Kitchen Memories

200g feta cheese, roughly broken into pieces (barrel-aged feta is delicious if you can find it)

sea salt and black pepper

Blanch the broad beans in boiling, unsalted water for 3-4 minutes or until just cooked, depending on the size of the bean. Then drain.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and add the pancetta. As it starts to colour, add the garlic slivers and the crushed chillies. When the garlic turns golden, add the broad beans and mint and toss all the ingredients together.

To make a dressing, combine the extra-virgin olive oil with the juice of half a lemon in a small bowl, then season with a small amount of salt (both the pancetta and feta are salty) and pepper.

Put the salad leaves in a bowl and toss with the dressing and the feta cheese, then spoon the broad beans and pancetta over the top.

ROSE’S ORIGINAL CRÊPE RECIPE THAT SHE BROUGHT BACK FROM PARIS IN THE ‘70S

Everyone has their own pancake recipe; this is the one we traditionally make in our family. Rose always made this mixture on Pancake Day or as a quick pudding after supper. The pancakes are very thin and exciting to cook, and are eaten the moment they come out of the pan.

A good fat and plump vanilla pod slit in half and put in a jar with caster sugar is one of the simplest ways of tasting the vanilla bean. A squeeze of lemon juice to melt the sugar brings the taste out even more. Delicious …

MAKES 10–12 PANCAKES

about 150g vanilla caster sugar (see above)

4 lemons, cut lengthways into quarters, as Rose always did

FOR THE PANCAKES/CRÊPES

225g plain flour

4 medium eggs

450ml milk

150g butter, melted

2 tbsp vanilla caster sugar

FOR FRYING

110g butter

Sift the flour into a bowl, make a well in the centre, and add the eggs, slowly stirring and combining, then pour in the milk in a continuous stream, stirring all the time to form a batter. Add the melted butter and caster sugar. Cover with cling film and leave in the fridge for minutes.

When you are ready to eat the crêpes, heat a non-stick frying pan with a knob of butter, then swirl it around the pan until it starts to bubble. Take a ladleful of the batter and pour it into the pan, tipping it so that the batter spreads out evenly over the bottom of the pan. When the sides of the pancake start to stiffen and curl at the edges, flip the pancake over and brown on the other side – for a couple of minutes. Adjust the heat if it is too hot. Serve directly onto a plate with a sprinkling of the vanilla sugar and a good squeeze of lemon juice. Roll up the pancake and eat hot.

NOTE: The first pancake is usually a bit of an experiment as to how much batter to put into the pan – this should be just enough to coat the bottom. How big your pan is will dictate how much batter to use. The first one is usually chucked in my house until I have got the measure of the batter and pan.

SPRING MINESTRONE

The ingredients in a minestrone can vary according to what is available and in season. During spring I like to include asparagus, peas, broad beans, chard or early spinach. I use tinned peeled plum tomatoes in this recipe, as the fresh early varieties such as ‘Camone’ or ‘Marinda’, which both have incredible flavour, are too acidic and have not yet formed enough of the sweetness that comes from ripening in the sun later on in the year.

I love all the different textures and shades of green in this soup and the broth is a gentle and sustaining background in which to poach the vegetables.

FOR 6

3 celery sticks, ends trimmed

4 carrots, washed or peeled, ends trimmed

500g peas in the pod, which yields about 200g fresh peas

1 bundle of fresh green English asparagus, about 350g, tough ends snapped off, washed

1.5 litres chicken stock

olive oil

a small knob of butter

1 medium-sized red onion, peeled and finely chopped

200g chard, leaves stripped from their stalks and washed, stalks crossways cut into 5mm slices (or spring greens or crinkled spinach, removed from the stem)

3 medium-sized Charlotte potatoes (or any waxy variety will do), peeled and cut into roughly 1.5cm pieces

3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

1 × 400g tin of peeled plum tomatoes, drained of their juice

1 small bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley, washed and dried

4 slices of ciabatta bread

100g Parmesan cheese

extra-virgin olive oil

salt and black pepper

Slice each celery stick lengthways into 5mm-thick strips, then chop the strips across about mm thick. Do the same with the carrots, so that you end up with roughly the same size pieces as the celery. Pod the peas into a bowl. Slice the asparagus spears at an angle into pieces about 5mm thick.

Bring the chicken stock to a simmer.

Add a slug of olive oil and the butter to a heavy-based pan and, as the butter starts to sizzle, add the onion, celery, carrots, chard stalks and potatoes. Turn the heat to low to medium and let the vegetables sweat gently for about minutes. They should not brown, but just soften.

Add the garlic and let it soften, then add the tomatoes and cook for a few minutes until they start to fall apart. Add enough of the hot stock so that it comes about two-thirds up the pan and let it simmer very gently for minutes or so, stirring occasionally, to help break up the tomatoes.

Check the potatoes are just cooked but not overdone, then roughly shred the chard or spinach leaves and add them to the soup, along with the peas and asparagus, making sure there is enough stock to submerge them. Simmer for about 5 minutes until they are just tender, then season with salt and pepper.

Preheat the grill. Roughly chop the parsley and grill the ciabatta. Ladle the soup into the bowls and add a scattering of parsley and a grating of Parmesan. Finish with a little extra-virgin olive oil and serve with a piece of the grilled bread.