Brighton Foodies

It rained, it shone, it swept and it pulverised. Brighton gave us a little bit of many seasons last weekend. I managed to establish myself as the on-site pain in the butt as I attempted to motivate the Brightonian stewards to action.
'Where's my pitch please?'
'Errrrr, good question..'
'Very funny. Can you radio through to someone who does know?'
'Ok, O-kayyy, chilloutman'.

I was chilled out. Until that crusty said it. And the next one and the next one. Welcome to Brighton! Luckily chocolate was at hand and I reached for it.

Lots of nice customers came by the van, ice cream was scooped, brownies served, hot chocolate frothed, truffles rolled...but I gotta say, the highlight of the weekend for me was buying my herb garden: purple sage, basil, parsley, coriander, tarragon, rosemary, mint, chives, thyme, marjoram, bay and dill. Joy!...oh, and Charlie of course - he was an angel.

Pre-fabs and council houses and Miami-style show homes

South of Chichester is the most beautiful beach - a great, crunchy swathe of shingle hemmed by wooly marshland and shimmering sea.

Then there are the architectural monstrosities...



But I'm always a sucker for anything that smacks of South Beach - especially if it's painted swimming pool tourquoise!

Supper # 6 - Chichester

It drizzled with rain all day on Saturday. Fanny and I went to pick Frieda up from her sleepover and she and her friends poured themselves into the back of the car, variously chatting about teenage stuff. They seem so much younger than I remember feeling when I was sixteen. You think you have all the answers! I think Frieda is a lot less reckless than I was though. I recall many a night spent knocking back Cadbury’s Liqueur, followed by Scrumpy, followed by Malibu and pineapple, followed by unmentionable carnage. Frieda sticks sensibly to Pimms.

We got back to the cottage by the sea and dragged damp logs out of the garden to try and dry so we might make a fire and get a fug up in the chilliness. Boy was it cold. My blood must have thinned living in London and I threw on every warm item I’d packed. Frieda suggested hot chocolate – great. Then the word ‘soy milk’ got banded around and a look of horror took over my face. I declined politely, but when these steaming cups of dark delight paraded out from the kitchen I couldn’t resist a taste: far out – it was perfectly palatable and had I not known about the S-word I’m sure I’d never have guessed.

The hot chocolate triggered the need for more chocolate. We made éclairs. Real live proper éclairs. When the yellow little fingers of warmth and joy emerged from the oven we dunked them into melted chocolate and our eyes rolled back. Mustn’t eat them all! We cried and placed them in a tin for later.

Later was a take-it-to-them supper at Fanny’s friends Chris and Elizabet. We left the world of open fires and rickety old lanes and surged through the driving drizzle to a whole new scenario: leafy, suburban Chichester – and a great big hub of a family.

WHO CAME: Fanny, Frieda, Bea, me, C&E + two daughters - Steph (new mum) and Camille (studying for A-levels). I really adore this family. There is a harmoniousness about them that is kind of unusual. I almost assumed that Chris was a recent addition to the family because of how upbeat and unencumbered he seemed. Isn't that odd? That such a thing should seem unusual? The daughters are beautiful, easy-going girls who carry themselves in the same serene way as their mother.

WHAT WE ATE: The plan was that Fanny would make paella, I would make chocolate soufflés and that we would put the finishing touches to the éclairs as we went along. What transpired was a really great, lemony paella, groaning with plump prawns and bulbous mussels and then a total choc-load of dessert. No one really drank (baby/exams/driving/too young) but Chris, Fanny and I laid in to some nice chilled shez and then a bottle of burgundy.

DINNER TABLE TOPICS: Bananas, mainly. Chris is a major fruit supplier to Sainsbury and I happen to be on the look-out for 2000 of the blighters. I've been asked by Le SportSac to supply them with enough frozen choc-dipped nanas to get the message across to Pitchfork festi-goers that they're doing a collaboration with Stella McCartney. Chris fairly rose to the challenge and started punching numbers and weighing fruit....and then came out with the fascinating fact that bananas are a herb. !. Imagine that. Plus, there's been this gossip knocking around other dinner tables that marrow is just an overgrown zucchini which I just can't accept. And don't even get me started on what I've been hearing about pineapples...

THE PUD: Hot chocolate souffles. Frieda got fully involved and it was great having such a proactive sous chef. There's always such a hullabaloo about souffles - this preciousness and reverence - which I think doesn't help. It puts pressure on the pud to perform and inevitably it falls short. These ones did anyway. Next time I'm taking them out of the oven two mins earlier. However, you could have heard a pin drop whilst everyone was digging in...real, serious, almost eerie quiet.


MY BED FOR THE NIGHT: Chez Peppercorns with two hot waterbottles!!

Supper # 5 - Hayward's Heath

The last time I was in Hayward's Heath I seem to remember some kind of 4am dash out of a friend's window. We didn't have any clothes on and it seemed like a wildly inappropriate way to behave in the dull yellow light of a hushed cul-de-sac. This is how the town appears to me - suburbia carved into woodlands; the thickets blunted by an urban influx; sound-proofed and paired-down so that order is made and peace maintained. I imagine that down the paved cut-throughs there are hundreds of mini-rebellions taking place - commuter kids digging for some chaos.

THE SET UP: The Blockers came here from California twenty years ago. Their kids have disbanded to Santa Monica, Cornwall, UEA but their house still feels like a big, full family home. I arrive (late again) and am surrounded by loud, eager guests wanting to know what the hell this trip is all about; where the van is; where I've come from; what I'm making for pudding. I try and answer everyone as best as I can then make a beeline for the range and get prepping.
David brings me a great big glass of white plonk, Judith pulls great platters of sticky ribs out of the oven and we all buzz noisily into the dining room for a big old feed-up.

WHO CAME: David, Judith, their sort-of neice Zhinnia (working on a property programme in Brighton), J's uncle and aunt over from France, an American friend and her son, another couple and me.
WHAT WE ATE: Enormous, Coca-Cola sticky pork ribs, purple 'slaw, green salads, potato and bacon salad. Anyone would have thought I hadn't eaten for days by the way I attacked those suckers. Sylvia, the American friend asked whether we were going to eat them British or US style but most people seemed to have them gathered up in their mitts already and were slathering all over them. So so tasty. You really can't beat the pure physical pleasure of this kind of dinner - it makes you feel alive!


DINNER TABLE TOPICS: David's (silver) surfing with his medic son, Oliver, down in St Ives - he split his chin on a rock and, after a quick pint, went down to the hospital where Oliver comandiered A&E and stitched it up for him; the French health system that has helped both the uncle and the aunt fight cancer; Sylvia's amazement at the possibility of seeing a black president in her lifetime - her African-American father never thought he'd see a black quarterback in his, let alone a President Obama; how ignorant British people make themselves look when writing off the whole of the States as Dubya-lovin' raghead baters; progressive local government environment policies; my time at the University of Missouri; Brixton and the future of Angel Town.

THE PUD: I decided to do Brownie Fudge Sundaes in their honour. I slowly warmed a slab of it in the oven, pulled it out, sliced that old rascal up into ten, crowned each one with a scoop of vanilla ice cream then drenched them with hot chocolate fudge sauce and gave a jug of sauce for
top-ups. It all got poured and the Americans approved so I was happy.

MY BED FOR THE NIGHT: The youngest Blocker's room - full of CDs and Vans boxes, hooded tops and F. Scott Fitzgerald. My sleep was heavy like my supper.

Downtown Hastings

I left C&C and drove all the way down the long sweeping hill to the seafront - with things flying everywhere in the back - and made it onto the pedestrianised road by Debenhams. It felt a bit illicit but I'm sort of used to going against the grain, traffic-wise in the van.

Rob Woods at the licensing dept. in Hastings had been very buoyant about our arrival. Some people were a bit aghast that I hadn't been allowed to trade on the seafront or in the Old Town but you get a much better feel for a place by being in the main civic centre. Apparently the town is on the up since being named a few years ago as the '27th most deprived' place in the country.

Like most towns in the South, Hastings seems like a mix of 'types'. I served milkshakes and ice cream to yummy, London-fleeing mummies ("it's soooo much better down here by the sea"); teen-age mums with painful looking hairstyles ("ohmygod, ohmygod Shaneice - try that. It's aMAZing"); not very busy estate agents; lottery winning gran'mas and LOTS of Willie fans.

Dios mio, the power of TV! It's so rivetting how mobilised people's minds are over the Wonky series.. The main subjects of interest are: whether Willie is really that mad; the poor wife; the hot wife; are they really poor/how can they be when they live in such a big house; how brilliant that someone is following his passion despite everything else and of course, chocolate. I was sold out of truffles in no time and relieved to discover that a new shipment of Venezuelan Black had arrived at my next destination. Not much cop for all those disappointed Willie fans in Hastings though but good news for Hampshire, Berks, Bucks......

My favourite people of the day were the family who drove down especially to see me and Jimmy. They'd contacted me a while before as they're about to start their own mobile food biz - an organic waffle van. They've bought an old orange Ford and are getting it all together and had a million questions about this world of mobile trading. My heart leapt for them - it's such an exciting time but so scary too. They even invited me for supper that night. So did another lady. But my most tempting offer of all was from this trampy looking guy from Brighouse in Yorkshire - "Aye - ya can com op to mine f'ra bacon buttie an a cuppa tea, but that's aboot all". I shed a little inward tear as I declined and instead got on the road to Hayward's Heath.

Supper #4 - Hastings, East Sussex

Once again I found myself darting across the countryside, trying not to be late but understanding the hopelessness of this desire in the light of Jimmy's slow moving ways. The drive from Dover to Hastings (via St Margaret's Bay to check out some raw chocolate making guys) is bellisima! Romney Marshes are great green basins full of hedgerowed pastures and contented looking, sun-glazed livestock. I charged past. Through heady fields of rape and over railway crossings, past Pop Larkin style clapboard farms and the Victorian mansion blocks of Rye....into a much larger than I'd realised Hastings.

All I had to guide me to the night's supper was a tiny map, frozen onto my laptop from my last contact with wi-fi. I pulled up and shoved the computer into the face of a slightly nervy looking woman. Her young son took control and explained it all to me - but this town is massive! I lagged up a whacking great hill to a point that looks out over a massive gulley of huge, new houses and all leered over by one of Duncan Bannytine's health clubs. I swooped down into this sea of suburbia, past driveways named after 20th century US presidents...Hoover, Eisenhower, Roosevelt...but no sign of Truman. When in doubt crank up the chimes. Children stood mesmerised and smokers stopped puffing as "Colonol Bogey" filled the evening air and then, from far away came a figure running towards me, arms flailing. The music had worked: we had contact.

THE SET UP: My inner child - which is never that far from my outter adult - leapt with joy at the sight of the night's supper location. It is an enormous, swanky, mock-Tudor spectacle and the kind of place I yearned to live in when I was growing up. To me, living in a modern house with wall-to-wall carpets, fitted kitchen and central heating was the epitome of exotic. And I've never quite shaken this idea off.

Charlene and Chris welcome me in and up to their huge, well-equipped kitchen. I am immediately offered a glass of 'Vin d'Orange' - something that Charlene has had aging in her fridge for a couple of months: Seville oranges languishing in rose wine, seeping their citric bitterness into the liquid and producing a drink so refreshing and lip-smacking that I'm inclined to start a batch up as I travel around.

WHAT WE ATE: Then I am offered homemade cheese biscuits, peppered with cayenne and rolled in sesame seeds; tuna 'mousse' crostini and clay-like, heavenly goat cheese dip. All made by Charlene. I glance around at the shelves heaving with cook books and am beside myself to have it dawn on me that I'm in the company of a couple of serious foodies. Now I know this trip isn't necessarily about just foodies, but by God it's a treat when I happen upon some!

Over on the granite island sat a great piece of porchetta, resting. Porchetta is one of my favourite things in the whole world. When my family lived up the mountain in Italy we would pester our parents for porchetta pannini every time we were at the market. Thick slices of this dense, pale meat, seamed with crushed fennel seeds, garlic, salt and pepper and shoved into a floury ciabatta....the business.

Charlene's recipe is from the Zuni recipe book and came in big, pullable chunks. Large nuggets of this well-roasted pork that went so well with the almost caramelled roast fennel, potatoes and onions. Chris opened a chilled bottle of Gavi and we chewed the cud and the grub.

DINNER TABLE TOPICS: Food blogger inhouse politics - the whys and wherefores of posting and being blackballed by precious foodies; Chris' nerve-wracking dash through JFK with a couple of Lobel's strip steaks in his bag; William Curley V Paul A. Young V L'Artisan du Chocolat; what to do with the horse meat in their freezer (apparently raw is a good option since it's the only meat that doesn't carry bacteria); how Nigel Slater should really not stray from food writing and onto the screen and this continuing theme of the joy of exchanging goods for goods without money always coming into it.

THE PUD: I made them one of Willie's Cloud Forest cakes - using a whole bar of his chocolate, ground almonds, the basics and topeed with a glossy ganache. It is a sensational cake - very dense, almost truffle like but with a lightness and a depth that keep it primal but not too heavy.

MY BED FOR THE NIGHT: We're all pretty exhausted and their little girl has a habit of waking at 5.30am so we had some jasmine tea and then I was led up to a very comfy room, complete with a TV, trashy mags and a basket full of guest size lotions. Imagine if hotels really were like this!