Something in the air has changed. After months of skin-pinching chill, the mercury has finally climbed and I can leave the flat without a coat. The light is different, the sun feels warmer, and, at long last, the bounty of summer is beginning to appear on our tables. And I have gone a little bit crazy. Perhaps it's the result of months of waiting through an interminable-seeming winter, but now that summer is truly here I am determined to make the most of it and not waste an ounce of sun-ripened goodness.
I have written before about the joys of summer cooking and the sense of freedom it seems to represent. Now I am fully intoxicated, and all I want to do is cook. The fridge is bulging with bags of sweet peas, broad beans and spinach, and I managed to get through a grand total of 13 lemons last week. Yes, I'm concerned about the state of my bank account, but every time I find myself faced with crates of glossy, pointed peppers or a bank of blushing red tomatoes that actually smell like tomatoes I can't seem to help myself. Is it gluttonous (or even entirely necessary?) to have four different types of tomato in one kitchen?
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Anyway, this spurt of culinary motivation has led to all manner of new creations from my semi-addled brain, as well as a new found love for all the cookbooks on my shelf that have been neglected of late. I'm cooking and jotting down notes every day, and, seeing as I love giving myself extra work, I have decided to set myself a challenge: to cook one new recipe every single day this summer.
Obviously the realities of real life and work mean that I am unable to devote my entire day to studying cookbooks (as much as I would like to), and so, to make things easier, I am going to count off-the-cuff cooking, or "inspired-by" dishes as new recipes, too. Beyond expanding my repertoire, I hope it will be a chance to explore food cultures and experiences with which I am less familiar, and to engage and interact with chefs and books both old and new.
My plan is to write a little about some of these recipes; to discuss the stories behind them and my experience of making them. I'm seeing it as a sort of Julie and Julia-cum-Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries hybrid project.
Will it work? Will I even manage it? Will it be so boring that no one will care either way? All are quite possible. But hey, let's give it a try.
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Day One: Saturday 24 June
Day One of the project and I am home alone, an ideal opportunity to experiment and try out a recipe that my sister would be reticent to entertain. (Also, let's face it, if it's awful, no one else has to eat it). Feeling positive and optimistic, I open the fridge and pull out the pleasingly colourful bunch of rainbow chard dominating the bottom shelf. Game on.
I've only ever cooked chard with raisins and pine nuts, slowly stirred together with onions that have been sweated until they are an unctuous, glistening tangle. It's good, but just a tad too sweet and, given the season, I wanted something light and fresh. I turned, as I often do, to Rachel Roddy: an English cook living in Rome, who writes wonderful recipes for Italian food with a thoroughly British sensibility, all bound up in delicious prose. Last August she featured a recipe for chard with chickpeas and tomatoes in her Guardian column, in itself a take on an earlier River Café recipe. This recycling seemed entirely in keeping with the purpose of the challenge, and so I reread the article with relish.
As with all her recipes, the piece begins with an evocative introduction, in this case, a description of the joys of spending time outdoors in her mother's garden in Dorset:While I cut away stems of the stuff, and pick green beans, my parents’ neighbour Peter digs up his potatoes. “Halloooooo,” he shouts over the hedge. Meanwhile, my son picks rotten plums and threatens to eat them, the sun blazes in the hard blue sky and the Dorset hills swell and roll – they are every possible shade of green, the sheep bleat up on Colmer’s Hill in almost ridiculous bucolic bliss.
Her words are a celebration of those rare, but infinitely precious English summer days, when the air is thick, sweet and filled with birdsong, and the pace of life slows. There is something instantly calming about it, a world in which days are devoted to tending the garden and harvesting its produce, later to be shared by a family at a scrubbed wooden table.
The charm of Roddy's food is its deceptive simplicity: recipes are not long or convoluted, and require only a handful of well-chosen ingredients. Here the chard stems and leaves are finely chopped and boiled before being added to a pan with olive oil, garlic and sweet cherry tomatoes that have been 'fried until the oil is tinted red'. Then you add the chickpeas, remove from the heat and season with the sacred triumvirate: salt, pepper and lemon.
Simple? Yes. The flavour? Nothing short of a revelation. I would never have known to combine greens with both tomato and lemon but the combination is simply wondrous. This is heightened by the addition of parsley just before serving; completely unexpected, it cuts through the sweetness of the tomatoes and adds wonderful summery freshness. To me, the dish epitomises the essence of Roddy's food: the flavours of Italy brought to life with the harvest of England. The result is joyous. I could not get enough of it.
"This summer is going to be epic" I said aloud, mouth full, to the empty chair opposite me. And I meant it.
