Food Stuff

The other day a tiny bird usually perched on top of a most sensitive literary radar flew down and sat on my shoulder. "Tweet tweet": have you heard about the latest literary sensation? No, not the smutty one. This little birdie is channelling a seriously influential publishing fat cat and apparently his novel is a winner. I’ve only read the first chapter so far. This evocative tome sets every bodily sense jigging. I can see the film. I can suggest actors. I can imagine awards ceremony sometime. Because the book's all about food and food stories are always winners.

This book has everything. A journey, intrigue, ruthless competition, a family saga. But mostly, it's about food. Talk about aligning the stars! Did this guy shift the solar system to suit himself? Food is so popular. This book seduces with sentimentality, suspense, tales of mateship and foe and gluttonous glimpses into a world of exotic tastes. Warm tum, warm heart, warm mind. I turn to the back flap and no wonder this first time novelist is grinning like a well-fed cat. It's his friends. Genius!

Skip to the end, scan the acknowledgments and find it. The writer is a magazine editor with seriously influential friends. He dines with film makers and fellow bookers, and my favourite British writer is his mentor. This book tells me what I’ve always known. We are meant to live together, work together, dine together, help each other, put competitive jealousies to bed and get on with the business of building success in whatever field. And luckily, because of The Serious Writing Course (TSWC) now completed, I have found a writing group.

Writing about food is always populsr: Love and Hunger, by Charlotte Wood, for example. Why we cook and why we eat. It's hunger that drives us. Maybe I should write a book about magical “clean out the fridge dinners”, because that's what I'm good at; usually on Monday nights and before a big shop. Maybe I should get those rexipes down. The problem is that I don’t follow recipes, so I can't write them.

And anyway, isn't the world is full of bad books about food? Escaping routines, ingratiating oneself to foreign locals, reproducing recipes and telling boring stories about not so fresh frontiers.

Another book I go back to is Kate Llewellyn’s The Mountain. I read it twenty years ago and I loved it then, because really, Kate’s a poet rather than a novelist. She writes about the domestic, the ordinary, the banal. Stuff to cherish and respect, given we spend so much tme in that kingdom. I read her story about cooking strawberry jam all those years ago and haven’t bought a jar of jam since. Do you know how easy it is to make jam?

Clean out fruit from fridge. Wash, chop and peel if you need to, but you dont have to. Throw into a saucepan and add about half the weight of the fruit in sugar. Squeeze in lemon juice and add some peel. Cook ‘til thick, fish out the peel and pour into sterized jars. You can sterilize jars by pouring boiling water over them or washing them in the dishwasher. Finally, put them on the window sill as Kate did and watch the sun glow through them. These jars are beautiful and should be gloated over briefly before chilling in the fridge.

Store cold because if you don’t, the jars will explode and make a mess in your cupboard.

And now, back to the book!