“My granny Kathryn, my dad’s mum, was a serious, elegant and intelligent woman that I always remember speaking her mind. Before having children, granny had previously worked as a governess, and she had an authority and grandness to her that never left, even when she was incredibly old, which sometimes made her rather formidable. Despite this, she had a very kind nature, and a great deal of patience, which was tested to the maximum while trying to teach me to knit.
She lost her husband Phillip, an architect, very young from bone cancer when my father was just a baby, and brought him and his two sisters up on her own through rationing. This undoubtedly instilled a thriftiness and knack for eking out food into her cooking, and I think the salad below is a perfect example of this – it takes a few quite simple ingredients and combines them to make something truly delicious and special.
Before she moved into an annexe next door to my auntie and uncle, where she perpetually sat in a corner armchair, reading, knitting, or watching tennis on the TV, she had a beautiful and very old house in Harman’s Corner, Kent, which had been built by one of her ancestors. It had an orchard attached, and, along with a neighbour, Kathryn raised a pig there which grazed on the apples, and eventually fed both families, with no part of the pig going to waste. My father had a love of all things porky, making his own scotch eggs and, at one point, even sausages, and I wonder if this passion for pork came from this part of his childhood. I wish I could ask him.
I don’t really remember the house at Harman’s Corner, apart from that it had a gorgeous old grandfather clock in the living room. Inside was a frayed sack of wooden toys and blocks that was brought out with much ceremony whenever we visited, which my sister and I always found incredibly exciting. Granny always laid on a nice home- cooked meal, and often made this salad, laying it out on the table with some ham and perhaps some cold cuts. It’s adapted from a very old Penguin cordon bleu cookbook, which, along with Elizabeth David’s Provincial French Cooking, was her go-to cookbook, and it might just explain my lifelong love of tarragon.”
Food writer and stylist Rosie Birkett, UK
Feeds 2–4 as a side
Ingredients
1 cucumber, peeled and finely sliced
sea salt
1 tsp sugar
1 dessert spoon of tarragon vinegar
1 small cup of cream
2 tbsp vegetable oil
¼ tsp ground white pepper
small bunch fresh chives
few leaves of tarragon
Method
Peel the cucumber, slice as thinly as possible, salt it lightly and press it down between two plates with a weight on top. Leave for 30 minutes, then tip off any liquid.
Mix the sugar and vinegar together, stir in the cream and add the oil by degrees, whisking until you’re happy with the texture, then season with the white pepper.
Arrange the drained cucumber in a shallow dish, spoon over the dressing and scatter the top with chives and tarragon.