saucepan with olive oil and cover the bottom with spare vine leaves, unfolded. Then arrange the stuffed vine leaves in circles to cover the bottom of the pan and build up layers until you have used them all up. Add the lemon juice and enough water just to cover the vine rolls. Find a plate or bowl that fits exactly inside the saucepan. Put this on top of the vine rolls to stop them floating up during the cooking process.
Bring to the boil and then simmer gently until the liquid has disappeared and the rice is practically cooked. If there is any liquid left at this stage, carefully strain it off. Now add the tomato sauce and continue to simmer until the rice is fully cooked. Leave to cool and then refrigerate overnight in the saucepan (do not attempt to turn them out while they are warm as they will break up into a shambolic mess!).
Next day, arrange the stuffed vine leaves on a serving dish in a single layer and pour the sauce over. Grind some coarse black pepper over the lot and serve with wedges of lemon.
marinated fish
Here’s one for those of you who happen to like a spot of fishing. If you catch a couple of fish, it doesn’t matter what sort they are at all (of course, you can buy fish from the fishmonger, ho, ho, ho!). But remember that the fish must be very fresh, since it isn’t cooked.
Fillet and skin the fish. Cut the fillets into bite-sized pieces, wash them and dry very carefully. Put them into a shallow earthenware or similar dish, squeeze over some lemon juice and add a dash of white wine vinegar so that the fish is half covered. Chuck in some finely chopped garlic, a couple of crushed peppercorns, a couple of very finely chopped chillies and a dash of olive oil, plus a bit of salt and pepper. Leave in the fridge for one hour and then turn the fish over to marinate the other side. Leave it in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours (preferably overnight). Serve with fresh bread. The fish is raw but ‘cooked’ by the marinade.
aubergine salad
Another dish that benefits from being prepared the day before as it needs to be chilled and, anyway, the flavours mature nicely this way. Serve spread on cubes of country bread as part of a mezze.
| 6 | aubergines |
| 2-3 tbsp | tahini (sesame paste) |
| lemon juice to taste (at least 2 lemons) | |
| about 4 tbsp | olive oil |
| 6 | tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and finely diced (to skin them, drop them into rapidly boiling water for a few seconds; the skins will break and they will be easy to peel) |
| 2 | spicy spring onions, very finely diced |
| 1 | bunch of fresh coriander, very finely chopped |
| sea salt and black pepper |
Dry-roast the aubergines in a very hot oven until the skins are blackened and charred. Leave to cool. Cut them in half, scrape out the pulp and drain through a fine sieve to extract any remaining moisture. Put the strained aubergine pulp and the tahini into a food processor and whizz to a coarse purée. Tip into a bowl and whisk in some lemon juice and olive oil (it should not be too runny). Then stir in the tomatoes, spring onions and coriander and season to taste. Chill overnight.
Corfu, April
The journey to Corfu, our first destination in Greece, was miserable. We got to Malaga airport at about 7am with two huge tin trunks full of all my cooking equipment, only to find we had to pay about £700 in excess baggage. Then we discovered that the trunks could not be booked through to Corfu because we had to fly from Malaga to Madrid, Madrid to Athens and Athens to Corfu, and there were no porters in Malaga or Madrid. If we had had to unload the trunks we could not possibly have shifted them. It took four of us to get them on the plane in the first place. However, we finally made it to Corfu at about 1 o’clock the next morning, the Greek Orthodox Easter Saturday, only to find that it was absolutely freezing. We had expected weather similar to Spain and had packed accordingly. To make matters worse we were checked into the most appalling excuse for a hotel I have ever seen in my life. It had no bar, no lift, no lights, the lavatory ran incessantly, the taps dripped and the beds were slatted wooden affairs with thin sponge mattresses. There were no power points, no services or facilities of any kind, except for a breakfast of stale bread and jam plus dreadful coffee made from ground roasted acorns. I can tell you we were feeling very sorry for ourselves, and to make matters worse everybody in the pub before we left had said, ‘Oh, you don’t want to go to Corfu, it’s full of lager louts!’ I was very much in mind of Bob Dylan’s song, ‘You’re lost in worries, it’s raining and it’s Eastertime too.’
I had a cooking sketch to do that afternoon but because a huge Easter procession was planned, all the shops were shut. Acquiring food was really quite difficult, and trying to buy pullovers and waterproof jackets was a problem, which luckily my wife,Tess, overcame.
It never rains but it pours.
In between downpours the sun shone brightly, while a very cold wind, which blew in from Albania just a couple of miles across the water, whistled through the narrow back streets of Corfu Old Town. We weren’t due to start filming until about 11 o’clock, so we wandered about the streets and discovered that the Old Town is a charming place: wonderful Venetian architecture, cheerful cafés, bars and restaurants, and an absurd concrete cricket pitch set in the middle of the park for the expats.
As it got closer to 11 o’clock the streets, which at 9 o’clock had been completely empty, began to fill with people – first a few hundred, then a few thousand, then tens of thousands – all lining the route for the grand procession that was to take place to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. In cynical mood, I took my place in the jostling crowds, waiting without any enthusiasm whatsoever for the band to begin to play – some shambolic, out-of-step, scruffy group of people in motley uniforms, banging drums and missing notes on trumpets, I assumed. But to my great delight and excitement I was completely wrong.
The parade was spectacular. The first band came into view and into earshot through a very narrow street, fanning out as the street widened. Its members were dressed immaculately in blue and gold uniforms with polished silver helmets, and playing the most moving music – classical in style but presumably religious. They were succeeded by sombre-looking priests dressed in black with curious stove-pipe hats, flanking a man, berobed but not of the cloth, as it were, who was carrying a
