Author: @lickedspoon

Love and a Licked Spoon is written by Debora Robertson, food writer, editor, enthusiastic kitchen botherer and optimistic planter of pretty and edible things. She lives in SW France with her husband Séan, a dog, a cat and a mountain of cookbooks and seed catalogues. She is ideologically opposed to rectangular plates. Her latest book, Declutter: The get-real guide to creating calm from chaos was published by Kyle Books in 2018. Dogs' Dinners: The healthy, happy way to feed your dog was published by Pavillion Books in 2018. Gifts from the Garden: 100 Gorgeous Homegrown Presents, was published by Kyle Books in 2012.

Do the Stokey Pokey

Paul and Sam at the grill.

There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger’s origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes.
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

I love where I live. I love that I can buy lightbulbs, shoes, packets of nails or buttons, chillies, guavas, curry leaves, home-made pesto, embroidery thread, books, bras, sardines, bread, cat collars and dog treats, baking tins, parcel tape, compost and pruning knives, wrapping paper, baklava and mixing bowls all within a ten-minute walk from my front door. But for years, to buy really good meat I had to get on the bus to Highbury or wait until Saturday for the farmers’ market. I’m not a wait-until-Saturday kind of girl.
A year or so ago the shutters went down on a small restaurant which had no discernible menu or, indeed, customers. Work began inside. Rumours ran up and down Church Street faster than a hipster on a fixed wheelie. Would it be another café? One more shop plundering the surely-soon-to-be-exhausted vintage clothing mines? Horror of horrors, another estate agent? Then something wonderful happened. The long, narrow interior suddenly sparkled with white tiles. Fridge cabinets appeared along the walls. A notice appeared in the window. It was going to be a butcher. If there were a single thing that would improve the quality of my life, it was this. No more bus trips, no more waiting for Saturday.
And what a great butcher it is. The meat is excellent, the staff cheerful, helpful. They open in the evenings and on Sundays. When I pop in for a chicken or a shin of beef or a bit of scrag end, they always pop a bone into my bag for the dog. Usually the bone is bigger than the dog. Often, so thrilled is Barney with his present, he hides it, burying it in some corner of the garden to be retrieved weeks later, filthy and rotting, and deposits it on a rug or (shiver) bed as the most precious of gifts.

So a nice thing happened, to make up for the filthy and rotting yet most precious of gifts. Paul Grout, one of the shop’s owners, invited me to judge The Stokey Pokey Sausage competition. Customers submitted their favourite sausage recipes and Paul and his staff whittled them down to their top five, which they made up in gorgeous, generous links.
Last Sunday afternoon, I trotted along to the shop thinking I really should be wearing a hat and gloves, the Mrs Miniver-ish uniform of the lady judge. At the garden in the back of the shop, the grill was lit, delicious, savoury smoke wafted into the damp autumn air and we warmed ourselves with the first mulled wine of the season. My fellow judge was Jane Curran, food editor of Woman & Home magazine (and fellow Gooner; when we’re together talk as much about football as we do about food). We chewed and sniffed, scribbled and debated the merits of seasonings and textures, and whether a chicken sausage could ever trump a pork sausage.

In the end, we decided it couldn’t. Even though it was delicious, we thought the combination of chicken, fajita spices, onion, red and yellow peppers and green chillis would make a better burger or meatballs. So the winner was Harry Crabb, with his pork, garlic, nutmeg, allspice, milk powder and white wine sausage. Harry told me it was his mum’s recipe, one she’d got from an Italian woman who’d been her pen friend since they were girls, whose family the young Harry and his siblings had visited and who had visited them here in England. If you’re local, Harry’s sausage will be on sale in the shop from this weekend. It’s really good. I suggest you try it.

Paul announces the winner.

Harry with his prize.

Paul’s Sizzling Sausage Tips If you’re not local but you’d love to have a go at making your own sausages, here are Paul’s top tips for success. He knows his sausages. He also runs the excellent Butcher at Leadenhall in Leadenhall Market and used to be the butchery and charcuterie manager at Harvey Nichols. He also teaches courses in the shop if you fancy a bit of hands-on instruction.

Always use good meat It’s very important to remember that what you put in is what you get out. It’s absolutely not true that sausages are the ‘dumping ground’ of the butcher’s shop. Go to a butcher you trust to give you well-bred animals which have lived and fed on the land. Ask for a recommendation as to the best cuts for sausages.
Sausages need fat Don’t be afraid of the fat. This is another reason why it’s important to use good meat. We are what we eat and well-fed animals will produce tasty fats. A good, juicy sausage will have about 20% fat to meat content. Sausages with little or no fat content will be dry and unpalatable. For small batches, it should be possible to buy a cut which offers meat and fat together, such as pork belly, lamb shoulder or beef chuck.
Don’t overwork the meat When chopping, mincing and mixing, handle the meat as little as possible and keep it cold. If the meat is overworked, or becomes too warm, the mix will become ‘sticky’ in the mouth. Mince the meat once, add the flavourings (herbs, spices, vegetables and seasonings) and mix quickly. Let the mix rest in a cool place. (NB If using root vegetables, it’s important to cook them off and allow them to cool before adding them to the sausage mix. The time it takes to cook your sausages will not be enough to cook your vegetables.)
Always use natural casing (skins) Use pork skins for ‘bangers’ and lamb skins for chipolata or cocktail sausages. It’s never acceptable to use ‘man made’ skins – yuck!
Let your sausages rest Having made your sausages, it’s good to let them rest. The skins will dry a little and become firm with the meat and any unwanted liquids will drain away. Too much liquid in your sausages is one of the reasons why they burst in the pan. Too much fat, or poor meat, are other reasons for exploding sausages which is why, historically, sausages were known as ‘bangers’.

Meat N16, 104 Stoke Newington Church Street, London N16 OLA 020 7254 0724
Open Tuesday to Friday 9.30am-7pm; Saturday 9am-5pm; Sunday 9.30am-4pm

Please Support the Blue Cross Big Neutering Campaign

A couple of years ago, I was walking Barney in Clissold Park when I saw a young woman, hugely pregnant, crying on a bench as her spaniel leapt and yapped around her. It turned out she was terrified of how she’d cope with a lively young dog who ran off all of the time when she had a baby to take care of too. I asked her if she’d thought of having the dog neutered as he might calm down a bit. ‘Oh no, she said. ‘My husband won’t hear of it.’

So here the poor woman was, dragging a randy, roamy dog around the park because her husband’s fragile sense of masculinity rested entirely on the entirety of his dog. Which he didn’t walk.

He’s one of many. I meet people all the time who don’t spay and neuter their pets because the thought of it makes them squeamish, or because they think they should have ‘just one litter’ or some other self-indulgent nonsense. I’ve also lost count of the number of dogs I’ve seen abandoned in the park, either old and frail or younger dogs who’ve started to lose their puppy-cuteness and amiability. My friend Louise Glazebrook is a dog behaviourist and trainer who is constantly trying to find homes for abandoned dogs who somehow find their way to her doorstep when there’s no room in the shelters. As there increasingly isn’t.

The animal charity Blue Cross has seen a 40% increase in the number of stray and abandoned pets they have taken in since 2010. I know that this isn’t something you might expect to read about on my blog, with its confection of recipes and ribbon, but it’s something I feel passionate about so I hope you’ll indulge me. The Blue Cross has launched their Big Neutering Campaign to encourage pet owners to neuter their pets.

Kim Hamilton, chief executive of Blue Cross, explains: ‘The tragedy is that somewhere along the line pets have become the latest throwaway commodity. For many, their pets are part of the family but there are simply too many pets and not enough of these good homes to go round. While charities like Blue Cross will always be there to give needy pets a healthy, happy future we must reverse this trend so pets are not disposed of like rubbish and neutering your pet is the norm.’

Neutering reduces the risk of some illnesses, makes your dog less likely to roam and fight, and in the case of males, makes them less likely to be a target of aggressive dogs. Please consider it.

Hidden promise

I’m really bad at delayed gratification. This serves me well in my career as a cook: think of a cake, bake a cake, eat a cake. Repeat as desired. This impatience, however, is a very poor quality indeed in a gardener. So much preparing and tilling and sowing, tending and pruning and nurturing and waiting. Endless sun-scorched, rain-lashed waiting. Gardening is optimism in action.

Fortunately, to keep us cheerful, some of the most glamorous flowers of all sprout quickly and undemandingly, going about the business of turning themselves into objects of beauty and wonder with precious little intervention from us.

Each autumn I go through the Blom’s Bulbs catalogue, seduced by its loving descriptions of colour, form and scent. Soon the catalogue is more Post-it note than paper. I find the descriptions as soothing as a cup of warm milk at bedtime: ‘Extremely strong and free flowering …Showy and weather resistant …Many small lilac flowers in the shape of stars…Lemon yellow cups becoming milk white with age.’

My order just arrived – a pleasingly heavy box filled with brown paper bags labelled with gaudy photographs, the number of bulbs carefully hand written in the top-right-hand corner. It’s astonishing to think that in a few months, these fat, papery bulbs will push through the cold spring soil in a bobbing tide of yellow, orange, purple, pink and white.

It’s easy to understand the tulipomania that engulfed Holland in the 1630s, so beautifully evoked in Deborah Moggach’s luscious novel, Tulip Fever. And as I squint at the greedily long list on my delivery note, I draw a little comfort from the thought that in 1637, a single tulip bulb cost more than ten times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. How very lucky we are.

This year’s list.

Gives good face

One of the things I enjoyed most about writing Gifts from the Garden was devising all of the beauty creams, lotions and balms. It made me feel a teeny bit witchy, which I like, but it was also enormously thrifty, which I love.

Most of the projects are made with things from the garden or kitchen cupboards, but some of the ingredients (such as the benzoin tincture used here) required a trip to Baldwins. Even now, with the book deadline a distant memory, I think of excuses to visit. It’s London’s oldest herbalist and has operated on Walworth Road since 1844. Go if you can, to enjoy the sight of shelves filled with jars of dried herbs and flowers and bottles of essential oils. They also have an excellent mail order service if you live further afield and their staff are enormously knowledgeable, patient and helpful. They also stock supplies for soap- and candle-making. I think if I was locked in there for, oh, three or four years, I would be perfectly content.

Fennel & honey face mask

Fennel is a natural astringent. It cleanses the skin and reduces puffiness. In India, gram or chickpea flour is used in many natural beauty treatments as it helps draw impurities out of the skin and is a gentle exfoliant. You can buy it from Asian stores and some supermarkets.

Makes approx. 170g, enough for 4–5 applications.

3 tablespoons fennel seeds, roughly crushed in a pestle and mortar
100g gram or chickpea flour
4 tablespoons runny honey
½ teaspoon benzoin tincture (a natural preservative)

1 jar or pot

Place the fennel seeds in a small pan with 80ml water. Bring to a simmer and immediately remove from the heat. Let the mixture cool and infuse, then strain through a fine sieve. Whisk together with the gram flour, honey and benzoin tincture until you have a thick paste. Spoon into the cold, sterilised jar or pot and seal.

The face mask should be smoothed onto a clean face and neck, left for 15 minutes, rubbed gently into the skin, then wiped off with a facecloth soaked in warm water. Rinse the skin in tepid water and pat dry with a fluffy towel before moisturising.

The face mask will keep in the fridge for 2 weeks.

packaging idea Tuck a soft, pretty facecloth into the package with the jar or pot for a simple, inexpensive but nonetheless thoughtful gift. Include a card with instructions for how to use the face mask too.

Growing Fennel

Airy fronds of fennel swaying in the breeze are such a pretty sight, and undoubtedly earn Foeniculum vulgare a place in the flower border, let alone the herb bed. Fennel can grow up to 1.5m tall and prefers rich, well-drained soil in a sunny site, though it will tolerate less-than-perfect conditions with fairly good heart. During the summer, keep picking at the fronds to encourage lots of sweet, young leaves. F. v. ‘Purpureum’, or bronze fennel, is less vigorous and has a milder flavour but is equally beautiful. The ripening seeds take on a yellowish shade.

Gifts from the Garden by Debora Robertson (Kyle Books, £16.99) Photography: Yuki Sugiura

Consider the squash

Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.

Linus, from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, 1966

I know, I know. At this time of year, pumpkin and squash recipes are splattered all over the internet like spaghetti sauce over a sloppy diner’s shirt. I add to them only because – if I pick up a butternut squash on the way home – I pretty much always have the rest of the ingredients tucked away somewhere in my kitchen and garden.

To be honest, I’d rather call this pumpkin soup. ‘Pumpkin’ sounds round, inviting, friendly. ‘Squash’ sounds well, rather deflating and miserable. But I make it with butternut squash as you can buy them almost everywhere. Crown Prince squash is also delicious if you can get your hands on one.

Every time I enter our local pub quiz, I have a tiny but persistent fear. One day the question ‘What is the difference between a squash and a pumpkin?’ will come up and, as I’m the designated food person on our team, all eyes will fall on me. In my imagination this is how that scenario plays out: I flail about a bit and then draw to my team mates’ attention my outstanding performance in the show tunes section, throwing in some over-exuberant jazz hands as a distraction from my curcurbita-based ignorance. I draw comfort from my friend Mark Diacono’s description in River Cottage Handbook No 4: Veg Patch

‘The distinction between pumpkins, squash and gourds is bizarrely vague, and even their botanical names provide little guidance. If it helps, I tend to think that pumpkins are generally orange, gourds and mostly inedible, squash are almost always delicious, So, concentrate on squash for the kitchen, a pumpkin or two for Hallowe’en, and decorative gourds to weird up your plot.’

Eat one, carve one, weird up your plot. Happy autumn!

Peeled squash and garlic.

Roasted butternut squash and garlic soup

I adapted Gordon Ramsay’s roasting method from this recipe. Roasting the squash and garlic together gives it a deeper, richer flavour which goes down well with those who sometimes find the sweetness of squash cloying (me).

Serves six

1 large butternut squash
4 tablespoons olive oil
A few sprigs of thyme
6 garlic cloves, unpeeled, 1 halved and the rest bashed to break the skin
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground coriander
1 small red or green chilli, membrane and seeds removed and finely chopped
2 onions, diced
1 – 1.2 l chicken or vegetable stock

Flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Some feta and fresh coriander or dill to finish

Preheat the oven to 190˚C/gas mark 5.

Halve the squash lengthways and scoop out the seeds. Place them in a roasting tin. Score the flesh with a small, sharp knife and brush with olive oil. Halve one of the garlic cloves and rub the flesh with the garlic then season with salt and pepper. Put the rest of the garlic in the hollows of the squash and scatter over the thyme. Trickle a bit more olive oil over the garlic and put them in the oven. Bake until the flesh is very tender and slightly charred, about 1 hour. A knife should pierce the flesh very easily. Remove from the oven and leave until cool enough to handle.

While the squash is cooking, warm a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a medium-sized saucepan over a medium-low heat and sauté the onions gently with a pinch of salt until very soft and translucent, stirring from time to time. Don’t let them take on any colour. This should take about 20-30 minutes.

Scoop the flesh out of the squash into a bowl. It should come away very easily, leaving only the papery skin. Make sure you pour the garlicky oil from the squash’s hollows into the bowl into the bowl too. Squeeze the roasted garlic into the bowl with the squash. Discard the garlic skins and thyme.

Add the cumin, coriander and chilli to the onions and stir for a minute or two over a medium heat. Add the squash and garlic and stir well. Add the stock and bring to a simmer. Simmer gently for 15 minutes, remove from the heat and cool slightly. Whizz until smooth in a food processor or blender; you may need to do this in batches. Return to the pan and warm through. Add more salt and pepper if necessary.

Serve in warmed bowls with some crumbled feta and fresh coriander scattered over the top.