The realisation that I might have a bit of a problem came about unexpectedly during a conversation with our son. “You remember” – he said – “that preserve you made with brined aubergines a couple of weeks ago?” Frankly I didn’t remember; not even the faintest glimmer of a memory shuffled into my mind. Alcoholics have this kind of experience, I believe. Evenings or weeks disappear and they have no idea where they went except people they thought were friends start crossing the road to avoid them and they find a hideously large till receipt for a club they didn’t know they’d ever visited.
Madame corrected my forgetfulness immediately. “Of course you did!” she said – “The thing with the aubergines”. Hm. That wasn’t much help. So we (or rather she) hunted around for ten minutes looking for the evidence which eventually we found in one of the cupboards; at which point the memory cleared like a Cornish sea mist and I knew what everybody had been talking about. “Oh that one ” I said, hoping to cover my shameful lapse. But it was too late, and the realisation that I have a problem, not just with pickling but with jams, preserves, ferments, sauces, ketchups, chutneys, marmalades and bottled fruits flooded into my consciousness.
I rang our son back and told him I’d found it, which relieved him of the possibility that he’d dreamed a whole conversation with me, and I said that I thought I might be overdoing it on the preserving front. “Good” he said – “I’ll always eat the spares”. Not on this scale, I thought to myself; but it’s comforting to know that I’ve got one fan outside the flat.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. I have a memory of a huge crop of blackberries that I harvested with Madame when we were young (we’ve been together for a very long time), and I’ve written here before at the resulting blackberry chutney that was so full of pips you could have used it for scouring burnt saucepans. Many people would have given up preserving at that point and taken up something sensible like fretwork or morris dancing, but I had been bitten by the thrill of making food last beyond the green and hairy stage. And so every cupboard in the flat has its complement of stowaways, and the overflow is stored in cardboard boxes awaiting the arrival of the next great famine, or a no deal brexit – whichever comes first.
Whether any of this frantic preserving activity has any purpose is a moot point. This thought crossed my mind when we had to move a redcurrant bush in the fruit cage. Every year we pick twice as many currants as we could ever eat and rather than just giving the surplus away I make stuff with it which involves the expense of fuel, sugar and jars. I must also confess to being slightly obsessive about jars too and the thought of having produce in a medley of different sized pots would keep me awake at night. My antidote to industrial preserves has to look as uniform as a supermarket display, and yes – I probably do need (more) counselling. Rationally, it would be better to dig up the surplus redcurrant bush and plant something different but then my obsessive thrift kicks in and ……..
Madame has not left me over my pickling peccadillos, but I notice the cold looks when the boxes invade her studio. The best I can do is limit the production levels on the allotment to meet our needs plus sharing a smaller surplus with anyone who needs some.
Today’s contribution to the pickle mountain was a single bottle of fermented chilli relish – absolutely heavenly, ‘though I say it myself! But my insight is timely. Once again, I over-ordered on the garlic, but I’m going to lop two of the three blackberry plants off the list before I send the next order off, and we’re going to have that conversation about the seed order. The solution to my woes is to control my impulses, but my nemesis won’t be an old girlfriend or a new shirt. It’ll be a £2.00 seed packet or a fabulous new recipe for hot smoked and pickled raspberries.
There’s a smell – or perhaps more mellifluously a perfume – for each season, and often it’s the perfume that gets you into the one that’s coming without your becoming aware of it. Suddenly the kitchen is full of glugging and bubbling ferments, you’re scratching around on the top shelves looking for preserving jars and that packet of rubber seals you were sure you bought last year, or was it the year before that? Dill, garlic, basil above all, and the apple smell of the sourdough starter fill the air and the feeling of hunkering down becomes dominant. Six weeks after the solstice it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that the evenings are drawing in. Apart from weeding there’s not a lot to do on the allotment other than bringing home the vegetables but it’s still too hot to embark on the civil engineering projects that you’ve got lined up for the autumn and winter. After a prolonged dry period it’s raining on and off here and so the urgent need to water has gone.
It’s frosty and there’s a lingering mist over the city that suggests it’s going to be one of those bone-chilling days out there, so we’re not racing to get up to the allotment. As ever the post-Christmas fridge is stuffed with leftovers demanding attention and bits of overbuying are ticking away dangerously like timebombs. And that’s not all, because there are things – nameless things – in the storecupboard that should be thrown away. Old and failed lactofermenting experiments like two of the three ways of preserving cucumbers should probably be given a respectful burial. Experiment number three, which was the least – shall we say – purist, is the most successful by far and even gained the approval of our son’s Polish girlfriend, and so we’ll mark that recipe in Diana Hendry’s book on preserving. Sadly – much as I love Sandor Katz – the first version failed mainly on texture. Cucumbers are prone to get rather slimy and soft in pickles, and when you add tough skin to the list of properties you can see that the poor unloved jar was going to linge
r in the cupboard to the end of time! The second version was so salty you’d probably have to tell your doctor if you ate more than two. But then the upside of the clearout is that there are more 2 litre Kilner jars for sauerkraut and other experiments, and we’re trialing a new variety of pickling cucumber next season. We’ve yet to try the salted beans which were inspired by a remark in her biography by by Patience Gray’s son who said he actually preferred them to the fresh ones. I can hardly believe that’s possible but we’ve done a small batch anyway.
The other thing that comes in January may not appear at all this year because cod stocks are always a bit fragile and the only kind to get is certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. But since I was a child I’ve always loved fresh cod roe. Most of it goes for smoking to make taramasalata As you see, the fresh stuff’s a bit in your face and it’s a faff to prepare because it needs poaching before you can do anything with it. But I love it – possibly all the more because it only appears for a brief season and often not at all so there’s no prospect of ever getting bored with it. But I’m probably among a dwindling number of people who will buy it. It’s almost certainly one of those dishes like feijoada that can only be fully loved by those who’ve eaten it from childhood. But next Saturday I shall go to the farmers’ market where I know there’s a fishmonger who will have it if there’s any about. Poached and then sliced, dipped in egg and flour and fried, it’s really lovely with the cheapest white bread you can get and some tomato ketchup. It’s like being six again.