15.4.25

in the soil

It seems almost at this time of year that the soil is working one week on and one week off so that after the almost astonishing growth of last week – the real first growth of spring when everything suddenly comes shooting up – this week is almost a disappointment, nothing seems really to have moved. We had that cold day or two, of course; the earth has simply not been warm enough to do its work. My mother notes that the plot of the archaeologist, who has been away for a couple of weeks and who dug it all over before he went is still entirely bare, no weeds poking through. Only the nettles seem to have grown much, not just upwards but outwards, spreading their rich carpet around the rhubarb and into the grass and yes, the asparagus shoots up inch on inch in time maybe for the traditional start of its season, next week on Saint George's Day. The hedges leading up to the gate are thick with garlic mustard already going to seed, and dandelions spring up everywhere; I put a bucket over a few to see if they will blanch up into good crisp salad greens.

in the kitchen

Eggs and lamb are everywhere in the run up to Easter, all over menus and the covers of food magazines. At work we have a ragù of lamb shoulder with saffron, orange zest and fennel sausage in tomato and I see mimosas of grated yolk all over Instagram. For Palm Sunday we are invited to Polentina's annual Easter feast in which every course features egg or lamb or both, namely:

Benedetto (a Puglian deep cut, a stack of sliced blood orange, ricotta, boiled egg and coppa)

Focaccia stuffed with cubes of cheese and ham and egg

A frittata of lamb's liver and spring vegetables

Stracciatella (not the cheese or the ice cream but an egg drop soup of chicken broth with very coarsely cracked black pepper)

Braised lamb, the juices thickened with egg and lemon, with sides of vignarola and mixed salad

Little pasties of ricotta and chocolate painted with egg and baked golden

and for Easter Monday (the day itself I intend to rest and maybe eat chocolate) I will bake a shoulder not of lamb but of mutton which is far nicer at this time of year, what local lamb is available having been reared indoors across the winter and my wife will make biscuits rich with egg yolk and Marsala and there will be nettles somewhere as there always are for Easter.

on the page

Hannah Lutz' Wild Boar (translated into English [and credited on the cover, more of this please!] by Andy Turner) is a rich and strange meander around the forests of Småland in which the animals once hunted nearly to extinction are making a rapid return, travelling in their sounders and churning up forest floor and cultivated land with impunity as indeed they have every right to. It is a story of people who do not quite know how to relate to the world around them, to its animals and ecologies, a filmmaker who cannot quite seem to catch up with this apparently ubiquitous pest, a hunter who does not seem to know if the wild pigs or his fellow humans are more of a threat, a man haunted by the thought of an impending ice age rushing without warning down from the north, a short tale of deep unease.