Fish chowder and beating the end-of-summer blues ...

At the risk of being boring - I know I've mentioned it before -  I'm really not ready to let go of summer just yet. Back beneath a leaden sky in London I'm missing the warm Catalan sun, our sandy beach and the wonderful mariscos, fresh seafood, landed off the fishing boats in our little harbour back in Sant Feliu, where I'm sure the sun is still shining and the sky is still a deep cerulean blue.

As a way of beating the end-of-summer blues I've turned to comfort food. And for me comfort food doesn't gets any more comforting than the smoky, creamy taste of a good fish chowder.  My favourite food in all the world is smoked fish. I could happily eat kippers every day of my life ...  which is probably something to do with my being Irish. And, as it happens, one of the things I miss when we're in Spain is good smoked fish. Maybe up in Galicia, where they're all really Celtic rather than Latin, they do our smoked fish thing, but in the rest of Spain you can pretty much forget it. There's the odd packet of thinly sliced, smoked salmon in the Mercadona chiller cabinets, but that's it.

So yesterday I made a great big pot of chowder, which was all steaming and ready to slurp when Emi got back from swim club. D-E-L-I-S-H! Bacon-fish soup, the young man hollered as he came through the door. I should add, by way of explanation, that we are also enthusiastic consumers of smoked streaky bacon over here at Talk-A-Lot-Towers, hence bacon-fish is a (not-so-short) shorthand for smoked fish.

Anyway I'm digressing. Shall I tell you how I make this creamy ambrosia of mine?

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

400 g of smoked white fish fillets. You can use any chunky white fish: haddock, pollock, cod, whatever you can find. Some people prefer to use un-dyed fillets as they look prettier in the creamy chowder, but I'm not fussy on that point.

3 or 4 bay leaves

200 ml milk 

300 ml of double cream (to make this feel less of an artery-clogging, cholesterol-fest I use the low-fat Elmlea double cream - I don't know how they deliver on that, and I wouldn't pour it over my strawberries, but it tastes just fine when you're cooking)

700 ml fish stock

1 teaspoonful of cumin seed

1 teaspoonful of peppercorns

2 large leeks washed and finely chopped

4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced into small cubes

2 medium carrots, peeled and thinly sliced

200 g sweetcorn (off the cob)

Dollop of butter and olive oil for cooking

What to do: 

1. Place the fish fillets in a large saucepan (I use a big reducing pan) with the fish stock, the bay leaves and the pepper corns and bring to a gentle simmer. Poach gently for several minutes until your fish starts to flake in the chunkiest parts of the fillet.
2. Remove from the heat, and leave your fillets on one side. Strain the stock to remove the bay leaves and the pepper corns.
3. Melt the butter and olive oil in a pan and sweat the finely chopped leeks with the cumin seed until they are soft but not browned. 
4. Add the cubed potato, stir everything around and leave to sweat for another minute or two, but, as before, don't let anything brown. 
5. Season and add the stock. Stir everything, cover with the lid and bring to a gentle simmer. Leave to cook gently until the potato is almost cooked.
6. Add the carrot and cook for another couple of minutes.
7. Using a fork break up the fillets of fish into flakes.
8. Add the milk, the cream and the flaked fish to the pan. Stir gently, and heat everything through. Serve hot with crusty bread.

Mmmmm ... maybe the autumn won't be so bad after all ... .

All the best for now,

Bonny x

Stowe House Gardens

 A couple of weeks' ago, Emi and I had a big day out with my very, very dear friend Jenny who was celebrating her birthday. We decided to head out of the Big Smoke to somewhere that none of us had ever been to before. As we had Maxi-the-wonder-dog in tow, we needed a canine-friendly destination. In the end we hit upon the idea of going to Stowe House Gardens in Buckinghamshire, one time home of the Dukes of Buckingham.

And there we took a trip back in time to the days when the sun never set on the British Empire and every wannabe aristo had to go on the Grand Tour to have their tastes and ideas refined and polished to shine in polite society. Stowe was built on a truly imperial scale, and has over the years played host to many movers and shakers who lived their lives in an imperial fashion.

Tsar Alexander I came here for a visit in 1810. Then in 1814 the Grand Duke Michael, his brother came and had a look around. They both liked it so much that in 1818 the Grand Duke Nicholas, who later became Tsar Nicholas I came for a look-see as well.

Can you imagine what it must have been like in those days at Stow, hosting the Imperial family of All the Russians? I imagine the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, as he became in 1820 when the title was created, went to quite some lengths to make sure that no one (or at least no one imperial) was allowed to get bored. 

The Duke's name, when he started out in life had been a breath-taking Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, which was a bit fancy-pants even by the standards of his day. What had happened you see was that the male heirs in the family had developed a strong penchant for marrying wealthy, titled heiresses. Each son then wanted to honour (or show off) his impeccable maternal lineage by adopting his mother's surname along with those of his father. And all those hyphens soon added up to an imperial ship-load of money in the family coffers.

Today I'd find it difficult to take someone seriously who insisted on using such a multi-hyphenated moniker, but old Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville didn't seem to reckon on encountering such cynicism as mine. In fact he himself added the -Brydges-Chandos- bit by royal warrant in 1799. Maybe it gave him something to talk about ... I say, old chap, do you know that I've got more surnames than anyone else in England ...  . Although he was commonly known as Lord Grenville's fat nephew, and Ph D, which was said to stand for phat duke and the gros Marquis, which would suggest that he may not have been the most svelte, dynamic man in England at the time.

Perhaps it was his amazing garden that did it, because the Great and the Good came in their droves to visit old Dickie Whatshisname.

Of all the follies and temples in the gardens my personal favourite is this gothic temple, reflecting my own strong preference for the irregularity and chaos of the gothic over the perfect symmetry and order of the classical. Jenny agreed. In fact it was the thing that both of us were most strongly drawn to when we first looked around the park. We spotted it in the distance and agreed that we'd have to bend our steps towards the church, but of course, silly us, it wasn't anything so prosaic and everyday as a simple church: it was a folly dressed up as a gothic temple.

Isn't it amazing? We thought it would make a great venue for a stonking Halloween party. 

But anyway, back to old Dickie Whatshisname: he followed in the family tradition and hooked himself Lady Anne Brydges, a very grand heiress, as his wife. Lady Anne could trace her bloodline back to the Plantagenet Kings of England. As a consequence, when they had a son and heir, he added the surname Plantagenet to his list of monikers, even though none of his Plantagenet relations seemed to have done so since they were Kings of England.  And he was known as ... wait for it ... <drum roll> ... Richard Plantagenet Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville.

Young Richard thingy-thingy-whathisname made quite a splash in society for two not-so-great reasons. He bagged himself the requisite grand heiress (Lady Mary Campbell - and there are strictly no prizes for guessing which extra surname his child and heir added to the ever-increasing list of family names) but then he decided that he'd made a terrible mistake and - shock, horror - he divorced her. So? No big deal, you may well say and today, by the standards of our age, I'd have to agree with you. People get divorced all the time these days and it's really not a biggie, but way back then, believe me, it was a huge biggie. No one got divorced - unless they were Henry VIII. And if you weren't Henry VIII, but were still hell-bent on being the exception to the rule, you'd need nothing less than an Act of Parliament to pull it off. And that's exactly what young Richard thingy-thingy-whatshisname did. He got himself an Act of Parliament divorce from Lady Mary in 1850. 

Financial difficulties may have added to his marriage problems. You see, despite having inherited riches that would have made even Croesus feel a little light in the bank-account department, young Richard thingy-thingy-whathisname was declared bankrupt in 1847 with debts totalling over £1 million. Now wait up: in today's money that would add up to well over a staggering £100 million. In addition to all the other names he'd accumulated he was known thereafter as the greatest debtor in the world. Embarrassed by all the attention from his not-so-friendly creditors he wisely took himself off to live abroad in August 1847.

His bankruptcy prompted the most prominent English country house auction of the century when Christies set up shop in the State Dining room at Stowe and sold off all the family silver, art, fine furniture, assorted knick-knacks, over 21,000 bottles of wine and 500 bottles of spirits. The auction started on 15th August 1848 and lasted until 7th October 1848. Unfortunately it only raised £75,400, which was a drop in the ocean given how much was owed. So they also had to sell off the family's London home, a little place on the other side of Pall Mall that went by the name of Buckingham House. And some 36,000 acres of land that the family owned on their estates in Ireland, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Cornwall, Hampshire and Somerset also had to go under the hammer.

But they did manage to hold onto Stowe and its magnificent gardens. 

The second duke died a broken man in the Great Western Hotel, Paddington in 1861 and his son, Richard Plantagenet Cambell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville inherited what was left of his estate and became the third (and last) Duke of Buckingham. Sensibly, in order to save ink, he usually operated under the name Richard Temple-Grenville. He didn't have a male heir, so the title became extinct on his death.

By the Third Duke's time the estate had contracted dramatically and the glory days of the family were over. The grounds, which had previously been attended to by a staff of 40, were now managed by a staff of 4, and I'm guessing that those 4 gardeners lived hectic busy lives trying to keep this place in order. 

The gardens are amazing, truly amazing. But for me, personally, they're just a bit too grand, rather like all those surplus surnames hanging on a chain of hyphens. 

It's true that around every corner there is a stunning view as though the eighteenth century gardeners who laid them out had the modern-day obsession with landscape photography in mind when they went to work.

There's a Temple of British Worthies, designed by William Kent, which celebrates the very best that these isles have produced in terms of human achievement. On the left are the men of contemplation and learning: writers, scholars and scientists, and on the right are the men of action: monarchs, warriors and statesmen. Above them all, in the alcove at the top, is Mercury.

And here they are, the selected British worthies: 

The worthies: top row left to right: Sir Thomas Gresham, Alexander Pope, Ignatius Jones and John Milton.
Second row from the top, left to right: William Shakespeare, John Locke,  Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Francis Bacon.
Third row from the top, left to right: King Alfred, Edward, Prince of Wales, Queen Elizabeth I and King William III.
Bottom row, left to right: Sir Francis Drake,  John Hampden, John Barnard and Sir Walter Raleigh.

I suppose if you were the Duke of Buckingham, wandering around your rolling acres with a different, perfect vista to look at in every direction and the very best of British Worthies for company, you might well become complacent and introverted to the point where you obsessed on names and honours rather than the changing world around you. Whatever the way of it, there's a salutary lesson there for everyone, even us lesser mortals who don't have so many rolling acres or surnames to count.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

(As shared on Friday Finds and Image-in-ing)

And if you're looking for inspiration for a day out of London how about:

Corfe Castle

or Tresco Abbey

or a quiet stroll on Dartmoor

The day Mussolini bombed our village ...

Yesterday, as I was walking across the market square here in sunny Sant Feliu de Guíxols, something caught my eye. It was one of those tourist information plaques that the town council has taken to putting up around the village. Even though I'm not a tourist I always take the time to read them. It's great to find little nuggets of historical information dotted around to fire your curiosity as you go about your daily business. And this one was so sensational that it stopped me in my tracks and called me over to read all the small print.

You see it told the story of how the village had been attacked by three Italian fighter planes on 22nd January, 1938. They came out of nowhere and started dropping bombs on the market square. They blew up our lovely old town hall that had been built back in the sixteenth century.

Town Hall, Sant Feliu de Guíxols

Then they blew up the public baths, the village school and the Passeig, the sandy boulevard, where the locals go for a stroll in the cool of the early evening. Thirteen people lost their lives that day, and another forty five were seriously injured.

Our village? The Italians? It made no sense to me whatsoever. This is a quiet, peaceful little place that doesn't seem to be of any strategic importance to anyone. Why on earth would Mussolini and the Italians have ever wanted to bomb us?

I went home bemused, but curious to get to the bottom of what had taken place.

I did a little research to try and put the pieces together.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, way back in 1936, Sant Feliu, like most of Catalonia, sided with the Republic against Franco and the Nationalists. Most of the rest of the world stood by and signed a non-intervention treaty whereby they agreed that they would't get involved; they'd leave it to the Spanish to sort themselves out.

Only it wasn't quite that simple. Not everyone honoured the notion of non-intervention. In particular Franco was able to count on two very powerful allies, who supported him to the hilt. Hitler and Mussolini, the two other Fascist dictators who were making waves in Europe at that time, recognised Franco as the man in charge very early on in the conflict and started supplying him with arms to fight the Republicans.

 The only countries that seemed wiling to proved any practical assistance to the Republic, on the other hand, were Mexico and the USSR, as it then was. But the big strategic problem with their assistance lay in getting their supplies home to where the Republicans needed them. Most of the land frontiers were effectively sealed against the Republic as a result of the non-intervention treaty. The only practical route lay over the sea, which is why little places like Sant Feliu de Guíxols became strategically important. With its large sheltered harbour it wouldn't have been a bad place to land munitions for the war effort.

Boats on the beach, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Catalonia

Mussolini also faced a backdoor challenge at home. There were many people within Italy who were fundamentally opposed to his regime, significant numbers of whom were happy to skip across the Western Mediterranean to help the Republicans in their struggle against Franco.  If they had returned to Italy, motivated and energised by a victory against Fascism in Spain, they could have represented a significant threat to the stability of the Fascist regime in Italy. In short Mussolini had a real interest in defeating the Republic.

And that was why he sent the Aviazione Legionari with over seven hundred fighter planes to help Franco bomb the living daylights out of the Republicans. Hitler also sent the Condor Legion from Germany with almost three hundred planes - they bombed Guernica, over in the Basque country (infamous for being the first instance when carpet bombing was used against a defenceless civilian population for no strategic purpose other than to crush their morale, and famously painted by Picasso).

And so that's how my village became a strategic target and got blown up by Mussolini. I know that horrible things happened to innocent people on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, but, given where I live and who my family are, I feel a connection with the people who held on for dear life in this quiet little backwater. And it seems to me that it must have been a terrifying business.  From time to time Franco sent his heavy battlecruisers up the coast to bombard Sant Feliu and the other Republican villages along the Costa. They'd turn up in the bay and sit there strafing the town with mortars and gunfire. Over seventy people lost their lives in the course of these bombardments.

The Spanish Civil War was the first conflict in which aerial warfare played a decisive role.  The intensive bombardment of the Republican territory created a new precedent for modern warfare in which the focus of the attack moved away from the frontline towards the rearguard where the civilian population found themselves in the firing line.

Memorial plaque to the 70 citizens who died in the bombing of Sant Feliu during the Civil War

Today, walking around in the sunshine it's hard to believe what happened here, and it's even sadder to think of all the other places in the world today, some 75 years' later, where innocent civilians still live under the threat of indiscriminate attack by aerial bombardment.

All the best,


Bonny x

The last days of summer in sunny Sant Feliu de Guíxols ...

It's almost over ... and I really, really don't want to let it go.

I love the summer. It's my season. I love the blue skies, the light, the optimism, being able to leave all the doors open and letting the breeze blow through to cool us down. And I hate to feel it slipping through my fingers as the nights draw in and autumn seizes us in its mists and mellow fruitfulness. 

And right now there's just a hint of the changes to come blowing about in the wind. Down in the Passeig dels Guíxols, where the old men play pétanque, the leaves on the plane trees are starting to turn brown and drop on the ground.

Yesterday I wandered down to the port with my faithful hound at my heels to make the most of the summer vibe before it's gone for another year. We passed a bank that's covered in Morning Glory. No one tends to it, but it seems to have flourished all summer, and still looks marvellous. I suppose it's technically a weed, but I guess one man's weed can be another man's prize bloom.

I walked past this apartment block, which my husband wishes didn't exist. From the back it is a bit of a blot on the landscape, but it looks out over the port so the people living there must have great views out to sea, and, as is true with every ugly building the world over, if you live in it you don't have to look at it when you're at home. I think it's fun to see so many people all busy doing their summer living on their balconies as you walk past. In the winter it's all closed up and boring.

A tiny sailing school has appeared on the quayside. I'm impressed by its funky paintwork. They're doing brisk business these days as the harbour is full of little sailing boats and people trying to get the hang of how to stand up on a windsurf. 

We walked on and had a look at what's parked up in the harbour. There were the usual commercial fishing boats ...

... and the little boats for just pootling around  ...

... and sailing boats for chasing the wind.

We walked on to the beach. The place was full of tourists and sun-worshipers, all stretched out on the sand, soaking up the rays, but away from the seafront the back streets of the village were quiet.

Here the people went about their business as normal, cleaning, fixing, repairing and getting ready for winter.

And the signs of the change in the season were all around. Fruit ripening on the vines. Leaves turning colour. Offers in the shop windows for back-to-school discounts. It was all there, and even I couldn't ignore what was happening. Who knows, maybe this time next week when we're back in London and Emi's settled into his new class at school I may even start embracing the autumn and telling everyone who'll listen how it's really my favourite season of the year.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

As shared on Friday Finds

Mas Oller, wine-making as it's been done for centuries ...

Yesterday we went for a tipple at the winery down the road.

Here in beautiful Catalonia they have some very delicious wines, and nowhere more so than at the friendly little winery of Mas Oller, just outside Pals.

I should say, by way of explanation that a mas or masia is a typical Catalan farmhouse. It was usually built from local stone, had at least two stories, with the ground floor given over to livestock or working space for the business of the farm. The family normally lived on the first floor, and if there was a second floor that would traditionally have been used as a granary or a pigeon loft. Most of these houses were built to face south or south east, to take shelter from the Tramontana, the dominant wind that blows down from the north.

Empordà, this lovely corner of Catalonia in which we live, has a long history of wine-making as it happens. It all goes way back to its days as a Greek colony. Way back in about 600 B.C. those old Greek overlords first decided to try their hands at growing some grapes in the rich, local soil. The result was an astounding success. Before long this little corner of Catalonia was renowned for the quality of its wines, and they've been going strong ever since.

At Mas Oller, the old farm house, dating back to the 18th century, stands between the mountains and the sea. They've produced many crops on the estate over the years, but when it was rescued by its present owner, the renowned winemaker, Carlos Esteva, it was pretty much on its knees. The old house and outbuildings were falling apart, and had Carlos not come along when he did there's a reasonable chance that they'd have passed the point of no return, and been lost forever. 

There were a few vines growing across the holding, but the local council insisted that, before Carlos turned his attention to what he does best, and set about growing some prize-winning wines, he focus on the farm buildings and restore them so that they could be saved for future generations.

And that's exactly what he did. 

Today the old masia and the outbuildings are restored to their former glory, their thick walls providing cool in the heat of the Catalan summer and warmth in the depths of its winters when the Tramontana blows harshly from the North.

The old cow shed has been converted into a cellar, and the vines have been replanted in what had once been the best wine-producing estate in Pals.

French oak barrels in which the wine matures

And out in the fields they're growing Syrah, Grenache and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to make their red wines ...

... and Picapoll and Mavasía de Sitges for their white wine. 

We had a leisurely stroll amongst the vines, and our guide explained that 2014 had been a bit of a strange year. The summer had been colder and wetter than normal, with the result that the grapes are not ripening as they usually would. It's going to mean that the harvest will be later than normal, but, who knows, perhaps the exceptional conditions will produce a vintage of exceptional quality. 

They showed us all their state-of-the-art machinery for cleaning, and mashing and fermenting the grapes after they've been picked.

The white grapes are picked and processed first. And then a few weeks' later they move on to the red.

And finally we went to the bodega to sample the three wines that they produced last year at Mas Oller.

First up was the Mar, a very stylish white that was fruity on the nose, but lighter and drier on the palate with notes of citrus. Then we had the Pur, which had a lovely toffee, vanilla nose, but was light and soft on the palate. And last we had the Plus, which was much less aromatic on the nose and drier with more tannins on the palette. All three were delicious, but both Mr B and I preferred the Pur.

Part of the space in the old cow shed has been given over to a collection of modern art, which contrasts nicely with the timelessness of the solid old walls and the barrel-vaulted ceiling.

If you're in the area and you fancy taking a look at a traditional winery do drop in and have a look around. They're open most days from noon until 6:00 p.m. local time, and are happy to give you a tour. You can find their website here: Mas Oller

All the best for now,

Bonny x

And if you're in the Empordá area why not check out Peretellada ... the village that time forgot

Or Sant Feliu de Guíxols mi pueblo

Or S'Agaró ... the pueblo down the road