Sweet things

London, 29 September, 2011 – I have all my teeth. I have no fillings. Never having been weaned on fizzy drinks and sweets, mine is an anchovy tooth, all savoury and salty. Yet I am staring at preening ciabatta – stale until a few minutes ago, now puffed up having absorbed whipping cream and egg yolks and a lot of sugar. One side glows, already a healthy dark brown. The underside froths in butter, turning caramel too.

The lost hurrah

Nîmes, 10.23pm, 7 September, 2011 – On family holidays, on all holidays, the final meal has always been freighted with some special significance. Arriving in Nîmes I resolved, for the second time today, to happen upon a local bistro, to maybe order some frites…

A triple positive

Avignon, 3.44pm, 7 September, 2011 – I arrived in Avignon thinking that I would take in the sights of the city and enjoy what could only, surely, be a magnificent, consoling lunch. There were no floods of tears leaving the farm, not this time, but it was a wrench. A departure with the same sad sense that I remember from twenty years ago: the magic over, the usual end-of-holiday glumness magnified by knowing that – unlike any other holiday – the fairytale could come real, the wish that the holiday would last forever could be made reality. All I’d do is up sticks.

In the trenches. De-mob sad

6 September, 2011 – A sprouting column of green and red stretches as far as the eye can see. Each shoot is only an inch or two high, and the horizon admittedly is not very distant when you are six inches from the ground, but still, from this vantage point, from any perspective, it is an impressive, inspiring, sight.

An extravagance, but not de trop

3 September, 2011 – The tap splutters, dribbles dry. A spanner in the works: even organic tomatoes, especially mucky organic tomatoes, have to be washed.

Mud, sweat and shears

1 September, 2011. I can tell you exactly what we did today, we lugged squash. Cut from their thick stalks then heaved and lined up. The events of preceding days however have melded, been gently folded, various farm tasks cut through with assorted, but uniformly delicious, foods.

Wild artichoke place

Provence, 29 August, 2011 – Insects roam free; thoughts are unfettered. This is a place untamed by pesticides and where, while there is the internet, it is ever so easy not to log-on. My commute takes me down a few steps to a muddy field, by way of a kitchen table spread with preserves (tender whole apricot; sweet, fine blackcurrant), runny honey, ficelle Provençale and coffee refined, hot and ready.

Another piquant way to skin a pear

27^th August, 2011 –  If a firework that hasn’t gone off should never be returned to, then revisiting a spectacular explosion on the taste buds is equally follysome. A dish reprised is rarely a patch on the original. A little of the aura is lost through but one attempted facsimile.

Ahead of the cuvee

21 August, 2011 – This is how I came to make the greatest salad I have ever had.

Lassitude, and the hankering for a holiday. Second-hand watching. Going through the motions. Bidding the hours go and being thoroughly grumpy with myself for thinking that way. So impatient, restless but also parched and rigid. Laid up with too many ideas and vying dreams while in a nearby room the record was stuck. The faint droning of a wearily familiar tune, the track which endlessly reprises an enduring obsession with fleeting ripeness, for things being of their time and things being done just so. Muzak I chide myself for not switching off, or for not drowning out, indeed for feeding the jukebox.

Going through the motions

31 July, 2011 – Knuckles up. Belly taut. Studied concentration. I stand at an angle to a chopping board which is set solid at a perfect height, a couple of inches pelvis high. I have removed the slenderest core from the fruit by turning it on the point of the knife, rotating smoothly so the blade cleaved through the green-tinged flesh at exactly where the not quite ripe ends. In my left hand the knife, spine upright, blade angled inward just a little. The right hand crab-like, all fingers and thumb, gently clamping the tomato in place. A highly controlled motion begins at the shoulder. The knife whispers through, only announcing itself with that clean knap on the board, then is drawn back to scythe another so that a precise terrace of red slices tumble softly, lie imbricated. Separate each, each perfectly intact.