Roses for midsummer

Here, before I lose it, is Sarah Raven's list of the 10 best roses for cutting:

1. Princess Alexandra - long-stemmed, magenta, scented, nearly thornless, lasts at least a week in a vase

2. White Gold - a newish Harkness rose, ivory with a tint of green buds opening to white-gold with a pinkish tinge. Scented. Long flowering season, lasts in a vase.

3. William Shakespeare 2000 - dark crimson David Austin rose, well scented. Other reds worth growing are the shrub rose Isabella (almost black, good in a vase but unhappy in the rain), and Big Purple (an HT which needs hard pruning in winter).

4. Golden Celebration - good fragrance, good vase life. Orange/apricot-yellow

5. Graham Thomas - clearer and lighter yellow than (4). Flowers both early and late. Either shrub or climber.

6. Susan - continuous flowering, good scent, lasts better in the vase than any other white rose

7. Winchester Cathedral - delicate white with dark golden stamens, similar to Margaret Merril, but with a longer flowering season, better disease resistance and stronger scent. David Austin

8. Gertrude Jekyll - true clear pink. Repeat flowers until October, the cut flowers last for days. Strongly scented. Very prickly shrub rose

9. Buttercup - another David Austin rose, semi-double flowers in a rich deep yellow with a strong tea scent

10. Louise Odier - a classic French rose (climbing or shrub) producing sprays of lightly-scented pink flowers through to autumn


Sarah recommends cutting roses on short stems to improve vase life, particularly those which tend to a short vase life (Mme Isaac Pereire and Mme Grégoire Staechelin), unless they have good strong stems (Princess Alexandra).

It's striking how many of these are David Austin roses. I'm sorry she left out Pat Austin, a very striking and lovely rose. Also The Pilgrim. And Noble Anthony. But now I'm starting on my own top 10 ...


One Hour Later:

I've just turned the page in last Saturday's Telegraph (not yesterday's - it takes me at least eight days to catch up with the papers), and found more rose recommendations, this time from Michael Marriott, who is a key man at David Austen Roses (and a very good lecturer). Here's his list:

1. A Shropshire Lad - peachy pink 6ft climber, thornless

2. Harlow Carr - strong pink, very healthy

3. Teasing Georgia - healthy, strong tea fragrance, yellow

4. Lady Emma Hamilton - tangerine flowers, one of the most delicious of all varieties for fragrance

5. Queen of Denmark - soft pink, tough, strong fragrance (happy growing under a large birch tree in MM's garden)

6. Celsiana - single flowers, soft pink paling with age, very reliable

7. R forrestiana - one of the best of the species roses, with deep, dusky crimson flowers that are very attractive to bees, followed by shiny crimson hips

8. R Californica plena - semi-double, almost a species rose, free-flowering and well scented

9. Cécile Brunner - covered in pale pink flowers

10. Adelaide d'Orléans - pure white semi-double flowers arching down, good for a pergola

Marriott also makes some suggestions: choose Mortimer Sackler instead of disease-prone Zéphirine Drouhin; Crown Princess and Teasing Georgia over "not so reliable and leggy" Gloire de Dijon (how COULD he??); The Generous Gardener over Mme Alfred Carriere; and Snow Goose over Blush Noisette. Sensible suggestions, I'm sure, but not advice I'd feel inclined to take in three out of the four - but then, I'm perfectly capable of ignoring the weeds or the blackspot and looking with pleasure straight at the lovely flower.

The last list in this Telegraph special on the 30 best roses is a rather depressing list of "top 10 disease-resistant roses" - a depressing list of mainly HT, "ground cover" and "patio" roses.

Tom Stoppard on living in the moment

Early this morning, I came across this speech from Tom Stoppard's trilogy The Coast of Utopia (which I have neither seen nor read). Herzen is talking about the death of his son:

His life was what it was. Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced?

A couple of hours later, I read a moving piece in the Guardian about Jane Wilson-Howarth's decision to spare her seriously sick infant son the agonies of a medicalised life. Instead she and her husband took him to Nepal, where they were working, so that David could enjoy the life that he had. And he did - the piece was full of baby laughter and smiles, a world away from his traumatised terror whilst in hospital. He died aged three, and is buried in the British cemetery in Kathmandu among 19th-century diplomats, surgeon majors, babies taken by smallpox and Gurkhas. His five-year-old older brother Alex decided David would be reincarnated as crown prince to Shiva, the god of destruction and recreation; he imagined him with a new body and laughing as always, flying around the heavens in a celestial chariot. Here we could savour our times with David, talk about him and even think of our bereavement as a period of good grief - a time that strengthened our family bonds through all the highs and lows we had experienced together.


I profoundly hope that I never have to make such a life-or-death decision. I know from the experience of a close friend how appallingly difficult it is, how much unnecessary guilt there is in the mixture. Some of this is addressed in Stephen Venables' book about his autistic son Ollie, who died of leukaemia. The thought of Ollie's funeral, still brings tears to my eyes - it was a cold, bleak autumn day, the only glimmer of hope coming from the distant sound of children's laughter which echoed round the hillside as the beautiful wooden coffin was lowered into the ground.

How clever of Tom Stoppard to have articulated this simple yet profound truth:

Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late.

One Local Summer: week two

After last week's success in finding good local cold-pressed oil, this week hasn't been great. I didn't manage one single meal that was entirely local, although most were mostly local (75%+). What stopped me succeeding was a queasy feeling that too much driving round looking for suppliers wasn't the best way forward.

This was the week I intended to find local meat. Horatio arrived home unexpectedly for vegetarian supper, and announced: A meal without meat is a wasted opportunity. Next year he's living in a student flat with four other young men, and I wonder how long he'll continue with that attitude will last once he sees how far his money will go.

There's a farm shop at the other end of the village, the sort that's in a barn: several people have recommended it to me. Huge disappointment - the vegetables are all bought in from all over the world, there are loose frozen veggies to help yourself to from a freezer, the meat counter didn't look appetising, and definitely wasn't local, and although the eggs were marked "from our farm" there wasn't a single chicken to be seen. So I left empty-handed.

My usual butcher supplies good meat, and mostly from the UK, but he's not a locavore. The monthly farmers' market in Henley is next week, so I should have better luck then - I didn't feel it was helpful to drive over to Reading specially.

Fish is similarly tricky, as we're a little way from the coast. But there are rivers near here. And fish farms. And the school holidays are about to start, so there'll be time to catch fish ourselves.

Instead, this week, all our vegetables, without exception, came from our box, so were grown less than an hour's drive way, or from the garden (especially herbs). The bread was all made with local flour, oil and honey. The milk - delivered with my veg box - comes from a farm near Marlborough, just over an hour's drive away. Not quite local, but better than the supermarket's offering, lower in food miles too. And I know where it came from, will try to take a photograph when I'm over that way next week. I'll also try to source some closer milk - sadly, the milk that's produced in this village at Lucy's Farm is all taken away by a huge tanker which holds up the through traffic which clogs up our tiny lanes ... but isn't there something mad about a farmer producing good milk which he can't sell to his neighbours, as practised by the whole of humankind for millennia???

Here are links to the international section of One Local Summer:

Amberism, week one - salmon patties
Amberism, week two - cheese omelette on home-made rye
Garlic Breath, week two - pork ribs, artichokes, grilled pointed cabbage
Rural Aspirations - lentil burgers, home-made buns, salad
Diario, week two - toad in the hole, sorbet

Links to related posts

One local summer, week one round-up
OLS, Saturday lunch in the garden
OLS, first thoughts
Introducing OLS

Useful links for locavores in the South of England

Rapeseed oil from Gloucestershire
Wessex Mill

My challenge to YOU

DO think about joining us in this project, even for one week - registration has closed for a whole summer of one local meal a week, but I'm inviting all bloggers to the challenge of producing one whole local meal this summer, and I'll include you in the weekly round-up of the main challenge. I've found - and I know I'm not alone - that the first meal sparked off a lot of thought about the food we eat here, where it comes from, how it gets here, who produces it and how much they are paid for that work. There's a bonus for you - so far, the food has all been delicious!

Wholegrain challenge: millet loaf

Thanks to everyone for making suggestions for the wholegrain challenge. There's wholewheat pasta in the larder, waiting to be cooked, and Olive Oyl sent me this recipe for a terrific millet loaf, really delicious for lunch today, and very easy to make. More than anything, I feel confident now that I can rise to this challenge (even if I don't manage every meal!)

Millet loaf

200g millet
400g water
2 grated carrots
2-3 grated courgettes
1 chopped onion
1 crushed clove of garlic
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tbsp sunflower seeds
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tbsp soy sauce

Dry roast the millet until it's smoking and just beginning to turn brown, then add the water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20 minutes, adding more water if necessary. Leave to cool for 15 minutes. You want to end up with a sticky texture which will hold everything together.

Gently fry the onions, then add the spices, garlic, carrots and courgettes. Cook down for 10 minutes or so, then add the seeds.

Mix the millet and vegetables together, and add the soy sauce. Press this into a greased loaf or cake tin. I used a lovely Le Creuset paté form I was given decades ago, but I could just as easily have used a smallish cake tin. Press it down firmly, and bake for 25 minutes at 200C. As you can see, it turned out perfectly - I left it for about half an hour, so that it was lukewarm when we ate it.


















This is delicious with tahini sauce. Olive Oyl says salsa works too, and I will try that tomorrow, as there's some left over.

Tahini sauce

Put a couple of spoons of tahini in a bowl. Add the juice of a lemon and stir. At first, it will become alarmingly stiff, but loosen it with a little water, until you get the consistency you like. Add a little crushed garlic if you'd like.


Links to related posts

Whole grains challenge
Ballymaloe brown bread
Poached barley with herbs
Quick oat loaf
Oatmeal bread
Stuffed butternut
Oatcakes (with smoked trout paté)
A plain spelt loaf
"Instant" spelt loaf from Gilchesters farm, Northumberland


Links to people who've helped with this challenge

Meg Wolff at Becoming Whole has written a really useful post on whole and cracked grains ... and thanks to Charlotte at Great Big Veg Challenge for the link, and also for this tip: quesadillas made with whole grain tortilla have a better texture than the white flour tortillas.

Olive Oyl doesn't have a blog, so I can't make you a link, but here's the whole of her really useful comment on my wholegrain challenge post:

I too shared your dread about wholemeal pasta but I PROMISE that once you start you will consider white pasta the equivalent of Mothers' Pride bread. Wholewheat pasta can take really strong flavours, lots of garlic, anchovy, strong tomato sauces, your lentil sauce. A good compromise is "semi-whole" which is good for much lighter sauces or salads.

Tabbouleh (bulgar) is very easy, fab with fish and a good salad to keep for a few days in the fridge. Millet, super grain, good as porridge, also makes a good "loaf" or burger.

Another book recommendation!...."Healing with Whole Foods" - Paul Pritchford, a HUGE tome, the recipes can be a little austere and the eastern medicine bent may not be your thing but, it is the most fantastic reference book if you interested in food, nutrition and health.


Links to the whole grain challenge

Culinate - where it all began
How to eat more whole grains - also at Culinate

Whole grains challenge

I've just joined the whole grains challenge:

To spend the month of June practising eating more whole grains. To eat whole grains at every meal. To choose whole grains over refined, processed grains.

Not sure I'm going to manage this exactly as stated (whole grains at every meal?), but I'm going to try to improve the range of wholegrains in my/our diet, and I'm going to try to eat whole grains daily.

Have you any favourite recipes you'd like to share? I'm definitely going to need a bit of help here. Oh yes, and does anyone have any tips they'd like to share about wholemeal pasta (which is an idea that fills me with gloom, not to say dread)?


Links to related posts

Ballymaloe brown bread
Poached barley with herbs
Quick oat loaf
Oatmeal bread
Stuffed butternut
Oatcakes (with smoked trout paté)
A plain spelt loaf
"Instant" spelt loaf from Gilchesters farm, Northumberland


Links to the whole grain challenge

Culinate - where it all began
How to eat more whole grains - also at Culinate

Happy birthday H

It's our elder son's 20th birthday today. His final teenage act was to telephone at 3am to ask if he could bring a few friends to lunch.

He was born on a sunny Sunday morning at home in our old four-poster. Out of the window I could see the laburnum tree in full flower - ever since I've had a soft spot for it, even though I don't really care for that bright bright yellow. These photographs were taken last week; the flowers are over now, summer starts earlier these days.

Happy birthday!

Broad beans

I've just podded a couple of handfuls of broad beans, for the first time in years. And the beans are all different sizes. Which makes me wonder: what do frozen food processors do with the rejects when they package broad beans, because they're always all the same size??? Does anyone know the answer?

New chicks

This time last year, we had a pair of buff Orpington broody hens sitting on a clutch of eggs. They hatched, and these were pictures of their first outing. Within 24 hours, the fox came. We were left with the cockerel and one chick, who turned out to be another cockerel. The two bachelors co-exist happily.

We've been incubating eggs this spring. The first batch failed because the thermometer on the incubator didn't work. The second batch - well, look for yourself, the first chick has hatched. I'll keep you posted!

One Local Summer: Week 1 round up

Was there an international section last year? This year, we've got one experienced locavore, and the rest of us are groping about making a start, with varying degrees of success.

Sally in Bristol UK made egg and chips with mayonnaise and peppery rocket ... it all came from the farm shop near Frome that's close to her work. Maybe she's been working too hard, because she fell asleep and the chips burnt in the oven. Find her posts at Diario

In France, Riana at Garlic Breath took it all in her stride, she's a long-standing locavore, one I've found inspiring over the months since she began her year of not shopping. Her meal this week was from weeds - yes, that's right, weeds - and flowers. Did you know you could eat hollyhocks? Me neither

Mariah at Rural Aspirations is nervous, she's only just started on this journey, but she's decided to go for it. Just not this week, there were problems, so she's made some cheese, and has great recommendations for local cheeses for locavores around Vancouver.

Amber says she was too scared to take part last summer, but now - with a newborn as well as a toddler - she's giving it a go.

One of the problems several of us have had is in deciding what local actually means. I've decided to start with a loose definition, trying each time to choose the most local. I amazed myself by finding local cold-pressed oil - something I never thought I'd find in the UK, and a great relief as my husband doesn't do saturated fats following a heart attack. Our meal was delicious but frugal - the result of lack of forward planning; find it at Joanna's Food

At Karen's Home on the Blog in Ayr, Canada they ate bacon and eggs ... she's going to post about her definition of local - but it already includes produce from her garden.


Because the international section is so small at the moment, I've invited bloggers to join us for one week, or whatever they can manage ...

Wendy at A Wee Bit of Cooking made gnocchi with nettles from her weed patch. All the other ingredients are from her native Scotland. I can't wait to try it on mine.


You can find the dozens of others taking part in the One Local Summer challenge at Farm to Philly

One Local Summer: Saturday lunch in the garden

The challenge to produce one entirely local meal a week is harder than you first think. It concentrates the mind, even if you are already committed to local-ish food. What about cooking fats? Where did those potatoes come from? Does 100 miles away count as local? Partial success. Virtually everything was very local, even the spice, but the artichokes were tough tough tough - not sure if I should have cooked them for longer or picked them last week, because that method is usually foolproof. Otherwise good.

My big discovery this week was cold pressed rapeseed oil from Gloucestershire, the next county, absolutely delicious. I bought it at a local market, but later found that it was on sale in Waitrose. The flour for the bread was grown six or seven miles away Battle Farm at Benson, which we pass frequently; I'm going that way later today, so if I've got time, I'll stop to take a photograph. The flour for the fougasse* was milled at the other end of the county, and I bought it in a shop a couple of villages away. The yeast was sweetened with honey from Wargrave, just the other side of the Thames from here (now that I come to think of it, I should be making sourdough bread with yeast captured from our air, rather than the dried yeast I buy). The tomatoes came from Hampshire via my vegetable box. The artichokes and all the herbs came from the garden. I used English mustard seed to pep up the green sauce, also Maldon salt from Essex. My only cheat was wine vinegar ... but as there are wine growers close by, I think I can solve that problem sooner rather than later.


















English green sauce

The green sauce was based on my usual salsa verde. I used mint, oregano, marjoram, a little parsley, and lots of sorrel and lemon balm because I couldn't use lemon juice. That worked well. I blitzed the herbs with R-Oil, a little red wine vinegar, Maldon salt and several pinches of Colman's mustard powder (I kept tasting until it was good).


DO think about joining us in this project - registration has closed for a whole summer of one local meal a week, but I'm inviting all bloggers to the challenge of producing one whole local meal this summer, and I'll include you in the weekly round-up of the main challenge - my first will be on Tuesday. I've found - and I know I'm not alone - that the first meal has sparked off a lot of thought about the food we eat here, where it comes from, how it gets here, who produces it and how much they are paid for that work. Besides: today's lunch in the sunshine was delicious.

Related posts

Introducing One Local Summer
One Local Summer, first thoughts








































* I was in a hurry, so I used dough made in my machine, rather than the full-on Bertinet recipe

Mottisfont Abbey

Yesterday Amy and I went to the wonderful rose garden designed by Graham Stuart Thomas at Mottisfont Abbey ... at their peak for the next couple of weeks: beautiful, scented, a magical place in the Test Valley, peaceful and timeless. Sorry for all the clichés ... they fit with the planting - all paeonies, pinks and white foxgloves mingled with shrub roses against the ancient brick walls.

Lunch was a Mottisfont tradition: egg and watercress sandwiches, with ginger beer. Mmm
























Without trying, I found the rose we will plant as a hedge beneath our pergola of climbing roses .. Mrs Anthony Waterer, a serious improvement on the plain pink rugosa rose I was planning to use until yesterday morning. This rose was developed in 1898 by Waterers, the now-defunct world-famous nursery a couple of villages from here, R rugosa x Général Jacqueminot, described by Peter Beales as semi-double, shapely, rich deep crimson flowers, freely produced on a vigorous, broad, thorny bush with dark green foliage, well scented. What more could you ask? So bright it almost hurts your eyes, and the colour doesn't fade to nothing as the flowers go over. The photograph does it no justice.


















Oh, and I came home with a pretty French rose, de Meaux, one of those ancient plants marked as pre-1789 because their origins were lost during the upheavals of the revolution. It seems to me that it will be both lovely and trouble-free for people to have gone to the trouble of preserving it through those terrible times. It has a mass of tiny pink flowers, and is scented.

Here is one of Mottisfont's three ancient sweet chestnuts, the bark alone makes me want to plant one. And you may just spot a fat old trout swimming against the current ...

Nigella's rich icing for chocolate birthday cakes

This is the time of year when there are a lot of birthdays, and I have to make a lot of cake. For years, I turned to my mother-in-law's recipe for very rich chocolate refrigerator cake, a great favourite, especially when there's a crowd. Four years ago Nigella's dense chocolate loaf took over - I can be precise because I write notes on my recipe books ... here it says, amongst other things: delicious, although all over the oven.

Yesterday, I thought I'd try something new, and Nigella's always a good place to start when you're thinking of making a chocolate cake. So I chose the chocolate fudge cake from Nigella Bites.

Big mistake. I mean, it was absolutely delicious, but it also took up the whole day, AND made me late for the dinner at which it was to be served. And the usual chocolate loaf would have been just as good. Especially if I'd put the buttercream icing on it. Or the delicious chocolate brownies from How to be a Domestic Goddess that Tom's mum made for cricket teas on Saturday - I only rejected them as I thought it was a little casual for a once-a-year treat.


















Part of the problem was that the cakes rose up spectacularly in the middle: all that baking powder and bicarb. I thought at the time there was rather a lot, but I'm always a little reluctant to mess with recipes for baking. But also there was a staggering amount of fuss - I felt like a Daring Baker having an off day. And I found myself thinking that the rich are different because they have people to wash up after them - it's a long time since I've used quite so many different bowls and pans.

But the icing is worth keeping - for very special occasions, as it's solid saturated fat ... yesterday we were celebrating Lettice's 18th birthday, which seemed like a moment to throw caution to the winds.

Nigella's fudge icing

This is enough to fill and totally cover a pair of 20cm chocolate sandwich cakes. Half would comfortably cover the top of a cake.

175g dark chocolate (I used 85%)
250g butter, at room temperature
275g icing sugar, sifted
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Melt the chocolate in a pan over water, or using a microwave. Beat the butter until it is creamy. Add the icing sugar. Beat more. Add the melted chocolate and vanilla.

After the rain

In our garden now.

The Portfolio Diet

The Portfolio Diet is the latest in cholesterol-lowering eating. Put a group of superfoods together in a portfolio, and eventually you can throw away your statins ... have you noticed how all nutritionists cover themselves by saying you shouldn't do their diet without consulting your GP: do people really do that?

The problem with the portfolio is that in order to consume the required 2g of plant sterols a day, you have to buy Benecol margerine, or those diddly little plastic pots of probiotic drinking yoghurt. Not my scene. I find myself wondering who paid for the research into this diet, which I hope isn't unduly cynical. I'm buoyed by the thought that even the smallest amounts of soluble fibre are good. And by the news that even those who weren't following this diet to the letter were found to have improvements.

The portfolio arises from research at Toronto University led by Dr David Jenkins to see how these new processed foodstuffs fit in to a heart-healthy diet. They found that if you followed the diet for a month, it had positive effects.

Fundamentally, you need to follow the usual heart-healthy eating plan: reduce overall fats, cut right down on saturated fats, increase fruit and vegetables, also fibre. And then you add almonds, soya, soluble fibre, & plant sterols.

If you're following a heart-healthy diet, you're probably eating quite a lot of this portfolio stuff already. It seems to me that there are two problems with this portfolio: one is that you turn into a faddish eater, going against the sensible advice of Michael Pollan to Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. And the second problem is that by being prescriptive (almonds are better than, say, walnuts), you are reducing the variety of foods you eat. And variety is good, because it exposes you more micro-nutrients, without your having to worry about them.

But, anyway, here's a precis of the portfolio diet instructions given by Heart UK for quantities based on a diet of 2,000 calories per day:

ALMONDS: 30g daily. This is about 23 nuts

SOYA PROTEIN: 50g a day - we're talking soya milk, soya mince, soyabeans, soya yoghurt, soya burgers, tofu and tempeh. Stuff I never buy (Another Michael Pollan rule is useful here: Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. My grandmother would have trouble with this list, although I accept that this would not be so if we were Japanese)

SOLUBLE FIBRE: 20g daily. Here we are talking about some of my favourites, the food I would least willingly give up - oats, barley, beans, pulses, fruit.

PLANT STEROLS: 2g daily. They are naturally found in plant foods such as soyabean, corn, squash, vegetable oils and grains. In other words, a varied and balanced diet could take care of this at lower levels, no need to go to the food manufacturers for peculiar yoghurts, special margerines, orange juice with added who-knows-what. Because I find myself wondering whether there aren't side effects if you take them in quantities unavailable except by industrial process. But, these days, this seems to be a minority view. And certainly the supermarkets are full of so-called functional foods.



Links to related posts

Our basic rules
Affordable superfoods
Pyramid plan for healthy eating
80/20 rule
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's sensible slimming diet

Useful links

Heart UK, the cholesterol charity
Heart UK on the Portfolio Approach
Heart UK's healthy eating sheets download page
Amanda Ursell on the portfolio approach - she's a media nutritionist, tv and press

One Local Summer: first thoughts

This is the week I've got to produce the first all-local meal of the summer. So first I've got to decide on a working definition of local. Harder than you'd think. I've been having nightmares that the only thing to eat will be dandelion leaves plucked from the lawn before we mow.

My first idea was to buy only produce from Oxfordshire. But Harpsden is right on the edge of the county, and produce from Berkshire or Buckinghamshire will often be more local than food from Oxfordshire. All three counties? Perhaps. Not much scope for fish, unless we catch it ourselves in the Thames, which seems a shame when I'm blogging from one of the great maritime nations.


My photograph shows Alfred out fishing on a backwater of the Thames with Dick in Jupiter, the lovely old dinghy he restored in our workshop. It was taken a couple of years ago, and they didn't catch a thing. I'm not sure they ever have. Certainly nothing has ever reached my kitchen.

The 100-mile diet is a tempting idea, although I fret that the scale is too big, too American for this small island: it would take us north to Leicestershire, which feels a long way from here, west right up to the Welsh border, but it would comfortably allow fish from the coast about 50 miles due south (although I wouldn't be able to buy fish from the Brixham fisherman who comes to Henley market each week, as Devon is a couple of hundred miles from here). On the other hand 100 miles makes sense because overcrowding, particularly here in the south, means that farming land has been squeezed, both for development and by hobby "farmers" who produce nothing at all (many of whom, indeed, treat their fields like extensions of their gardens) (don't get me started).

I think I'm going to oscillate between the two, and you're going to have to trust me to source produce as close to home as I can manage. Actually, that's pretty much a given, because I don't want to be driving around looking for things to eat - much of what we eat is delivered by organic box suppliers, on the grounds that the least eco-friendly part of the food chain is the bit where I get in the car and buy a bag of shopping. (Also on the grounds that someone else puts the shopping on my kitchen table, and the value of that is not to be underestimated.)

We are going to have one massive problem, one that's only just crossed my mind: my blog began because my husband had a heart attack, and I used the blog to keep track of the changes we were making to our diet. Thankfully, a lot of that dark time has receded to a haze, but one thing that still rings in my ears is the last part of the dietician's orders: blah blah blah, blah blah blah, butter - never! So we use oil instead, no butter substitutes, although I do use soft margerine for (very occasional) baking. Our locally-produced fat is butter. There's a bit of vibrant yellow oilseed rape, but I imagine it gets sold to the big producers ... you know that there will be rejoicing on the day I discover a local oil producer, cold-pressing the fruits of south Oxfordshire.


My challenge to you - for one week only, any week you choose:

One Local Summer is largely an American initiative, and registration has closed. I'll be posting the (small) International section every Tuesday for the next three months. I'd really like to increase non-American participation, so that next year it would be worth separating Europe from Canada, and involving other parts of the world too. So have a go, just for one week, send me your link, and I'll include you in the round-up. This is what you do:


The challenge will begin on Sunday, June 1 and run until Sunday, August 31. Your challenge: prepare one meal using only locally-grown ingredients - the exceptions are oil, salt and pepper, and spices. Send me the link to your post, and I'll include you in my round-up.














Useful links for One Local Summer

The Thames Valley Farmers' Market Co-operative - they'll email you with reminders; I signed up this morning
Big British Food Map - this is a Channel 4 initiative, I was asked to contribute some ideas a couple of months ago, but I'm not sure how it's going. Later (I can't do that crossing out thing): Food bloggers' Britain (starting with my recommendations - thanks Andrew!)
The Fife Diet - a lively local food experiment
Local food web - this link is set to Oxon, but you can search for local produce outlets all over the UK
Slow Food UK
Slow Food Oxon ... this week's task: join this group

Links to related posts

Nettle soup
Nettle tea
Nettle beer
Ground elder salad
Elderflower syrup, plus a note on citric v tartaric acid in syrups
Elderflower champagne
Machine bread, local flour, from Wessex Mills

International participants in One Local Summer

Amberism
Rural Aspirations
Garlic Breath ... the only blogger in this group that I already know: Riana is inspirational, and her example played a big part in my decision to get involved in this project
Sally at Diario

AND two other Canadians who may or may not have a blog - whatever, I don't yet have their details.

Seven of us. 133 in total. Please try to rise to this challenge, even once.

Braised lettuce

We had a huge glut of lettuce, after the long winter weeks of yearning for some soft green salad leaves. It's been salads all the way this week, and by last night I was longing for vegetables that were cooked. This was simple, quick, and much more delicious than you might suppose.

Braised lettuce

Lettuce
Chicken stock (or white wine diluted with a little water)
Capers

You need small tight lettuce for this, Little Gem is ideal. Allow one per person. Trim off the tough outer leaves. It's best to serve this in the cooking pan, because the heads are quite fragile when ready.

Brown the whole lettuce on one side in a little oil. Turn carefully. Add a little chicken stock to the pan, a few capers, and cover. Turn the heat right down and braise for 5-10 minutes, depending on size.


















This picture shows the leftovers, because Alfred declined to eat any ... now I find it's quite nice cold, too

Related posts

Braised fennel
Braised carrots and capers

Cooked lettuce on other blogs

Peas with mint and lettuce at Serious Eats
Petit pois à la Versailles

Introducing One Local Summer

Here's an exciting project starting this week ... this is the second year of One Local Summer: I was too late to join in last time, but this year I am (drumroll) International Co-Ordinator. This is the brainchild of Nicole at Farm to Philly ... last year I saw lots of One Local Summer posts; this year they'll be everywhere, as there are 133 participants.

The challenge will begin on Sunday, June 1 and run until Sunday, August 31. Your challenge: prepare one meal each week using only locally-grown ingredients - the exceptions are oil, salt and pepper, and spices.

Now it's fair to say that there aren't very many "international" participants - four from Canada and three from Europe (all the rest are from the US), but I'll be linking up with them each week for the next three months. So if anyone wants to join us informally, feel free to send me your permalink, and I'll include you in my round-up. Sunday night is the deadline, and you can find buttons on Farm to Philly.

I'm really looking forward to three months of searching out great local food, perhaps meeting up with the other European bloggers involved in this project, and generally eating some great local food, locally sourced. I'll also try to find some local recipes ... One Local Summer: starting here, next week and every week until the end of August. By which time, let's hope the habit's ingrained.

Courgettes with sultanas and pine nuts

I have two veg boxes being delivered this week, as I'm trialling a rival to Riverford. We had a very small salad box from Riverford on Tuesday, all now eaten; tomorrow Abel and Cole are delivering a large veg box to see us through a busy weekend. Despite this vegetable richesse, I couldn't resist buying courgettes today .... I had a vague idea that I would make courgette fritters, but, instead, this cooked salade tiède beckoned from the pages of Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food.


















Zucchini with sultanas and pine nuts

500g courgettes
2 tbsp pine nuts
2 tbsp sultanas (or raisins)
zest and juice of a lemon
mint

Slice the courgettes, cook them fast with the nuts and sultanas, also a clove of garlic if you like. When they're soft, transfer them into a dish, sprinkle with chopped mint, then add the zest and juice of a lemon, a little Maldon salt and some pepper. Leave for at least half an hour for the flavours to develop.


Links to other posts about courgettes

Marrow Zanzibar
A lemony courgette salad
Courgette salad - this is an earlier version of the same dish
What to do when the courgettes have turned into marrows
Essence of courgette ... saving the best till last, just ignore all the preamble; you'll find a good aubergine recipe there too, it's an early-ish post, when I didn't realise that it was better to give one recipe per post if you were to have any hope of finding things again

Links to courgettes / zucchini on other blogs

Stuffed courgettes at Closet Cooking
Courgette and Pumpkin Seed Bread (not cake) at A Wee Bit of Cooking, where you'll find lots and lots of other ideas for things to do with courgettes.
Courgette flowers at the English version of Trembon

Some thoughts on pizza and authenticity

The idea of authenticity in cookery has become powerful, courtesy of research-heavy recipe books ... Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson etc. The writer visits archive / goes abroad, finds a recipe, preferably a peasant recipe, and sets it in stone. It becomes the grail to which the rest of us must aspire. This is followed by a trip to the supermarket for far-flung ingredients - a couple of decades ago, this was fraught with difficulty (you needed a back-up plan, because it was likely that even the biggest and best supermarkets didn't stock, say, Puy lentils, or coarsely-ground polenta). These days authenticity is less work, as we (in the west) expect to be able to buy what we want when we want, regardless of geography or nature.

The problem with authenticity is that life isn't like that. The peasant will make the dish with whatever comes to hand (or not make it because it is no longer possible/seasonal). It will change subtly over the course of a season: the ingredients are local because they are not flown in from the other side of the world, or trucked in from the other side of the continent. And when the recipe moves to another locality, it is altered to fit in with the new circumstances, sometimes resulting in a completely new dish. This approach is now, in the West at least, history (although there are plenty of people who think it's going to be forced on us soon by an energy crisis).

All this by way of introduction to a passage about pizza in Majorca: the pizza can be traced back to the Etruscans; at the Pizza Museum in Italy, historical research based on archaeological excatavtions refers specifically to the portada, a round savoury tart identical to (Majorcan) coca de verdures. What we have (in Majorca) is the authentic pizza which the Romans taught us to make when they settled on the island; we've carried on making it in exactly the same way. There are more than 400 recognized ways of making pizza, and 1,000 variants of each recipe; everyone has added his own particular stamp."

Two thoughts: authenticity here is understood to be a method rather than a recipe. And I bet the 400,000 recipes don't include pizza with ham and pineapple, or with vindaloo. Each - mystifyingly - much loved in their countries of origin (both far from the Mediterranean).


This post is prompted by Tomas Graves's book, Bread and Oil, Majorcan Culture's Last Stand. Too early to say exactly what I think of it, as I'm only on page 46, but so far it's interesting, if a little fierce.

The photograph is of a potato pizza I made recently. It seems such an odd combination, but it is one which works well (so long as you ignore the health police, who seem to have it in for potatoes, but that's a whole 'nother story for another day). Mine wasn't good enough to pass on the recipe, but if you're interested in making one, you should consult Tanna at My Kitchen in Half Cups.


Related links

White pizza with fennel seeds
Pizza bianca with rosemary
Pissaladière
Pizza for lunch
River Cafe pizza dough


Links to pizza on other blogs

Susan at Farmgirl Fare is a great baker, setting up her own bakery, and knows a thing or two about pizza ... there are lots on her site
Lemon pizza from the Wednesday Chef .. yes, I'm not sure about that one, either ;)
Gluten-free pizza from Karina's Kitchen

Cucumber and mint salad

Cucumber has just started to turn up in my veg box, strongly and sweetly flavoured. It's delicious with mint from the garden roughly chopped, a good squeeze of lemon juice, and a tiny drizzle of oil. Mmm