One Chicken. Three meals.

There's something very appealing about making something from nothing.  Well, not nothing of course, but very little.  I expect one chicken to make at least three meals for two.  Roast chicken, chicken and leek pie enlivened with some chestnuts perhaps and maybe a risotto.  Then soup. Or at the very least some gorgeously golden home made stock. Or you might want to go the Asian route - chicken with ginger and garlic, or a five spice and pomegranate chicken salad with some fresh mint, the possibilities are pretty endless.  Though a keen cook I have remarkably few cookery books in my kitchen.  I don't know why really - well I do, I suppose.  Sheer laziness on  my part.  I never have all the ingredients for a recipe , I never measure anything, and frankly, I can't be bothered.  But what I do like doing is taking the suggestion of something and making it my own.  A book that has been described as 'The Bible' and  'The best friend you can have in the kitchen' (Nigel Slater) is Leiths Meat Bible by Max Clark & Susan Spaull. It's published by Bloomsbury and is a hefty £40, but goodness me, it's worth it. Unless you're a vegetarian, of course.   Not only does it have everything in it, but the best bit is that after every recipe it tells you what might have gone a bit Pete Tong and how to remedy it. Oh, and also what wine to drink with it. Boned leg of pork with sour cherry and lime stuffing? Roast suckling pig with coriander? Smoked woodcock with broad bean salad? Navarin of lamb? Osso Bucco? Glazed lamb tongues with creamed puy lentils? Pas de problem....  It also tells you how to buy, store, bone, carve and nosh away till your buttons burst.... Beautifully laid out, great photos (but not too many) and top tips.  An all round winner.  Now, where's my carving knife?

Charleston

After a staggeringly wonderful reading weekend at Tilton House (more of which later) it seemed rude not to wander down the track for a tour of the sublime next door neighbour of Charleston with the magical garden. Of course, it was hard not to resent the other guests which seemed to be wandering through my garden, but with a willing spirit I tried my best... the foxgloves, the roses, the wild strawberries, the lavender, the apple orchards, the pond, the waterlillies, the mosaics, the statues seemed to be from an age that I longed to be in.  Even the tour of the house with its casual boho decor, the careless sheaves of old magazines and books, the narrow beds adn the unheated bathrooms didn't distract from the longing to live there. I even had a slight spooky moment in Clive's boudoir (do men have boudoirs? - no matter) where I thought I saw from the corner of my eye, just for a nano second the outline of a portly smiling man... Vanessa's glasses were on the table (I read somewhere amongst the many, many books of the Bloomsbury lot that she started the day with strong coffee, an orange, and a cigarette which I find endearing) and her enduring art fills the small farmhouse that was rented to her and her family for more generations than she could possibly have imagined. 

In the shop the books on all things Bloomsbury are seductively prolific.  There was one amongst them that I had read the previous year - Mrs Woolf and the Servants by Alison Light that had stayed with me... Virginia and Vanessa were, so they thought, both blessed and cursed by the servant question.  Some remained 'loyal' and others 'turned against them'.  The life and conditions of their servants were probably no better or no worse than others of the time, but it made me realise that much as I longed to live in that house and take tea with Lytton and Carrington, Clive and Vanessa, waving at Angelica playing by the pond and watching the sun set over the haystacks whist discussing high art and sketching famous profiles, I would no doubt feel guilty about the scullery maid washing up in the chipped enamal sink with cold water. I sighed, stole a strawberry and went home to wash up in my warm kitchen with copious amounts of hot water.