Hitchhikers

CUTTLEFISH FRITTERS, WILD GARLIC SOUP £9.00
Here we are, March, spring time. The wild garlic is pushing up and picking it is a great excuse to get out into the sunshine. As if an intensely dark green, luscious garlic leaf soup isn’t enough, Nathan Outlaw in his book ‘Restaurant Nathan Outlaw’ pairs it with an exotic cuttlefish fritter. A total of 28 ingredients set the scene for a delicious lunch or as a starter for a more ambitious supper.

GRILLED LAMBS HEART, PEAS AND MINT £8.00
This is from a recently acquired cookbook from the absolute legend that is Fergus Henderson, ‘The Book of St John’. I tried this recipe in January and have been waiting for any excuse to get it on the menu ever since. The meat of the heart is dense and full of flavour, especially when marinated in good olive oil, balsamic, sliced garlic and parsley for 24 hours. It’s simply griddled and thinly sliced, like liver, the accompaniments turn it into a delicious, rich, yet refreshing salad.

BULGAR, TOMATO, AUBERGINE, LEMON YOGHURT £6.50
Ottolengi’s ‘Simple’ strikes again. A really refreshing, light combination of vegetables, set off with sharp yoghurt and mint. The aubergine is cut into chunks, tossed in oil and seasoning, then roast on a parchment lined baking sheet until caramelised and soft. Somehow this avoids the oily, greasy result often associated with cooking aubergine.

MANGO & PASSION FRUIT ROULADE £5.00
From my amazing cake maker Karen, I’ve just tasted the sample, it’s sublime. It takes me back to a birthday party we did in Tisbury, many summers ago. It’s a soft meringue roll, rich whipped cream, lashings of fresh passion fruit and mango, toasted, flaked almonds, I’ve no idea how she pulls it off, it really is a dream.

Forty three years ago, Jimmy Docherty and I hitch hiked out of Chester, it was four o’clock in the afternoon my diary tells me, we arrived in London at 8.00pm. We met up with friends from art school and shared a pint in The Grove Tavern, Camberwell, before heading down to Ramsgate with friends, Georgina and Anita in a battered old Renault 4. There we slept in the car, freezing our nuts off waiting for a hovercraft to take us to Northern France, from where we drove to Southern Spain to catch a boat to Oran, Algeria, leaving Georgina and Anita behind.

We were twenty three years old and had no idea that we wouldn’t be back home for over two and a half years, as we ventured from country to country, adventure to adventure. We’d had a bit of practice. We hitch hiked to Copenhagen when we were 17 years old. It was Easter, it was freezing, we wore boots, a denim jacket and a tartan scarf, we froze. At 5.00am on Copenhagen station, over a coffee, we were offered the enticing opportunity to become child prostitutes to aging male business men. We politely declined.

The city’s hookers looked after us all night, showing us where we could shelter and keep warm. We were passed from one to the other as their clients came and went and were eventually dumped at the station when the sun came up, as Dracula would inevitably dump his brides in similar circumstances no doubt.

So when we were approached by an overly hospitable teenager in the dark backwaters of Oran at 11.00pm, asking if we needed a bed for the night, we were kind of ready. Our long planned trip round the world had finally begun. A month later, having hitch hiked 3627 kilometres across the Sahara desert, we found ourselves in the Kano flying club, Northern Nigeria, sharing a beer with Prince E.M.L Eronini, who was about to proposition us with yet more dubious employment.

I could fill a book with stories of the adventures we had in that one month alone. The people we met. Sites we saw and the very tricky situations we always seemed to get ourselves into. Hilarious tales packed into ‘Letts’ hardback A5 desk diaries that my dad used to buy me every Christmas. Writing is my next career move after years in the building industry, international fashion, and now food.

Back to the present, this time last year we offered our first take away. It was a very simple affair, cuttlefish fritters, wild garlic soup. Most of them went out as a thank you to all the people who had booked in for our March pop up here at Longford Farmhouse and are, even now, still waiting for it to happen. And it will, we will be back with an updated menu as soon as we get the nod from the powers that be. In the meantime, here’s this week’s menu;