On spring
I had two springs this year. The first, in March, was vivid. On Wandsworth Common, the trees greened furiously over a single week and buckets of daffodils lit the kitchen sill. After five months of drear, the English spring justified every tired verse ever written about it: the first flowers are so beautiful they hurt to look at.
My second spring, in September, was milder, rain-scented. In contrast to the winter that preceded it, I hardly noticed the difference: Auckland’s winter has grey clouds; London’s has teeth. The clouds didn’t matter. Magnolia trees woke up all over the city and it was bright enough to think the sea would be warm.
Both springs were shadowed. The first unfurled while London was in its initial lockdown: death in all the silences and half my colleagues furloughed. The second was full of personal uncertainty and an election where the stakes were (are) much too high. But somehow, I was allowed two: two blooming seasons, two months of tangibly lengthening days, two first strawberries of the year.
This last is the most important, I think. Spring must be the year’s best eating season: its produce — asparagus, fresh peas, chicory, strawberries — is so bright and tender after winter’s pumpkins and potatoes. During London’s spring, I made everything that produce demanded: Victoria sponges with English strawberries and cream, pavlovas pinked with rhubarb, an asparagus tart with new butter, a hundred bowls of spring onion noodles. We ate most of it on our tiny, sundrunk balcony, over the eerily quiet road.
Beyond produce, spring is the best eating season because it’s finally warm enough to eat ice cream outside, but not yet so hot you have to eat so quickly you can’t savour it. In recognition of this fact, my second spring has involved a lot of ice cream.
There are several ways to make ice cream. The best involves both proper technique (making a real custard) and either great expense (a high-tech machine) or considerable elbow grease (removing your custard from the freezer every half hour for six hours and beating it hard to break down the ice crystals). While nothing is comparable to the first spoonful of real vanilla ice cream — pale gold from an absurd number of egg yolks, silky to scoop, and smelling of heaven — one should not, I think, be penalised for a lack of machine, upper body strength, or custard nous. You can make ambrosial ice cream from nothing more than whipping cream, vanilla, and sweetened condensed milk.
The recipe, tweaked from this one, is this: empty one can — about 400g — of sweetened condensed milk into a medium bowl. Sneak a fingerful, then stir in two teaspoons of vanilla paste or the seeds of one curled vanilla bean, plus a generous capful of gin or vodka or brandy (this helps the mixture not freeze too hard and cuts the sweetness) and a generous pinch of salt. Whip 500ml of double cream in another bowl to firmish peaks.
Fold a big spoonful of the whipped cream into the sweetened condensed milk, so it lightens. Then add the milk mixture to the bowl of whipped cream and fold it all gently together until you have a big bowl of softness. Pour into whatever tin you have and freeze for six hours (snaffling spoonfuls throughout, obviously) —
— then scoop into bowls and top with strawberries that have been sprinkled with a little sugar, some chopped mint, and a squeeze of lemon or lime juice and left to sit for ten minutes.
Best eaten out of doors.