FROM PATCH TO PLATE Matthew Fort
February is the month to indulge in tea. And afternoon tea without crumpets, Matthew maintains, is hardly worth eating
There is a fire in the grate, a pleasant fug in the sitting room, and I’m dozing on the sofa. A teapot, milk jug and teacup sit on the table just beside me. A plate with little puddles of melted butter and the odd blob of homemade preserve rests on my knee. Until a minute or two ago, several buttered crumpets had rested on said plate, but I have demolished them – butter, bramble jelly and all.
Well I’ve earned them. I’ve been toiling all afternoon with unusual vigour in the garden, tidying up here and there; clipping shrubs that need to be clipped; digging out compost from the compost heap and then digging it into my veg beds; and dreaming of the bounty that will begin to peep through in just a few weeks.
In the meantime, I’m making do with leeks, the odd leaf of Swiss chard, and the tail-end of the winter chicories and endives that I’ve managed to keep going with a bit of help from cloches: the speckled, creamy leaves of Castelfranco; the dark purple and white spear-headed Treviso; the egg-yellow hearts of Escarole Bionda; and the jagged edges off the Catalogna Pugliese bring a welcome dash of colour.
Most of all, I watch how my puntarelle – a variant of chicory and a speciality of the Lazio region in Italy – are swelling at the base. Shredded, dunked in cold water until they go all frizzy, drained, dried and then turned in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and chopped up anchovy fillets, puntarelle are one of those treats that make you glad you got out of bed of a cold winter’s morning.
For the most part, though, February is a month of future promise rather than present production when it comes to vegetables. However, its short days and dank airs have other compensations. February is the month for indoor feasts. Above all, February is for tea. Of course, you can have tea on any day in any month you like, but somehow in my mind, February is the apotheosis of that admirable opportunity for eating.
If there is one meal that demonstrates the superiority of our cooking culture over all others, it is tea. No other country in the world has an afternoon celebration to match it. In fact, no other country in the world has the number of formal excuses to eat during the day. Think of it – breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea, high tea, supper, dinner, midnight feast. You might not want to tuck into all of them, but there they are, ready for you to pick and choose.
What really brings a song to my heart is the prospect and then the reality of tea
– a panoply of cakes and biscuits and cupcakes and drop scones and jam and butter and cream and sandwiches (if you so wish). It’s a multi-layered extravaganza, a celebration of sugar, a testament to dairy produce of all kinds, a test of the home cook’s skill, the ultimate demonstration of a host’s generosity, a shining hour of culture and civilisation.
For me, a February tea without crumpets is hardly worth eating. When it comes to making crumpets, I like to turn the clock back to the great Constance Spry Cookery Book by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume, one of the great monuments of British cookery. This is pretty much the Misses Spry and Hume’s recipe, with one or two subtle modifications. You need crumpet rings, if possible, certainly rings of one sort or another the same size so the batter doesn’t spread. You can make crumpets in a heavy-based frying pan, but you should have a griddle for authenticity.