Provence, peaches and tomatoes

August 25 2024

Introduction

In these late summer days, the tomatoes, peaches and plums are at their best.

It’s been a while since I wrote this newsletter as I deleted the last one by mistake just before posting it and I was too cross with myself to do it all again. It’s a good job that it’s free.

It’s a shorter version today as I’m on holiday in Provence but before I came away, I made Esther Clark’s nectarine, tomato and feta yoghurt salad and Nigel Slater’s plum shortcake, both perfect easy ways of using the seasonal produce.

Books

Ottolenghi Comfort by Yotam Ottolenghi, Helen Goh, Verena Lochmuller and Tara Wigley

in the Guardian with an interview here where Ottolenghi defines comfort food, ‘It’s home, family, memory – the combination of right dish, right time, right place’

and an eclectic mix of recipes including cauliflower and butternut pakoras, easy cheesy rice and chocolate ripple fridge cake. This is an Australian biscuit cake where you can even make the biscuits that you then layer up with cream. I remember my mother making a similar ginger nut cream biscuit log in the 70’s.

‘For The Love Of Food by Paul Ainsworth

in the Independent with an interview here from the chef who has a Michelin star for his restaurant No 6 and  two others also in Padstow, the Italian-inspired Caffe Rojano and a pub, The Mariners, with recipes for red onion tarte Tatin with goat’s cheese, watercress and hazelnut and Cornish crab, tomato, pickled shallot and basil salad. This was so light, zingy and fresh and a welcome, different way to use crab.

Jane’s Patisserie: Easy Favourites by Jane Dunn

in the Independent including her golden rules of baking with recipes for cookie dough bars, foolproof home made pizzas and an apple crumble cake.

Small Batch Cookies by Edd Kimber

in the Sunday Times with Swedish lace, hazelnut spread-stuffed and flourless double-chocolate cookie recipes.

Travel

UK

10 of the best renovated English ‘foodie inns’ in the Observer including the The Owl, Hawnby, North Yorkshire, the The Black Horse, Climping, West Sussex and the Great Bustard in Wiltshire

In a similar vein, it shows how strong the Pig Hotel brand is that the Sunday Times was minded to find 20 other hotels of a similar style to book instead of going to the Pig. This included the East End Arms in the New Forest, Glebe House in Devon and my favourite, the Bell Inn at Langford. Off season, a favourite trip is a night away at Mollies Motel near Faringdon, lots of walking and then dinner at the Bell, for less than the cost of a meal out in London.

Mollies Motel and walking in the Cotswolds in Autumn

This leads on neatly to an alternative guide to the Cotswolds in the Guardian concentrating lesser known places such as Stroud and Slad and the Cotswold Way.

Seaside and cycling on Jersey, Guernsey and Sark in the Guardian with an overnight ferry to the Channel Islands

I’m not sure about Bexhill in Sussex, but the Telegraph is encouraging me to give it another go. Half of me agrees with Spike Milligan who rudely described it as “the only cemetery above ground”. His grave is further along the coast in the churchyard at Winchelsea where he lived for some years. Bexhill itself is on the 18-mile Coastal Cultural Trail that connects the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne with the De La Warr Pavilion and the Hastings Contemporary. 

Europe

On the Sawdays website, they are doing guides to different parts of France and this week it was a foodie guide to the South of France by Carolyn Boyd, an extract from her book Amuse-Bouche, as well as a local’s guide to Provence with some useful recommendations.

Market at Laudun d’Ardois and Domaine Cadignac

Carolyn Boyd also wrote about her family surfing holiday in the Guardian to French Basque Country where they went by ferry from Portsmouth to Santander and then visited Bilbao, Bayonne and Sare for the Rhune Railway as well as the surfing.

I didn’t know that Monet painted landscapes in La Creuse in France but the Guardian says its rugged gorges, spectacular lake and medieval castle really captivated the artist.

Vienna for a late summer city break in the Sunday Times.

Nigel Slater’s stuffed peppers with pork from the Observer that I cooked last night and photographed in the evening sunshine. One to repeat back at home.

Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph. Sometimes my husband buys a Times on Saturdays or I buy a Guardian and I buy the Observer when it’s Observer Food Monthly. Otherwise I rely on what’s online, and on Twitter and Instagram. And occasionally, I ask a friend to save an article for me.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives a certain number of free articles

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

Sometimes, I use the recipes for inspiration. If they are from a cookbook, they may be in other publications as well for publicity, and you may find them or a similar version through a quick Google.