Seasonal eating, normally such a pleasure in the Somerset countryside, is proving a little disappointing this month. Hold on, that’s not entirely true. I think it is just a little disappointing as my head and heart are still weighted down and groaning with the feast of last summer’s bounty, and the lack is not actual, just comparative.

The fact that this summer seems to be a little hesitant about making an appearance and this last week we seem to have gone straight to late autumn has me a trifle anxious. Generally I love each season. The acid green newness of Spring, the lazy, bee-buzzing air of the kitchen garden laden with promise in mid-summer, the late summer apple harvest with fresh pressed apple juice martinis lubricating the long, light evenings, and the first chill rains of Autumn, giving me an excuse to slow cook one of the pot roasts or stews I love so much.

The anxiety comes from feeling that I have only just sat down to the summer course, I have barely tasted it and the overzealous waiter is whipping it away to replace it with early Autumn. Wait! I’m not done! My appetite is barely whetted, let alone sated. And when it comes to food I’m afraid I’m far too greedy to sit back calmly and politely pronounce that I’ve had an elegant sufficiency.

I want my summer course and I want all of it. In fact, I want seconds. So when I saw some asparagus at the market I pounced on it. No it was not local, but at least it was English. And Suffolk is not so VERY far away. I brought it home and made one of my favourite summer meals: Steamed asparagus on toasted olive sourdough, with poached egg and a fresh basil aioli.

The ‘happy eggs’ so dubbed by my daughter because they are double-yolkers from the free range chickens belonging to her schoolteacher’s in-laws. Still confused? Well the chickens must be happy to keep producing double yolks mom! It’s like a present for us. Happy eggs from happy chickens. And the little bit of sunshine that lit up my kitchen when we sat down to this meal certainly made me a happy woman. Or it may have been the sublime combo of garlic, basil, slightly crunchy asparagus and the perfectly poached egg yolk blanketing the whole…

For the recipe check here, and I hope you are getting a little summer sunshine wherever you are.

Tags: asparagus, poached eggs, seasonal eating, sourdough

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I admit it. I love kitsch. But not just any kitsch. Specifically that peculiarly, joyously colorful, sundrenched African kitsch. It stops me in my tracks. It speaks to me on some visceral level. It beckons with little cameos of home.

It wasn’t always that way. Growing up I was very boring, and as a teenager, instead of rebelling with neon coloured leg warmers and studded armbands like the rest of the 80’s, I wafted around in Out of Africa eau de nil. All colonial linen and floaty scarves.

Not until I sailed away (metaphorically of course) from our burning shores did the lack of colour started to make its absence felt. Unable to remain supressed, my African genetics burst, wildly toi-toi ing and ululating, to the surface, and before I knew it raspberry walls started popping up all over my home, followed swiftly by tangerine and cinnamon Indian silk cushions, strings of coral West African mozi beads and handmade ceramic jugs of zebra striped porcupine quills collected on one of our Greyton mountain walks.

On the table in our bedroom is a picture of my daughter aged 6, next to a bowl made of red-brown African clay, filled with black spotted red lucky beans, collected in Africa by the same 6 year old. I remember my mom having a similar bowl full of little black and red beans painstakingly gathered by my sister and I.

It’s not that England has no colour. Somerset has a million shades of green, like my beloved Cape. But the echoes of our burning African sun are nowhere to be found. Unless of course you create them yourself.

I can’t tell you how energized I felt by making this unbelievably cerise pasta, with nothing but some local, free range eggs, a few beetroots from the garden and some organic pasta flour. I spent nearly half an hour snapping pics in the sun and reveling in the richness and sheer happiness of the colour. When I eventually made some of the pasta into cannelloni, with equally beautiful rainbow chard and some fresh ricotta, I was entranced all over again by the perfection of the hues.

Yes, Heston Blumenthal is right, food is so much more than just taste. For me, colour and smell are just as important, perhaps more. And while pasta is singularly Italian, my garish, vibrant, homemade beetroot pasta is the epitome of African Kitsch. And I love it.

The recipe for homemade beetroot pasta can be found here and this is my entry to Ruth’s Presto Pasta Night. Make sure you pay her a visit on Friday for a roundup of what the web has to offer in the way of pasta this week.

Tags: Africa, beetroot, homemade pasta, Pasta

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Doesn’t this photo just say it all. Summer on a plate. I defy anyone not to dive in when a platter of these makes its appearance at any summer party. I can barely believe that these were an afterthought. They were the leftovers from a batch of puff pastry I made destined for savoury tarts for lunch. And while the pastry takes a little time to make (if not very much effort) it is also possible to buy good quality puff pastry from the freezer section of supermarkets. Or specialist bakers such as Baker&Spice in London. Make sure you go for the all butter kind.

Once you have your puff pastry, made or bought, these little temptations are simplicity itself to make, leaving you looking like you’ve just popped out to a fabulous Parisian bakery for the edible edification of your guests, even if you are in the middle of the West Country.

Or maybe not. Their official French name is Feuilletees, a version of the more well known mille-feuille (or thousand leaves). They are generally little individual sized portions of rectangles of puff pastry, brushed with an egg glaze and baked at 220*C for 12 -15 minutes, then split in half and filled with sweetened cream and fresh fruit. So far so good. But had these truly come from a French Patisserie I have no doubt they would all be perfectly uniform and would not dare to have a single one of their thousand layers out of place.

Mine, on the other hand, reflect their maker, far from perfect, wildly undisciplined, wandering off at a tangent (that’s what happens when you use scraps of puff pastry), and filled to bursting with sunshine, joie-de-vivre, a touch of tart sweetness, and a little bit of whimsy. The sunshine and happiness come from the fact that there is actually some sunshine today. Hooray! The tart sweetness comes from handpicked berries from the kitchen garden, and the whimsy (without which I would be lost) is the fragrant promise of fresh mint, the smell, rather than the taste infusing the whole.

Actually, they make me think of deck chairs and floaty dresses, glasses of Pimms and Sunday afternoon cricket. Not French at all then. But very very Somerset. There are some times when it is well worth being British.

This is my entry for Jeanne, Johannna and Andrew’s WTSIM… event. This month it is hosted by Jeanne and the theme is Berried Treasure. For once my only problem with entering an event was choosing what to post about. I can’t wait for the roundup as it s my considered opinion that you can never have to many things to make with berries.

Tags: berries, pastries, puff pastry, strawberries, sweet kitchen

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