Keeping Cool, Actually & Metaphysically
At the moment we have peaches and white flesh nectarines in the fridge, often watermelon too. I keep oranges in the fridge at work for an early afternoon bit of juice joy.
If you would like to listen to this and get on with something else at the same time, hit the play button above and you will hear me speaking these very words.
Cooking in all this heat is certainly challenging and cold summer fruits really help.
The long black barn that houses my kitchen is south facing and has no insulation - did I mention that it’s black? It is also glazed all along its front, but luckily the previous tenant in the two units I rent left behind some fitted Venetian blinds. How do I cope in all this heat? I start work very early, between 6 and 8am. I keep those blinds closed until the point, around 1.30pm, when the sun has moved round to shine down the yard, just kissing the edges of my windowsills. The most crucial part of all is the one ancient air conditioning unit that I have. There are two, one in each space, and fairly typically the one in the actual kitchen no longer works. The one in the adjoining space does however, and set at 16 degrees from the moment I arrive, it does an admirable job of countering the sun, the ovens, hobs and dishwasher. This last packs out the most heat of all, with its sterilising heat cycle and short runs. Every time you open the door clouds of hot steam escape into the space. It’s making me hot just to think about it.
This week coming I will be on a rest day on Monday, I’m doing a writing course on Monday mornings which is nearing its end, it’s been treasure to have this time, although I have to say that the necessity to rise early on a rare day off will not be missed when it comes to an end. Last week we used food as a writing prompt, and it was moving and inspiring to hear everyone’s connections to the lemons, potatoes, party ring biscuits and all else that they had brought with them. The course is not focussed on food writing, but writing from life, and you can’t really write about life without writing about food, can you?
I feel very lucky that food has always been a tool of comfort and joy in my life, it was wielded so by my mum and I presume by her mother before her. I am certain that war rationing during my parents early lives - they were both born in 1945 - played a part in the significance of food in my own childhood, the absence of availability and reliability through the post war years being paid tribute to via the constancy of full fridge and larder in my equivalent early years. Food as treats, food as soothing balm at the end of each day. The evening meal was a focus point and was most often, on reflection, a lavish affair. Classic suppers would be lamb chops, potatoes, cauliflower cheese and the like; fish pie, cottage pie, shepherd’s pie; tuna spaghetti, bolognaise; kedgeree…proper solid ‘dinners’ which became my pattern for feeding myself and my own family, and is only now aged 52 something I am able to relax with on occasion (although rarely) now that we are empty nesters it is not unheard of for the evening meal to be a sandwich or a light graze on what food is available.
I can’t do this often though because I miss the thinking and the planning too much.
Once again of late my mind has been turning to food for soothing, I hope that you are able to find comfort and joy in areas close by too. It makes me so very glad that this newsletter is now called Hope’s Kitchen – my close relationship with food and cooking was first born out of needing hope and focus when Noa got sick, and now my nervous system is completely programmed to lean heavily into food and cooking when it is being inflamed by external forces beyond my control. It is also strangely helpful to know that I cook at my best when I am at my most emotional, perhaps it is a mind body connection thing, but like an athlete in ‘the zone’ I can sense when I am geared up to cook particularly well. I feel it nearly all the time at the moment, and it is helping me a lot when, to be frank, a lot of my mind has been unravelling.
This season of abundance is the perfect time to get carried away with cooking, there is so much that is delightful and delicious growing locally. Once I have published this post I will be ordering my vegetables for next week’s Friday Food menu from local growers – courgettes and French beans, kale and sweet potatoes. For myself I can’t get enough aubergines at the moment, or basil and tomatoes. I bought three bunches of basil from the Lewes Friday Food Market on Friday, where I have just started trading again after a break of a few years. It’s lovely to be back at market – I trade at Florence Road Market in Brighton too once a month, and this time I am taking only my spices, salts, pickles and the like to sell – no freshly prepared food that causes me to rise at 4am and can leave me with fresh food waste after a rained off market. Having only my spices is working brilliantly on two levels – the first, people can actually see the products and are buying them, where before they would be hidden behind piles of samosas and custard tarts. Second, at the end of market I put all my tins and jars away in their boxes, where they live happily till the next outing, meaning my pre and post market workload is massively reduced. This is heaven!
My business turns 11 this month, can you believe it? 11 years of my pram and feeding the people of Lewes and surrounds. It feels apt to be re focussing what I am doing with writing on here and making products as this is the working future I dream of – teaching, writing and selling a range of spiced goods. Seasons in Lewes will start stocking my wares this month, which is very exciting. I will also finish the writing course I have been doing with Holly Dawson, writer of the most excellent All Of Us Atoms, which has been focussed on writing from life. Since Noa was first diagnosed with cancer I have wanted to write a memoir of sorts, in fact have been writing consistently since October 2012 when I first started blogging as a way of keeping friends and family up to date with her progress through treatment. It has gone from chronological memoir to epic poem to essays and short stories and many variants in-between over the years. It is now happily forming itself into a collection of writing and recipes, that I hope will be illustrated with drawings rather than photographs. It has felt unwieldy and clumsy for many years, it is beginning to show me what it wants to be and I look forward to sharing sample chapters with you on here.
Hope and cooking, love and cooking, friendship and cooking, family and cooking. And of course all the eating that comes too.
Paid subscribers look out for your hold in your hands printed copy of my Making Summer Simple recipe booklet. I shared the PDF file on here last week and liked it so much I ordered a short run of booklets. These are available for free subscribers and everyone else to buy online via this link, anyone who has already purchased the PDF copy will receive a printed copy too.
Hope’s Kitchen the Fanzine Issue 2 is underway – aiming for a late August publication date. The loose theme is Happiness and excitingly I have 3 contributors to this issue, meaning it will not only be filled with my meanderings. Once again all paid subscribers shall automatically receive a copy in the post.
I currently have 36 paid subscribers and a total of 456 subscribers in all. Thank you everyone! If you follow me and don’t subscribe (I have no idea of the difference to be frank and find Substack infinitely confusing) please consider subscribing. I have it on good authority that gaining interest in memoir writing from agents and publishers is challenging and the best way to do so is to gain an audience so that you can prove yourself viable in the market place….so please subscribe, share, like, comment if you can.
With huge love and thanks,
Chloe
The recipe this week is a homage to aubergine – I love simply cutting them in half down their length, with the stalk still attached, cross cross scoring the flesh with a sharp knife before brushing them with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and roasting them for 20 minutes at 190c or 170c fan. Once they are cooked you can top them with any number of things before returning them to the oven for a further 10 minutes and serving them with the salad of your choice. They are also delicious cold for lunch the next day.
This week I topped our halves with some pesto that I made simply with one bunch of the aforementioned market basil and some peanuts, a clove of garlic, oil, salt and pepper. I mixed this in a bowl with a block of feta that I had mashed up with my fingers while it was still wrapped in its packet before turning it out. I also added a tin of Albacore tuna. When the aubergine halves were ready I piled them high with this mush and cooked them till lightly coloured, about 12 minutes. Delicious.
Other things you could do with your aubergine halves:
Mix up what you add to the oil that you brush on before first roasting them – try my favourite trio of cumin, turmeric and smoked paprika, or make it more southern med’ with some thyme, oregano and garlic granules. You could change the oil and brush them with sesame oil, miso and a few sesame seeds…
Toppings to try:
Sliced tomatoes topped with mozzarella, or any cheese to your liking.
Roasted peppers, capers & olives all chopped up fine with a crushed clove of garlic and some finely chopped parsley and perhaps some lemon zest.
A generous smear of a pre brought or homemade curry paste or chutney could go on the cooked aubergine before adding some left overs – roasted or steamed vegetables, some cooked meat of tofu.
There really are no limits beyond your imagination and the contents of your food cupboards and fridge!
