The fact that many utensils are used as wall trophies indicates the muddle people are in who misguidedly buy things as ‘symbols’ of culinary merit. The merit lies not in the possession of the object but in putting it to good use. Equally, cooking is not to be regarded as a display of virtuosity, it is far more vital than that.
Patience Gray, Honey From A Weed (1986)
The most humble and fascinating book about real food, this. The last sentence rings truer now than when written.
This week, the fruit bowl finally holds something worth crowing about. Small, hard nectarines, patiently softening and, better still, a clutch of delicious almost-there apricots. That bowlful there is my mothers'. She got in a week earlier than I.
When Nellie bends my elbow to push it gently across my back, she always holds my hand. My fingers (of their own accord) often curl up to greet hers and gently grasp back, a gesture I find intimate and comforting but I wonder how she feels about it. Beneath her tiny, hot hands, my shoulders have dropped, my neck moves freely and I haven’t had a headache worth mentioning in months.
I'm feeling kinda good.
Walking home, shoulders loosened, the light falls beautifully on the neighbourhood gardens. A single wild strawberry pokes out between the fence posts, a bright orange nasturtium blossom peeks at me beneath a freshly-painted white gate. Birds of paradise looked curiously - proudly – over a fence line and a grape vine that tumbles onto the pathway each summer is lush and green.
Soup for one, tonight. A little bowl of cold sorrel soup from Patience Gray's Plats du Jour, one that uses no cream, no butter, no nothing bad. One apricot will be halved when the sun sinks below the fence, stalk end to pointed tip, and prised carefully apart. Its hollow will be filled with a few crushed amaretti, mooshed with a teaspoon of butter, a drizzle of honey then into a moderate oven until done.
Quite enough for a happy solo diner, and the dog, naturally, can lick the bowl clean.