Although you may not agree with me, I feel that August is a great month for the Southern Hemisphere. Frankly, what’s not to enjoy? It is in August that the best seasonal fruits and vegetables drop in price, culminate, force you to salivate over their colours, their variety. Some articles of wonderful produce greet the shelves like cherries, oranges and pineapple, that for months before, have known only pickles, preserves and candied forms. Most importantly, August means a time for embracing the limbo of seasons, desiring the incredible and exciting experimentation with recipes given to you; embrace the variety of life. After all, Mother Nature didn’t invest in four seasons in a single year for nothing!
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Heart stuck on your sleeve? Can’t let go of the tricycle in the backyard? If only we could be forever young; everything to do with being a grown-up seems to involve complexity, uncertainty, periods of trial and error. Sure, we’d probably never know what it feels like to have perfectly and fully realised love, never have any lasting friends nor the chance to take our first rust-bucket sedan for a trip down memory lane. Still, it sure sounds swell being a knee-high cherub.
But that’s because being a kid meant not worrying about the grown-up stuff. It was, for many of us, a time to form memories of the food we enjoyed, of the kitchen with its myriad of silverware, cast iron cookware and fine bone china. But most importantly, the aromas and laughter that filled the house at the dawn of every season. Food brings families together and it is through the ritualistic passing of recipes from generation to generation that the spell-making method is preserved. And so I present to you a winter warmer dessert that’s low on complexity and full of nostalgic yielding.
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It would be great if only we had such a creation as a split identity – a new dimension to ourselves that interacts with the world and which does the chores you’d rather maintain a distance of a 50-metre pole. But the reality is that you’re strapped for time, strapped for money, stressed out and pulling your hair out. It’s cold outside and your toes are poking through your last pair of socks – yes, those socks; the ones which came wrapped up nicely with a ribbon for your seventeenth birthday. Your stomach grows. Your fridge door is hanging off its hinges full of jars and bottles; mucky milk, mouldy mustard, rancid relish, putrid pesto. Perhaps the only “gourmet” ingredient you’ve seen in weeks is a tin of eerie brown coloured caviar. Perhaps, by the time you reached the end of this list of disgusting fridge contaminants, you’re on the floor laughing, rolling around in stitches.
But I can assure you that being in dire straits has happened to you more times than you’re comfortable to admit. The true art in cooking, in my opinion, is inventiveness with the ingredients on hand – the ability to create an indispensable number of dishes from similar bases. Thankfully, there’s a solution to your winter woes that doesn’t involve taking out a second mortgage on the house or selling that briefcase full of unused Dinky Toy cars. Read on to hear more about one of the best kept secrets of the Mediterranean coast.
Perhaps you share my experience, perhaps you understand this uniquely seasonal phenomena. Perhaps, despite your greatest efforts in trying to decipher the recipes on Wild Thyme and Sweet Pea, nothing can be done to rescue me from the terrible jokes and ridiculous puns that I break like eggs into a pan. While nothing can be done about the latter, I can assure you that there is certainly hope for your winter woes and frozen toes.
Firstly, I thought to mention how this recipe came to my mind and why it seemed like an interesting feature. It didn’t begin in a remote Tuscan village, nor was it quickly penned down from the words of a sage on his deathbed or from a Platonic conception of itself; it was much simpler than that. Gnocchi-making was often reserved for on rare and coveted occasion for the family to get together and roll up these wonderful potato dumplings on their forks on a long table, sharing anecdotes and stories of misadventure.
I decided to try this recipe with my housemates – the second family – and to see what degree of fun and success we would have. It all began in recent times with the fact that no matter what I do or how I adjust the climate of the room, my hands have remained fidgety and impatient and always freezing cold…
Wandering through cold streets tangled like old string,
Coming on fountains rigid in the frost,
Its formula escapes you; it has lost
The certainty that constitutes a thing.Only the old, the hungry and the humbled
Keep at this temperature a sense of place,
And in their misery are all assembled;
The winter holds them like an Opera-House.Ridges of rich apartments loom to-night
Where isolated windows glow like farms,
A phrase goes packed with meaning like a van,A look contains the history of man,
And fifty francs will earn a stranger right
To take the shuddering city in his arms.-W.H. Auden, 1907. Modernist poet.
Pull out the slippers, slip on the socks. Dust off the mattress and reset the clock. Turn up the heat and go for a jog, while the cauldron bubbles with last night’s broth. Replace sunburn and mosquito bites with pasty skin and chilly nights and you’re right on the mark. While practising your poetic verse is a great way to give your brain a workout after a period of reticence, you won’t see the benefit of that fortification against dementia until you’re well into your age and pipping on your tobacco and looking out your bedroom window!
I’m here to herald something much more immediate. It might not be the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus or a giant paycheck waiting for you in the mail, but I can assure you that a great summons is coming to a city near and it is far more exciting than waiting for your brain to mature or for the grass to grow.
As you would know from my previous post, not too long ago I took to the streets for some photography of the Autumn leaves, picked up some wonderfully fresh honey and passed by my grandmother’s garden for this fantastic photograph of a growing broccoli stem. Those images of liquid amber trees dropping their leaves is soon to be a relic of the past as we confront the change of seasons.
From the view of my window, the trees are now like skeletons, waving flexible limbs in resistance against the wind, crested with chirping birds in the early morning and burdened with the buds of younger growth coming into fruition. For a lot of us, there isn’t a whole lot to look forward to with the arrival of winter. There is the routine dusting and cleaning and pulling out of the warmer closet. That’s why I’m here to remind you of the hidden glories in the colder months that are so often overlooked.
So, while you read your feeds and wait for that mug of freshly brewed Earl Grey to cool-off its steam and dissolve the granules of sugar in that hot milky vortex, ready the stove and heat up the oven. In the spirit of W.H. Auden’s profound, allusive poetry that warms your heart and soul, Wild Thyme and Sweet Pea is ready to roll out the catalogue of winter recipes and ruminations on the coldest of seasons of the year, and you are cordially invited to partake in everything that is soon to be on offer.
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 »
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