Rosemary's ham

How many recipes, I wonder, are said to come from the author's grandmother? Hundreds of thousands, perhaps. One pictures a white-haired old lady stirring a bowl of cake mixture, following a secret recipe which, perhaps came from her own grandmother. My first memory of home-cooked ham came from my grandmother. She would spike it with cloves, boil it and smother it in some unknown brown spice, and we would eat it over several days, accompanied by salad: lettuce, washed and dried in a salad spinner; hard-boiled egg, sliced in an egg slicer; cucumber with the peel chopped off; tomatoes which were sometimes skinned; beetroot in vinegar; spring onions; sometimes a tiny bowl of potato salad. There was salad cream in those days, although as the seventies turned into the eighties, she gradually switched to mayonnaise. Olive oil was used only rarely, for extra-special salad dressings, made in a vinaigrette and shaken vigorously before each meal. Slices of brown bread. Once upon a time I would have eaten the last ever slice of ham which had been cooked by her, but, like many firsts and lasts, I cannot pinpoint that moment.

Mixing

The thought of mixing can make the heart sink or lift depending on the skills of the mixer. Pineapple and cottage cheese; potato salad and hard boiled egg; clotted cream and fudge; the thought of all of these, you might think surprisingly, at best cause indifference and, at worst, repel me. But other mixes interest me enormously. Baking meat into pastry. Scraping the residue of a tomato salad - chopped onion, tomato pips, olive oil and the tomatoey juices - into a saucepan of just drained pasta or into gazpacho.