What's Cooking?

Hundreds of chilli peppers drying in the polytunnel

As the winds batter and howl, shaking window frames, blowing open doors and tearing greenhouse panes from their sockets, the indoor duties seem more preferable to the outdoors.

Most of my work here at Pilsdon tends to be outdoors - I've been digging over the heavy compacted clay in the garden, banging in corner posts for a new leaf mould container, weeding the rhubarb bed, scraping off the mud from the lane that had been deposited by the recent floods, creating a new set of straw-bale compost bays, and milking the cows. But the Rota, which allocates duties to all and sundry, must be obeyed, and I am occasionally required to get myself to the kitchen and cook a meal for everyone.

Rainbow chard leaves in the glasshouse are huge

Last week I was on with Gerry*, a chef by trade, to make an evening meal from minced beef (so sayeth the Rota). We decided on lasagne with garlic bread, and naturally agreed that he should take the lead on any culinary points. However it was simplest to split the tasks so that he made the lasagne and I made the bread. A Paul Hollywood recipe book was my guide which proved to be a reliable one. A huge electric mixer with a kneading component was my assistant so no need to knead. The many garlic cloves I roasted in the Aga with oil and balsamic vinegar and inserted them whole into the eight baguettes just before baking. Perhaps my beginner's luck has not yet run out because they did turn out very well, to general acclaim.

Grapevine leaves turning autumnal 

Yesterday it was my turn to make lunch with Barry. Lunches are always vegetarian and come accompanied by Rory's home-baked bread with a selection of confitures, plus fruit, so even if what you make is a disaster people don't leave the table hungry. He suggested pasta which we hadn't had for a while. We had mushrooms in the fridge. I was thinking tomato-based sauce but he wanted to do cheese-based white sauce, which of course is a little trickier but with a Delia book at hand I was happy to go for it. Timing is always critical to get it ready for bang on one-o'clock, and for a moment it seemed like we'd left it a bit late as I stirred and stirred this huge panful of milky cheese sauce but it thickened in time, we chucked Barry's beautifully fried mushrooms in and served it up. The gluten-intolerant and/or pasta-hating people, of whom there were four, got jacket potatoes.

Not a canal - this is the Pilsdon lane after the stream burst its banks

Tomorrow, the Rota informs me, I am to make a pork supper with Neil. As it happens three of our pigs are being butchered as I type this, having just been fetched from the abattoir, so having got permission to use the fresh meat rather than frozen I popped into the butchery room earlier and asked for the pork chops not to be put in the freezer. I was a fraction too late, most of the chops were already bagged and popped in there, but I ran over and grabbed three bags out (thirty chops in total), they hadn't frozen yet thankfully, and put them in the kitchen fridge instead. You can't get much fresher meat than this. These pigs had not that long ago been romping around on and manuring the very same garden clay that we are now having to dig over due to their heavy trotters compacting it all in the rain. It's all connected here.

"Resurrection Soup" Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3. We will be eating this for lunch today

* all names changed

A Room With A View

I have swapped one reality for another. From being a caravan-dwelling nurturer of a patch of soil in mid-Wales, I have become a volunteer resident in an intentional community in south-west England. This transformation has happened every winter since 2013. Each time I flit south I am welcomed by a whole crew of friendly and familiar faces, good people who are for a while living and sharing their lives together at Pilsdon. For a few months I swell the numbers by one.

My room is on the ground floor of the East Wing, originally the stables for the manor house, that runs the length of the central quad and houses the male residents. The quad is put down to pasture, with a diagonal fence across it which forms two small fields, so sometimes my window looks out upon a few sheep or a couple of calves, but right now it is empty. The two calves are indoors now, in the stables directly opposite me, next door to the three beef cattle who I can see right now munching their hay. Their stables form the top end of the long single-storey block called the Loose Boxes which also contains a number of single-bed rooms for those who visit at weekends (in Pilsdon parlance, “the wayfarers”).

A squirrel lay on my land's entrance track, still warm but definitely deceased

In between these bedrooms and the cows is a long room used variously for more formal meetings, for the watching of important sports events on the wide screen TV, and for the laying out of large collections of second-hand clothes that are occasionally donated en masse. Such a donation happened recently so today all those who wished to extend their wardrobe a little could be found in there trying on extra-large jumpers and comparing socks. I myself came away with a natty pair of smart black shoes which fit perfectly. May the soul of their previous owner rest in peace (I assume).

A huge Angora rabbit, one of many at my friend's rabbit farm.

The Manor house is off to the left, out of view of my window, where all the meals happen and where I spend many a happy hour murdering Beethoven on the piano. But if I lean and look right I can glimpse the milking parlour and the “North Barn” (there's only one barn and it's to the north) which houses a mountain of hay. Next to that, out of sight but closer still to my room, is the winter quarters of Snowdrop, Daffodil and Cuckoo, the three Jersey milking cows. Their summer quarters, which they find infinitely preferable no doubt, are the surrounding fields. Still, part of their winter quarters is an external yard so they have daylight and fresh air when they want it and they get as much delicious hay as they can eat.

As I write it's approaching that important time of the day, 4:30pm, which Pilsdon marks with a daily ritual known as Tea and Toast, whose key ingredients can easily be gleaned from its name. Yesterday we celebrated two birthdays so it was temporarily upgraded to Tea and Toast and Cupcakes. Today there's some grape jelly I want to try, made from the grapes of the two vines I planted back in early 2013 so I think I'll leave you now to join the others in the Common Room. Till next week!