This is the time of year when mum comes to mind. It is six years since her health took a turn for the worse and, after a rapid decline, she left us in late February as the Beast from the East swept across the country. February, the cruellest month, is now associated with this time. Those weeks spent back at my childhood home, taking turns with my brother to look after her. Sitting by her bedside, as the first stirrings of spring were held in check by the freeze, time seemed to stop. To stop and yet also to cast me back into my childhood and family memories, even as I now had to parent her.
Memories of mum, a seamstress’s daughter, sitting at the dining table running up a new outfit on the sewing machine and teaching me how to do the same. Of dad reading Dylan Thomas’s ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ aloud on Christmas Eve. Of the home-decorating and DIY projects that filled weekends and holidays; wallpapering, painting and tiling, stripping and re-upholstering furniture, clearing out and organising the attic and garden shed. And of our yearly holidays on the Gower in South Wales, where we would stay with our grandparents.
Although mum and dad moved from Swansea to London in the late 1950’s, five years before I was born, I have always felt Welsh, not English. Welsh was their first language and, although they never taught us to speak it, they often conversed in Welsh when my brother and I were children (usually when they were discussing things they didn’t want us to understand) and continued to do so right up until mum died. It was the language they felt most comfortable with and in which they were able to express themselves most truly.
As a child interested in food one of the things that came to define my Welsh identity were the traditional foods cooked by my grandmothers and mum. Bara brith (fruited tea bread), a stalwart of the tea table and beach hamper. Welsh Cakes (pice ar y maen) and pikelets (crempogau) cooked on a cast iron griddle. All three spread thickly with very salty Welsh butter. More challenging to a child’s palate were laverbread (a black and slimy coastal seaweed) served with cockles and bacon and faggots, pork and offal meatballs wrapped in caul with peas and onion gravy. My favourite of all, though, was cawl.
Cawl (pronounced cowl) is the generic Welsh word for soup or broth, but it is known throughout the country as a simple meat and vegetable stew. In north Wales it is more commonly known as lobscows, which relates it directly to both lobby, the Staffordshire beef stew and scouse, the eponymous Liverpudlian stew most commonly made with lamb. In south Wales cawl is usually made with lamb, while in the north it can be made with either lamb or beef.
A peasant dish, which varies from village to village and family to family, the vegetables always used are leek, carrot, swede and potato, although some add onion, turnip and parsnip. The family recipe handed down to me did not include the latter as my grandmother felt that, in combination with both the lamb and carrots, parsnips both made the stew too sweet and too strongly flavoured. Some versions are thickened with pearl barley, others have the addition of herbed dumplings.
Cawl was what mum made when my brother and I were sick, for winter Saturday or Sunday dinners, or perhaps when she and dad were a little homesick for the taste of home. The night before she would boil some neck or shoulder of lamb until it fell off the bone. Then either dad or I would strip the meat and put it in the fridge until the next day. The stock pan would be put out on the cold back doorstep for the fat to solidify overnight. The next day the disc of fat was lifted cleanly off, melted down again and kept for dripping.
The stock was brought to the boil and the vegetables added and cooked until soft. Highly seasoned with salt and white pepper and finished with lots of finely chopped parsley the stew was ladled into bowls, where golden beads of lamb fat played on the surface of the milky liquor. On the side were chunky slices of white bread thickly spread with more salted Welsh butter. The flavour of cawl always transports me back to those times and instils the same sense of comfort and security it did when I was a child.
As we don’t eat meat the process of making my own version of cawl is less protracted, meaning that it can easily be made the same day for lunch or supper. I leave out the potatoes, as the beans are floury enough, but the addition of celeriac adds savour and turnip a sweeter pepperiness that contrasts with the swede. Protein comes in the shape of giant Greek butter beans, which were one of the big successes in the vegetable garden last year, with over a kilo dried and put away in the pantry.
The stock is enriched with the addition of kombu seaweed, which adds flavour and body. Curly parsley, which grows all through the winter here, gives the most traditional flavour but, if you don’t grow your own, it can difficult to find in the shops, so it’s fine to substitute with flat-leaf parsley, which has a slightly stronger flavour. Historically marigolds were used in many traditional Welsh foods including cawl and a marigold cheese to which it gave a yellow colour and spicy flavour, which is what they add here. At the end of summer I pick and dry our own and, although they can be found at some wholefood shops and herbalists, if you can’t get hold of them, don’t worry. Although not as pretty, the soup tastes just fine without.
Serves 4
150g dried butter beans or around 300g cooked
2 large leeks, abut 200g trimmed weight
150g swede
150g turnip
150g carrot
150g celeriac
A 5cm long piece of kombu seaweed
A generous bunch of curly parsley
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons fresh or dried marigold petals (optional)
Soak the beans overnight. Put the beans and soaking liquid into a lidded pan with the bay leaf. Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes until tender. Remove from the heat.
While the beans are cooking peel the root vegetables and cut into bite size pieces. Cut the bottom 2cm of white from each of the leeks and reserve. Cut the leeks on the diagonal into slices about 1 cm thick.
Put all of the vegetables, apart from the reserved leek, into a saucepan with one litre of water and the kombu. Put on a medium heat and bring to a very gentle simmer. Cook until the root vegetables are tender to the point of a knife and the leeks are starting to break down. About 30 to 40 minutes. Remove the kombu.
Drain the beans and add to the pan of vegetables together with the reserved leek, which you have sliced finely. Simmer for a further 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and season generously with salt and white pepper.
Finely chop the parsley and add to the pot with the marigold petals. Stir and serve immediately.
Recipe and photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 10 February 2024
