The Simplicity Of Coming Home
A return to the coast and some familiar food memories. And Vicky's incomparable Cloudy White ☁️🍞
Food For Thought.
There's nothing like a place you once lived in. It doesn't matter where, but once you get over the bittersweet return – knowing it was once yours and now no longer is – you can sink into the sentimentality all over again. It doesn't hurt that this place for me in Falmouth, a harbour-side town on the South East coast of Cornwall.
The familiarity of coming back means there's less uncertainty about what to do, who to see and where to go. A trip back always means Harbour Lights fish and chips either scoffed by the pier or driven up to Pendennis, eaten overlooking the point. Or if I'm cooking, it's Seabourne's in Penryn for fresh fish. Potager for the nostalgia and plant-gazing (sadly their breakfasts just aren't what they used to be). Gear Farm pasties and sausage rolls eaten on rocks on the Lizard. Restaurant Mine for a meal that pinpoints elegance and wonder and ripples fresh but oozes rich (think perfectly roasted cod and creamy borlotti beans with bite; local asparagus with a truffle butter bean purée; charred leeks on Cornish mids with a cashew cream). Drinks after dinner, rolling ciggies in the courtyard and bumping into old friends, then strolling through town at midnight.
It's never the same as it was when you lived there. Restaurants change hands, people come and go, shops move and like the coast is want to do, everything ebbs and flows. One thing that has remained the same is my love for Vicky's Cloudy White, a small white loaf that becomes sun kissed summer skin when toasted. I layer butter on its tan – salty, rich, creamy and in abundance – and eat it with eggs in the morning or as a snack with miso-whipped butter, thinly sliced radishes and a showering of broccoli sprouts. Even un-toasted, it's perfect. I pack a couple of slices, along with pre-boiled eggs, an avocado and a little pot of salt and pepper to take to the beach for a post-swim snack.
It's a cliché to say food tastes better by the sea. But it's true. Here I can eat the same thing each morning and lunchtime and never get bored, in the same way that I can wear two outfits interchangeably the entire time I'm here (a Marazul uniform of sorts). It's that straight-from-the-ground mentality – simplicity on a plate – that I love about Cornwall. Yeah, I love London for its diversity of produce, its colour and its fanfare; but sometimes there's nothing like eating a piece of toast swimming in local butter with farm-fresh radishes from down the road.
Here's to the places that were once home and remind us that uncomplicated usually wins,
Cat
Recipes-not-recipes™️
I have a knack for complicating most things (see: past relationships), but this is a dish that hinges on simplicity.
Whip 2 parts butter (the soft, creamy kind) with 1 part miso paste in a small bowl. In a hot pan (no oil) char an assortment of greens like tenderstem broccoli, asparagus, runner beans, sugarsnaps or even whole pods of fresh peas on a medium to high heat for a few minutes, just so they get a bit of colour. Coat in a big spoonful of the miso butter then grill for another 5 minutes on 200ºC. When cooked (tender but with bite), arrange on a low-sided wide dish and mix well. Add a big grind of pepper, a gentle squeeze of lemon and ofc some lemon zest. Serve as a side with grilled fish, roast chicken or simply with rice and a crispy fried egg. Or on toast slathered with more of the whipped miso butter.
Since I Asked.
I met James (and his girlfriend Maddie, the side of her pictured) with my brother in Nicaragua. We were staying at a hotel and I nervously approached Maddie and started chatting. They were living and working at the hotel we were in; and what followed was a friendship steered by a mutual love of food. James's love for food is insurmountable. Not just for its taste, but for its specificity. He dives into its details. I love that. When we were all back in London after our sojourn, James was working at the iconic Quality Chop House, and I remember wine-soaked meals both at the Chop House and at Quality Wines that made me grateful for food and all it carries. Memories. Friendships. And potato fondants. James has just finished up a wine course in Sussex, so I'm eagerly anticipating more wine-fuelled meals and being schooled by his new sommelier-esque knowledge.
What recipes have you been cooking at home recently?
I get so much joy from cooking a ‘simple’ dish and trying my best to ‘perfect’ it. This includes Spanish tortilla, sourdough loaf, hummus and tomato pasta. There are only four ingredients in a tortilla (potato, onion, egg and olive oil), so why is it so hard to get buttery waxy layered potatoes, sweet onions, custardy egg inside and golden egg on the outside? The one thing I do know is to use an obscene amount of good olive oil; that helps some what!
Best country with the best food while travelling?
Mexico. Five tacos filled with mystery cuts of beef, slathered with habernero sauce, washed down with a Corona, all for $4 — I must have been eating an average of 20 tacos a day! The best part of the taco — which I have found so hard to replicate back in the UK — is the corn tortilla, it tastes and smells so incredible, and I loved walking past the Tortillerias in Mexico City and smelling them being made.
If you could recreate one restaurant meal, what would it be?
Going to Bouillon Chartier, Paris, when I was 13 was one of my first real restaurant meals abroad. Escargot with all the garlic butter, steak tartare where you mix all the ingredients/seasoning yourself (also I was incredibly disappointed to find out that they have now stopped doing this dish Chartier’s!), writing the order on the white paper table cloth and tearing it off as your receipt! All this excitement recreated would be pretty cool.
What dish makes you feel most at home?
It has to be anything with rosemary in. In my parents garden there is a very large rosemary bush, which is constantly picked, especially on Sundays, and whacked into our Sunday roasts. Slow cooked lamb shoulder with rosemary, with roast potatoes and rosemary. There is something so comforting about walking into any home and smelling rosemary being cooked in the oven.
Leftovers.
The aforementioned roasted cod and beans at Restaurant Mine.
A 1992 Bernadette Mayer poem called We Eat Out Together.
I’ve long-admired Alexis Nikole Nelson (@blackforager); here’s a New Yorker piece on her florivore influence.
*Immediately books table at Parsons*
Paz sals doing the rounds via Dan Pelosi, Molly B and Alison Roman (SNOA version incoming).
No, but these milk buns and fish patties from NYC’s Winson Bakery.
It’s confit tomato szn, friends.
Few do simplicity like Towpath Café.
Stanley Tucci. Italy. An iconic duo.