Quince

These things are bone-familiar, yet rare. The quinces ripe on the trees. The shadowed light of a kitchen where a thin cloth in the window softens the sun. An old wooden table. 

I grated one small quince and squeezed lemon juice across it. Salt, some chile/chili/chilli, and it was a quick sambal, ready for the lamb chops we cooked over coals under a shimmering southern sky. The sheep eat the bushes that grow in the veld we can see.

In this old house  where we are staying, with thick walls, low doors, and and high gables and layers of thatch, I wondered how many hands had prepared quinces, before me.

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Yuzu syrup, sort of

Every winter I make yuzu syrup. The question is, Every winter since...when? I'm struggling to identify a year. Our yuzu tree arrived in 2020. But had I only made yuzu kosho before that - the intense condiment made from unripe yuzu and green chiles? Did I make yuzu syrup from the ripe fruit later that year? I need to dive into the archives.

The fruit in the photo above came from Flavors by Bhumi, a grower in New Jersey that also sources fruit from California. The trees, Citrus junos, are relatively cold hardy but still require some protection here, in USDA growing zone 7b (-ish). Container-grown trees should still come indoors for winter.

And these are not yuzu, but bergamot. Yes, the same bergamot that is in Earl Grey tea. The same bergamot that inflects many perfumes, including the cologne my father wore, Penhaligon's Blenheim Bouquet. I have a tiny bottle of it, that I took from his bathroom cabinet after he died, in 2018 (the same year my second book was published, which was in the same month we lost our previous lease, and the same year my one brother, Francois, accused me of stealing a fortune's worth - apparently - of Kruger Rands from my father, who had dementia and lost track of things, and who was convinced that he had lost them. The same year my other brother, Anton, stormed into my mom's room hours after my father had died, and pulled me out physically, demanding to know the whereabouts of said Kruger Rands. Threats.

After my mom's death last year, Anton realized, at last, that I had not, in fact, taken them. That was a surprise. But Francois had slipped up. He doesn't often, and when he does it's helpful. Anton got in touch with me the day my mom died. It was the first time we'd spoken since my father died. He hadn't got in touch with me weeks or days before to tell me my mother was gravely ill (a carer called me on a Thursday to tell me my mother was "unwell." I landed in Cape Town on Monday evening, and she died in my arms just after 4am on Tuesday. I did not get there in time for her to know I was there. Not something I will ever forget.)

The day she died, I got that brotherly call, not to commiserate but to demand the whereabouts of the missing gold. I hadn't slept in three days. But it brought to light the slip-up: Some years ago Francois messaged me and sent me a picture: a pile of shiny Kruger Rands, apparently missing quite a few. He had arranged them on the cover my first book, which I thought was an interesting choice. Look what I found! he said. I asked where, and when he said, In the safe (that multiple people had searched, many times), I knew. Huh. The surprise was that he had never told Anton. His buddy. He had counted on the two of us never speaking again, and fanned the flames of animosity as required. And now, fast forward to 2024, they were apparently gone, again! But at least the blame had shifted from me. And if I am looking over my shoulder, it was only out of fear of one brother now, not both. 

I learned, that early morning after my mother died, that Francois and his wife had arranged about a week earlier for an undertaker to be ready to fetch her body when the time came. Then they went on vacation, leaving her. She never regained consciousness. Three days after her funeral Francois arranged a meeting to dissolve a family trust. I was on a plane to Brooklyn.

There's a tiny amount of liquid left in the Penhaligon's spray bottle. A quick spritz into the air and it summons, immediately, my father, as though exiting our Brooklyn bathroom (where he never set foo), close-shaved, sillage in the hallway, a crisp collared shirt, cufflinks, suit, shining, leather-soled shoes. Tie pin.

You can make this fermented syrup with any citrus. The sugar and fruit sit together in a jar, the granular sugar dissolving rather quickly into a translucent, aromatic syrup. Left longer, the sweetness evolves and becomes more complex. The fruit slices become gradually crystalline and soft, and very edible. 

The recipe for yuzu syrup (or any-other-citrus-syrup) is up on Gardenista.

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Winter Walks and Picnics

Lilies, and the mighty eep

Regal lilies on the terrace. They opened in the night, and this evening we will sit down outside to a scented supper.

In all the years that we lived with Don Estorbo de la Bodega Dominicana (our big black cat, with a mighty eep) he never tried to nibble a lily (they are highly toxic to cats). I suspect this is because he was an outdoor cat and had grass nearby. He'd actually run after me on the roof if he saw me weeding, and beg for a blade of green. He also never showed the slightest interest in hunting birds, which was also strange, but welcome.  He did hate pigeons, though. Typical New Yorker.

But this is a post about lilies, not dead cats. I am ready for a new cat. It only took eight years. That kitty left huge paw prints to fill.

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What was, may be?

In freezing January it is helpful to look back at scenes of another life lived, just a few months ago. I am still sorting photos dating back to the middle of last year, and here are some good - and occasionally perplexing - moments.

The aperitif - honeysuckle cordial and basil - sipped on the warm July terrace, with the book I just bought, written by a new friend, Serena Bass. We met through social media, before feeding each other at our respective Brooklyn homes. She is a chef and formidable cook (the two don't always go together, curiously), and a truly delightful human. One of the rare ones who makes you feel special, and consequently a lesson in How to be a Better Person.

This was really perplexing. Looking at the photo I wondered...what is it? Sour cream? With garam masala? What's the golden stuff? Was it a marinade for a grilled supper? I checked the date on the digital file, checked my diary, and found a forage walk. Phew. Checked my emails, discovered the menu for the walk and... Lilac honey, cream cheese, full cream yogurt and ground spicebush (Lindera benzoin fruit). So that took eight minutes. It's slow going.

For the picnic we spread it on persimmon focaccia. Under mighty tulip trees, in an old cemetery. A good memory today, with howling wind, and grey-and-white light.

Also in July last year the Frenchman and I returned to the Hudson Valley woodland paths where we had stumbled upon a trove of chanterelles, in 2019. This beautiful green place was unreachable for the whole of 2020, while a massive COVID-testing site mushroomed (sorry) nearby and all access was shut down. We felt very lucky to find them again, and we stocked up!

One of the meals I made with the chanterelles was this one, where meatballs studded with pine nuts cooked with the apricot-smelling mushrooms in a pan sauce of vermouth and cream, gooseberries and summer squash.

Summer means lilies. The Silk Road is statuesque, and I hope the bulbs will weather the very low temperatures we have just seen, and will experience again in a few days' time. They are very cold-hardy, but it's the frozen pots that pose the problem: the base freezes and prevents drainage. The bulbs can rot. Fingers crossed. They have grown in each of my four New York gardens.

The windowboxes undergo seasonal makeovers, which gives me an excuse to shop for plants. These pretty yellow hyssops (Agastache) came from the Gowanus Nursery, and replaced the hard-working Nemesias (which are a South African wildflower; it always makes me very happy to see them).

Nemesias out (the cut flowers saved and on the table), Agastache in. On the left the flourishing bay tree (now indoors until April). 

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My Books

Of hayfever and wild lilacs

The middle of May and the evenings stay lighter and lighter.  This is 7.38pm. The chicken on the grill has been seasoned with berbere, an East African spice mix that I first met when I waitressed at Cafe Adulis in New Haven, many years ago. The owners were Eritrean. My tips were stuffed into an envelope at home and once a month I walked several blocks and deposited them. And then I paid the rent. It was a hard time but I learned independence, met good people, and grew to love this potent blend of chiles, cinnamon and cardamom (and a few other things, too!).

Back to now. The Frenchman and I drove home from the Catskills with these bunches of feral lilac. They smelled wonderful and also gave us the worst hayfever attacks we have ever experienced. So they were banished to the stone table. But everything is in bloom - meaning trees and grasses - and producing pollen, and out on the terrace we can hear people sneezing, like a spring percussion.

The lilac flowers are being turned into a May wine to be served at a forage picnic this weekend (a bachelorette walk for a group of friends), and the rest will be the finishing, perfumed touch for a May vermouth. All the flavors of May, minus the sneezes.

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Classes:

NYBG, 27 May - Spring Edible Plant Walk

Alley Pond Park, 23 June - Midsummer Edible Plant Stroll

Rusks

South African rusks are in my blood. In the houses of my childhood and teenagehood rusks lived in big metal cake tins that gradually collected dry layers of loose crumbs. Rusks were served in little baskets when tea was made. 11am and 4pm. And you dunked. If you went on a long road trip and stopped beside the road for a break, you had rusks and instant coffee. 

When the Frenchman and I have gone camping rusks were breakfast, easily packed into the breakfast box with the Bialetti, the ground coffee, the sugar jar, and the enamel cups. My Canadian-born, French-blooded husband took to rusks the way he took to South African boerewors. He fell in love, hard. 

They are hard, yet brittle, dry through and through. They travel well. They are sweet. They suck up hot liquid and turn just soft enough to bite. If you dip too long they calve into the cup like a global warming glacier and send a tsunami of brown liquid across your pajamas (you can study rusk splatter the way experts study blood spatter to piece together prior events). 

There are many styles of rusk, from delicate mosbolletjie flavored with caraway, to knobbly bran-and-raisin, to the classic buttermilk, cut into neat rectangles. The ones I grew up with had loads of butter and warm milk, and cream of tartar. 

In Brooklyn, that warm, sweet smell of drying rusks, baked for the first time late in this year of pandemic, whooshes me back to my mother's Bloemfontein and Cape Town kitchens, where she mixed enormous batches in a huge cast iron Dutch oven covered in chipped, pale yellow enamel. On Sundays it held a roast leg of lamb. I would beg for a still-soft rusk hot from the oven, split it, and cover it in butter and Marmite. Then, they are like American biscuits (or English scones). After, they are split and dried slowly. If kept dry, they last approximately forever.

I made rusks recently for the Frenchman, to whom rusks mean an unspooling road to the horizon, a car's nose pointed towards adventure, and freedom from desks and meetings and deadlines and targets. Because he has found that a low-carb diet works for him, I also worked out the carb count for each half-rusk. Because you eat rusks in halves. Now, if he wakes and worries in the night, he says he thinks of his morning cup of coffee, and the first dunk. It is his Om.

I based the rusks on my mom's recipe, and added yellow sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis) whose honey-like, fresh-mown hay scent is wonderful in baking. Collect its flowers in summer and dry them for use through the year. But the rusks are authentic without it. Go next door for the rusk recipe, residing at 66 Square Feet (the Food). 

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NYBG Winter Walk - 21 January

African Violet Revival

Late last year I cycled to Lowe's to look for a bag of potting soil. One downside of our move last year was that it put unwelcome distance between us and the two person-owned nurseries I like (GRDN and Gowanus). And I was desperate. So Lowe's. But they only had horrible Miracle Gro, filled with synthetic fertilizers, I turned to leave. But not before I cast a fatal glance at the indoor plant section on the way out.

Many of the plants were wilted and their soil desiccated. But the rich colour of some African violets stopped me. I felt their soil. Dry like the Kgalagadi desert in July. Their price? $3.99 each. How do you even grow a plant for $3.99? The labor, the transport...? I scooped them up and rode them home nestled in my bicycle box, their bag tied shut against the cold November air.

These cheap little plants woke up a very old, buried plant love. I grew African violets on my bedroom's windowsill - propagated them from leaves - as a very small girl. The cuttings came from my grandmother Quez (to me she was Ouma) who grew them on the windowsills in her flat. Her plants may have come from her down-the corridor neighbour Tina, who was effusive in her affection toward me, and the real violet queen: she had dozens of plants, and they were always in full bloom. They were intoxicating.

I adored the flowers then, and looking at the plants that I began to collect again last year, I was reminded of how they fascinated me, all those years ago: it was like meeting long-forgotten landmarks within the botanical details of pollen, petal-iridescence, leaf texture. Mesmerising. I started looking for more but could find them nowhere but on Lowe's reject pile. So I rescued them.

I wanted some rich and some subtle colours, but I bought what was available. They are riotous and a little gaudy and I love them.

Where is the African violet comeback? They are perfect for small spaces and apartments. They actively dislike direct sunlight. Give them that despised northern window light. Water them in their saucer once a week, and feed them every time (I am using Espoma's African Violet Food, but need a few more weeks to see how well it works).

I took some cuttings. The undersides of their leaves are exquisitely anatomical.

These cuttings have since rooted very well.

This last picture was taken a few days before I rushed to South Africa, leaving autumn's bounty forgotten.

But the violets live on, happily, and I must find some more.

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Book A Wild Plant Walk

Bottling it up

The road to vermouth does not always involve sorrow.

I had not stayed with my father the night he died. He was alone. I had not known he would be, but the night before, when Vince and I left the hospital, my body collapsed in grief. It knew, if I wasn't sure, that I would not see him alive, again. I never cried in the room with him - I never wanted him to see that sorrow, or to feel anyone else's stress. And so at unexpected times in those five days I would have to pull the car over, or risk accident.

When the call came to the house in the 4.30am dark,  I went to sit with him for the last time. The small dark nursing sister was there, and I was glad she had been on duty. Looking up into my eyes, she held my arm firmly and told me she was sorry. On a previous night, she had held my shoulder with that same firmness as I sat beside him, reading him childhood stories, from books whose pages were falling apart. The ward staff were kind. The previous day I was brought a tray of coffee, and asked if I would prefer hot or cold milk. And there was a cookie. I don't like cookies, but I ate that one, very carefully.

Immediately afterwards, that final morning, the shocking bureaucracy and decision making of death evicted any possibility of mourning. But in the blank days after my father's cremation, and when my husband's warmth had returned to New York, I began to gather wild flowers and fynbos herbs from the mountain, the surrounding green spaces, and my mother's garden. In small jars each plant began infusing in good vodka. Elderflowers and wild plums began to ferment.

On the last day of 2018 I blended and bottled the vermouth. That year is over. And from its end there is a local alchemy that tells the story of this Cape Town summer.

Vermouth captures time and place like nothing else I know. When I open it in Brooklyn, sometime in a new year whose days remain to be filled, I know I will cry.

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Forage, Harvest, Feast

(Yes, there is a vermouth recipe)

Storm's River - place of waves

After seven long hours on the road from Cape Town to Storm's River, it was a relief to reach our roomy wooden chalet perched at the highest spot above the crashing waves of the spectacular Tsitsikamma National Park. We had been checked into the park by a very efficient and friendly SAN Parks staff employee, who dealt with a long line of tired and impatient Dutch and German guests (we were the only South Africans at that time) as we all poured in from various corners of South Africa, stiff from driving, hungry for showers, clean beds and the views we knew were around the corner.

Below the chalets were the campers and their tents, right on the shoreline (where we had stayed, before), with a very high tide sending waves roaring over the rocks. In the blue valleys between the waves we spotted pods of dolphins, who stayed and played in the huge breakers for hours, with more elusive whales blowing in the background.

The Frenchman was in heaven. Seeing him unfettered and trigger happy made me smile.

All around the campsite fires were lit, with embers sparking as people began their supper preparations. We lit our braai on the incongruous set up - an iron grid and ash box attached directly to the wooden railing of our high wooden balcony, and rather wobbly. It would take only one very heavy person to lean against it and go whoops right over the side - I cannot imagine this in America, but in South Africa perhaps the need to braai wins. It is like an inalienable right. (There was a second braai on the private patio below, reached by steps.) What did we cook? Chops, I recall, and boerewors, with a salad of cucumber and tomatoes. Red wine. Basic, happy food.

It was cold, and we sat outside well wrapped, later sliding between crisp white sheets beneath layers of comforters and blankets, falling into a sound sleep to the boom of the surf.

Early the next morning our blue view brought a lump to my throat. I know these creamy seas. I swam in this water and these waves every childhood summer until I was an elderly teenager. Not right here, but a few dozen miles further west, at Plettenberg Bay. A strong swimmer, I lived in this sea. Hearing and smelling and seeing the powerful surf - quite different from Cape Town's colder water - brought back physical memories and longings I can barely articulate.

In the morning on a short walk (we had to check out by 10am and drive on to Addo) I spotted pokeweed, a species I had never seen. My friend Don offers Phytolacca octandra for identification. Even though it was still spring, and the night had been very cold, the plant was at the maturity stage I would expect in late summer, Stateside (from Phytolacca americana). I'd love to see its earliest shoots and test how succulent (or not) they might be.

We had time for a walk across the little beach and onto a long and sinuous boardwalk that snaked towards the river mouth in the forest before heading back to pack the car again.

But Storm's River has been discovered and can be a busy spot - very beautiful, but now too trafficked for my taste. I noticed with some amusement (because I loathe racism), a rising xenophobia and antagonism in myself as European and Asian visitors brushed past us without greeting, talking loudly, behaving like tourists anywhere, oblivious of the birds in the canopy, the possible Cape clawless otters on the rocks below.  Most South Africans will look you in the eye and greet you, just a smile or a nod, or an actual hello - I find it charming, and I felt cross and resentful that Foreigners had not adopted this etiquette.

I needed to get further away from people.

Fortunately, we were headed in the right direction.

First, pack your box

Before you can go on a self catering roadtrip you have to pack. That's the fun part.

The Frenchman and I did not have much time to prepare, so it's fair to say I winged it, with food. But we know our habits well, by now, and knew we had seven days' meals to organize. We knew that we really only eat dinner, that breakfast is good espresso with hot milk and rusks to dunk, that lunch is opportunistic - a lucky dip into a large snack bag that contains an assortment of dried fruit, biltong and droewors (dried South African sausage), that wine every night is imperative and that I will die if I do not have fresh fruit and Green Things.

Into our big plastic container went two smaller ones: one stuffed with fruit that could travel well or ripen en route: kiwis that began rock hard but which were tender and sweet on Day 5, tamarillos, perfuming the whole box, a small papaya, passionfruit from the vine at home, a pineapple. Lemons. Because who can travel without lemons? In the other small container went potatoes - sweet, and regular; a huge head of garlic, onions, avocadoes and tomatoes.

In the loose part of the large box went the dry goods: long life milk and Illy coffee for breakfast, flour and yeast for the bread rolls that I made en route (with foraged sweet white clover) and cooked over coals, a small bottle of olive oil, ditto white wine vinegar, a small jar of salt, a larger one of sugar (we used the very last spoonful on the very last day), a baby pepper mill, canned tomatoes, tomato paste, crackers, custard for the Frenchman and tonic for our sundowners.

And nothing could rattle while we drove over rough roads. I hate rattling.

In a small coolbag with some dry ice went the fresh lettuce - an iceberg hybrid that looks like romaine, an excellent traveller. Rosemary and marjoram from the garden in a ziplock bag with a damp paper towel, red cabbage (indestructible), tiny cucumbers, hearty brown bread, butter and cheese.

One serious cooler held our main course supplies, frozen, with dry ice - and kept frozen overnight at every stop (we stayed in SANParks - South African National Parks - bungalows all the way, except for our last night). Lamb, lamb, and lamb. In various forms.

Almost every meal was cooked over the red coals of a fire, to the tune of a thundering Indian Ocean surf, rumbling, browsing elephants, the evening song of fiery necked nightjars in Eastern Cape thickets, and the caterwauling of jackals, high in the dryness and red dust of the Northern Cape.

South Africa is a country of magnificent landscapes and wild geographical and climactic contrasts, and we packed a kaleidoscope into a week and just under 3,000 kilometers.

I no longer take the ability to remember anything for granted. But while we have them, these memories will be sustenance. Ballast for bad times where the noise from upstairs makes Brooklyn nights impossible to sleep through. Antidotes for days when barking dogs and blaring horns and entitled white folk (at least where we live) believe their world is the only one.

Something to savor when we talk about what life can really be like.

The springing of the year*

I have not been out walking as much as I would have liked, this month. My first park-venture in weeks was to Prospect Park, to see what is happening in this very strange early spring. Above, Lonicera fragrantissima (which it is) - winter honeysuckle. A gorgeous shrub now, non-descript in summer, and very invasive in general. The flowers would be exceptional, caught in an overnight or fermented infusion.

Catkins that I do not recognize, above. A picture of the bark would help, of course. Sorry.

Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) flowers! This means that the woods in Inwood are alight, right now. I do miss that about living in Harlem - a quick subway ride up to Inwood Hill Park, or a 15 minute walk to Central Park's North Woods. Now, Inwood is 50 minutes way, at least.

Close, but different. Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas), a dogwood from eastern Europe. Warmer yellow, with small flowers in umbels.

Ugh, nasty man. Says something, then speeds off. Where's the pepper spray when you need it? 

Invasive and yummy field garlic - no, I didn't collect any. 

A surprise (right after a second nasty man encounter - this one elderly and lurking in the woods we cleaned for that year; a voyeur, hoping for juiciness; I'll spare you the details). But I looked down, and there were these tiny bloodroot flowers. Sanguinaria canadensis. They will be at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, too, easier to see, in the Native Garden.

I walked some more, meeting early chipmunks and returned robins rooting in the leaf litter, and spotting the first tender leaves of elderberry bushes. Lots of litter. And emerging at last in the north, in time for my camera battery to die and my phone to take over:

I cut west and walked home down the streets of Park Slope, past the earliest of cherries, choosing Union to take me home, over the Gowanus ("It doesn't look so bad," said a woman to her friend, watching the water where beige foam spewed from a pipe, to be kept contained behind a floating boom).

* The Springing of the Year - the title of this post is also the title of a uniquely interesting and beautiful book by Gillian Rattray, who kept a water colour-illustrated journal of her observations of plant and animal life on a family farm in then Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), South Africa. I read it as a teenager (it still lives in my Cape Town bedroom). Tragedy later visited the family - her grown son was murdered in the land she loved, not foreshadowed in her botanical illustrations and records of country life.

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Book a Spring Forage Walk

Contact

We really were unplugged. No laptops, no signal.

The Frenchman and I are back in Cape Town after a few days away near the very, very southern tip of Africa.

There was a lot of sky, there were horizons (whose memory is to be hoarded for the dark and enclosed Harlem days to come). There were fragrant dune plants. There were blue cranes whose rough calls in flight gave us a new thing to remember. There was a wide blue tide whose rising and retreating left exposed and hidden a vast sand canvas where flamingos and terns, salty plants, small fish and hermit crabs made daily new watery pictures. There was the sound of surf, always.

It was good, it was not enough, it was more than many have, it was very beautiful.

Thank you Don, for the suggestion.