It’s worth repeating
The trick to large pruning jobs is to have the right toolkit and right supervisor, Leigh Bramwell advises
‘MORETHANJUSTA MANTRA, ‘cook, eat, repeat’ is the story ofmylife’’ says television personality and author Nigella Lawson of her latest cookbook.
‘‘Food, for me, is a constant pleasure: I like to think greedily about it, reflect deeply on it, learn from it; it provides comfort, inspiration, meaning and beauty
. . .’’
Cook, eat, repeat is a delicious and delightful combination of recipes intertwinedwith narrative essays about food, all written in Nigella’s engaging and insightful prose. Whether asking ‘What is a Recipe?’ or declaring death to the ‘Guilty Pleasure’, Nigella’s wisdom about food and life comes to the fore, with tastynew recipes that readers will want to return to again and again.
Following is a recipe from her book:
CHOCOLATE, TAHINI ANDBANANATWO WAYS
Gives approx. 10 slices of banana bread or makes a pudding for 2–3
Ingredients
250g(approx. 2medium) very ripe or overripebananas (skin-onweight) 60mlolive or vegetable oil 50gtahini, atroom temperature; ‘do tryandget proper Middle Eastern tahini, which is smokierandmore fluid, with a full-bodied velvetiness, than themore widely available Mediterranean one’ 50gfull-fat Greek yoghurt, at roomtemperature (but only for the pud) 1 large egg, atroom temperature 50gcaster sugar 50gsoft darkbrownsugar for the pud; 35gfor the bread 1 tsp vanilla extract 60gplain flour (or gluten-free plain flour) 25gcocoa 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda 1/4 tsp fine sea salt 100gdark chocolate chips 1 1/2 tspsesame seeds, to sprinkleontop (only for the bread)
Method
Heat the oven to 170C/150C Fan if you’remaking banana bread, or 180C/160C Fan for the pudding. Put a paper liner into a 450g loaf tin or, for the pudding, get out an ovenproof dish with a capacity of about 750ml; mine is 18cm in diameter and5cmdeep.
Peel the bananas and, either by hand or using an electric mixer, mash the bananas, then beat in the oil. I use an American 1/4 cup (60ml) measure to do this, and then fill it up with tahini conveniently, 60ml of tahini weighs (50g) and beat that in. If you’re making the pudding, beat in the yoghurt (you can also fill the 1/4 cup measure with it to get 50g). Whether you’re making the pudding or the bread, now’s the time to beat in the egg, then the sugars and vanilla.
Whisk or fork together the flour, cocoa, bicarb and salt and slowly beat into the batter and when you can no longer see any specks of white, fold in the chocolate chips with a bendy spatula, which you will need to scrape the runny batter into either loaf tin or ovenproof dish. If it’s banana bread you’remaking, sprinkle over the sesame seeds.
First, instructions for the bread: cook for 45–50 minutes until risen and firm to the touch, or until a cake tester comes out almost clean; somechocolate chipswill make it a little sticky in parts. And don’t worry about the cracks on the top; that is part of its deal, as it is for the pudding. Let it cool completely in its tin on awire rack and – if you can bear to wait – once it’s cold, slip it out of the tin and wrap it in baking parchment, then foil, and leave it for a day before slicing and eating. I understand if this is too muchto ask; I confess I don’t always manage to wait.
Andnowfor the pudding-cake: cook for 40–45 minutes, depending on whether you want it to have a gooily molten centre or not. Once it’s out of the oven, let it stand for 5–10 minutes before diving in for that first squidgy spoonful.
IT’SNOSECRET The Landscaper and I have differing views on howtall plants should be, but wedo agree that big shrubs need pruning every nowand then not just for height but for shape, and to stop them from shading everything in their path.
I naively think this needs doing only every three or four years, but the reality is that tiny shrubs, planted with, say, a person height hedge in mind, can grow 4metres while you’re making a cup of tea.
We’ve started the discussion already about what andhowseverely to prune the trees that line our driveway, because it’ll take us weeks if not months to cometo a consensus. But whatwe do agree on is thatwewant the sun back on the driveway, and wewant to keep the shrubs under control for the foreseeable future. Thismeans they can’t be allowed to grow any taller than an average-sized bloke with his arms upstretched.
There are quite a fewthings you need (in addition to a consensus), to embark on a pruning job. Pruning trees that are taller than the aforementioned bloke with his arms upstretched requires a leap of faith, so a pruning supervisor is an essential component of the tool kit. Her duties involve supervising the selection and collection of the tools needed for the job and directing their transfer to a location convenient to the shrubs to be chopped. She is also required to assess the aesthetics of each tree and advise on which branches should go, precisely where