Bloomfield April - A girl and her greens: hearty meals from the garden

ALSO BY APRIL BLOOMFIELD

A Girl and Her Pig

Published in 2015 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

www.canongate.tv

This digital edition first published in 2014 by Canongate Books

Copyright April Bloomfield, 2015

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

First published in the USA by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the
British Library

ISBN 978 1 78211 170 2
eISBN 978 1 78211 171 9

Designed by Suet Yee Chong

Contents

acknowledgements

Lets start with the most important person: thank you to Louis Russo, the young man who came up with the title for this book!

Thank you to the amazing team at Ecco, especially Dan Halpern, Gabriella Doob, Libby Edelson, Suet Chong, Allison Saltzman and Rachel Meyers, for helping me create a book that I adore. And best of luck at your new job, Libby.

To my superstar agent, the always dapper Luke Janklow.

To my friend and co-writer, JJ Goode, for driving me nuts, making me measure, and making me laugh.

To my friend, the brilliant photographer David Loftus, and food and prop stylist Georgie (Puddin and Pi) Socratous and Irene Wong for helping me make this book beautiful.

To Sun Young Park for her incredible illustrations.

To my friend Martin Schoeller for yet another lovely cover photo.

To Amy Vogler and Marian Bull for their careful, thoughtful recipe testing.

To Jamie Oliver, Pete Begg and Dolly Sweet for their advice, support and friendship.

To my friend and partner Ken Friedman. When shall we open another one?

To my hardworking and patient assistant, SarahGlenn Bernstein.

To my wonderful staff, who kept everything humming away while I worked on this book. Special thanks to Katharine Marsh, Christina Lecki, Josh Even, Ryan Jordan, Amy Hess, Robert Flaherty, Charlene Santiago, Jimbo Gibson, Edie Ugot and Peter Cho.

To Amy Hou, my rock.

introduction

Ive developed a bit of a reputation for meat, particularly the odd parts what I call the not-so-nasty bits. I certainly do adore trotters and kidneys and liver. I get chuffed about a roast dinner or sticky veal shank or a good burger. Yet lamb shoulders and suckling pigs are sort of like action films, with lots of explosions and excitement. You like them, but you probably dont want to watch them all the time. And not even the juiciest steak or crispiest pigs ear gets me happy like nice peas.

Just about my favourite thing to do is go to the farmers market in spring in search of flawless pea pods, unblemished and full. I walk around like a kid in a sweet shop, nabbing a pod at my favourite stall, gently squeezing until it splits to reveal a happy row of peas, and popping one in my mouth. You know when you like something so much that it makes you not just nod your head in satisfaction, but shake your head in disbelief? Thats what happens when I find that perfectly sweet pea. So many things conspired to make that pea the weather, the soil, the farmer and there you are on the receiving end. It makes me happy and grateful.

And I love that later on, I know Ill be propped up at the counter with my big bag of peas, gently squeezing their bottoms so the pods pop open, running my finger along each one to split them, and nudging the peas into a bowl, listening to the pitter-patter sound they make as they tumble in. If I ever get up the nerve to get a tattoo, Ill get one that shows a few pretty green pods.

I didnt exactly grow up on a farm. I grew up in Birmingham and, like most big cities, its a place dominated by concrete and shopping centres. I was as particular an eater then as I am today. While nowadays I get fussy about finding the sweetest peas and the prettiest carrots, back when I was little, I got fussy about liking my bacon sandwiches with the slices still a bit floppy and a good dose of HP sauce. I insisted on eating my fish-finger sandwiches with butter and ketchup. When my nan skewered pineapple and cheddar chunks for a party, as people used to back then, Id always steal the pineapple but leave the cheddar. To eat my Cadbury Flake, Id squeeze the long package to crumble up the chocolate, then Id open one side and tip it all into my mouth at once.

Like many working-class people, my parents didnt always have time to shop for fresh vegetables, let alone peel them. I ate plenty of cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots that came from freezer bags. Id cram these horrible veg into my cheeks like a chipmunk does, because I knew I had to eat them but I wanted to delay the chewing and the tasting. Frozen peas, however, I loved. I still do.

When the vegetables were fresh, they were often cooked in the English manner of the times that is, for too long, until they were squishy and a little grey. I still remember some godawful Brussels sprouts, which at the time I just loved, boiled to buggery in a pressure cooker. England has come a long way since then.

Wed occasionally eat marrow, a sort of watery, overgrown courgette, as big as my forearm. My mom would scrape out the seedy middles to make canoes, pack in minced meat, and bake them. I quite liked these, the way the marrow got creamy and you could just shovel it into your mouth with the meat without thinking that you were eating the vegetable. For a spell in the 80s, after we moved house and got our first microwave, my family lived on potatoes baked in the futuristic oven. Imagine, putting something as lovely as a potato in the microwave! Even as a girl, I knew how wonderful potatoes could be, thanks to my schools cafeteria. I might have been horrible at my times tables while the rest of the class was on 6s, I could barely make it through my 2s but I was quite good at eating steamy boiled potatoes bombarded with butter and black pepper.

My early vegetable mentors werent chefs obsessed with the perfect tomato or blokes who plunged their hands into the cool dirt to pull up carrots. One of them was my granddad. When I was a girl, he ran a small caf called Lincon Road. His customers were a mix of Mods and Rockers. Mods wore suits with thin ties, rode mopeds, and listened to dub music and The Who; Rockers wore leather, rode proper motorcycles, and listened to Elvis and Eddie Cochrane. When the two factions werent fighting each other, they were trying to drill a hole in the cafs pinball machine to get at the coins inside. My granddad tried to keep the peace with tea and toast.

He loved his caf. And he was a good cook. He was particularly proud of the fry-ups he cooked there, which along with the mandatory egg, bread, sausage, and bacon included lowly vegetables like button mushrooms, Heinz tinned baked beans, and pale tomato halves browned slightly in hot fat. While I loved the meaty bits, I had special affection for those tomatoes. Just when you thought you couldnt take another bite of sausage, the tomatoes acidity would revive your palate and youd go back in for more.