Please be honest!

In the next few days or weeks if I happen to meet you in the street the chances are fairly high that I will show you my book. If you ask to see it first well done but even if you don't I am sure I will find a way to turn the conversation round to my book. I have a copy in my handbag all the time. Ostensibly this is just in case I have to show it to booksellers or people in the business. In reality I have never met a bookseller or publisher just by chance wandering the streets of sunny Surrey or deepest south London, I am carrying my book around because I am so proud of it.
It's funny but the pride I feel is for the book as an object not in myself for having written the words. Writing the words was for me just putting what I would have said out loud down on paper. I am proud of the way it looks, feels and sad as this sounds, smells. I love the colours, the illustrations and I really want to meet the boy on the cover. The way he's attacking that plate of food we would get on famously I feel.
Just because I really love my book please be honest about it. I want to continue writing and your constructive criticism will help me. To paraphrase that rather hackneyed saying, if you have an point to make tell me. if you love the book tell others.

Sunshine and butterflies

For the first time this summer I have been able to really enjoy my garden. As a student of ecology in the past butterflies and moths have always fascinated me. They are easy to tell apart by the way, butterfiles have straight antennae and moths have antennae that look like feathers, but please don't squash then just to get a close up view it really is not that important.

So out comes the sun and hopefully out come the butterflies. Not to worry if they don't as my most favourite butterfly of all comes courtesy of lambs. As I type the faintest whiff of garlic and lemon still linger on my fingers. My butterflied leg of lamb marinades itself gently in the fridge waiting to offer itself up on the altar of sun worship that is the gas barbecue. I butterfly the lamb legs myself for no other reason than I enjoy wielding a very sharp knife and I get a real sense of achievement if I get the bone out without making the kitchen resemble Hannibal Lecter's house. If you don't like the idea of wrestling raw meat, are fond of your fingers or would rather just pay someone else to do the job then fine.

Marinade your lamb for at least two hours in lemon juice, yogurt, garlic and harissa paste if you like things spicy. Heat your barbie up as high as it will go, whack on the lamb, turn the barbecue down a bit and cook for 25 minutes turning over to prevent the meat catching too much. The outside should be seared but not burnt to a cinder and the inside should be pink. Rest for at least 10 minutes and serve with cous cous, tomato and mint salad, flat breads and a large glass of wine. What a beautiful butterfly!

In the brownies

Sprites, Pixies, Leprechauns or Gnomes couldn't have been happier than me this week. For reasons I can't really divulge at the moment I've spent my free time devising the ultimate chocolate brownie recipe.

Despite originating in America, these beauties are neither brash nor unsophisticated. There is a complexity to them that belies the belief of some that they are purely and simply a poorly cooked cake. That squidgy texture is what makes these treats so special. Licking the bowl has always been the cooks perk and with a brownie we all get to indulge.

My biggest problem has been what to include and what to leave out. The understated British me wants to leave the mixture simple, just a squidgy chocolate cake. The slightly trans - atlantic me wants to add every nut and chocolate chunk I have in the cupboard, and believe me I have substantial quantities of both. Deciding that I really ought to share these with the rest of my family I opted for the no nuts versions. (Please insert your own joke here.) Well I actually devised a nut and chocolate recipe but then swapped the nuts for differing hues of chocolate chunk. Chunks and not chips of chocolate are vital both in the taste and the look of these brownies they are American after all and bigger is always better where chocolate is concerned. They also really help give the eater a decent chocolate hit.

Eaten warm with a scoop of decent vanilla ice cream Brownies taste like heaven. When I eat these I can almost forgive America for inventing the Pop Tart. Mind you ..... where is that toaster.

Back to where it all began.

Being a creatures of habit, and also being addicted to thick treacly coffee where the ratio of caffeine to liquid is always biased in favour of the caffeine, we have just got back from a fantastic holiday on a small island in the Bay of Naples. For me it is the place that first inspired me to first write about food with any real intent. The importance of food was brought home to me everywhere we went, be it a small roadside shop selling fresh fruits and vegetables, a caffe al banco just liquid enough to stain the bottom of a cup or eating proper lemon ice cream during the evening passegiata. Food added value and dimension to the lives being lived and wasn't just a fuel or a filler. This was the first piece I wrote and when I was in this very restaurant last week I had this very simple dish and it was still magnificent but then the same people made it with the same love and care that they had taken nearly twenty years previously.

Bruschette con pomodoro

Passion and respect, two things we as individuals all crave, but this object of desire was the humble tomato. Worship of the 'love apple' in this restaurant in Ischia in the Bay of Naples is simple and pure. Tomatoes are plucked fresh from the vine, unsullied by any refrigeration and still with a bloom on their cheeks. They are chopped deftly and anointed with the purest olive oil.
Slices of locally made bread are caressed with garlic and laid to char briefly on the grill. Bread and tomatoes are brought together on the plain white plate and seasoned with sea salt. Basil is freshly torn and strewn on the tomato.
The first bite is heaven. Tangy yet sweet, crunchy yet soft, gritty with sea salt, but slick with olive oil… simplicity makes this dish magnificent. If I ever get to choose my last supper it would be this.

How to ...

Read the above and follow the instructions, use as many tomatoes as you have, decent olive oil and remember food in Italy is for sharing, falling out over, discussing, savouring and enjoying with wine and water so find someone to help you do all of the above.

The first cut is the deepest.

I wrote last time that some cuts had to be made to the text and recipes had to be left on the publishing equivalent of "the cutting room floor". I thought I would share one with you and in the true spirit of healthy schools nowadays this one should be good for you. Now you know why I cut this from a book about 60's and 70's school dinners!

Fruit cocktail

The keeping healthy message for us seemed to rely on the nit nurse scaring head lice into submission and swimming teachers digging their nails into feet to check for a verruca. To my knowledge no one has died from either nits or veruccas although I admit both would be rather horrible ways to go.

Occasional visits from the optician made sure that all short sighted boys looked like Joe 90 and myopic girls had pink or clear plastic NHS frames. No stereotyping there then! The dentists brought their mirror and a glass of pink disinfectant. A swirl and a wipe with a paper towel and the mirror was good to go for the next patient. One year we were presented with a free beaker, toothbrush and tube of toothpaste as we left the medical room. Product placement was alive and well in the Seventies too.

Our school meals were high in calories as I have said before but we used the calories up. We did get lots of fruit and plenty of vegetables. Carbohydrates filled any remaining gaps in our digestive tract and the milk kept our bones and teeth strong. Strangely the seemingly healthiest pudding was syrup laden and almost certainly unnaturally coloured. The amount of preservatives per spoonful we consumed should have embalmed us from the colon outwards. This version is however a healthy one! Looking at the ingredients in this fruit cocktail made me realise just how life has changed for us all since the late sixties. Ingredients my children take for granted such as kiwis, mango and even pomegranate were virtually unheard of. The most exotic part of this cocktail were the cherries and you absolutely only got those when the pudding was out of a tin.

Ingredients
1 red apple chopped
1 green apple chopped,
1 orange peeled and chopped,
1 pear peeled and chopped,
1 banana peeled and chopped,
Red and green grapes halved,
Juice of half a lemon,
Sugar to sweeten if needed,
Custard to serve.

How to …….
1. Squeeze the lemon juice into a large bowl. This will stop the fruits from discolouring before they are eaten.
2. Peel and chop all the fruits as appropriate and place into the bowl turning them over in the juice as you go. Taste and sweeten as you see fit. You can use honey if you prefer this as a sweetener.
3. If all this is too much effort then open a tin of fruit cocktail for the complete retro effect.
4. Serve with cold custard or ice cream.

I have seen the future

Well maybe that is just a little too over stated but I have seen the inside layout of the book. The future is bright, the future is orange. To be more precise as befits a nostalgic trip through the late 60's and 70's the future is brown, beige and orange, with a hint of psychadelic patterning.

One slightly sad outcome was that as the book is running over (too bloody long in publisher speak) I had to decide on three recipes to cut.

I know this sounds very wet and more than a little ridiculous but I felt like stamping my foot and saying "No!" This is my master work, my opus, how can you cut genius. I didn't of course, I said "OK" and chose three recipes to cut. Not my least favourites but ones I could combine into others - sneeky huh!


One good thing to come from this will be my chance to post a few bonus recipes on this site for people to enjoy(?) before the book is published. On second thoughts perhaps I should wait for people to buy the book before they discover what my writing really is like.

Next week should see the final decisions being made on the cover design. This is crucial in how it attracts the eye of the would be purchaser as it nestles up against all the other books on that table, if I'm lucky, or the bargain bin if I'm not, in Waterstones. (Other booksellers are available).

As for me whilst the look of the book is very important for sales just so long as I see my name on a book jacket I will be ecstatic.

A cookbook of my own!

Having whiled away many an hour reading and re-reading the many cook books on my shelves there comes a time (usually after several glasses of wine) when this frustrated writer thinks to herself, I could do that. I could write a cook book. More often than not the feeling would pass and sanity prevale but the last time the muse struck, it hit hard enough to knock me senseless and by the time I'd come round I was up to my ears in it!

The discovery of a favorite but forgotten recipe was the catalyst for my creativity. Butterscotch Tarts rule! A summer holiday of cooking and writing followed. Indigestion and typists finger in equal measure. Recipes written it's time to start the hard work.

Now to get published. Without much real hope I began. Inevitably for a newbie at this game there were rejections from literary agents. They kept telling me that as I wasn't Nigella or Delia ( tell me something I don't already know!) and had no TV tie in my book was unlikely to sell. One rejection came from a small publisher on the grounds that they were all vegetarians and would find publicising a book with meat recipes in hard but they wished me well with the project!!! I decided to get serious. I bought a copy of Writers and Artists year book and worked out a system. Being a teacher the system I used was ........ wait for it ..... the alphabet. Begin at A and work your way through to Z. If you get to Z and still no one loves you then it's time to stop I reasoned. I also thought that I'd start by just sending to publishing houses who accepted emailed submissions. Carbon footprint, trees being felled, queues at the post office if you can find one etc etc.

My first submission of this new system bore fruit. Anova, or more specifically Portico, an Anova imprint were interested in my idea and the fact that I wasn't a TV chef didn't matter a jot. I was elated, over the moon, gob smacked call it what you will when that first email pinged into my inbox. Later reality struck when I worked out just how many words I had to write and the fact that they expected me to be witty too. Worrying, especially when, according to my daughter, I don't do "funny".

So what is this book all about then?

Did you lust after a Chopper or crack your knuckles on clackers? Did you cut the roof of your mouth on spangles or fancy the Milky Bar Kid? You did! Me too, excellent; we lived through the heyday of school dinners. Time was when all schools had a cook, each cook had her ice cream scoop and she wasn't afraid to use it.

In my book I hope you will find tastes that awaken memories of your days at school. Food is a fantastic way to time travel. Transport yourself back to a time when tank tops were cool and lapels were so wide they could catch on doorframes. Take a few friends with you whilst you are about it. All you really need is a tray of mashed potato and an ice cream scoop and off you go.

As children we had a favourite school dinner and also had some we liked less, but usually with enough custard or gravy most flavours could be masked. I have attempted to revive the flavour of the school canteen during the sixties and seventies. Some recipes I have collected over the years from friendly school cooks. Others I have recreated using my own memories of meals eaten. First courses at school were hearty and filling but it was school puddings that really made us finish our cabbage and sit up straight. Some were real traditional favourites whilst others were only found in school canteens. All these recipes are, I hope, as you remember them from school but in many cases I have also added a version that allows for the maturing of our palates and the changing ingredients available to us today. Added to the recipes are recollections of life as a milk monitor wannabee, parka wearing, Bay City roller fan whose main aim in life was to be first in the queue for puddings!

Want to join the queue?

School Dinners

Published in October 2008.

Portico £9.99