The smell of elderflower is everywhere. Rain followed by sunshine has produced moist air that carries its flowery, musky perfume in drifts across the fields and down the lanes. It is strongest in the mornings when the air is still. It pools in the glades down by the stream and by the barns where it mingles with honeysuckle and eglantine to produce an intoxicating blend.

As with many other things this year, the elder is earlier into flower than usual. And, as with the blossom of plum, pear, cherry, apple and hawthorn, it also seems that it will be a bumper year for elderflower. Its more normal flowering time in mid-June always happens at one of the busiest times for us, with annuals to plant out, vegetables to sow and manage and a number of group garden visits, meaning that our focus gets pulled to the areas closer to the house. Combined with a run of wet Junes this means that for several years we have missed the opportunity to gather elder for cordial. Since many of our bushes are on the woodland fringe down by the stream and north-facing, we sometimes miss them completely, putting off to tomorrow what should be done today, lulled into a false sense of security that they will hold onto their flowers for some time yet in the cool. This season’s early start means that I have been able to gather the first blossom to appear and plan on making a batch of cordial this weekend.

Today’s recipe is a departure from the usual. It contains nothing home grown, nothing seasonal and yet it is one of my favourite and most frequently made recipes. The reason for this change of tack is that my Dad died a few weeks ago, his funeral is on Monday and I have spent every evening this week reading through his handwritten memoirs piecing together the eulogy I will give.

Dad was a proud Welshman and his memories of his childhood are vivid and emotive. He was born in Swansea on April 25^th 1935 and was brought up in the suburb of Cockett by his father, Herbert, who worked for an iron and steel merchant, and his mother, Winifred (née Lewis), who left school at 14 and was a maid in the Mayor’s Parlour in Swansea, until she married my grandfather in 1929. The house was on a road on the top of the hill (Town Hill) above Swansea Bay, and you had a fine view of its golden sweep from the upstairs back bedrooms. When we went there as children during the summer holidays, the sound of seagulls and the smell of the sea were ever present.

When I left university in Manchester in 1988 I returned to London, where my first job was as a Wardrobe Technician at the English National Opera. At that point I was set on becoming a costume designer and thought that this would be a good way into the industry. However, I quickly became aware that there exists an ‘upstairs downstairs’ hierarchy in the theatre, which meant that that door would never be opened to me from backstage. My days were spent ironing shirts, washing socks and underwear, removing stains and mending tears to get everything ready for my floor of the men’s chorus when they arrived to start preparing for the evening show.

The 18 months I spent working there were an education on many levels, not least in the variety of cuisines that were available just a step away from the theatre. Most meals were taken in the theatre canteen, but when there were breaks between performances a group of us would head out to Covent Garden or Soho to eat. Many of the places we would go to don’t exist any longer. Lorelei, the tiny pizza restaurant where you had to bring your own wine, Gaby’s Deli on the Charing Cross Road where I first experienced falafel, The Stockpot and Pollo Bar on Old Compton Street, which had long queues well before ‘no bookings’ culture made them ubiquitous and the New Piccadilly Café where a Full English fried breakfast was served in an interior that hadn’t been touched since the 1950’s. All now gone.

At secondary school I was the only boy in my year to take Cookery as a practical study subject. Woodwork and Metalwork were definitely not my thing and although I enjoyed art lessons and pottery particularly, given the option of only one practical subject at ‘O’ Level, it had to be cookery for me. I knew I was unusual amongst my male peers for being interested in cooking and, thinking about it now, I was doubtless bullied in part because of it, but when pushed to choose I didn’t think twice.

Lessons took place in a huge, high-ceilinged room in a new wing built in the 1970’s. Linoleum floored in a shade of petrol blue, banks of double-sided counters, each accommodating two students per side and each with a cooker set into it, were arranged perpendicular to the exterior wall. Plate glass windows running the length of the room offered an expansive view onto the sports field and the suburban landscape beyond. One day in 1980 we saw the smoke rising from Alexandra Palace as it burned.

This week it is exactly fourteen years since we left London and moved to Hillside. Although a lot has changed since then, this time of year still takes me back very strongly to that week. The sense of excitement as we drove along the ridge above our valley through heavy mist illuminated by a hidden sun. The astonishment of having long views to east and west after the claustrophobia of city skylines. And the magic of lying in bed with a view of sky and the treetops. Morning sun lit up the yellowing foliage of poplar, hornbeam and hazel, on the flank of the opposite hillside. The vista animated by the passage of rooks, crows and ravens, black as voids in the glowing backdrop.

The farmer before us had kept all trees away from the grassland to maximise grazing for his cattle. All that remained were an old holly, an exhausted damson and dying plum. In that first winter, determined to make our own mark on the landscape and eager to get a head start on growing food to eat, we planted our westernmost field with an extensive orchard of apples, pears, plums, gages and damsons. However, it was another two years before we got the long planned for nuttery planted, and we wished we had done it sooner, as the hazels were so slow to get away. Seven varieties were chosen, both cobnuts and filberts, with three or four of each variety, to make a total of twenty four trees. Their rate of growth was a little dispiriting for several years. In fact, some varieties looked as though they might fail, but now, twelve years later, all of them are thriving and threatening to burst through their tree guards next year.

Although this is the second article of the autumn issue, the cold nights and mornings this week have felt a little premature. Instagram is already full of images of ‘cozy’ autumn dishes made of pumpkin, potatoes and root vegetables, but I am not ready to turn my back on the produce of summer quite yet. The pumpkins will remain on the vines for another couple of weeks, taking up as much of the remaining sunshine they can. There are many months of roots and brassicas ahead, and I’m in no rush to get there. What we are harvesting and eating right now are considered to be the quintessential summer vegetables – tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, chillis, sweetcorn. Together with the last courgettes and beans, this is the food of this early autumn season.  

When you grow your own food, eating really seasonally sometimes feels out of step with what you see on social media or restaurant menus. Wild garlic in February, broad beans in March, asparagus in April, courgettes and new potatoes in May. But these jumps on the real season are not what is actually happening in most people’s vegetable patches. The very earliest wild garlic comes from the warmer gulfstream-influenced woods of Devon and Cornwall, while the broad beans, asparagus, courgettes and potatoes, even if local and not shipped in from overseas, come from polytunnels that are also in the southernmost parts of England. This can lead to the slightly frustrating feeling that you are behind in your vegetable growing and can lead to you berating your growing abilities or wishing the weeks away. I am not keen on this mad rush to get to the next season and much prefer the gentler bridges between seasons where, facing both backwards and forwards, you can eat the best of each season. Celeriac and spinach alongside the first broad beans, or potatoes and kale with the last tomatoes and first squash.

On one of the hottest days last week, as I walked along the back of the herb garden where the Benton irises sit at the base of the breezeblock wall, I was suddenly aware of a strong scent, which at first I couldn’t place. Mingled with the musky spearmint of calamint and resinous tang of lavender was a warm, fruity perfume that stood out. The afternoon sun beating down on the wall had created a hot spot alongside one of the granite water troughs and it is at this junction, just before the steps to the upper level, that our Afghan fig is planted.

The unfamiliar smell was coming from the leaves of the fig. Green and floral like freshly cut hay, but with a distinct undertone of coconut. Instantly I was reminded that last summer I had dried some fig leaves to be used as a flavouring for winter desserts. As well as coconut, the flavour that fig leaves impart has something of both almond and vanilla and so lends itself very well to milk and cream-based desserts; panna cotta, rice pudding or clafoutis. But in the long-awaited heat of last week, what I immediately had a hankering for was fig leaf ice cream.

I was in Greece last week, where the temperatures topped 32°C and it was impossible to think about moving from the shade until 6pm. Any time spent in the kitchen preparing food had to be brief and undemanding, requiring as little additional heat as possible. Cooking big meals was the last thing on anyone’s mind. I was staying with an old friend who was shortly heading back home to New Zealand and the challenge was to use up as much of the food as possible that she had left from her stay. One evening I was tasked with making a dish for a small dinner party of locals.

Felicity pointed me towards a bunch of island grown beetroot, a couple of red onions and a handful of mint that had seen better days and said, ‘Can you make something with that, darling?’. There were oranges and lemons in the fruit bowl, a well-stocked spice cupboard and a huge tub of Greek yogurt in the fridge. I started to think about how to combine them. Given our location it would have been easy to have made a simple knee jerk salad with yogurt and walnuts or olives and feta, but I cast around for a different approach. For less predictable Mediterranean flavours.

In the vegetable relay race of early spring, last year’s crops are now starting to flower on their mission to set seed. The leeks have sent up their flower spikes and the radicchios and chicories are finally coming to the end of their season and are about to follow suit.  The kales and purple sprouting broccolis have handed the baton to the spring greens, while the autumn sown chard is having its last gasp before being replaced by the plugs that I planted out last weekend. In the polytunnel, the autumn sown salads, spinach, herbs and spring onions are still producing but, with the lengthening days and higher temperatures, they too are starting to flower and are beginning to flag. So the aim has been to eat as much as we can, before everything bolts and is cleared out in advance of the tomatoes, peppers and aubergines.

This means we’ve been eating a lot of meals where greens are the primary ingredient. Pasta with a sauce of blanched and liquidised ‘Hungry Gap’ kale. Creamed kale. Kale in a cheese sauce. Kale risotto. Kale curry. Chargrilled and roasted spring cabbage with a dressing of tahini, garlic, lemon juice and mint or smothered in chopped olives, preserved lemon and parsley. Every lunch features a salad of spinach, mustard greens and the last of the winter lettuces. While we’ve had wild rocket for days. In salads, pestos, sandwiches, risotto. We can’t eat it fast enough, as it lives up to its name in exponential growth. It’s the first year I’ve grown it in the polytunnel and it has been so successful it will now be a regular feature.

For our Japanese visitors last week, foraging for spring greens is a very natural part of the reawakening that takes place after the long Hokkaido winter. The gathering of sansai (mountain vegetables) is an ancient tradition and one that, unlike here, is seemingly unbroken from its hunter gatherer origins. Indeed, sansai provided an important means of survival even up to the 19^th century as the large population struggled in the face of wars, famines and earthquakes without well-developed agricultural systems. Wild foods are still a fundamental part of the Japanese diet with cultural importance.

Midori told us how one must be very careful foraging for sansai in the forest in early spring, which there comes in late April. When the brown bears awake they are hungry and grumpy after their long hibernation, leading to the dangerous combination of them being both confused and aggressive for food. Foragers wear bear bells to alert the animals to their presence and must keep one eye and ear on the surrounding undergrowth in case they should need to run. Not quite the relaxed and bucolic scene we might experience when gathering wild garlic in the woods here on a spring morning.