Patagonia in summer (their winter).
Unfortunately, annual production ceased on Chinese New Year’s Day, leaving only four pairs available, as His Loyal Highness the Clown Plince had bought the rest. He was velly solly.
But because we were velly honerlable customers, the cost of these four remaining pairs would be – nil.
This was wonderful news, tempered only by me noticing that the date of my brother-in-law’s email was the 1st of April.

Beef, Coriander and Carrot Stew

This simple but very distinctive and tasty stew demands shin of beef and long slow cooking (three hours anyhow on top of the stove). In a cold winter its coriander taste offers a hint of spring. I believe that two Oxo cubes are better than a beef stock cube, and chopped coriander stems better than its leaves. But that’s a fine point of judgement, the differences being slight. This is as good a beef stew as any.

BEEF – BEEF, CORIANDER AND CARROT STEW

You will need:
Olive oil
Onion
Garlic
Shin of beef
Flour
Oxo cubes (2) or beef stock cube (1)
Pepper and salt
Carrots
Coriander

In a saucepan or iron casserole fry chopped onion and garlic in olive oil. When this is just turning brown, add chopped up shin of beef.
Carry on cooking, stirring all the time, until the meat has turned colour (but just whether this browning makes any difference in sealing in the goodness I don’t know, and somehow doubt).
Now sprinkle over a dessert spoon of plain flour, some pepper and salt, and two crumbled Oxo cubes or one beef stock cube. Stir well.
Add water to well cover the meat. Then put in plenty of cleaned and chopped carrots.
Lastly, add chopped coriander stems (wash them well) or plenty of chopped coriander leaves.
Bring the ingredients to the boil, stir well, and leave the pan on the lowest heat for three hours.
Then eat, or leave the stew until the next day when it will taste even better.

Note. To add a small chilli or a shake or two of Tabasco sauce may be to your taste. And if using a stock cube instead of Oxo, add a little liquid gravy browning. The depth of colour the browning imparts is much to the benefit of the look of the stew.

An Acting Career

Now that there is a new Peter Greenaway film out (“Nightwatching”), I am reminded of my (distinguished) career as an actor.
For the Greenaway film, “The Cook, the Thief etc.”, I was invited by friends to join them and to act as a restaurant customer.
Driven to enormous studios in the suburbs, I spent much of the day at a table pretending to eat a pink crayfish. That would not have been so bad had the crustacean not been stinkingly rotten.
There was action around me as tableware was thrown about with explosive force and, I think, a fork shoved through someone’s cheek into their mouth. The latter action was contrived, with fake blood in full flow, by the visual effects and make-up departments.
At the conclusion of a long day’s acting (the whole day produced but five minutes of finished film) we were given fish and chips as payment and thanks.
When the film eventually reached the silver screen, I was, obviously, anxious to witness my skills as an actor. But sadly, I think, only just think, that I saw the back of my head. And I’m not even sure about that, either.
But I really have had a career as a serious actor.
My first job, having been to art school (The Central), theatre design school (The Old Vic) and the Covent Garden Opera House (as scene painter), was set designer in repertory theatre at High Wycombe.
Presenting a new set weekly, with reading the play, working out a floor plan, constructing a model, painting the scenery, installing the set and furnishing it with hired and borrowed items, was an onerous task, made tolerable by applause for my hard work as the curtains opened. Pay was minimal, but experience great.
Our cast was limited in number. In one scene of a play, two ambulance men were required to cross the stage with someone on a stretcher.
Our number could run to only one ambulance man, but not two.
So there I was, a genuine actor for a week, with my name in the programme – as second ambulance man.
So when I see a television drama or stage performance, I think to myself that I, too, was once an actor.
If I am ever asked to act again I will demand a better part – first ambulance man, perhaps.

Luck in France 2010

In life you need luck on your side – pre-ordained or by absolute chance does not really matter, as long as it is good luck, and preferably plenty of it.
We had just spent three nights in France, mainly to re-stock our wine supply, which gets depleted at some speed with our daily consumption, along with some generous entertaining.
And we also go to France to eat well, breathe in sea air, walk off excesses, buy food of various descriptions, and generally absorb a foreign way of life. Theirs is another culture with those in-built identities that seem as nature to them but of a separate past and present to us.
Our first stroke of luck this time was to find that our favoured “house” wine was “on promotion” – six bottles for the price of five. And it was cheap enough already.
With an anniversary celebration meal in mind we headed for a favourite restaurant, to find it closed for their annual holiday. But another place nearby – almost if not absolutely in a shed, was open.
We lunch early, which was fortunate as there was only one sitting, where clients (mostly workmen) arrived to eat at between mid-day and 12.15.
Here we were given a house aperitif (cider/cassis) and told to take as much as we felt from a most interesting spread of hors d’oeuvres.
Already we were clearly in luck.
We were then offered a choice from three main courses.
On our table stood a bottle of cold and delicious fizzy cider and a litre bottle of red wine. They were there to be drunk as we might see fit – and at no extra cost.
A lovely cheese board of local produce followed the main course, then a dessert and then coffee – total price £10.80 a head, with service, all inclusive. What luck!
We lunched there every day, feeling that we could do no better elsewhere – even in favoured old haunts.
There was still room in our car for more wine, the kind we buy at a separate supermarket, obtaining there old favourites for a modest sum as they are “foreign” wines to the French, and so not to their liking. It was lucky that the ones we wanted were available.
I have used the same hotel in France for probably 65 years or so, knowing the grandfather founder, son, and now daughter. They are as friends.
It so happened that recommending this hotel to neighbours in London at one time, we heard that they were given a discount on the price of their room – something that had never happened to me, and probably being their most long-lasting and faithful client.
So I jokingly made this clear to the management. When leaving for England, we were given a fine discount. I’m not sure that this was luck at all.
We were very early arrivals at the departure terminal in Dieppe, so were positioned in the front of a particular row of cars that were about the same height.
After some time, the overseer of boarding order pushed aside the lightweight bollard in front of our car and waved us aboard. Margreet switched on the motor to start and go. From beneath the bonnet came not the noise of a starting motor but one of angry ratchets.
General consternation broke loose as French port officials passed judgement on our mechanical failure and decided to hit the starter motor with a sizeable hammer to free the mechanism within it - without success.
Well, telephone calls were made to all and sundry breakdown services, and we were pushed aboard – last.
On the way to England I wondered why only twice in some 15 years of use had our splendid Toyota RAV 4 let us down – and each time the circumstances had been almost identical. It happened before (unsolved) in Santander when about to board the ferry back to Portsmouth, and now it happened again when waiting to board the car ferry in Dieppe to carry us back to Newhaven.
I solved the problem when lying down during the smooth crossing to England.
In both instances we had arrived well before the departure time. And although on each occasion the engine had been switched off, the electronics were still on and working, in the form of dashboard lights, radio, window-winding motors and such. And during that wait the battery had become drained of its charge, with not enough power remaining to engage the starter motor with the engine.
Others might well take note of this possible state of affairs.
Shortly before arriving at Newhaven I asked the Purser of our vessel to see if someone aboard could connect up our car’s battery with jump leads. If successful in starting the car it would save us from having to be towed off the ship or engaging the services of the now waiting AA breakdown man.
Being the last and lonely car in a dark corner of the vast car deck, jump leads were brought, connected, and the engine started. We were on our way.
So were we lucky to eventually get home unscathed, or unlucky, after such a spell of good luck, to suffer the indignities and embarrassment of mechanical (electrical) failure?
Perhaps good luck is always tempered with a little bad.

Mushroom Soup

Here are two methods of making mushroom soup – the first with dried mushrooms and the second with fresh. Both are excellent, the fresh mushroom one being the easier.

MUSHROOM SOUP

You will need:
Mushrooms, dried or fresh
Onion
White sauce or plain flour
Butter
Flour
Milk
Pepper and salt
A chicken stock cube

Dried mushrooms impart, for less cost, more taste to a soup than the fresh variety, though if using the latter their taste will be enhanced by turning them into soup.
Buy a small handful of dried, sliced mushrooms (porcini are best). Shake them well in a sieve to rid them of sand. Soak them for 24 hours. Extract the mushrooms and, with knife or scissors, cut them into small pieces. Keep the (brown) liquid, but decant it off any sand that has fallen to the bottom of the water.
Now make a white sauce using butter, flour, milk, water and the liquor in which the mushrooms were soaked Add the mushroom pieces.
You will want to add extra liquid in the form of milk, or a dissolved stock cube or two, to give the soup the desired consistency and extra taste.
Season as thought necessary - and serve. This soup, like the one below, which uses fresh, white, button mushrooms, is even better the following day.

Using fresh mushrooms:
There is hardly a simpler or more economical way to make a glorious soup than the following way when using fresh, white, button mushrooms.
Cut up a good size onion as finely as possible. Then do the same with fresh mushrooms – say as many as you can hold in cupped hands (or 250g). Both of these operations take time – but it is worth it.
In a saucepan melt a good lump of butter, and into it stir your chopped onion. Cook this slowly until the onion is transparent. Now add the mushroom bits. Continue stirring the mixture over heat, sweating them all together. Add pepper, salt and a sprinkling of flour – a dessert spoon at the most. Stir this. The mixture will now be quite tacky. Crumble in a chicken stock cube. Now add plenty of milk (1 1/2 pints will do), stir, and allow the soup to boil very, very slowly for, say 20 to 30 minutes. That’s it. And the result will be quite delicious, taste as if you have used cream, and be even better the next day. So make it the day before wanted if possible.

Tomato and ginger sauce for noodles

This is my simplification of Singapore Noodles, being a lot easier to make and much quicker, too. In fact, the sauce can be made well before wanted and heated up as the noodles are being boiled. So it is a convenient dish to serve up at a dinner party.

TOMATO AND GINGER SAUCE FOR NOODLES

You will need:
Oil
Onion
Garlic
Root ginger
Pepper and salt
Chopped tomatoes
Chilli sauce (like Lingham’s)
Prawns
Noodles (preferably when sold in one portion squares)

In oil fry chopped onion until cooked, but not browning. Add to it plenty of chopped garlic and a good quantity of finely chopped root ginger. Then add pepper and salt.
Now tip in the contents of a can of chopped tomatoes and some chilli sauce (like Lingham’s).
Cook the sauce through for 5 minutes. Now add cooked prawns – halved if too large.
Boil the noodles in salty water as directed (3 to 5 minutes, probably). Drain them in a colander, cutting through them in the shape of a cross (with kitchen scissors) to make serving and eating them easier.
Add the noodles to the sauce (or vice versa). Stir and serve.

Chicken in foil

As foil is an insulator of heat, I seldom have a use for it. But here it is put to great effect – even though the foil is tending to keep the heat away from the chicken in its package.
From a Halal butcher buy two roasting chickens (quite cheap). At home cut off the four legs and bag them for the freezer and later use. Do the same with the wings, and then the thighs. Use these off-cuts for Indian or Thai curries at a later date.
Now cut off the double breasts (on the bone) from the carcasses. Use one or two for this dish (one double breast is more than enough for two people). Pressure cook the carcass bones for soup stock, should you feel like it.
Now we are ready.

CHICKEN - CHICKEN IN FOIL

You will need:
Foil
Chicken
Butter
Pepper and salt
Garlic
Thyme
Rosemary

Lay out a sheet of foil, and on it place a double breast of chicken (on the bone). On this put two knobs of butter, pepper and salt, garlic (squeezed from a press), and a small branch of thyme and one of rosemary (these herbs both grow well in pots in the garden, on a balcony, or attached to an outside window sill).
Make a parcel of the chicken, folding over the foil to seal in the contents.
Lay the parcel in a baking tin, and cook it in a fairly hot oven for an hour.
Undo the hot parcel, and slice the chicken from the bone. Serve it with mashed potato, and possibly another vegetable, or salad, or what you will.

Patés and Terrines

When I lived and entertained in the country it was commonplace for me to make patés. (Terrines are much the same but I tend to call the rougher editions terrines and the smoother ones patés.) These were first courses, served with hot toast, or put on to biscuits to be served with drinks. Patés are most convenient dishes, cheap and easy to make, cater for the ideas of an experimental and imaginative cook, and keep well in the refrigerator or deep freeze. Having left the country for the town, I continue to make them for meals, drinks and as gifts.
If new to cooking these delicious and most useful dishes, start with the basic recipe – more or less. A “handful” is about 250 grammes. Other amounts are up to you.
Just why I failed to add paté-making to either my “Dockland Cooking Past and Present” book or “The Oldie Cookbook” I have no idea. So here it is – with variations.

PATES OR TERRINES

You will need (roughly):
A handful of minced, fatty pork (the fat is essential)
A handful of minced beef, veal or lamb (veal is best)
A handful of minced or finely chopped liver from pigs, lambs or chickens (lambs is best I think, and chicken liver, though excellent, tends to look red and raw in the finished paté)
A few anchovies
A beaten egg
A dessert spoon of sifted flour
Pepper and salt
Herb or herbs (I favour just thyme)
White wine
A spirit (to give the paté a little extra punch and individuality)
Lard (or butter) for greasing a container before adding the ingredients
Thinly cut rashers of smoked streaky bacon (especially for paté made in a bread tin)

Either make your paté in a handsome receptacle, like a lidded china pie dish shaped as an animal (my favourite is a sleeping duck), or in a bread tin.
Line the containers with lard (or butter). If using a bread tin, from which the paté can be turned out on to a flat surface when cold (by heating the exterior of the tin with hot water), apply thin overlapping strips of smoked streaky bacon stuck to the inner surfaces. Any bacon hanging over the sides can be folded over the paté before it is cooked.
In a large bowl put the minced meat and liver. Add a few pounded anchovies. On to it put a dessert spoon of sifted flour, a whisked egg, pepper and salt, herbs (thyme alone for preference), with white wine and spirit – like brandy, calvados, whisky, etc. to make a fairly sloshy mixture. It must be sloshy, when you have used your hands or wooden spoon to blend all the ingredients together.
Fill your greased containers with it, folding over the bacon if that has been your method. Cover them with foil, held securely by elastic bands or string.
Now place the container/s in a bain marie (a baking tin containing a small depth of hot water). Bake this in a medium oven for about 1 to1½ hours, depending on size. Make sure, once in a while, that there is enough water in the baking tin. If low, top it up with boiling water.
Take out your paté/s to cool. This may take a fairly long time. If using the bread tin method, put a weight on top of the foil to flatten the upper surface. This will make the paté more stable when it has been turned out to be sliced. Another bread tin weighted down with stones or filled with water will do this job satisfactorily.
That is the basic paté. And excellent it is.
You may want to make a “house” paté by giving it individuality. There are countless ways to do this. I have used just sausage meat successfully, and added green Chartreuse. I have made an excellent “Indian” paté with minced pork, chopped fresh chillies, chopped ginger root, dried methi leaves as the herb, and the usual egg, flour, pepper and salt. And sometimes I have added chopped cornichons (small gherkins), pressed garlic, capers, and now, nearly always, green peppercorns (that I have had soaking in vinegar for some time) and shelled pistachio nuts, both soaked in wine or spirit overnight. As another addition try stoned and chopped black olives (they look like truffles) or stoned prunes. A nice one, for instance, involves 1 lb. of minced pork, a beaten egg, some of those green peppercorns, black olives stoned and chopped, walnuts, shelled and broken up, and salt. Stir it together, cook in a bain marie for an hour, press and refrigerate. On it goes. A more complicated one would involve minced pork, lamb’s liver, chicken liver and lamb’s kidneys. Add to this some fried onion and garlic, a chopped chilli, some rosemary leaves, crushed juniper berries and peppercorns. Now add a dash of sherry or calvados. Finish with a beaten egg, salt and lots of chopped parsley. Then cook as usual. Finely chopped ginger root adds a kick to paté. And some lime juice sharpens it up. Liquids, like egg, lime juice and spirit might make the mix a little on the liquid side, so be careful not to overdo them. It should all firm up when cooked and pressed. I believe that thyme is always an excellent herb for patés. Combinations of meat and spices are really all up to you. Making patés is fun. Patés are economical, too – especially if you have many mouths to feed.
Once, when I was in Paris, a slice of foie gras was served with a small pile of what appeared to be dried green peppercorns and salt. So good was this addition that I have now often served it with my patés and terrines. To make the mixture, grind up or pound together about ¾ of dried green peppercorns to ¼ sea salt.

To keep my hand in after a spell of paté-making inactivity, I have experimented recently with various combinations of ingredients, each added to the above, basic, uncooked paté mix. They were: shelled pistachio nuts (available shelled and salted in Indian condiment stores); milled pepper and oregano; garlic, chilli and pickled peppercorns; olives and anchovies; capers, cornichons and pine nuts; horseradish and mint (extracted from mint sauce); foie gras (gift); and one made with leftovers from all these experimental mixes added to the basic paté. Each was of interest, with the mix of all probably the best.

THE MAYORS AND THE MAYOR GALLERY

To buy a picture from Freddy Mayor you not only had to know him, but be liked by him. Otherwise there was no hope. And if you were friends, you were friends for life.
His gallery prices were reasonable. And should you have to sell one of his pictures, you always returned it to Freddy - always.
I can not recall either how or when we first met. But I do remember when I bought my first picture from him.
So I must have known Freddy for some time just to be admitted to the inner sanctum of the Mayor Gallery, then at 14 Brook Street, London, W.1.
The gallery was small. There was a picture or two on display in the window, and one or two beyond. Public, interested in art, might venture in – but not too far in, then leave.
You had to pass through an inner door to meet the owner. That passing over the threshold was, in itself, somewhat of a privilege.
On gaining entry, Freddy would be seen at his desk, probably working out which horses to back for that day. The smell of fine Havana cigars enhanced the air. He would be surrounded by a selection of wonderful works of art both large and small, for Freddy Mayor had one of the most perceptive eyes in the art business. Each painting would be of the top flight – among the best, and sometimes very avant garde. For he was a pioneer of modern art.
Besides having a fine eye for a painting and an appreciative eye for a pretty girl, he possessed an absolutely lousy eye for a horse. If he would be on a bad streak, he might back each horse in a race to be sure of a winner (which seems rather a good idea to me).
I was clearly a bit flush with cash at the time, and in work, either designing or painting scenery in the theatre (ice shows paid well, and when working on ice I wore my wartime pilot’s sheepskin-lined boots to keep my feet dry and warm).
So it was that, on the 16th of February 1956, I was allowed into the holy of holies. There I saw a lovely little Matthew Smith painting (a study for a larger one, and originally given to the British consul, William Ashcroft, in the South of France), and bought it for £145. After that I expect Freddy and I went out for a Guinness or lunch. When really flush we might also visit Carlins to select a box of Havana cigars, where they opened several boxes for you to smell before you bought. And you were given a fine cigar on the house to smoke on your way home.
I still have the receipt for that painting from THE MAYOR GALLERY Ltd with its 2d stamp over-signed by Freddy. I treasure it.
Over the years I continued to buy from the gallery – a Paul Nash, two Edward Burras, an Henri Gaudier-Brezska, and bronzes by Lynn Chadwick and Kadishman – each now worth a small fortune to their present owners. For reasons of solvency, all, except for a bronze dog, were returned to the gallery for re-sale.
In a 1960 exhibition of drawings, done on a yearlong voyage around the world in 1958 and 1959, I entered the world of Cork Street art galleries for the first time, exhibiting at the Reid Gallery there. Most were sold, with some more going to Japan for a 1961 exhibition in Osaka. I then used one hundred of them to illustrate my Mudlark Press account of the trip - “Harbours, Girls and a Slumbering World”.
Nearby, in Cork Street, was the most recent Mayor Gallery, now run, internationally successfully, by the late Freddy Mayor’s son, James.
In 1969, James came to a show I had at the Qantas Gallery (The Relief of Kut), in Bond Street nearby, where he bought one of The Nine Logs from the Tigris. It was a jetsam paddle, withdrawn from the Thames in Limehouse, in a way that those of our army might have done from the Tigris when they were besieged by the Turks in Kut during 1916 (in what was Mesopotamia, now Iraq). On the paddle was inscribed “God Punish England”, a common graffito in that distant Arab land. So I was delighted, in this creative way, to rekindle my association with James Mayor and his Mayor Gallery - and Cork Street.
In either Freddy’s or James’s day the idea of me ever exhibiting my work at their gallery would not have entered my head, their offerings being so exalted.
In 2006, when I abandoned writing books and articles and returned to painting after a writing break of 25 years, James Gould, the 20th century expert on English art at Christie’s, South Kensington, saw my 1954 painting of “The Shed”, Chelsea Football Ground, and asked if he could sell it at his auction house. It went for an enormous sum, re-establishing me as an artist of that period.
I continued to work, now with pastels, depicting my ideas in shape and colour of the garden, the shadows of aircraft, and the relationship of yacht sails and boats’ hulls on land. As it took some 55 years for my early stuff to come to light again, so these, I thought, might, with any luck, do the same in the distant future.
So, in 2009, it came as a complete and wonderful surprise when James Mayor offered me a November/December show of Aircraft Shadows at his Cork Street Gallery.
With nice words written for it by James May (television writer and Top Gear presenter), Geoff Cowart, (editor of h&f News) and Christopher Neve (art critic and author), and a piece in Aeroplane, the show did splendidly well – making me, in the process, both a 20th and then a 21st century painter.
But most of all, it is the connection with the Mayors and the Mayor Gallery that pleases me the most.

Oven extras

When baking meat or casseroles in the oven, there will probably be unused space available. I like to use it.

COOKING OTHER DISHES IN THE OVEN WHEN IT IS IN USE FOR ROASTS OR CASSEROLES

You will need:
Baking pans that can be covered and your choice of ingredients
Olive oil
Pepper and salt
Vinegar
An herb

In your baking pan, or pans, you could put chopped onion, chopped garlic, chopped apple, chopped tomatoes, chopped potato, chopped aubergine, chopped celery and on and on. But it is best to cook a single ingredient, or two, possibly three. A grand mix becomes a sort of ratatouille. And those of us who have lived in the country and had a surplus of vegetables and cooked them all together for the freezer and later use, will know how very bored one can become with the result.
Always start these extra-oven dishes with olive oil, some vinegar, pepper and salt. Add your chosen chopped ingredients.
Add an herb (one is better than lots), though I do sometimes use Herbes de Provence.
Before covering the tin with another of the same size, or foil, turn over all the ingredients with the fingers to coat the contents completely with the oil, vinegar, herb, salt and pepper mixture.
You may want to check the contents and turn them over at some point during the cooking, but most will be ready to eat without attention when the main dish is ready.
Besides my regular mixture of mainly peppers and onions, two other dishes have recently been great successes.

One of my favourite first courses (hot, warm, or cold) is aubergine in tomato and onion. Generally made in the slow cooker, this can be cooked very successfully as an oven extra.
Into an oven dish that can be covered with a lid, another dish, or foil, put chopped onion, olive oil, chopped garlic, pepper, salt, and a little vinegar. Just cook this until the onion is transparent. Add the contents of a can of chopped tomatoes. Stir it around. Now cut small aubergines into two down their length and place them, cut side down, in the onion/tomato mix. Cover and cook in the oven. They may not take quite as long to cook as stews, roasts and casseroles.

The other recent success had been Brussels sprouts. Trim them, and then coat them with olive oil, pressed garlic, pepper, salt and vinegar. Cover and oven-cook.
Should you be cooking a stew or casserole in the oven, and have some sprouts handy, place them on top of the ingredients. Cover and cook. Even those who can’t stand sprouts may well come around to liking these.