Baba ghanoush
Baba ghanoush means ‘spoiled dad’, and its creamy smoky softness is out of this world. In fact, the French call it caviar d’aubergines, which is quite a name to live up to. I think it does! It’s weirdly addictive.
SERVES 4 TO GO WITH DRINKS
2 large aubergines, pricked all over
1 quantity Spicy Garlicky Olive Oil (see here)
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp tahini
Sea salt, to taste
Preheat the oven to 220°C/fan 200°C/gas mark 7 and roast the aubergines until they are really soft when poked with a knife – up to 1½ hours, but keep checking on them.
Remove the skins and put the flesh in a food processor with the infused oil, the lemon zest and juice and the tahini. Whizz to a smooth paste, adding salt if needed.
OTHER CROSTINI TOPPINGS:
Boursin cheese and a couple of slices of roasted red peppers.
Cream cheese and smoked salmon.
Tapenade and a slice of goat’s cheese.
Rare roast beef on mayonnaise with rocket.
Thinly sliced radishes on unsalted butter.
Crab cakes with sweetcorn salsa
The perfect light lunch that won’t make you want to fall asleep – though you are very welcome to, of course. If you don’t want to bother with making the salsa then the crab cakes are great dunked into sweet chilli dipping sauce.
SERVES 2
1 garlic clove
1 small piece fresh ginger (about 2cm)
½ tsp sea salt
300g fresh white crab meat or 200g minced fresh prawns
Zest and juice of 1 lime
100g breadcrumbs
1 large egg, whisked
Sunflower oil, for frying
Sweet chilli dipping sauce (optional)
For the sweetcorn salsa
1 × 326g tin sweetcorn, drained
2 large beef tomatoes, deseeded and chopped
1 avocado, finely diced
1 red chilli, thinly sliced
Zest and juice of 1 lime
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp chopped coriander
First, make the salsa. Tip the sweetcorn into a bowl and add the tomatoes, avocado and chilli. Mix together and add the lime zest and juice. Season with salt and pepper, and stir through half the chopped coriander, sprinkling the rest on top. Set aside while you make the crab cakes.
Chop the garlic and ginger together very finely and mix with the salt. Stir into the crab or prawns with the lime zest and juice. Stir in the breadcrumbs and just enough egg to bring the mixture together. Divide into small patties about 5 cm across. Heat about 5mm oil in a frying pan and cook for 2 minutes on each side.
Serve the crab cakes with the sweetcorn salsa, or with chilli dipping sauce if you prefer.
Traditional pasty
This is the ultimate traditional beach lunch in the South West. We buy them from the pasty shop, piping hot in a paper bag, and we each have our own favourite flavour – but they are super-easy to make yourself. It’s important to dice everything into small, even pieces to enable it all to cook through properly.
MAKES 4 PASTIES
500g ready-made shortcrust pastry
1 onion, finely diced
250g carrot, finely diced
400g potato, finely diced
400g sirloin steak, cut into very small pieces
Dash of Worcester sauce
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 egg, beaten
Preheat the oven to 220°C/fan 200ºC/gas mark 7 and grease a baking sheet.
Roll out the pastry and cut into four equal 22cm circles, about the size of a side plate. Mix together the vegetables, meat and Worcester sauce and season well with salt and pepper. Spoon a quarter of the meat and veg mix down the centre of each circle. Dampen the edges of each circle with a little water and draw the sides together, crimping the edges with your fingers to make a firm seal so the pasty has a little spine (this was what the tin miners used to grab hold of so they didn’t get their pasty grubby). Brush with the beaten egg and put a small hole in each pasty with the tip of a knife to let out the steam. You can, if you’re feeling whimsical, make a pastry initial with the leftover pastry for each person.
Transfer to the baking sheet and cook for 10 minutes then reduce the oven to 150ºC/fan 130°C/gas mark 2 and bake for another 30 minutes.
OTHER FLAVOUR SUGGESTIONS
Potato and onion
Broccoli and Stilton
Chicken and mushroom
Ham and leek
Sausage and apple
A twist on a traditional cream tea
You can’t go to the seaside without indulging in a cream tea. You just can’t. And it’s best to bake your own scones, because then you can make them the exact size you like, add whatever fruit you fancy and know that they are fresh out of the oven that day. Source and buy the richest, yellowest local clotted cream you can find and bring along your favourite jam. For me, it’s raspberry every time, as raspberries taste of summer and my Irish grandmother’s garden. And I don’t really care whether you are cream first or jam first – it’s delicious whichever way you slosh it on! But, for the record, I’m cream first. That’s because I live in Devon. Devon: cream first. Cornwall: jam first. Try both!!
It’s easy enough to find a scone recipe – you can count on Mary Berry or Delia Smith, for example – so I’m sharing with you an experiment. While writing this book I had the most delicious experience in the tea room of a garden near to me: ginger scones with cream and honey. It was one of those gastronomic epiphanies that don’t happen very often: something so simple and obvious yet I’d never come across the combination before. I dreamed of it for days afterwards and then decided to make my own.
MAKES 8 SCONES
225g self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tsp sea salt
60g butter, cut into small dice
30g sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
2 balls of stem ginger, very finely chopped
100ml milk
Clotted cream
Honey
Preheat the oven to 220°C/fan 200°C/gas mark 7 and flour or line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl. Add the butter and stir in with a knife until the lumps are coated, then rub gently into the flour with your fingers until it resembles fine breadcrumbs and there are no lumps left. Stir in the sugar and gingers. Add the milk and stir with a knife or a wooden spoon until everything begins to draw together and you have a ball of dough.
Lift onto a floured surface. Pat or roll the dough out to a thickness of about 2.5cm. Cut out rounds using a cutter – you must keep the edges sharp and not twist, to get the best rise. Re-roll the excess dough until you have used it all up. You can dust the tops with flour, or brush a little milk or beaten egg on the surface if you want shiny scones.
Place the scones on the baking sheet and cook for 8–10 minutes – they should feel nice and light when you lift them up. As they have ginger in them they will look a little more golden than usual scones. Cool and eat as soon after baking as you can. Split them open and top with the clotted cream and a spoonful of honey
Sea salt chocolate chip cookies
These cookies are the perfect treat to nibble on while you are reading. It could be possible to eat them all yourself … If you can’t find sea salt chocolate, simply buy plain chocolate and then scatter the cookies with sea salt just before baking.
MAKES ABOUT 16 COOKIES
150g sea salt chocolate
125g softened butter
125g light soft brown sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g plain flour, sifted
½ tsp baking powder
Preheat the oven to 190ºC/fan 170°C/gas mark 5 and grease two baking sheets.
Chop up the chocolate into little
chips with a sharp knife. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the egg and vanilla extract. Gradually stir in the flour and baking powder then add the chocolate chips but do NOT overmix.
Dollop small walnut-sized spoonfuls of the mix onto the baking sheets, leaving plenty of room as they will spread. Bake for around 12–15 minutes until they are just turning golden, keeping a sharp eye so they don’t burn.
Let them cool slightly and then remove to a wire cooling rack.
TEN CLASSIC BEACH READS
Every good beach hut should have a shelf full of well-thumbed beach reads for the visitor to plunder. ‘Beach read’ doesn’t necessarily mean trashy but the idea is to relax and enjoy what you are reading and to give your brain a holiday. I call this kind of book ‘brain candy’ – the literary equivalent of a Magnum: quality ingredients, indulgent, delicious.
For me, the best beach read has to be a decent size, page-turning and completely immersive so I can lose myself and become oblivious to what’s going on around me (often to the annoyance of anyone trying to grab my attention). It should take me to another place yet it shouldn’t be too demanding – I should be able to race through the pages effortlessly. This means a combination of vivid description, engaging characters and gripping plots.
This is a list of my favourite beach reads – a mixture of romantic, blockbusting, thrilling and historic. My copies of these are battered, torn and yellowed. Some are classics in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Others are timeless blockbusters – or bonkbusters, as the more racy are known! All are unputdownable, except to pour a cup of tea or fetch an ice cream.
The Godfather – MARIO PUZO
I found this on my parents’ bookshelf when I was about twelve and read it with wide eyes and an open mouth. Sicilian mafia shenanigans with the Corleone family – sexy, ruthless, fast-paced drama with some unforgettable scenes and lines: poor old Luca Brasi, sleeping with the fishes!
Jaws – PETER BENCHLEY
I bought this at the airport when I was heading back to boarding school from America where we’d been posted. It certainly kept me engrossed on the flight. Small-town politics and sexual liaisons underpin the arrival of a great white shark to an idyllic coastal resort. It’s pretty raunchy – I kept my room-mates enthralled reading out the rude bits!!
Valley of the Dolls – JACQUELINE SUSANN
This was the original bonkbuster and paved the way for commercial women’s fiction, sex and shopping, chicklit – call it what you will. Shocking at the time, it is the tautly plotted and eye-opening tale of three successful women in showbusiness and their slide into dependence on uppers and downers – the ‘dolls’ of the title.
Riders – JILLY COOPER
Jilly Cooper is the ultimate in escapism with her outrageous, larger-than-life but lovable characters and their gorgeous rambling houses. The Olympic show-jumping team are rivals for more than just medals – love, lust and legs in tight jodhpurs. Naughty but incredibly nice!
Scruples – JUDITH KRANTZ
Sharp, witty and sexy, Judith Krantz’s stylish blockbusters were the archetypal sex and shopping novels in the 1980s. Scruples is a classic as Billy Winthrop evolves from overweight nobody to the glamorous owner of a top Hollywood boutique.
Destiny – SALLY BEAUMAN
Sally hit the literary headlines when she got the first million-pound book deal for this sweeping story of star-crossed love spanning several decades and continents. It’s rich, deep and multi-layered, and extremely classy writing.
Lace – SHIRLEY CONRAN
Superwoman Shirley Conran is the queen of one-liners – not least ‘life’s too short to stuff a mushroom’. Labyrinthine plotting explores the friendship of four strong women – sex, sin, scandal and revenge.
Cashelmara – SUSAN HOWATCH
I love anything in a windswept Irish setting, and this is the cream of the crop. Starting in 1869, three generations of the de Salis family play out their dramas in a breathtaking Irish house, Cashelmara. It’s a fascinating insight into the Irish famine told from six different points of view.
The Shell Seekers – ROSAMUNDE PILCHER
Rosamunde Pilcher indisputably rules contemporary Cornish fiction, bringing the seaside to life through her romantic bestsellers, and this is the most famous. When a mother is put under pressure by her children to sell a beloved family painting, The Shell Seekers, everything starts to go wrong.
Quentins – MAEVE BINCHY
Whenever I go on holiday, there is always a Maeve Binchy in the cottage, the B&B or the hotel library where I’m staying, which is a testament to her enduring storytelling and universal popularity. This is the most wonderfully satisfying of her books, featuring the stories behind the staff and customers of a legendary Dublin restaurant.
A birthday banquet
A Fair Exchange
JUNE 1968
‘Come on, girly. Chop chop.’ Dickon Travers gestured towards the Triumph Herald waiting on the pavement, but showed no sign of helping Elspeth with the picnic basket she was carrying. He was only chivalrous when it suited him, she’d noticed; only chivalrous when other people were looking.
She opened her mouth to remind him of her name for the umpteenth time when his arms shot up in the air and he started waving to another motor car trundling along the road, a rather less glamorous Morris Minor Traveller. It mounted the pavement outside the college and came to a halt behind his. The streets of Oxford were still quiet. It was far too early on a summer Sunday for activity, even if the sun was already up and about.
‘Hey! Here you are! Terrific.’ Dickon greeted the inmates of the car then turned back to Elspeth and hurried over, scooping up the basket in his arms and lugging it round to the boot. ‘You didn’t forget the cake?’ he hissed as he went to slam down the lid.
‘Of course not.’ For a moment, she debated not coming. He’d been showing his true colours in the past few weeks, and she didn’t much care for them. He was all bluster, and his affable charm didn’t go very deep. But if she backed out now there would be a scene. It was going to be a gloriously warm day, and a trip to the seaside was tempting. It was Dickon and his twin sister Octavia’s birthday, and they were all heading down to Devon, to the Travers family beach hut. Six of them. A day of games, a birthday banquet, lashings of booze.
It should be fun. Elspeth felt nervous, nevertheless. These were not her people, not really. She’d been dazzled by Dickon at first. Flattered that he found her so intriguing when it was very obvious she wasn’t one of his kind. She was ordinary. A grammar-school girl who had worked her socks off to get to Oxford, not like the Travers twins for whom it was a given.
She was just a novelty to Dickon, she knew that. Of course, she was very clever, although that didn’t make you stand out at Oxford. But she was beautiful too, unusually so, with thick dark wavy hair and navy-blue eyes, very tall and slim. Her height made her self-conscious. She felt gangly next to most girls, and longed to be petite and dainty. Her arms seemed too long for any of her blouses, and she thought her knees knobbly. But people – men – seemed taken with her. Her looks seemed to be a ticket, even if she didn’t always have the confidence to go where that ticket took her.
Maybe the confidence would come. Her mother told her never to be afraid of anyone, her tiny little spitfire of a mum who was so proud yet so scared for her. She had been very quiet the day they went to Oxford to look around, awed by the grandeur of the buildings, the hallowed atmosphere. And disconcerted by the aura of all the people who swept through the streets. People who would never notice a little grey-haired woman from Stoke-on-Trent scurrying along the pavement beside her leggy daughter.
It had rained, and when her mum had pulled her see-through rain hood out of her bag and snapped the popper tight under her chin, Elspeth had been overwhelmed with love for the widow who had done everything she could for her daughter. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her, but leave her she must, for Elspeth was no fool. She didn’t want
to stay in Stoke for the rest of her life, and Oxford was the fastest route out. The applause of prize-giving still rang in her ears. She could still feel the warm handshake of the headmistress. Her name was written in gold on the wall of the dining hall. All those hours in the library had paid off. She was daunted but she loved her subject and had been happy to immerse herself. She might, one day, be an historian in her own right.
And now, her first year had come to an end and she still felt something of a fish out of water. Even though she loved her studies and had kept on top of them, taking them far more seriously than most of her contemporaries. Around her, there was a lot of drinking, a lot of acting, a lot of poetry. And a lot of sex.
She had met Dickon at the college tennis club. Tennis was the other thing she had excelled at, and it had proven a very useful way to meet people in a setting where she felt comfortable. She was happy in front of the net, racquet in hand. She understood the geography of a tennis court and was much happier there than in the pub or the JCR. The Travers twins were the stars of the club, ruthlessly competitive while pretending not to be, their blond heads flashing and their pale-blue eyes not missing a shot.
Elspeth always had the feeling that if she had beaten Octavia in a match, something bad would happen to her. Luckily, she didn’t care enough to put it to the test. She played for pleasure. She’d been put with Dickon in a mixed doubles tournament, and he’d been impressed enough with her game to ask her for a drink afterwards. And somehow, she was now his girlfriend. She felt certain it was only so he could make some other girl jealous. He couldn’t possibly have any real interest in her. Could he? She’d never been hunting, or skiing. She didn’t have any family silver, or portraits, or a house in the country.
A Day at the Beach Hut Page 7
