Fish Supper

Z was going to be out for the earlier part of the evening, so it fell to me to cook.  Paul the Fish calls on Monday mornings; we usually have a debate about what’s best today, what do we fancy and so forth.  This often becomes the ‘you choose’ ‘no, you choose’ dialogue, where Paul ends up as the adjudicator; but in this case it was obviously entirely down to me, so I just went random and said ‘hake’.

We had a batch of leftover cherry tomatoes, so I invented a recipe that Z told me I should write down, as I could be the next Nigel Slater (who specialises in making a lot* out of whatever’s available).  So here it is.

All the chopping is best done in an electric grinder/chopper.

Finely chop a fat clove of garlic and put it in a pan with a tablespoon of olive oil.  Let it just turn light brown over a medium heat.

Meanwhile, smash up about 20 cherry tomatoes (no need to skin them; if using bigger ones, you might choose to) and add them to the pan.  Add a small glass of dry vermouth (or whatever white wine you have to hand; vermouth is best though).  Season with salt and plenty of pepper.

Cook for about 20 minutes until fairly concentrated but still liquid.  Halfway through, finely chop a small bunch of basil leaves and add them to the sauce.

Cut the hake fillets (any firm fish will do; monkfish or turbot would be great) into large chunks and add them to the pan.  Stir gently to coat the fish, cover and simmer until the fish is just cooked through.  It was about 5 minutes for the hake.

If the sauce seems a bit wet (the fish will have added some liquid), remove the fish and boil hard for a minute or two.

We served it with the season’s first marsh samphire (not local yet, from France, but tres bon).

 *Including money

Learning Norfolk

I am, slowly but surely.

We had to go to something called Reedham Ferry for lunch.  For reasons too devious to mention here, Z drove.  The satnav said it’d take 45 minutes, which seemed s bit much until we worked out that that included the ferry crossing time (see below). Anyway, after a couple of U turns we got there.  That is, we got to the south (I think – the only compass points that seem to matter in Norfolk are east and, if you insist, west) side of the Yare.  But the pub is on the north side.

So what you do is cross the river on the eponymous ferry.  We’d done a bit of research and established that the thing to do is park on the south side and cross as pedestrians, which would cost us much less than taking the car over and then bringing it back again, which would anyway have been pretty pointless.  (My brother and sister were both already on the right – I mean north – side of the Yare.)

So we parked up and got onto the ferry.  It’s a very small chain ferry, crossing about 250 yards of river.  A chain ferry drags itself across its stretch of water by winching a pair of fixed chains through cogwheels on the ferry and so dragging its cargo across and safely discharging it on the other side.  There are ramps that enable roro.  R opined that the chains were a bit shorter than they used to be and so higher in the water, which would make it a bit riskier to drive a boat over until the ferry had fully completed its voyage.  But the boat drivers seemed to manage. 

Z and I stepped aboard.  The price list said ‘PEDESTRIANS 50p’ and ‘MINIMUM CHARGE £1.50’, which was a bit confusing until the young man manning the ferry asked us if we were going to the pub, in which case it was free – at which point I remembered that I was in Norfolk.

Afterwards, I remembered the previous time I’d been on a chain ferry.  Sandbanks to Shell Bay.

The caravan evolves

We’d taken a circuitous route rather than the usual boring bomb down the M4, because Z had arranged to visit someone in mid-Wales for business reasons, which seemed, from my perspective at least, to offer the possibility of revisiting the scenic route my father liked to take on family holiday journeys back in the fifties.  It didn’t quite turn out that way, mainly because the satnav refused to take us up the A417, over Birdlip Hill, and through the Forest of Dean; nor did I get to see that Black Mountain view down from a dizzy height to a reservoir with a toy train running alongside it.  But the company and the lunch were compensation enough.

Very few of the people I think of as my ‘old caravan mates’ attend frequently nowadays; indeed, some have given up their vans completely, and others I know have health issues.  I can’t expect to relive heady occasions like my 60^th birthday, when I happened to mention it to a neighbour in the gents (no in-van plumbing in those days) and an hour later was joined on the newly-laid patio by a tipsy horde of about sixteen glass- and bottle-clutching Welsh party-makers.  Nor can I expect again to stagger glass- and bottle-clutching up the hill towards Dave and Marilyn’s and fall over halfway under the influence of an unaccustomed cigarette.  Just as well really.

Of course, the next generation has mostly inherited, as well as the property, at least some of the behaviours (though I don’t think they’re as good at them as we were).  I can’t expect or want to be drawn into that.  Watching the little ones will do now.

And the rabbits, which are back in force and still burrowing under the front of my caravan.  Joseph assured me they can’t excavate a big enough sinkhole, but I noticed that a bag of cement had been left behind the van, and was tempted to tip it down there just in case.  Probably just as well I didn’t.  I’m not sure that the insurance covers failed attempts to fill in undermining rabbit warrens.