Not adiós, simply until the next time

Until then, and since the age of 13, I had been getting my gastronomic kicks by collecting and reading cookbooks, and by spending a considerable amount of time in the kitchen learning how to interpret recipes from around the world.

I am now about to undergo another total turnaround that will take me back to my culinary roots: I am giving up food writing. My foodie frissons will once again come from doing some real cooking at home.
So this is the last weekly food article I’ll be writing for the Bulletin, and my final Ultima Hora piece appears tomorrow. I had never thought I’d retire from journalism, but that’s what’s happened.

The changeover to doing some real cooking occurred unexpectedly, at great speed and, somewhat ironically, the day after I had drawn up a longish list of future articles for the Bulletin and Ultima Hora.
That adds up to some enthralling material that will have to lie in limbo while I try to stir up a bit of culinary magic in the kitchen. So as one door closes for me, another is opening to reveal an exciting panorama.

Although I have had an intense interest in cookbooks and recipes for some 70 years, I have only scraped the surface and there’s still so much I don’t know, so many culinary adventures I haven’t undertaken or even entertained.

The first dish I cooked was a minestrone soup from Elizabeth David’s Italian Food. I did it on a bank holiday Monday when I was 15 and I needed three hours to get it ready for the table. I made a big pot and it impressed everyone.

That set my agenda for future culinary excursions: I became an interpreter of recipes and wasn’t at all interested in what became known as creative cookery. There were eventually piles of cookbooks on my two bedside tables (that’s still the case) and by reading them and visualising and analysing the recipes, I built up considerable culinary know-how.
Having been born into a Scottish-Italian family, I was introduced to Italian food from a very early age, so it’s no coincidence the first dish I cooked was a world famous Italian soup.

I also had an introduction to French food when I was 13 and started to spend the long school holidays with the French-Italian members of my family in France.

In the following years, I learned more about French cuisine through Elizabeth David’s and Jane Grigson’s marvellous cookbooks and they’re still among my favourite bedside reading. They are so packed with information that every time I glance through them I learn something new, or remember something I had forgotten.

But I wasn’t interested in baking and I never got round to doing any sweet or savoury pastries, except for an Elizabeth David pizza, her quiche Lorraine and a Mallorcan cheesecake from the recipe of the mother of one of my son’s school friends.

When I move into a small rented council bungalow next week (£325 a month) I’ll finally get down to doing some serious baking. It will be mainly savoury (I’ve never had a sweet tooth) and I’m particularly attracted to bread making.

There is a good choice of books on sourdough baking written by relative unknowns who are obviously real experts in this field and I have already bought two of them. The flat breads, a feature of cuisines all over the world, are also on my list of priorities.

I have a new all-gas oven and I’ll also be using it for Sunday roasts. I didn’t do much roasting in Mallorca and I’m looking forward to popping some Scottish beef and lamb into the oven. Scottish lambs are much larger than I was used to in Mallorca and I’m keen on trying one of the huge legs which every butcher has on display.

There’s a slight problem here: I prefer my roast lamb truly underdone in the traditional French style and no Briton I have ever met also likes it that way. I’ll probably have great difficulty finding any Scot who is at all interested in French style leg of lamb, which is roasted at 200C for only 10 minutes per pound. I may end up having to find myself a French girlfriend. Which wouldn’t be a bad idea, lamb or no lamb.

I have a front lawn where four squirrels, which nest nearby, sometimes come out to play. I’ll be feeding them with peanuts in the shell so they visit on a very frequent basis. And if they bring a few friends and make a real party of it, all to the good.

I have a generous-sized back garden, some of which I’ll use for growing kitchen herbs. The rest is for large green plants that flourish without much attention.

I’ll be seeking the advice of a nephew who was a landscape gardener and who’ll also supply me with some French tarragon, which cannot be grown from seed. The fresh herb sold in supermarkets is Russian tarragon and it doesn’t smell or taste of tarragon (or anything else) but everyone is quite happy to buy it and use it. Not me.

The rest of the back garden will be used as a party venue for which I’ll also need a barbecue pit — but not for chargrilling whole fish or cuts of meat. I’ll be using it instead as a source of even heat for large paellas for family and friends.

But it may take a little time to find a king-size paella pan, so the first rice dish I’ll make for the family will be a Mallorcan arroz brut, with alioli stuffed Scottish mussels as a starter and the Mallorcan cheesecake with almond ice cream.

Although I’m leaving gastronomic journalism behind, I’m not giving up writing: every day I’ll spend the mornings working on novels and short stories. That’s why I’m saying ‘until the next time’ instead of ‘adiós’, which has terrible sound of finality about it.

Just about anyone can write a novel and some short stories, but getting them published is something else. So don’t hold your breath while waiting for mine to appear.