Lucy Boyd - Kitchen Memories

It is this feeling of excitement about ingredients that has stuck with me as well as the period of time we spent in Italy. We often had little money living there, but I remember driving to Viareggio on the coast from our house outside Lucca in the hills to meet guests (the cost of petrol to fill up the huge barge of a car), walking the passiagata in the evening, sipping prosecco in the bar and tasting a little of town life with the wind blowing in from the sea between gaps in a promenade of pristine Gucci and Prada shops. Most influential, though, are the memories of our ritual family breakfasts. Our Pavoni coffee machine which gave us an electric shock as we turned it on in the morning before we were fully awake, anchovies on toast, tomatoes, eggs with chillies, Lapsang Souchong tea with no milk, prosciutto with thick slices of juicy sweet melon – learning to love the taste of the prosciutto and eating the sweet fat with the fruit and it melting in your mouth (tearing the fat off the prosciutto was considered as bad as not eating your crusts). My approach to flavours and learning about the joy of cooking seasonally comes directly from Rose and our time in Italy, which has a huge impact on the way I cook now.

Rose cooking the pig for Christmas lunch 2007 with David, her husband, and my brother Dante in the courtyard of Cabalva farmhouse, Wales.

At Petersham, 2012.

Me making Barolo Bagna Cauda at home for friends, 2011.

Italy, 2005, family lunch.

Rose and David with some of her grandchildren, Tuscany, 2004.

Rose teaching Alex how to peel tomatoes, Italy, 2004.

Daisy, David, Rose and Alex – Rose loved to paint with her grandchildren on holiday – Tuscany 2006.

Early spring is the season for young shoots, swelling buds and fresh new growth. At Petersham, the garden is waking up after the winter and despite the beds being given a heavy mulch of compost there are splatterings of green against the dark soil where the weeds have started growing, a sign that the ground is warming up and the days are getting longer. There is a brightness and a feeling of excitement and anticipation about what is to come.

In March, there is a distinct shift in what I want to cook and how I use ingredients. The first young artichoke buds are tender and sweet, delicious eaten raw with fiery new-season’s olive oil or the creamy pale shoots of forced sea kale in a salad with oranges, and are at their juiciest and best over winter and in early spring. Instead of stews and gratins which need longer cooking, I want to eat lighter meals – my griddle comes out from the cupboard so I can grill a piece of chicken or a fillet of wild salmon quickly, in contrast to the winter comfort of a slumbering roast lazily bubbling away in the oven while you go off on a walk.

Spring ingredients can have a relatively short season and so are valued all the more because of it. Sea kale in late February/March, rhubarb, the first early tomatoes of spring – ‘Marinda’ and ‘Camone’ with their red-and-green-flecked crunchy skins and amazing flavour: tart, acidic and not too sweet.

As spring gets going more and more ingredients become available, purple sprouting broccoli, spring greens, soft-leaf herbs, early spinach and chard, Jersey Royals, young baby onions and carrots, asparagus and one of my favourite ingredients of all – broad beans.

I love the first broad beans as they arrive in spring. The pods are bright green, young and fresh and have not swelled into the furry pods that contain the nuttier, more mature beans with a thick skin that you find later on in the season. In Italy we would pod the small beans, pour a small amount of good extra-virgin olive oil over them and add a few grindings of black pepper and some roughly broken pieces of pecorino stagionato, a fairly young sheep’s milk cheese that is fruity and tart.

Mostly I am excited by cooking with ingredients that should be eaten in spring when they are at their best and most delicious and I don’t want to miss out on them – the first early tomatoes which have a taste and texture that is so very different from summer varieties, which will go on through the summer and into the autumn months. I want to enjoy the tender buds of artichokes before they develop their chokes and become woody, just as I look forward to and want to taste the first apricots of spring with their dense jammy flesh and tart sweetness.

For this dish you ideally need the first of the new season’s broad beans. They are small and sweet and have the delicious broad bean flavour without being too starchy and dry.

750g fresh young broad beans in their pods

3 garlic cloves, peeled

1 tbsp freshly grated Parmesan cheese

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

200g podded fresh peas (about 500g unpodded)

1 sprig of fresh mint, washed and dried

2 dried red chillies, crushed

4 slices of sourdough bread

4 good-quality fresh eggs

1 handful of rocket, washed and dried

sea salt and black pepper

Pod the broad beans and put in the pestle and mortar with two of the garlic cloves and pound to a rough paste. Add the Parmesan, then stir in the extra-virgin olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Put a pan of water on for the eggs and bring to a simmer. Preheat the grill or griddle. Blanch the peas in boiling water with the mint for a couple of minutes or until the water returns to the boil. Drain, then season with salt and pepper and a little chilli.

Grill the sourdough on both sides, then sweep the remaining garlic clove lightly over one side of each slice. Place a slice on each plate and spoon the broad bean mixture onto the bruschetta, keeping it light and lively.

Break the eggs into the simmering water and poach until the egg white is no longer clear and has solidified. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the eggs to kitchen paper and dab away any excess water. Place an egg on each bruschetta, tear the rocket leaves in half and place on top, then scatter the peas over.

I will often have no idea what to cook for supper and no desire to shop at the supermarket. It is when I am feeling like this that I make a visit to my favourite greengrocers, on Turnham Green Terrace in Chiswick, London. Andrew, the owner, sources an incredible range of seasonal fruit and veg from English growers as well as from the Italian and French markets.