Already tattered, worn and dirty from weeks of wear, it was a requirement that the cuffs of my jeans were retracted into a knobbly anklet before I could wander barefoot into the garden. Armed with a pressed and washed plastic bag still gleaming from its wagging way on the clothesline, in the sunshine, and with all the vigour I had, I remember jumping right in to the irrigation trenches freshly drenched with my little toes wriggling and delighting in the cool silt, like earthworms to tangled roots. Despite my enthusiasm, I was under strict instructions to not bother the vegetables that were young and struggling to grow; the carrots by the entrance, the snake beans tenuously clinging to the teepees or the delicate zucchini flowers that would later be battered and fried. It was my grandfather’s job — and he was definitely better at it — to carefully tease the vegetables from the earth and collect them. Instead I had the brave duty of collecting the herbs from their happy soil beds and watching as the large heads of cauliflower, broccoli and fennel carried away. It was always a joyful thing, to greet the myriad of tightly budded flowers in the uniform florets of broccoli, in a light indigo-turned-turquoise suckling upon the morning dew, synthesising the sun into their thick and mighty stems.
My grandmother’s garden was perpetually alive with new fruits and vegetables heavy upon their stems and deep into the season, plentiful and fresh. I suppose this is what caused me to believe as a boy that food was abundant, simple and inexpensive and led me to become a little spoilt. It was only as I grew older than I observed how food was carefully and lovingly prepared and preserved by my mother and grandmother, and only as I grew older did a fondness and interest develop for the elaborate methods of preservation with the golden triad of olive oil, vinegar and salt. In some sense I developed an attitude toward wastefulness, and this was my greatest disrespect to the lovingly prepared meals prepared for me; if something on my plate looked unappetising, I was never ashamed about pushing it to the side, politely ejecting it into a napkin or even surreptiously hiding it within the hideous mess of scraps already on my plate. I also made the effort of being a horrible nuisance in the kitchen, voicing my abhorrence at cooking methods that were alien to me at the time, especially the presence of bones and herbs in soups, stocks, sauces and roasts.
I discovered from an early age that many herbs, from their most fragile days right up to their adult forms, are wonderfully resilient, fragrant and exceptionally copious in their giving - to the very end of their life. Their roots take care of the erosion of the soil, occupy the earthworms through the untangling of the plant’s under-earth meandering and through the sheer variety available, introduce myriad flavours to our food. The exact time my appreciation process began proper is impossible to say, though I suspect it is due in part to my sighting of the worms and the seeds within my grandmother’s backyard – let’s just say I had curious fingers forever seeking the roots of things! I scouted wherever a crack hairlined the concrete, or the paved brick chipped and grew mossy or a seam mismatched the beams supporting the base of the house, and found that parsley grew there. From the first snap of winter frost through and beyond the dewy smell of the first summer day, parsley darted from some of the most unexpected places and regressed to seed in its dying days. Because of its versatility and abundance, my grandmother maintained a love and a hatred for the common herb — a sentiment I also share.
Continue reading »
The Wild Thyme and Sweet Pea project found its roots when it was plucked excitedly from the garden, washed briskly in a basin of water and lovingly left out to dry in a soothing marinade of vision and ambition ... More »
The Food of Italy, Kay Halsey
The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban & Silvano Serventi
The Silver Spoon, Phaidon Press
Jamie's Italy, Jamie Oliver
Italian Country Cooking, Loukie Werle
La Cocina de Mama: The Great Home Cooking of Spain, Penelope Casas
