Vinegar

It puzzled me slightly that we learned the Latin for vinegar - acetum. Even the alternative - sour wine - sounded slightly too obscure to be worth knowing. Somehow I had picked up without being aware of it that Latin was a language of formality, where slang had little place. (Even our Latin teacher became pained when he heard himself using the expression “Shut up...if that’s the sort of language you understand!”) We might know how, in Latin, to praise the table, love the woman or fight the soldier. But not to chat with the newsagent, to engage in banter with the bus driver or to ask for salt and vinegar on our chips.

Seffie soup

Guest blog by Liz.

I believe that any good lunchtime soup should contain at least seven types of vegetable as well as protein and iron. This is ‘Seffie soup’, named after a famously fussy eating child, who nevertheless enjoyed this dish. 

Chop and fry onion, celery, carrot and leek. The amount depends on how many people the soup is for - allow one small onion, a stick of celery, a small carrot and couple of inches of leek per person. In fact this is the opening sentence of any hearty soup recipe. In this case I added courgette because there was some which needed using - and it’s an extra vegetable component. I have used cabbage, swede or squash in the past. Soften the vegetables, add a good shake of red lentils (protein and iron in one, as well as a nice thickener) and a tin of tomatoes per person. Add water until everything is submerged, and a teaspoon of bouillon per person. 

Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer for half an hour; then blend smooth. Add seasoning as needed. At this stage you can also add a spoonful of pesto or harissa for flavour; in this case I have added fried chopped chorizo and its oil scattered over the top.

Kay’s breakfast

Nearly forty years ago, the BBC first showed “The Box of Delights”, a wonderful rendition of John Masefield’s book, set in the days before Christmas. The book was a sequel to “The Midnight Folk” but the earlier book has never been the subject of a film or television adaptation. Both are wonderful and have some vivid descriptions of food. Here, from “The Midnight Folk” is an account of its hero, Kay’s, ideal breakfast.

‘They had for breakfast all the things that Kay was fondest of: very hot, little, round loaves of new white bread baked in the embers of a wood-fire, very salt butter, a sardine with a lot of olive oil, some minced kidneys, a poached egg and frizzled bacon, a very fat sausage all bursting out of its skin, a home-made pork-pie, with cold jelly and yolk of egg beneath the crust, a bowl of strawberries and cream with sifted sugar, a bowl of raspberries and cream with blobs of sugar-candyish brown sugar that you could scrunch, some nice new mushrooms and chicken, part of a honeycomb with cream, a cup of coffee with crystals of white sugar candy for a change, a yellow plum, a greengage and then a ripe blue plum of Pershore to finish off with.”

Less extensive but equally delicious is Kay’s breakfast with his friend, Peter, in “The Box of Delights”:

‘They went down into the larder, and got themselves ham and bread, which they spread with blobs of butter. Then, each had a big mince-pie, and a long drink from a cream pan.’

This is said to be a “foraging” breakfast before Kay and Peter head out for an early morning adventure, before returning for their “real” breakfast.