Rhubarb
This vegetable, served as fruit pudding, turning up in a variety of terrible guises for years and years in guest houses and school dinners across the country, has led me on a quite remarkable route. As I tried to trace a little of our culinary connection to it, rhubarb has taken me back through time unbelievably to where I began this entry, that is Iraq. When the capital of the Arab world moved from Damascus to Baghdad in A.D.763, the Round City, Abode of Peace, situated in the central point of the Middle East between the Euphrates and the Tigress, became the centre of trade with the East. Traders headed East from Baghdad for all manor of goods; honey, quince, saffron, salt, pomegranates, quail. Earliest records of Rhubarb describe how it was brought back from China together with cinnamon. Rheum officialis was extremely important in ancient medicine.
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Wild Primroses
It is Easter this weekend. Holy Week, Passover, Spring! Suddenly winter is behind us and we’re racing into Spring. It all seems to happen over night, one minute we’re bracing ourselves against wind and rain, sliding around in the mud as we struggle up to the farmyard and the next minute the clocks change the evenings are lighter and we’re plunged into the new season. We’re awash with flowers, singing birds, trees with buds bursting, ewes fussing over their lambs, ducks shouting on the mill pond. And everyone’s in a hurry! Seeds are germinating and begging to be pricked out, flowerbeds need digging, vegetables need planting and all I can do is paint paint paint the holiday cottage in time for the first summer visitors on Friday, Good Friday. The winter tenant left it perfect but the time has come for a new coat of paint, and, oh, how I hate being trapped inside with a paint brush in my hand when the sun shines! And I had my best ever phone message yesterday, did I have some eggs that the children could hatch over Easter and then give me back the chicks on their return to London…..birds and bees?
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A friend of mine who has recently had to take on all the cooking for the first time looked at me in a puzzled way the other day and said “When you’re making soup where does the liquid come from?” If you’ve never cooked before it’s a very good question! I laughed and explained about making stock, ‘take the meat off the cooked chicken, put the carcass in a pot. Fill the pot with water, add a bay leaf, some herbs, a carrot, an onion and put the whole thing in the bottom of your kitchen range and go to bed’! “Goodness” he said and looked delighted. Just then someone else spoke to me and our conversation on soup finished. But I overheard him trying to find out more from a photographer friend. “Where do you get the liquid from?” he asked again ” A stock cube, of course!”. I laughed to myself. It was like me taking my happy snaps to Boots to have them processed when I know my friend works for hours printing to perfection in her dark room. So horses for courses, make your stock or use a cube!
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Simnel Cake with 11 Marzipan Apostles (no Judas) and Primroses.
Simnel Cake was originally baked for Mothering Sunday but has now become associated with Easter.
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Violet Ice Cream: Dorothy Hartley’s recipe is so simple. Add as much fine fresh brown bread crumbs to a bowl of whipped cream “as it will carry“, freeze a little. Stir in coarse sugar or crushed sugar candy. The sugar must be course, she insists. Chill again. Cover “lavishly” with crystallised violets, chill and serve. My version is almost the same but I find stiffly whipped egg white lightens the texture. Experiment and see which you prefer.

The easiest way to crystallize flowers is to dip them in lightly beaten egg white, shake of the excess, place gently of a wire wrack and sprinkle with icing sugar, allow to dry. The flowers are so fragile it’s a delicate business. Don’t try it if you’re in a hurry!

“Marconi is wireless now” said Richard obliquely as we trundled across a muddy field in his jeep leaving a trail of feed on the ground for the hinds. “Yes?“ I replied waiting. “He got high tensile wire wrapped round his antlers a while ago,” he continued. “I couldn’t get anywhere near him for days. Then suddenly there he was standing quietly beside me waiting for me to release the wire with my huge wire cutters. It made quite a bang when I cut it but he just stood patiently till I’d finished. I thought it might make him easier to approach but no, once more he won’t come near me. But he’s wireless now…..”
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