Photo: Spring on the Allotment by Sabine Thoele
Weather has perked up this week. How many of you are growing plants on allotments? Anyone out there working on the garden this weekend? Any other exciting plans? Let’s hope the sun decides to stick around.
Happy Friday everyone!
Admittedly, I am not the most elegant in the kitchen. Part of the reason is that time is precious and with London’s busy lifestyle, there’s not a lot of it to spare. M&S oven meals often come to my rescue after a busy day.
When this shiny cookbook, We Love Food, landed on my doorstep, I felt a bit more inspired by its pretty photos of organic food and a wide variety of dishes to choose from – some simple for people like me and others a bit more complicated for those who are more adventurous when it comes 6pm.
I had the opportunity to ask the authors about how hectic Londoners can benefit from their approach to cooking and food in general. They also give some tips on how to grow your own in London’s limited living space.
Here’s a few words from Peta Heine and Kirsty Manning-Wilcox. (WLF)
LLO: Why is We Love Food specifically relevant to the lives of Londoners?
WLF: London life is fast-paced, exciting and complex. Modern family life is all of these things too! As busy working mums, we recognize that it can be crazy to get the kids to school and all their other activities, pull off a day job and get any time at all to cook or garden. We Love Food is full of tips for gardening in confined spaces plus many healthy, quick and practical recipes for families on the run (including an SOS list for those nights when you just can’t face the kitchen but want a quiet night!).
We’ve also included ideas for lazy weekends at home when more time is available to roam the wonderful markets, delis and specialty shops a great city like London has to offer. There are many old recipes to remind you of your childhood, like Golden Syrup Dumplings and Lemon Delicious Pudding and other more modern adaptations of the wonderful cultures that are available to us now like Thai Green Chicken Curry, Middle Eastern Tomato Salad and Sesame Chicken Vermicelli with Asian Greens.
LLO: What were your priorities in creating this beautiful book?
WLF: As working mums we recognize that during the week you want your children to be eating healthy meals, but we don’t necessarily have the time and energy to spend all day doing it! We want to introduce children to the concept of how food is grown and prepared, and wanted a guide book for people like us who don’t necessarily have a team around us helping us cook, garden and care for the kids! We are the generation doing it all! Our goal was to create delicious, achievable, family-oriented recipes as well as some simple and inspiring growing instructions for a handful of well-loved fruit and vegetables.
In the photography and design we really wanted to show the kids having fun in the kitchen and the garden. It’s about getting back to the simple pleasures, stepping off the treadmill to smell the roses. Something we could all do a bit more of! We are both working on it!!
LLO: It’s often a bit hectic in London with this chaotic city lifestyle. Can you point us to a few of your recipes that would be perfect to toss together after a long day but still feel like you’ve prepared a nice meal?
WLF: Chow Mien Noodles, Lemony Lamb Chops with Baked Vegies, Sichuan Chicken Thighs and Asian Greens, Tacos or Fajitas
LLO: What’s your favourite sweet treat to indulge in after a stressful week at the office?
WLF: Easy baked rhubarb, Nutty Ice Cream Sundaes or Golden Syrup Dumplings.
LLO: There are some interesting sections in We Love Food that are all about home-grown ingredients. A lot of Londoners don’t have the luxury of a garden, so do you have any tips for growing indoors or on small balconies?
WLF: Summer is a great time to get a few herbs growing on a sunny windowsill in 10 cm pots. Rosemary, parsley, basil, coriander, chives, mint, garlic chives and a chilli plant will see you through the summer months. The great thing about growing your own herbs and garnishes is they give an instant life to any pasta sauce or curry and can be sprinkled over anything. How often do you buy a bag of herbs at the supermarket only for it to go mushy before you use it all? This way you have herbs for any spontaneous dish. Fresh herbs are also a good way of getting “greens” into the diet of your kids – let them sprinkle parsley over a pasta, or scrambled eggs on the weekend. Chillies really add depth to simple pasta sauces and curries and they look pretty as a centerpiece on an outdoor table.
If you have a larger outdoor space, a 50 cm terracotta pot filled with premium potting mix will hold a couple of silver beet plants, a few lettuces (cos, mizuna, radiccio- pick your favourites) , some rocket and some Asian greens like pak choy or bok choy so you always have a salad or Asian side dish ready to go. A large ½ wine barrel will hold enough greens to keep a family of 4 in salads throughout summer. Choose green plants that are ‘cut and come again’ so you can just chop them off and they will re-shoot right through summer. Beetroot is a handy plant to grow as the leafy green tops are great in salads and pasta sauces, and the beetroot is great baked in foil and drizzled with Feta and olive oil. Two sides for the one veggie, Voila!
Tomatoes and beans can be grown in hanging baskets or trellised up drain pipes. Many London nurseries also stock specialty grow bags full of soil and nutrients ready to grow whatever seedlings are in season. Drop into your local nursery or farmer’s market to get a couple of punnets of whatever is in season and away you go!
LLO: What are you having for dinner tonight then?
WLF: Tacos with the lot!
Thanks Kirsty and Peta!
We Love Food, £16.99, is published by Hardie Grant.
Some people love to capture London on film, others in photographs, a few just in memory. Welsh illustrator Martin Hoare takes his sketch book out to the streets. Later, some of these sketches are transformed into more elaborate drawings or paintings. For a while, his pens & pencils sat in a drawer while he concentrated on his day job as a graphic designer, but now he’s set up a blog to revive them. It’s called Martin’s Doodles. If you enjoy his unique catalogue of London life below, pop over and have a look.
For this week’s London Art Spot, Martin tells us a story of frustration as a prospective art student, talks through the process of creating a new piece of work and about the satisfaction he’s recently discovered in a completely unrelated hobby that fills his spare time.
Piccadilly Line
LLO: How does living in London influence your creativity?
MH: London is an amazing place to live and work. I’ve lived here now for 12 years and there are still always new places to discover. I love the way that each area has its own unique feel, the way you can travel just a short distance and feel like you’ve gone somewhere completely different. It’s always been drawing people and the way the people of London interact with each other and the urban environment. That’s what really interests me. Someone once said: “There’s 8 million stories all playing out at the same time.” That’s what I’m trying to capture.
Green Park
LLO: Graphic designer by trade, and here you are with a blog full of “doodles”, of sketches and drawings. What’s your artistic background?
MH: I have always been a compulsive drawer. As a kid, I don’t think I was happy unless I had a pencil and a stack of paper. I left school at sixteen and took a training scheme at the local Ford Motor plant. I think it soon became apparent that I had no interest in producing axles and, fair dues to them, they set me up with an interview at the local art college. But without formal qualifications, they weren’t interested in taking me on, and at the end of the interview they showed me a perfectly airbrushed illustration of a motorbike and told me not to come back until I could produce work of that standard. This really discouraged me from perusing any kind of career in art. It wasn’t until years later that I found out the illustration was from a student’s final degree show.
I did a fanzine for a bit around this time, designed a few record sleeves, t-shirts and gig posters for local bands. Then when the need to get a proper job came along, I became a painter and decorator. So I was working as a painter, but just the wrong type. I still kept on drawing but didn’t think of doing anything with it until I started taking a life drawing class. There were a lot of art students there from the college that had turned me down a few years back and I was surprised to find that I was drawing at a better level than practically all of them. So I thought, what the hell, gave up my job and started a foundation course. I intended to go on to study fine art or illustration, but having discovered the wonders of what could be done on a Mac, did a degree in Graphic Design and have been sitting in front of a screen ever since. The down-side of this being that for a long time I put down my pencils and brushes and it has taken me quite a while to pick them back up again.
Brewer Street
LLO: Where did the initiative to start “Martin’s Doodles” come from and what do you hope to achieve by keeping the blog?
MH: I had drawings all over the place, in numerous sketchbooks, on bits of paper, and it was hard to keep track of everything. I really needed to get everything scanned in, just to pull everything together. So the main reasons for setting up the blog were getting organised, getting my work out there and moving it forward. After all, what’s the point of producing a load of artwork if it’s just going to sit in a drawer in the spare room?
LLO: Best place in London to shop for art supplies?
MH: Cass Art in Islington. I spend a lot more there than I need to, I have a thing for buying new sketch books, whether I need a new one or not. I also visit the London Graphic Centre in Covent Garden quite a bit.
North Lanes
LLO: Favourite place in London to sit with a sketch pad?
MH: Probably somewhere on the South Bank, especially when the sun is out. There’s usually a chilled atmosphere and noone is in a rush to get anywhere, which is helpful when sketching.
LLO: Which piece are you most proud of so far and why?
MH: It’s usually what I’ve just finished or am working on at that time. I’ve just finished a painting ‘Leaving Las Vegas’, which is Soho street scene. The thing that started me off on this image was the signage, which I just had to work into a painting. And being Soho it just had to be a night scene.
Leaving Las Vegas
LLO: Describe the process of how your artwork comes to life from the moment you conceive an idea to the finished product.
MH: I’ll spend a lot of time wandering around just looking for somewhere that will work as a drawing or painting. I’ve basically always got an eye on the next piece of work. Once I’ve chosen a location I’ll do a few rough sketches and take as many pictures as I can. I’ll then put all these together in Photoshop, and usually work up a composite image, putting all the elements together. Print this out and make a rough pencil drawing sketch placing all the main elements on the page. Once that’s done I’ll start working up the drawing, with either a fine liner, or ink and pen. Once I’m happy the drawing is done, I’ll either add shading with marker pens, or I might scan the drawing and colour it in Photoshop.
The next stage is to determine which drawings may have the potential to be worked up as paintings. The whole painting process is a lot more involved and time consuming. Unlike drawing where the work can be finished in one sitting, a painting can be very much a stop-start affair, gradually taking shape, depending on the free time I have available. But it’s really rewarding when you finish with something that you’re pleased with.
Oceanic Leather Wear
LLO: What do you get up to when you’re not drawing/doodling/sketching/painting?
MH: Aside from work which takes up a large part of my time, I have recently started gardening. For the first time since moving to London I have a garden, and have really gotten into growing my own vegetables; there’s something really pleasing about eating food you’ve grown yourself. I tend to go to a lot of galleries. One of the great things about London is that there is just so much art going on; wherever I happen to be, I can usually take a bit of time to check out whatever galleries are around. Being Welsh, I also often end up in the pub watching a bit of rugby.
LLO: Is there a place in the capital you’d love to sit for a day with a sketch pad but haven’t had the chance yet?
MH: Actually having the luxury of a day to sit sketching is not something I’m used to. Maybe it’s being a Graphic Designer, where everything is driven by deadlines, but there never seems to be enough time to fit everything in. I’ve never done any drawings on the tube; maybe I could sit on the Circle Line going round and round drawing people. Perhaps I should try that.
Smoking Man
LLO: Any impressive up-and-coming London-based artists we should keep our eyes on?
MH: Print Club in Dalston (www.printclublondon.com), has some really good illustrators and artists. I like a lot of the work they produce.
Sundae, Sundae
Thanks Martin!
For more London Art Spot interviews, click here.
London is full of brilliant London shop names – like this one I posted the other day. Stoned & Plastered, which is round the back of Columbia Road, sells garden ornaments, not what you would assume. Not the greatest, photo, but brilliant name.
Favourite shop names in London or your own city, anyone?
Little London Observationist 