It would begin with being sent into the garden to collect apple mint to cook with Jersey potatoes, my first happy summer holiday task, so it was probably going to be salmon they would accompany, a Saturday dish that would become a highlight all summer long. Then, to go with it, the cucumber slicing, the vinegar, the rarely used black-pepper mill, the pinch of sugar and parsley sauce: green-flecked and silky smooth, that gorgeous lotion buried pink flakes of fish as swiftly as lava flow.
All this carry-on was giddy stuff to a boy who, quite simply, loved to eat. Later into the season it would be the neat shredding of our own runner beans through a hand-cranked contraption clamped to the edge of the kitchen table, so bright green and sappy as they tumbled into an enamelled tin dish (always the same one) as if by magic. Broad beans were homegrown, too. Although I adore these now, I truly loathed them as a boy.
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