18.11.25
in the soil
The creeping buttercup which last week I pulled up from around the asparagus is sprouting up again and nothing will stop the grass from growing, but the season’s first frost has seen off what little else remained of the summer, the fig leaves black and drooping, the nasturtium crushed and dewy like herbs pushed to the back of the fridge, cells ice-swollen, not yet turned to slime. I worry that the agretti which I have been growing on for seed will collapse before they have a chance to set, it is blackening too but then I do not know what it should look like, at this time of the year; nothing I can do now except leave it. This year to supplement the last of my own garlic crop I split and planted a fat bulb from the Isle of Wight which is coming up now in fat little spears, the first of the little hints of green – I have no brassicas, no leeks, my broad beans are not up yet – which will see the soil through the winter.
in the kitchen
This week is the week of Beaujolais Nouveau or Vino Novello, the time to open and drink the very first wines of the year, an excuse or a reason in the restaurant world for a little party in the dead time before Christmas kicks in and an excuse or a reason for me to cook a French-ish menu and wine-centric menu at work. Last year I made
Pig’s head terrine with pickled figs
(Richard Olney’s) Coq (actually Sutton Hoo chicken) au vin with buttered noodles
Tarte Tatin
and served it while wearing a beret; this year I will make (I hope)
Chicken liver parfait with grape pomace mustard (the pomace from my colleague’s winery turned into molasses as described last week)
(Richard Olney’s) Coq (actually Sutton Hoo chicken) au vin with macaroni au gratin and frisée salad (not with lardons, I think, given the lardons in the chicken, but with mustard dressing and croutons)
Quince crème brûlée with chestnut cream (an Eliza Acton recipe for quince custard adapted for baking)
and it strikes me that this might be the last menu I write for a month or so – a good one to go out on!
on the page
Reading David Levi Strauss’ little book Photography and Belief on the train while listening to music loudly enough to block out the interminable announcements is I realise not necessarily the best way to take in its skip through Barthes, Benjamin and Berger – which mainly remind me regretfully of how little attention I paid in the few of my university classes that dealt heavily with critical theory – and so what mainly sticks in my head is the revelation that it is in some sense possible that the so-called Turin Shroud is a photographic self-portrait taken by Leonardo Da Vinci, all of the relevant technology (the pinhole camera, light-sensitive silver emulsions, lenses) having been available to him at the time. Yeah, I’ll go ahead and incorporate that into my belief system, as the meme goes.