THANKS to its rich soil and temperate climate, everything grows with abandon on this little garden island, marooned in the English Channel a few miles from the French coastline. Hatched by hedgerows and parcelled up into an orderly patchwork of fields, this is an island where food is more than a staple: it’s a way of life. Many of the island’s farms are centuries old.
‘Guernsey’s history is essentially a tale of farming and fishing,’ explains Sara Lampitt, who works for the National Trust of Guernsey and helps organise the island’s biggest food celebration, Lé Viaër Marchi, held once a year in the parish of Castel. ‘That’s not really surprising—we are an island, after all. Most Guernsey recipes are connected with the land or the sea. And you can’t even begin to discuss the island’s food without starting with bean jar.’
A hearty meat, bean and veg cassoulet, bean jar is the nearest thing Guernsey has to a national dish. Cheap and filling, it’s a classic example of cucina povera (peasant cooking): the ideal fare for working folk to eat after a long day in the fields or on the boats. Customarily, it’s accompanied by a Guernsey biscuit, a flat, yeasty bread roll, ideal for soaking up sauce. The beauty of a one-pot stew such as this, Ms Lampitt explains, is that it could incorporate whatever leftovers people had to hand—from old vegetables to scraps of meat—and it required little time or effort to make.
‘In the old days, when most people didn’t have their own ovens, they would drop their bean jar off at the bakery, where it would cook slowly throughout the day—and they picked it up on the way home from work.’
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin August 16, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin August 16, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
A tapestry of pinks
THE garden is now entering its season of vigour and exuberance.
Bringing the past to life
An event hosted by COUNTRY LIFE at WOW!house is one of the highlights of a programme that features some of the biggest names in interior design
This isle is full of wonder
GEOLOGY? A bit like economics, the famously boring science? I confess I suffered the prejudice—agriculture and history being my thing, both of them vital in every sense— but Robert Muir-Wood’s voyage through the past 66 million years of the making of the British landscape has biblical-level drama on almost every other page. Flood, fire, ice… or, perhaps, the formation in rock, sand, mud and lava of these isles is best conceived of as fierce poetry.
Empire protest
Without meaning to issue a clarion call for independence, E. M. Forster perfectly captured the rising tensions of the British Raj. One hundred years later, Matthew Dennison revisits the masterpiece A Passage to India
Hops and dreams
A relative of marijuana, hops were a Teutonic introduction to British brewing culture and gave rise to the original working holiday
Life and sol
The sanctuary of the Balearic Islands has enchanted a multitude of creative minds, from Robert Graves to David Bowie
'Nature is nowhere as great as in its smallest creatures'
Giving himself neck ache from constantly looking upwards, John Lewis-Stempel makes the most of a sunny May day harvesting ‘tree hay’ and marvelling at the myriad wildlife including flies and earwigs–that reside on bark
'Plans are worthless, but planning is everything'
Country houses great and small were indispensable to D-Day preparations, with electricity and sanitation, well-stocked wine cellars, countesses to run the canteens and antique furniture to feed the stoves
The darling buds of May
May Morris shared her father’s passion for flowers, embroidery and Iceland, but was much more than William’s daughter. Influential both as a designer and as a teacher, she championed the rights of workers, particularly women, as Huon Mallalieu reveals
Achilles healed
Once used to comfort the lovelorn or soothe the wounds of Greek heroes, yarrow may now have a new starring role in sustainable agriculture