Observations from a Hill

  I was watching a really wonderful documentary earlier, on YouTube, from a series of TV programmes titled 'Parts Unknown' by Anthony Bourdain, which culminates in his eating at the table of Paul Bocuse, in the latter's hunting lodge after they had spent the day duck-hunting for the pot. Bocuse was one of France's fêted Chefs de Cuisine, and a culinary hero of Bourdain's personally. It's a wonderful programme overall, but the final, informal setting is one of plain good cooking and eating in the company of friends: good food, good wine and good company. Over the last half century I've spent many an hour similarly, and cooked and eaten thousands of such meals in good company, accompanied by much quaffing of drink. Anyway, what did I cook for myself this evening, as I'm flying solo for a few days? The above pictured cheese and streaky bacon toastie with HP Sauce. Not quite wild duck spit-roast over an open fire, but a damn sight easier to prepare and not ...

The world is arguably, and some of us would assert demonstrably, in the most perilous state that it has been since mankind evolved. Hyperbole? I really don't think so: climate change is now accelerating at a pace predicted by climatologists just a few years ago; a rate of change so fast that extreme weather events normally restricted to Africa and the Indian subcontinent are now commonplace across northern Europe. This year has seen catastrophic wildfires taking hold across Spain, Italy, Greece, France and the UK. Drought has been declared similarly widely across the continent, making fighting these fires increasingly difficult. Is there any significant rainfall in the offing for us? Not as far as the meteorologists can foresee: we're looking at similar conditions for the next month or so at least. On the international politics front, how many wars are being waged at present and for what reasons? The Middle East, Ukraine, what next? And what will the antagonists party to and in...

Spaces within spaces, or, I suppose more correctly, volumes within volumes, in a house, have always held more fascination for me than open-plan living. A house to me should be a cabinet of curiosities writ large, with places to explore and definitely more than one staircase. Which I suppose is what attracted me to our home of twenty-plus years, here at Fairview Heights [just to jog the memory, my rather twee little appellation for our humble abode arises from the name of my great-great aunt Annie's house in Herefordshire, Fairview ,  twisted through the irony of John Peel in his nickname for his place: Peel Acres]. I like an edifice with corners. And cupboards. And cubbyholes. I like bookcases full of books, slightly too much over-stuffed furniture and bizarre knick-knacks, souvenirs and collections. I guess at heart I'm a kind of Victorian, mediated by an Abstract Expressionist aesthetic: living amongst a semi-organised clutter of things of occasional interest bound together b...

I suppose anyone from the UK of my age - born in the 1950s - and class: working - can remember folk coming back from early-days package holidays to Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, etc., and saying that it was lovely, but 'all the food is swimming in oil'. Ah, how our tastes and palates have changed in sixty-odd years. I know I'm starting to get a bit like a stuck record here with these repeated gratuitous food posts, but whatever; this is worth sharing. Pictured is tonight's pasta sauce in the making: and it's principally comprised of olive oil. Lots of it. As I posted, I did a simpler version of this the other night for myself, but the above goes something like this. Very gently sauté down half a dozen of those tiny, ripe salad plum tomatoes, quartered, with a clove of mashed down garlic, some flat-leaf parsley and a couple of basil leaves, salt, pepper and a pinch of chilli flakes in a goodly quantity of extra virgin olive oil, with a splash of cider vinegar until...

OK, so yet another food post might seem a tad excessive, but here's the thing: if you can't be arsed to create, invent or otherwise extemporise a meal, let alone follow a recipe, the next best thing is to turn to the comfort food of one's childhood. Viz the above: the aftermath of tonight's meal - I couldn't even be bothered to photograph the finished article as I simply wanted to eat it: a Fray Bentos steak & kidney pie with baby Maris Piper potatoes roasted in beef dripping. Properly nostalgic working-class nosh from my childhood. The Fray Bentos pie occupies a place in that unique pantheon of readymade foodstuffs that serious, professional chefs will always cleave to when they simply want comfort and convenience after a hard day's work. No-one wants to bake a sixty-four layer puff pastry from scratch, to be perfectly honest, and the pastry on these things is always nothing short of wonderful. Other items of note on the roster are: Heinz Cream of Tomato S...

Two gratuitous food posts on the trot I'm afraid: tonight's repast of rolled breast of lamb marinated in garlic, lemon juice and olive oil; stuffed with dates, rosemary, flat-leaf parsley, cardamom and bay leaves; rolled and slow-roasted for a couple of hours and then zapped on high for half an hour. We just ate it with mash: the meat was finger-food and as fatty and garlicky as you can imagine. Interestingly, the stuffing contributed little: the overriding tastes being lamb and garlic. Room for future experiment, methinks. As a very cheap [used to be free in times past] cut of meat with oodles of flavour, I would recommend it to diehard lamb fiends, but not to anyone who's a bit picky about their food: dainty it ain't, and it requires a bit of dextrous chewing to get the best of it. My go-to for satisfying anyone with a taste for sheep, however, will always be shoulder: far superior to leg of lamb in every way. Make it hogget or mutton, and you've got some serious...