Supper # 39 - Wellington, Devon

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Supper # 38 - Molland, Devon

Molland is really old fashioned. It lies up towards Exmoor coming away from South Molton; a small cluster of houses all looking like they're ready to drop into the road from their high up positions on the bank. As I drive along I lament my lack of horn - you can't see a thing and putting the chimes on is hardly much of a warning blast. If anything it confuses people and they look around, unsure of where the amplified music box sound is wafting in from. I curl around the corners, past the village pub and the tight group of teenagers hanging around on the side of the road and pull up to the Dart's farmhouse. They've said I can plug Jimmy in with their Red Devon bulls while I stay with my uncle Marius down the hill.

I arrive to hoots of delight from Mrs Dart and her daughter and get ushered into their huge, slightly retro kitchen. "You must be hungry", they say and bring out pineapple cake, carrot cake, still-warm quiche - and a large pot of clotted cream to dollop onto anything I fancy. Tea is poured and I get chowing, unable to resist almost anything anymore. It just all tastes so good and how often in London does one get offered cake as part of the daily, domestic routine? Not I and I'ma get mine while I can - before I know it I'm going to be back in that gym surrounded by slightly demonic individuals and craving such things as cake with clotted cream.

The Darts prepare great greedy lunches for the local shoot. A dozen or so men will come tromping down in their plus-fours and tweeds, chomping at the bit to blast those pheasants to the ground. Apparently it's now becoming trendy for city boys to come and have a pop. I suppose it's part of the rolling-around-in-the-mud-together in the woods impulse; a quick flight from the concrete to indulge the primal. Heck, I'd do it just for the big lunch at the end. They make all their pastry from scratch, cook their own cream, rear their own beef and grow all the veg in the garden. Heaven.

Uncle Mal turns up and can't turn down the cake either. We munch and chat and then settle Jimmy in and head off down the hill.

THE SET UP: My uncle and aunt have been given this house by my aunt's older sister. Sort of given it...it's complicated. Anyway, Marius comes down here all the time from London for work. The house has been part of the Molland estate for centuries, you can practically smell the goat shed. It's brilliant and wonderfully far from civilisation.

Marius goes into the house swinging a cloth bag full of shop-bought goodies: Lincolnshire sausages, bagged lettuce, packaged veg and I am quietly surprised. Normally it's a lot more rustic and there's a hare hanging about somewhere or a partridge laying ready to be plucked. Needn't have worried though as the window of opportunity for a hearty - some might say challenging - supper soon presents itself when we discover that the fridge/freezer has been turned off. Off we troop to the stone back room to investigate the damage. We sniff and dunk and prodd and soon have an 'in' and an 'out' tray: out with the gassy grapefruit juice, the defrosted dog food and the filthy melted ice, in with the defrosted pheasant, the lamb stew and the sliced brown bread.

It really does bond you when you're not sure whether what you're about to eat is going to make you both ill or not, but in my family it's almost a test of strength to see who's constitution can withstand the least likely of offerings. In no time at all the pheasant is perched atop a piece of dripping-slathered bread and roasting in the oven for another time and the lamb stew is bubbling innocently away on the hob, veg roasts in the oven and zucchini softens in a pan.

WHAT WE ATE: Defrosted borscht given an artistic flourish of scissored chives start the ball rolling. Tastes like the earth. As earthy as anything I've had in a long time. Soon enough we're onto the main thrust of the meal - the defrosted lamb stew. There it sits, surrounded by jewel-like veg: zucchini sauteed with tomatoes and oregano, peppers and squash from the roasting pan, streaked with rosemary, chunky discs of carrot - it's quite a sight to behold. We tuck in, our wine glasses at the ready should anything untoward start to occur in our stomachs...all fine we proceed with gusto.

Next we enjoy some salad, reassuringly clean and perky and fresh from the bag. Some camembert accompanies it along with...oh, what's this? The pheasant is out of the oven and it's fatty bed is being touted around as a possible partner to all this clean-cut fare. "It might be a bit greasy" warns Marius, which means that it's going to be so far beyond greasy I probably shouldn't. But, heck, I do and am soon transferring it onto his plate where it'll receive a much better reception.

DINNER TABLE TOPICS: Intrigue and suspicion over previous ancestor's misdemeanors, my grandparents and their barny when my grandmother discovered my grandfather had bought a house without telling her, Marius tells me about being sent out of London as a boy to stay on a farm in Cornwall and what a thrill it was for a King Arthur loving kid, more family disection. We get the map out a lot. I love going over maps - especially with people that really understand them. We gaze over Lincolnshire and its vast tracts of unadulterated farmland. We revel in the possibilities of the ancient kingdom of Arkenfeld. We slap each other on the back and pour more wine.

THE PUD: Venezuelan truffles and whiskey from the Co-Op. I bite mine tenderly, Mal tosses them back like popcorn. They're only just set and so perfectly supple. I love the way the cocoa powder acts as a serious case for the dreaminess within.

MY BED FOR THE NIGHT: Marius marches round the house pulling back bed covers, investigating what lies beneath - not that different to the inspection of the fridge in fact. Eventually we find a bed that I can sleep in, complete with sheets, pillow cases and blanket. One more discussion on the history of the house and where things have been put in/taken out and off I trot clutching (embarrassingly) OK!, full of pics of Wayne and Colleen having a right old knees-up.

Supper # 34 - Exeter, Devon

Charlie invited me to supper anytime I was in Devon . She told me they lived in a madhouse, which obviously had my ears pricking up no end. I rang them up when it looked like I might finally have a handle on Dartmoor and they called me in; out of the wilderness and into the fire. Well, not into but close to. Mark, Charlie's husband greeted me wearing a pair of sturdy looking gloves. "For gardening?" I asked. "No, cooking" he said with a grin and then strode round the back of the house to tend to dinner: paella cooked on the family tripod BBQ. How exciting!

Charlie was an exemplary host. She furnished me with a very chilled glass of prosecco and then gave me a tour of the house, explaining all the quirks to look out for in the bathroom and offering the use of the washing machine. But I was too busy being awestruck to think about laundry - they live in the most fabulously retro house I've ever seen. It was built in the '50s as part of a Barnados home and then bought by Charlie's mum in the '70s.

THE SET UP: This house is pure Margot & Jerry nirvana. There is an avocado bathroom suite with a dual purpose loo roll dispenser and ashtray. Imagine that! And a dining room that just yells Robert Carrier at the top of its lungs, complete with hostess trolley. Charlie and Mark live there with C's mum and their two kids, Eddie and Eleanor. They pitched up here from London, wanting to get away to bring kids up and enjoy the good country air.

WHO CAME: Mark, Charlie, Me and C's mum.

WHAT WE ATE: So this BBQ had the look about it of being handled by people that knew what they were doing. Turns out Mark is a wine expert and Charlie really knows food. This meant that when C chose the wine Mark kicked up a silent stink and as Mark poked the barbie, Charlie kept a watchful eye from the sidelines. I was thrilled to see that both of these cats meant business in affairs of the palate. We ate paella from a big, hot pan. It bulged with throbbing little chorizitos, juicy shrimp and hunks of chicken. It was sprinkled with pimenton dulce and lemon wedges stood at the ready.

DINNER TABLE TOPICS: The sad lack of decent food/wine shops in Exeter, how frickin' pricey Totnes is, how deprived Cornwall is at its centre (the worst in Britain, apparently), what they miss about London (good restaurants, Borough Market, 'culture'). We then discuss fave eating spots in London and I wax lyrical about my beloved Brixton and my much missed Hawksmoor. It turns out that this lot head for the hills with their rucksacks at least twice a month - they're proper stalwarts on the camping scene and have attracted many an admiring glance for their tripod cooking device and other exemplary features of outdoor living. Where are we all heading, I ask them and they opine on the possibility of flying long distance - or at all - becoming an unbelievable notion to future generations. Maybe we'll only be able to get to the British Isles and camping will be the norm. The idea of my bartering trip and how people have latched onto it is an example of this low level way in which attitudes are changing.

THE PUD: I make Bananas Foster on the tripod, feeling slightly guilty not to have pulled out some fabulous molten creation out of the bag for them. They insisted I go with the easier option though: easy pud = all the better for enabling cerebral discussion and not being distracted. I acquiesced and slung some nanas into a babbling pan of rum laced caramel. When soft and full of flavour I served them up, each bowl topped with spiced hot chocolate sauce and rum whipped cream. It was lovely - although we couldn't see much.

MY BED FOR THE NIGHT: The baby was booted out of her cot for the night and I was given her room. I went to bed reading Vanity Fair and fairly passed out in the cool, dark and peaceful room.

The next day Charlie introduced me to her and her mum's wonderful collection of cookery books. There was everything in there - Jane Grigson, Elizabeth David, Silver Spoon, Floyd, Keller, Claudia Roden...and of course, Robert Carrier. This is the best cook book collection I've encountered on my trip and I poured over them most hungrily...

Onto Dartmoor...

It was almost as if I'd entered some kind of full-size, 3D computer game, with me and the van as the perpetrators - twisting through all the obstacles in order to reach the other side and victory. I departed Totnes and Dartington and went in the direction of Exeter. Sort of. I'd read so much about Dartmoor - about the ancient tors, the murky swamps, the mist coming down and enshrouding the place with unspeakable disquiet. And about the bleakness that can bore right through you. I wanted to get right in there and traverse the entire moor.

From Buckfastleigh I cut up through a 1960s housing estate, already pushing Jimmy into second gear just to rev past the kid outside fixing his scrambler. As I turned the corner I was soon ensconced by high, dense hedgerows that seemed only just able to frame us as we wended through. The road was absolutely tiny and Jimmy collected all kinds of fern and bracken round his wheel arches. There was nowhere to pull in anywhere and I have no idea what might have happened if another vehicle had come along - it was all I could do to squeeze past a disapproving woman and her dog.

Every person I saw, in the occasional village I'd enter - in Buckfast, Coombe, Scorriton - would look at me with eyes of pure, local distaste. She's got to be out of her mind, they seemed to say, bringing that monstrosity through here, and then, she'll get hers...and as if I'd read their minds I would then be confronted by some new challenge - either a terrifyingly steep hill (shades of Yorkshire) or a bridge so tiny and so narrow that I wondered whether I might have to abandon Jimmy there in order to save myself.

But we triumphed and finally found ourselves with somewhat of an opening and engaged with the company of this merry party.

They shook their heads in horror as I showed them the route I fancied for reaching Exeter - none of them had ever done it, but I had to cross the moor properly or I wouldn't have been able to rest easy at night. And oh my! What a wild, beautiful thing it is! Hosted entirely by languishing sheep and the odd self-sufficient pony, it engulfs you with its sweet, chilled, marshy air. And time could fall away.

Not for me though; not for long. I had a dinner date on the fringes of Exeter and didn't want to throw the paella into jeopardy...

Dartington Arts College end of year show

Lovely Lucy McConnell contacted me through the Facebook Group and expressed a huge amount of enthusiasm for having Choc Star at her college's end of year show.

"It's a bit odd down here" she warned me, "you'll see what I mean when you get here".

And as soon as I got within sniffing distance of Totnes I could already see that this weren't no ordinary town. It's a crystal and flotation tank hot spot. It's a craze of health food shops, mental health offerings, vegetarian cafes, hitchhikers, protestors, factions, organisations, groups - all dedicated to living an alternative lifestyle, away from the constraints of the system.

And yet it turns out that Totnes is the 6th most expensive place to buy property in Britain. Fancy.

I trucked through the speed bumps that carry you in to the college campus and was shouted and yelled at - "I love you!" they cried. "We love chocolate!" they yelled and, though the rain came down, I spent a few cosy hours in the van with the hot chocolate machine cranked up (Make it a Jamaican with rum went down well), Beres Hammond on the Bose and lots of excitable art students running over to indulge in a bit of Choc Star action.

Later I went down to the student bar with them all. Foppish artists threw willowy shapes on the dance floor, bathed in red lights. Some went techno and jerked away, entranced by the hi-speed Drum 'n' Bass. I swigged my Red Stripe on the sidelines and waded in to rescue Lucy's dad when guys approached him asking if he wanted to get high.