not getting it……

There’s something clearly very sexy going on here. Fruit can’t help being sexy because that’s what they are. They’re the fruit of some tree’s loins and they look like sex. The one moment that I remember from Ken Russell’s film, “Women in love”, was the celebrated fig eating scene which, although I had read in reviews that it alluded to sex and thus was ready to react suitably so as not to appear like a naive twat which I was,  didn’t mean as much to me then as it does now. In 1969 there was little chance of me associating a fig with the one thing that I thought about continually and of which I could not get enough. Maybe if there had been more fresh figs in post war Sutton, and less jam roly-poly, the allusion would not have been wasted on me. I’ve been told that time is a great healer but, finding myself with the keen sight of a bat and the teeth of a basking shark, I think that time has been over optimistically reviewed, probably by the same man as recommended “Women in Love”.

I try to avoid using the word “love” when writing about food mostly because I find it nearly as annoying as “Oh, my God” ( the abbreviation is so annoying that I’m not going to give it page room) but not quite as stultifying as “Yum fucking Yum”. Fruit of very nearly all denominations brings me close to using the word as I find it as irresistible and satisfying as was the fig to Alan Bates and Co…but they were acting and I’m not. Summer fruit gets better when it’s warm and even better when the hot sun, such as the sun today, draws forth the perfume and coaxes out the juices from all those stoned fruits. I’ve just made this small tart of nectarines and apricots which sit on a layer of ground hazelnuts, creme fraiche, sugar and vanilla …..turn over, action.