Welcome to my weekly Letter from Nettle & Quince, in which I share stories, articles and recipes, as well as restaurants, books, exhibitions, …, that inspire through the seasons.
Some things that subscribers received in their inboxes in the last few weeks:
7 good things in October — From a dinner of leftovers to a stunning exhibition, a retroactive mood board of sorts that captures some of the best that October brought my way.
And finally, the temperature dropped — The time for soup! And our Halloween traditions.
It’s free so please do share, and a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has.
It is so unlike me, but in the past I always bought the useless, inedible variety of carving pumpkins for Halloween. They are easier to whittle, and once decorated, set out, forgotten on the stoop for a few Halloween hangover days, no one needed worry about next steps. We all have blind spots when it comes to following our own principles. A jam jar isn’t finished in my book if half a teaspoon can still be scraped from the sides. (My sister goes so far as to use the jar for ‘jam tea’ by swishing the remnants with hot water. I now do this with honey.) Stale bread is saved, sometimes for weeks, to make ‘pain perdu’ = lost bread = French toast. Vegetables one step away from decomposition forgotten at the bottom of the fridge drawer are always transmogrified into soup.
But, somehow, I fell into the trap of expediency when it came to Halloween pumpkins. Until this week. The only ones left at our corner vegetable grocer on Tuesday were beautiful Crown Prince squashes. They were the only ones but either way, they were irresistible. In truth the carving wasn’t more difficult — Max did it entirely independently — saving the flesh post-Halloween was not a big deal, and now that the job is done our freezer is packed to the gills with pre-cut pumpkin. How cool is that! I’m excited. There is much pumpkin in our future, and so easy now too. No reason to ever go back to the useless variety.
COOK
Predictably, my attention is geared toward SQUASH these days, so I’ve been making and flagging new recipes.
This winter squash and spinach pasta bake is great. [Smitten Kitchen]
Ravinder Bhogal’s Pumpkin in Agrodolce sounds delicious. [FT / paywall].
Diana Henry’s most recent European inspired soup recipes features a deceptively simple and very good Austrian pumpkin soup. The secret ingredient is paprika. I complemented mine with pumpkin seed oil rather than dill, because I’m obsessed. [Telegraph / paywall]
So are we eating nothing but SOUP? And will you forgive me for directing you to yet more soup recipes …
Fish soup is something I love but never make, I feel intimidated by it. With this ‘quick and easy’ version there is no excuse, it might be my way in. [Guardian]
At the other end of the spectrum is the River Cafe Ribollita, which I’ve described in the past as ‘insanely time-intensive but completely-worth-it’ (It’s in the first Blue River Café Cookbook). I found the recipe reproduced here, tucked amid a flurry of other stew-style soups in an article by Annie Bell from 1997! [The Independent]
More Autumn soups from the Nettle & Quince archives.
But enough of vegetables, it is time for CAKE.
Nigel Slater’s tantalizing Fig and Hazelnut cake ‘celebrate[s] autumn and the return to home-baking.’ I will make it this weekend. [Guardian]
READ
This post from Fiona Beckett’s Eat This Drink That: How to deal with darker nights. I’ve always loved the cosiness of darker days for many of the reasons suggested here. The feeling, at this time of year, that life folds inward and we should too, and savour the moment like finally sliding into bed at night, pulling the blanket up to one’s ears, and opening a book.
It isn’t the first time that I’ve mentioned Yewande Komolafe’s writing and her book My Everyday Lagos: Nigerian Cooking at Home and in the Diaspora is already on my wishlist. This excerpt gives an insight. [NYT unlocked]