18 Comments
Mar 6Liked by Julia Watson

Made that beef & prunes a week ago to have friends over for a “Bruno” dinner.. good golly it was good!!

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Phew! I'm really pleased it worked!

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My onion cutting trick is to wear my contact lenses, as they stop whatever it is from making you cry.

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0h! That explains why I don't cry!

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Mar 7Liked by Julia Watson

Salivating just looking at the picture! I'm having visions of coming home from an icy 'dook' in the Moray Firth to a steaming plateful of this ... with a healthy glass of a rich red ('take a little wine for thy stomach's sake'!) to wash it down. I agree - cooking without the humble onion is just not an option. I interplant my carrots and parsley with spring onions; never had a problem with carrot fly!

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I can't begin to imagine the temperature of the Moray Firth! Even in summer. I swore once I left home never to swim again in less than body heat...

I wish I knew more about companion planting. Mother Nature is so sophisticated and so benign.

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Mar 7Liked by Julia Watson

It varies from about 4°C in January to 16° - 18° C in summer/early autumn (September is the warmest!). Four minutes in January is about my limit, though have to say, it's not so much getting into that painfully cold water as getting out into the usual January howling nor'easter that puts me off.

I wish I knew more about it, too, I'm by no means an expert. Though I'm sure Bruno knows about planting summer savoury with beans (repels blackfly)! and French marigolds with the tomatoes to repel whitefly.

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Oui. He's right on it. And the marigolds go pretty much all over the potager. Brilliant foes to aphids.

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Mar 8Liked by Julia Watson

I love Bruno! I also grow nettles (for the soup and the butterflies) and dandelions (for Bruno's yummy omelette, bien sûr). The neighbours think I'm nuts ....

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'Noisettes', perhaps....Bruno will be tickled pink. Envy you access to dandelion buttons - mine are in the dog park.

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They do well in 12" pots ...

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This looks delicious! Also: as food (obviously) and Desert Island Discs are things you enjoy, I've got a podcast for you: https://desertislanddishes.co/podcast/

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Oooh, thank you! Eons ago I pitched an interview/cookbook called that but the estate of Roy Plumley vetoed it. I'll dig into this!

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Mar 6Liked by Julia Watson

I have the Bruno cookbook, and I did cook it twice as long, made the day before, sat over night and then reheated low and slow...I have the Bruno cookbook....also did not have enough prunes so there were some dates and figs...

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Adding different dried fruits is a wonderful tagine-style twist! Particularly with the figs. Something to stick with in future repetitions...

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Mar 6·edited Mar 6Liked by Julia Watson

I'm curious why onions disappeared in Moscow during the winter. Elsewhere, they are a storage crop like potatoes, beets, and cabbage, which I'm guessing were readily available during the winter.

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There was so much that was baffling. Even potatoes showed up half-rotted and the cabbages had black hearts. And these were the only vegetables ever in the state stores over the winter. I imagine it was an element of the poor administration and organisation that affected so much of USSR trade and manufacture, in the case of produce, badly managed storage systems and transportation vulnerable to weather. When the buck stops with no-one, no-one needs take responsibility for anything.

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