Sussex Bloomsbury Group walk and salads using summer fruit

June 19 2023

Introduction

I’ve been in Suffolk for the weekend but earlier in the week, Nigel Slater’s couscous with apricots and mint and pine nuts came up on my Instagram feed and I made it with fresh apricots from the stall on the High Street. The weather was so hot that they smelt as fragrant as if I was in Italy.

Travel

UK

A comprehensive guide to the South Downs in the Telegraph which is one of my best areas for walking. My favourite is from Firle Beacon along the crest of the Downs and down to Berwick Church where there are murals painted by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. And then back through Charleston where the garden is free, (pictured below) and you can go in the café, Caccia and Tails, even if you don’t go in the house. You can even go to Monk’s House where Virginia Woolf lived on the way home. I call it my Bloomsbury Group Walk. The ten most popular walks according to the OS map app in the Guardian. I have the app on my phone and once you work out how to use it, it’s the best way of planning walks.  

Walking in Teesdale in the Sunday Times and how to plan a visit to the Cairngorms in Scotland in the Telegraph.

Best ice cream shops in Britain  by Felicity Cloake in the Guardian including my favourite Baboo in Dorset, Jelberts in Newlyn, Cornwall and yesterday I ate the most enormous key lime pie and strawberry cone from Harris and James in Southwold,

67 best places to eat in the Guardian in Cornwall, Devon & Dorset, Kent, the Lake District, Norfolk, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland chosen by chefs. 

Europe

The train route of the month in the Guardian is the hourly Mont-Blanc Express railway from Martigny to Saint-Gervais-les-Bains in France which you can take over a day getting off and on where you please.

The Times advises taking a train from Porto, through Vigo and Santiago de Compostela to La Coruna with a side trip up the Douro Valley to see Europe’s most underrated wine region. Funnily enough, last night I was researching ultra lightweight backpacks to do one of the Camino trails and now I find I can just do the Portugese route by train.

The Guardian has a great article on retreats in the Austrian Tirol and they go to Achensee which pleased me immensely as it’s where the first Chalet School books by Elinor Brent-Dyer were set. When I was growing up, I always wanted to be a pupil there where I could speak English one day, followed by French the next and German on the third.

San Sebastian city guide in the Times, which they describe as pintxos, cider and surf. There are now direct summer flights with British Airways from London City airport so you don’t have to go to Bilbao and then by road for an hour. Maybe you could combine both in a visit to see the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao as well which is one of my fantasy plans.

The Telegraph says go to Treviso and not to Venice but as even Ryanair now flies into Marco Polo Airport from the UK, I would rather just be in Venice.

More useful advice than a holiday in Treviso is their advice on holiday money especially choosing the right card issuer. They recommend Monzo on the current ­Mastercard exchange rate, which has a mark-up of just 0.33 per cent above the European Central Bank’s rate. They say don’t take cash, you only need a credit card. I’m not sure how that would go down buying a bag of tomatoes from a French market, thinking forward to my summer holiday.

Which? recommends debit cards for use abroad issued by Starling Bank, Cumberland Building Society, Virgin Money, Chase and Kroo Bank’. For good-value credit cards that offer similar rates: the Halifax Clarity Credit Card, the Bip Credit Card (both MasterCard) and the Barclaycard Rewards Visa.’ And more detailed advice in this Telegraph article as well as this one from the Guardian on holiday money which gives the same kind of advice 

Finally, the best places to stay in Normandy in the Times as well as a guide to Aix-en-Provence.

Restaurants 

The list of the National Restaurant Awards is here.

In the FT, Tim Hayward went to Ploussard in Clapham Junction, London SW11. It offers a seasonal menu of plates designed to be shared and a wine list of natural wines.

 In the Guardian, Grace Dent described Lilienblum in Shoreditch, London EC1, as ‘a sort of elegant, earthy, Ottolenghi mashup of Honey & Co and The Palomar, with Somehow, it all works.

In the Observer, Jay Rayner thought Gamba, a Spanish restaurant at the Royal Festival Hall  was ‘the answer to the question, where can I eat before seeing a show at the Southbank Centre?’ But the puddings let it down.

In the Standard, Jimi Famurewa went to Leo’s in London E5, and said his meal was ‘a touch discordant and ordinary.’ He had expected better due to the chat on social media.

In the Telegraph, William Sitwell was in Liverpool reviewing Röski, where the express tasting menu for one is £84 including optional cheese, but excluding drinks and service. He thought it’s a restaurant at ease with itself, confident and cheery. And the staff are the same, delivering wholesome plates of great flavour with panache and charm.

In the Times, Giles Coren went on a crowded train there and back to the Three Horseshoes at Batcombe, in Somerset. gave the food a score of 6.5 and thought ‘it’s a little bit of Hoxton for people who have sold up and moved to Bruton.’

Recipes

If I was at home, I might have stirred myself in the heat to make a peach and fennel salad by Skye McAlpine in the Sunday Times as well as her other recipes including baby spinach, citrus and almond salad, chicken and pineapple salad, and peach and tomato caprese salad.

Ottolenghi is also using summer fruit in savoury recipes with cucumber and berry salad with urfa and sesame, roast pork tenderloin with cherry and chipotle salsa and roast peaches with fennel croissant wafers in the Guardian.

Diana Henry declares we should all be making and eating flatbreads with recipes for green chilli and coriander naan with kachumber salad, flatbread with scallops and seaweed butter and Irish potato bread with hot-smoked salmon, poached egg and herb cream sauce in the Telegraph. Rosie Styles agrees in the Guardian with her budget ideas for courgette-stuffed bread as well as slow-cooked garlic courgettes with bulgur pilaf. Rachel Roddy gives two recipes for stuffed aubergines.

There’s a double helping of Nigel Slater in the Observer, with his recipes for fried new potatoes and rocket mayonnaise, and broad beans with radishes and Pecorino and then recipes with seasonal greens in Observer Food Monthly including panko prawns with pea and coriander chutney, broad beans, asparagus, courgettes and peas in white wine or vermouth, and courgette cakes with red pepper sauce. Honey and Co make an Italian dish of braised eggs with broad  beans in the FT.

Mark Hix has barbecue recipes in the Telegraph for tandoori John Dory, monkfish skewers with shallot sauce and grilled carrots with apple, mint and coriander relish. 

Books 

Flavour Kitchen: Vibrant Recipes with Creative Twists’ by Crystelle Pereira,

an ex Bake-Off contestant, she has written a book celebrating her Goan-Portuguese heritage with recipes in the Independent for Goan-inspired coconut and cabbage fritters, as well as mango and cardamom cheesecake and roasted grape, honey and feta crostinis.

There were more of her recommendations in the Guardian with recipes for pistachio, white chocolate and cardamom millionaire’s shortbread and lime, coconut and sesame cake.

Time and Tide: recipes and stories from my coastal kitchen by Emily Scott 

I was so pleased when Emily Scott was chosen to cook for the G7 world leaders when they were in Cornwall and there are recipes including whole mackerel over coals with garlic, as well as tomato salad (truly!) and madeleines in the Observer.