team nigella

I'm so team nigella it's not even funny. If we can forgive Kate Moss for years of drug use I'm not sure what's stopping us from doing the same for Nigella. Maybe because she's up on a pedestal, and we take some of perverted pleasure in watching heroes - but in particular, heroines - fall. But we have to remember, it was us that put her up there. Us that made her the Domestic Goddess par excellence. She gave us the term, but we applied it to her, she who from the start just wanted women not to be afraid of the kitchen, not to be afraid of being domestic, not to label ourselves or let ourselves be labelled un-feminist because we enjoyed such a simple, traditional thing as cooking. There are so many women who owe their love of food and cooking to Nigella, but I just want to talk about one - me. It was to Nigella that I turned when I made my first home-baked birthday cake all on my own. I banished my mother from the kitchen and fuddled my way through a recipe with the most deliciously written introduction I have ever seen. It was Nigella that I ripped open the wrapping paper to on Christmas, and spent whole nights with the light on low, devouring recipe after luscious, effortless recipe (linguine with pancetta and lemon oil! if only it could always be this good!) long into the night. It is Nigella that I have to credit for my greatest culinary successes; to this day I am renowned amongst my friends for Cloud Cake, a flourless chocolate torte that is so gloriously balanced it gives 'intensity, and then relief, in every bite'.

Time passed and Nigella, domestic goddess that she is, was relegated to just that. Goddess status. My mum and I found new foodie crushes, who seemed to speak to the simple, casual way we had grown to eat (nigel, hugh, sophie, I am speaking of you). We took out her books to consult recipes that we adored and those alone. But we never stopped loving her. How could we? How could I? When she taught us not to feel ashamed at sneaking a spoonful of clotted cream from the fridge at 3 in the morning, when she insisted we not be afraid to take short cuts in the kitchen, when she showed us just how much pleasure - is there a better word for nigella than that? - we could get from cooking.

As I finish writing this I can see so many Nigella books in my mum and I's groaning cookbook shelf. Without pausing to get one down and check I would be able to tell you where all my favourite recipes are (Cloud Cake, page 110 in Nigella Bites, covered in flecks of chocolate and with the page slightly ripped, not that I need the recipe anymore though, the devils on horseback from Nigella's Christmas, the one pan cherry chocolate cupcakes from domestic goddess, the easiest, simplest, BEST TASTING cupcakes I have ever had). I could even tell you the occasions we had all her food, too. Because, as she says in Feast, she makes food that celebrates life. That's why all of her books have sections for the festive season, for parties, for entertaining, for sharing. Her food is about love. It's not really about expedience, or restraint and it's certainly not about health. Just plain old love. That's worth something, in my eyes.

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saturdays are for love

Who would have thought that we could have pulled it together, after cancellation after cancellation, and all of it a SURPRISE? Only for you, RKB. A kitchen tea for the ladies, at our favourite place, with our favourite people, just before you get a(nother) ring put on you. Who would have thought we could have done it - betterthanchiswick lamb, nigel's mistress chicken, a coconut dream cake, and pavlova with all the trimmings, just the way it should be - and all with maximal minimal stress. We pull out the stops when we do it for love. Afternoons like this are the ones that make the working week worthwhile, the ones that you get up every morning at 6.45 for. They're the ones that never end, even when the rain starts to drizzle down mere metres away and the staff start to get out the mops and clean up around you. Lucky we have friends in high places that let us linger, eh? If only it could always be just like this.

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happy snaps

How do we remember? In snapshots or feelings or the shadow of a movement long forgotten? What happened casually remains.

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the nanny

Nick Dewolf's images of his French au pair Cozette in 1967, Boston

I love nannying. I love mucking around with cute kids and making a mess and getting paid for doing the kind of silly things that I would normally do for free. In my head being a nanny looks like this - white shirts tucked into flared jeans and tousled hair and long limbs. To be honest it looks a lot less underdone-glamour when I'm doing it - in overalls and slightly worse-for-wear sandals - but I like to think that I get some of that inner glow that being around kids gives you. The other day I nannied and for most of the day we lay on the trampoline, looking at the clouds and watching the slow, solitary dance of a plane skywriting across the winter blue. It was perfect in the kind of way that makes me realise that it doesn't matter that I'm not some gorgeous au pair, if that makes any sense at all.

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the star

"Don't lose the change, Hannah, you're going to need it." My dad had pressed two metal coins into my palm. I looked at them. The bigger one had the curves and rolls of a flower, of a warped 50 cent piece, the smaller one a nondescript bronze piece. They felt so light in my hand, I didn't know what they were for or why I would need them. I was certain that I was going to lose them, so small and so nondescript. Money wasn't something I thought of regularly, at eleven years old.

We were sitting on benches at the Star Ferry dock at Ocean Terminal, Kowloon side. The air was heavy with moisture in that particularly Hong Kong way, as if the sky would break open at any moment. It was so hot we had hardly been outside all day, flitting from restaurant to museum (planetarium, I think, even), to mall to restaurant, that sitting in the heat of the dock's waiting bay was a shock. My feet felt heavy in their velcro-strap sandals. My brother's fringe was plastered to his head, resting on my mum's shoulder. It was the early evening and way past the bedtime of a eleven year old, a nine year old and a four year old. Soon we would be peeling off these hot, heavy clothes and getting into lilo and stitch pyjamas and settling down in our makeshift beds. Me and my brother top-tailed on a rollaway, and my youngest sibling, who at four years old was a slip of a thing, curled up between two arm chairs pushed together. We wanted to be there already, actually. The coins in my hand was the price I had to pay to get home and into bed on our last night in Hong Kong.

The Star Ferry came into the wharf, rocking ungainly on the water. We stepped gingerly onto the moving gangwalk, navigating it with the deftness of kids well-versed with Easter Show rides. We took seats in the open-air compartment, sticking our heads over the side. A salty breeze moved languorously through the cabin. With a deafening honk of the horn, the Ferry was off, taking us back to Central for a mere dollar-twenty a piece. "Hannah, look to your left, look to the Island," my dad said, pointing his hand forward. "Keep looking," he murmured, looking down at his wrist, checking his watch.

My brother saw it first. "Wow!" he shouted from the unobstructed viewpoint between the railings - the unbearable lightness of being four! of being short enough to see through railings! - and he was right. Wow. The whole of the Hong Kong skyline had lit up with a fluorescent, neon-tinged ebullience. It was exhilarating in such a simple, uncomplicated way that both the child and the adult can enjoy. That primal urge to marvel when faced with something bigger than yourself. The journey across Hong Kong harbour is short - no more than Rose Bay to Circular Quay on the Ferry in Sydney - but in the early evening, when the lights on the building fronts are turned on (HSBC! SONY! CATHAY PACIFIC! they proclaim) it seems to go for so much longer. You are treated to a show of technological advancement and commercial spectacle that seem to defy belief. We sat there, open-mouthed, transfixed by these lights. (What was it that Frank O'hara said? Is it our prayer or wish that this is occur? Oh, what is this light that holds us fast?) Humans are like the mosquito, right? We are attracted to bright lights, to big cities. Well, in this moment, Hong Kong had the brightest lights, was the biggest city, of them all.

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ladies who brunch

To fete my return to Sydney my mum celebrated in the way she does best; with a brunch party. We gathered croissants from Bourke Street Bakery (all the better for lathering with Apricot and Ginger or Raspberry and Rose jam, hauled back from La Chambre aux Confitures in the Marais), we brewed Caramel Damman Freres tea (also hauled back from the Marais!) and I cooked my favourite lemony peach and raspberry cake (a modified Donna Hay recipe), jet-lagged and resolutely wide-awake at five am in the morning. The table was set - in fact, it came first - and I saw family and the best of friends surrounded by the sweetest of gifts, eagerly devoured. It is this that I love the best; the ease and comfort of relations with your family, when it doesn't matter if you're twenty minutes early or twenty minutes late, when stories told a thousand times seem brand new again, and all that matters, all that ever matters, is tea (a drink with jam and bread).

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petersham nurseries

There are some places in the world that instantly make you feel at home. You know, right from that first step, that first sight, that first smell, that you are in the kind of place that could make you happy. Often this feeling accompanies events - your first day at university, your first sight of a new house, occasionally, if you are lucky, when you start a new job - but for me this happens more frequently at restaurants and cafes. I have always felt comfortable surrounded by food, with a mother who cooks better than anyone I know, and family and friends who share my love of celebration and plenty. Good memories for me are inextricably linked to the food that accompanied them. The evening I had after my first holy communion, eating home-made choc-tops and allens snakes with my best friend while watching A Little Princess, the graduation dinner my mum cooked, outdoing herself for the umpteenth time with an ode to french cooking and champagne to match, my first time at The Rose Bakery, an experience in and of itself.

Well, now I can add Petersham Nurseries to that list. I had wanted to go for ages, because of spreads in Harper's BAZAAR UK, features on Park and Cube, and the prominent role it played in the best Burberry campaign ever, of all time. Nestled in the heart of Richmond in West London, it literally abuts the field opposite a family friend's house, a fellow foodie through and through, and we've always wanted to go together. When I finally did get to go, while in London just a few weeks ago, it was a cold and windy winter day, with barely a flower in sight. But it didn't matter. We found a seat in the deserted cafe - carefully selected because of its proximity to the heater - and devoured chicken and mash, tart and salad, cake and tea, cake and tea. This is the kind of place that appeals to that homey, simple pleasures part of everyone. The part that likes flowers - lots and lots of flowers - and hand-carved pottery and chandeliers, the part that likes dirt floors and Hunter wellingtons, candles burning all the time, cake and earl grey tea and honey, roast chicken with fresh herbs, the part that likes dirt and fresh air, children and tricycles, the part that religiously, fervently refreshes Manger hoping for a new post (Look, we've all done it). Some people are more attuned to this part than others. Some people are city people with a dash of country thrown in for good measure - they eat organic, they listen to the occasional Hugh Laurie blues song. But some of us are country people who have learned city behaviour. It's less about ambition and more about happiness. A world without fashion or trends. A world formed around contentedness as it exists in the pure simplicity of pleasures.

Because isn't that the point, that despite everything - the price tags, the artfully dishevelled-ness, the overwhelming perfection of it all - it's still the dream? Because if you could, if you really, really could, if you could cook from scratch every day with organic produce and herbs from your own garden, if you could breathe fresh air and see the stars every night, if you could sleep in and go to bed early, if you could make your own quilts and knit your own beanies and spend all day surrounded by green, if you could get your hands dirty with soil and seeds, with babies and buds, with four under four and chocolate-smeared cheeks and finger-painting, wouldn't you? I know I would.

Petersham Nurseries, Church Lane (off Petersham Road), Richmond
 

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snake

Even though I'm halfway around the world and away from my family I still like to celebrate Chinese New Year. Last year I was actually in Hong Kong, spending evenings making braised pork with my grandmother and drinking jasmine tea cross-legged on the floor of their tiny apartment in Wan Chai. Chinese New Year always makes me miss my family, my mum and my dad and my brothers, but especially my mum, who although not chinese, married one and tries very earnestly to give us a proper Chinese New Year celebration. So this week I made some tea eggs for lunch and boned up on Hong Kong history (my honours thesis area) to assuage some of that homesickness. Tea eggs are one of those crazy Chinese specialty dishes that you either love or you hate. I am fan of them - and the way that they fill the house with the smells of soy and black tea and ginger - for hours as you make them. The patterns that form on the egg are so intricate and so elegant, they would make a beautiful print on a scarf. Mimi has a pretty good recipe for tea eggs, although I tend to leave out star anise and add ginger instead (my favourite), the more the better. They're really easy to make and are the best snack! Perfect for a little lunar new year celebration. Gong Hei Fat Choy!

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