Kitchen Memories

Preheat the oven to 200ºC (180ºC fan) Gas 7. Lightly butter an ovenproof dish.

Put the cream in a saucepan large enough to contain the potatoes and bring to a simmer. Add the potato slices and stir together with the cream. Add the garlic and season with salt and pepper. Cook for about minutes, then pour into the prepared dish, sprinkle the Parmesan over with a small drizzle of olive oil, cover with silver foil and place in the oven. Cook for minutes or so until the potatoes are cooked through, then remove the foil and return to the oven. Turn the oven up to 200ºC (200ºC fan) Gas and cook for a further 15–20 minutes until the top is bubbling and golden.

UGLY BISCUITS … BRUTTI MA BUONI; UGLY BUT GOOD

I love the simplicity of this recipe. These light, Mediterranean biscuits are perfect with an espresso after a meal or with a peaches and cream ice cream, or simply on their own as a sweet biscuit for the children. If you want to make half the quantity, just halve the ingredients.

FOR ABOUT 30 BISCUITS

4 medium egg whites

250g caster sugar that has been kept in a jar with a vanilla pod (or add ½ tsp vanilla extract)

300g skinned whole almonds, finely chopped (not to a powder) in a food processor or by hand in the pestle and mortar

Preheat the oven to 170ºC (150ºC fan) Gas 3. Whip the egg whites with a pinch of sugar until very stiff. Mix the almonds with the remaining sugar (and the vanilla extract, if using) and fold in the egg whites.

Grease a baking sheet (or use a non-stick baking tray liner), as they are quite sticky. Using a tablespoon, place little dollops about 3–4cm apart (they spread a little when cooking), onto the baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to firm up on the tray and dry out a little, then transfer to a wire rack to cool. They can keep for a while in a tin but are so good they will soon be devoured.

EDIBLE FLOWERS

One year at Petersham I decided to grow edible annual flowers between the usual flowers we grew for cutting – dahlias, zinnias, scabious, cosmos and sweet peas amongst others, none of which are edible but which were chosen for their cut-and-come-again abilities as well as for their ornamental virtues. I also planted endless roses, the petals and hips of which are edible. My boss at Petersham, Francesco, would walk past me and say, ‘Roses, more roses, I want the whole place filled with roses.’

For edible flowers, I sowed seeds of blue and white borage (which over the years has continued to self-sow), sweet rocket, nasturtiums, malope, calendula and violas, amongst others. My good friend Skye Gyngell loves to use flowers in her cooking and so the rocket was allowed to bolt and flower along with the coriander. Francesco thought this an example of sloppy gardening practice – which it is if you don’t want rocket or borage seeding itself all over the place.

Skye is naturally inquisitive in her approach to cooking and has an intuitive sense of flavours that go well together. Rose petals were stolen to use in salads for the Petersham café kitchen and the blossom from the rosemary bushes picked along with the usual squash and courgette flowers. I even tried to grow caper plants for their flowers and buds but without much success – they need a long, hot growing season. Perhaps some seed artfully dropped into the rough hogging that makes up the dusty floor in one of the glasshouses would succeed. It might be perfectly happy in a sunny, neglected spot; my stepfather, David, grows them in pots in his sun-filled flat very successfully. The plant sprawls away on the windowsill, producing a mass of dense green leaves with beautiful little buds and flowers.

RECIPE FOR A PLATE OF FRIED FLOWERS AND BUDS – ARTICHOKES, CAPERS AND BORAGE

FOR 4

4 whole artichokes (‘Violetto’ are a good variety for this)

1½ lemons

30g salted capers, rinsed, soaked in a bowl of water with a splash of red wine vinegar for minutes (or capers from a jar, rinsed and dried)

8 stems of borage with the flowers and leaves attached, washed and patted dry and the ends trimmed

150ml sunflower oil, for frying

2 tbsp plain flour (for dusting)

salt and black pepper

FOR THE BATTER

150g plain flour

3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

6–8 tbsp water

pinch of salt

3 medium egg whites

To make the batter, sift the flour into a bowl and make a well in the middle. Stir in the extra-virgin olive oil and add the water a little at a time, stirring to make a smooth, creamy consistency, then cover with cling film and put in the fridge for half an hour.

Meanwhile, prepare the artichokes. Cut the end off each stem, leaving 1cm still attached to the bud. Pull away the tough outer leaves until you reach the tender yellow ones. Slice the top of the leaves off just above the heart. Pull the leaves apart slightly to reveal the hairy choke, then remove the choke with a spoon. Peel the stalk and trim off the tough bits around the base of the heart. Cut the artichokes lengthways through the stem into quarters, then put in a bowl of water with half a lemon and its juice to prevent them discolouring. Once they are all prepared, remove them from the water and pat dry on kitchen paper.

Drain the salted capers, rinse again and dry on kitchen paper.

When you are ready with the artichokes, capers and borage, pour enough sunflower oil into a large, heavy-based pan so that the oil comes to about 1cm or so up the sides of the pan, then heat to about 180ºC.

Back to the batter. Whip the egg whites until they are soft but can stand alone. Fold the egg whites into the flour and olive oil and water mixture and season with salt and pepper.

Dust the artichokes with flour seasoned with salt and pepper and shake off any excess. Put them into the hot oil and fry for about 4 minutes, turning them, until they start to turn golden and crisp at the edges. Remove with a slotted spoon onto kitchen paper.

Holding the borage by the stalk, sweep the buds and leaves through the batter, tap off any excess batter against the side of the bowl and then carefully place in the hot oil. Fry for a minute or so until golden and crisp, then using tongs turn the borage over and fry until golden on the other side. Remove with a slotted spoon onto kitchen paper.

Put the capers in a clean, dry metal sieve (it is important not to let any water near the oil) and lower into the hot oil. Let them sizzle for 1 minute, then remove onto kitchen paper.

Cut the remaining lemon into quarters. Put all the ingredients on a plate, sprinkle some salt and pepper over the top and serve immediately with the lemon quarters.

PETERSHAM

When I arrived at Petersham, I wanted to grow vegetables and salads that were difficult to obtain here and for Skye to use in the restaurant and Gael (Francesco’s wife) to cook with in her kitchen. I wanted to pick the male flowers from the courgettes when they first opened up in the morning to take to the kitchen, and to choose at what stage of growth to harvest the courgettes for eating raw when they are still relatively small and firm and delicate in flavour, without too many seeds and flesh, or to leave them on the plant for longer and allow their skins to thicken and the flesh to swell. These I use for grilling, as the moisture evaporates over the heat and condenses the flavour in the skin.

Rocket, the commercial varieties of which are so bland, is a delicious and incredibly versatile leaf used as either a herb or salad. The broad-leaved varieties are hard to find and the tastiest mainly sold in Middle Eastern stores, tied in bundles. I scattered a packet of seeds in some of the herb pots in my garden the other day and three days later they have already germinated and are showing signs of growth. Perhaps that is due to the warm week we have had this March.

All the chards are easy to grow here, despite the fact they are sold as specialist produce, along with cavolo nero, the black kale from Tuscany. I sow broad beans, peas, French and runner beans and borlotti beans (which are expensive to buy, that is, if you can find them). Start the borlottis off under glass in March to give them the long growing season they need, then plant them out in May for a September crop.

The most challenging Italian ingredient I attempted to grow was radicchio ‘Rosso di Treviso Tardivo’. Tying up the summer and autumn growth of leaves to ‘blanch’ the inner hearts was my inexperienced way of trying to figure out how to grow this specialist plant. It was successful to a degree in that during the winter I dared to untie the plant and peep at the leaves within: there were, huddled in the dark heart, beautiful cold-white spines dividing the dark wine-red leaf, crisp and dense and beginning to fold like a death at the tips.

Tomatoes: last year we grew an avenue of them in terracotta pots, tying the stems to string attached to the roof of the glasshouse. Francesco had instructed me to fill the glasshouses with them, so we did. He also suggested I ask his housekeeper for any old linen sheets we could tear up and use to wrap around the supports for the tomatoes as they grew. I did ask but got one of those ‘you must be insane’ looks. Varieties we grew included ‘Tigerella’, little yellow plum, ‘Gardener’s Delight’, ‘Bull’s Heart’ (‘Cuore di Bue’), ‘Black Russian’ and ‘Costoluto Fiorentino’. I love tomatoes, missing their wonderful flavours and aroma in the winter months.

PENNE CARBONARA WITH ASPARAGUS

I often make this on a Sunday night when eggs can be particularly soothing and I want to cook something simple but delicious. You can replace the asparagus with either peas, broad beans or courgettes. This is one of my favourite ways of eating asparagus.

FOR 4

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

150ml double cream or g crème fraîche

6 good-quality fresh medium eggs, separated