Sophie Grigson’s kitchen

Sophie Grigson portrait by Mark Fairhurst.

She’s a self-confessed cook rather than a chef and champions local food production.

Sophie Grigson explains what’s going on in her kitchen.

COOK Sophie Grigson has a personal sense of style more in keeping with an Eighties pop star than a chef. With her spiky haircut, dangly earrings and elfin features she could so easily have bagged a record deal or presented the cult programme The Tube during that era, you can’t help but feel as you talk to her.
Her lovely Oxfordshire farmhouse also has a slightly whacky feel. There’s the new dog, Ben, recently adopted, who currently has to be kept in one side of it while the cat, Spice, rather put out by the usurper, has taken refuge in the kitchen. The door between Ben’s and Spice’s territories remains firmly closed and it’s not clear, if it came to a bun fight, which pet would come off the victor.

Sophie is all smiles, welcome and hand waves, excusing the chaos and ushering me into the most obvious room for this interview the kitchen – or rather, Spice’s space.
It’s just the kind of kitchen you would expect Sophie to have. Not for her the pristine pans gleaming on a rack beside polished granite work surfaces. Instead, it’s a used, lived in, experimented in, sat in, chatted in creative kitchen. It was hand built by a local joiner and has a range down one end, while jars, bottles and packets line shelves all over the walls. The windows frame views over the valley beyond and the sills are packed with kitchen paraphernalia, including a stylish hand-juicer, which, I note, has dust all over it.
“I take it that’s not used much,” I venture.
Sophie, busy creating coffee for us, is unabashed as she replies that it looks good, which is why it won its place in her kitchen.
Sophie herself has lived an interesting life. Her late mother Jane Grigson was a highly acclaimed author, translator and one of the pioneers of the Sixties culinary revolution and her father Geoffrey Grigson was a poet and critic. Hardly surprisingly, Sophie has a string of books to her name and is a regular contributor to Waitrose Magazine. Easy to talk to and passionate about food, she regularly pops up on hit TV cookery shows and spent the run-up to Christmas cooking in Sri Lanka. She was one of the judges of the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme Food and Farming awards and uses her not inconsiderable influence and profile to champion local food producers, farmers’ markets and small food-related businesses. Indeed, it was at a local food producers’ festival that I first met her.

Such a good cooking pedigree

With so many strings to her bow, so many demands on her time, so many accomplishments and such a good cooking pedigree, it’s refreshing, if a little surprising, to her that she was slightly daunted on her Sri Lankan trip to discover she was cooking for around 50 guests.
“I’m a cook, not a chef,” she says, adding in the same breath that she really enjoyed the experience. “It made me realise how hard chefs work every day, especially in that heat. In the course of preparation we had several power cuts, the fuse box went up in flames and not all the staff spoke English – but we got it done on time and it was a really good evening,” she says.
I ask her if her children can cook and she assures me that they can, a bit, though se reveals that they think what Mum does is a bit boring.
“They can both cook their favourite dishes,” she says. Favourite means a Thai coconut vegetable and fish noodle soup and pasta with tomato sauce. They’ve also been known to supply peanut butter brownies to local fundraising markets.
“They get the idea and that’s good,” says Sophie.

“It’s important, as a food writer, to give my backing to people who are producing the kind of food I want to use.”

Living with one foot in Oxford and the other in the countryside, it’s perhaps not surprising that Sophie is so passionate about supporting local food producers and retailers.
“I think there are issues that we do need to address… I think it’s important, as a food writer, to give my backing to people who are producing the kind of food I want to use,” she says.
“We are seeing a lot of changes in attitudes to food production. You can have a green hotel, for example, without compromising on quality; in fact by raising your quality. Hotels and restaurants tapping into local food producers get lots of things, not just fresh produce. They can have more say and ask local people to make things for them” she says. And there are so many human interest stories behind the food we eat.”

Community and rapport

Sophie is keen that we should be aware of what is available at farmers’ markets and in farm shops. She also points out that shopping regularly that way establishes a sense of community and rapport between buyer and seller or producer.
Other cooks are also lending their weight and voices to highlighting the way we produce food – recent programmes with Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall about the lives of British-reared chickens have had an impact on supermarkets and customers.
“The demand for free range chickens has gone up, which is also good for British producers – it’s very exciting,” says Sophie, pointing out that the ultimate aim was to improve the way that chickens were raised.
“Good for Channel 4 for being brave enough to do that. When I first started appearing on television programmes 15 or 16 years ago I wouldn’t have been able to do that sort of thing,” she says.
Sophie would like to do a series on meat and follow the progress and lives of beef cattle, because she feels that if we are going to eat meat we should know the process of getting it on to our plates.
“I love meat, as long as I know it has had a good life,” she says.
So, food apart, how does Sophie spend her time?
“I do a lot with the children. I like reading novels. I’ve been reading a Barbara Trapido book – I really enjoy her novels. I had this strange experience of sitting in bed one night, reading one of her books and there was my name. It was a conversation someone was having – it felt lovely!” says Sophie, adding that she has been a volunteer at Oxford Literary Festival. She enjoys amateur dramatics, recently playing the fairy godmother in her local village panto and taking part in the The Vagina Monologues in Abingdon.
Sophie makes regular visits to France and loves the way the French have remained so connected to their food production. She would like to travel more, especially if she could combine her journeys with discovering food. She was enchanted by Sri Lanka and would like to travel through South America.

“One of the good things about having an interest in food is it’s a common language.”

“I’d love to take six months out and go from top to bottom, or the other way round,” says Sophie. “One of the good things about having an interest in food is it’s a common language.”
It’s a language that Sophie has proved fluent in and our local food producers are lucky to have such an eloquent and dedicated champion for their cause. She’s not just another personality dreaming up recipes in the kitchen. Sophie’s choice to be hands-on in the food world is Oxfordshire’s – and the nation’s – gain.

This interview first appeared in Oxfordshire Life magazine on June 2008 under my former name, Sandra Fraser. ©SandraKessell
Image ©Mark Fairhurst

Why should e-readers be treated as second class?

I’m rarely moved to write reviews these days but having loved Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale for its setting, characters and evocative writing, the experience was marred by the poorly proofread copy. It jars when you have to stop midflow to check whether you should be reading ‘filing’ or ‘filling’ or when wordsareruntogether so you have to do a double take. It takes you out of the world you and the author have created together, that intimate setting or quiet haven. It’s even more annoying when you’re reading, not a cheap imprint or self published novel, (when typos and literals are understandable and more forgivable, if no less noticeable) but one promoted through a large publishing house, written by a well-respected author, that was downloaded at the cost of £4.99. I buy e-books because I just don’t have any more shelf space but that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to sacrifice quality for slapdash. Come on HarperCollins, honour your readers, honour your authors, honour your good name and fine publishing traditions – proofread your e-imprints to the same standards as your hard copy prints.

The Story Museum in Oxford takes on a new lease of life.

Last week I took my un-literary medic daughter and her friend for a tour of the Story Museum in Oxford. We arrived in true la-la fashion – in the maze of Oxford I couldn’t actually remember where Pembroke Street was, though I knew what it looked like – and after admiring the doorbells (see above), the work of resident artist Ted Dewan, we entered the magic kingdom of fiction, make-believe and all things creative.

It’s not that my daughter doesn’t read, she reads a lot, but her taste runs mostly to medical text books – she also has a medics’ anatomy colouring-in book, but that’s another story. She looks at me as if I’m a little odd when I rhapsodise about fiction. I suppose we need doctors as well as writers.

The Story Museum has found a home in Rochester House, supposedly built on the site of an inn frequented by Samuel Johnson when he was at Pembroke College (you can tell the stories here are going to run and run). It has served as Master’s lodgings and a Royal Mail, for which read GPO if you’re as old or older than I am, sorting office. Behind the main front door is another front door, with a sliding hatch and a circular counter, ideal for popping a head out of, if anyone felt so inclined. Everything about the house is “Just right” as Golidlocks might have said. There are stairs winding endlessly up to proper untouched writers’ garrets in the top of the house, creaky floorboards, wacky blackboards and odd signs on doors – which writer in residence Michael Rosen is keen to keep.

“Only dragons are allowed to smoke in the courtyard” proclaims one notice as we step into the world beyond the main Victorian building to a series of 1930s warehouse-like offices and rooms which flank all sides. One can feel (if one’s not a medic) oneself being pulled into the world of make-believe as posters and card-board cut-outs from the city’s last Alice Day stare out of windows.

“Who or what made the huge holes in the walls?” I ask Cath Nightingale, the museum’s press officer, imagining giant masonry-eating rodents still living in the corridors and roof spaces. The answer is much less poetic. Before taking on the lease, the Story Museum had to be sure the building wasn’t about to fall down and it’s structural engineers’ tests of the steel within the walls that have rendered the plaster and brickwork somewhat patchy here and there.

A very generous anonymous donor put up the £2.5 million necessary to buy a 130-year lease from Merton College and suddenly, along with a vast quantity of pigeon guano, a set of keys that would have impressed a Victorian chatelaine was handed over. Other effects have been found in the building and put to good use by avid collector, inventor and artist Ted Dewan, who has set up a workshop full of the kind of things you’d forgotten existed.

A programme of clean-ups and running repairs has been started to restore the buildings to some kind of new life after the years of neglect and decay. Some parts remain appropriately spooky, others, cosy, warm and inviting. Some have an airy spaciousness, others have a dark intimacy. The Bodleian Library’s presses have found a home here, and print workshops are already being run on site. The Creation Theatre is using the space for rehearsals, prior to its next season.

With little twists of creativity and running commentaries from visiting writers present at every turn, the building is not only a receptacle of fiction but a giver of stories and ideas to its visitors. If it inspires a new generation of authors to rival Philip Pullman, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and Lewis Carroll the money spent on the building will be an investment. If it offers children a run of imagination and riot of fancy in a world populated by exams, hoops to jump through and prescribed teaching, who cares whether they go on to be writers or doctors? As long as they let their parents accompany them, everyone will gain.

The Story Museum is scheduled to open fully in 2014. You can find more about it and the building programme here http://www.storymuseum.org.uk/the-story-museum/aboutus/ourbuilding/Rochester-House

Give World Book Night a Chance

It’s a little earnest, this post, but heartfelt, nonetheless.

Three weeks ago I was delighted to learn my application to be a World Book Night giver had been successful.

I’ve copied below the text I understood to be the essence of WBN, which all donors were asked to read before they undertook to be a giver and I’ve underlined the section I considered most relevant as I filed my application and stated why I’d like to be part of this big giveaway.

From today, 2 December 2010, members of the public are invited to apply to be one of the 20,000 givers of 48 copies of their favourite book chosen from a carefully selected list of 25 titles. Most givers are expected to be passionate readers who will take pleasure in recommending a book they love to other readers. However, World Book Night will also encourage givers to pass the books on to others who either may be reluctant readers or who are part of communities with less access to books, bookshops and libraries. 960,000 books will be distributed by givers and a further 40,000 will be distributed by WBN to people who might not otherwise be able to participate.

I stated in my “pitch” to the organisers (every potential WBN giver had to do this) that I wanted to give my books to refugees and/or asylum seekers living in my locality. Buying new books, for me, is better than any other form of shopping – clothes, food, shoes, jewellery, anything – and anyone giving me a book for my birthday will be elevated in my estimation – regardless of the book, regardless of the content, regardless, even, of whether or not I already have a copy on my increasingly groaning bookshelves. I hoped to pass on or renew that yet-to-be-read anticipation to people who might love reading but for whom a new book is, or has become, a luxury or to people for whom reading is a forgotten or undiscovered pleasure. I recognise the loss of reading material would have been the least of their worries as they fled from war, famine or persecution, but while sanctuary, food and shelter are primary needs, friendship and understanding are fundamental to well-being and books are gifts of the heart. Without wishing to appear patronising, ignorant or seeking to stereotype, books are an opportunity to escape real world troubles and slip into another place, even if it’s only for a chapter or two.

To be honest, I was dismayed to learn that some givers are viewing March 5th 2011 as an occasion to treat their mates to a freebie. As far as I understood it, World Book Night was never about giving readers a chance to donate the books they were allocated to readers who could easily buy their own copies and who may already support writers and booksellers. There have been some gloom-mongers, sellers and writers alike, who have moaned about WBN being a blow to book sales, but you could just as easily go and picket your local secondhand book shop or village fete book stall for all the same reasons. Or do writers receive a second royalty on a £1 book bought on a hot summer’s day by a sandalled reader slurping on a £2 ice-cream? Given Susan Hill‘s recent rants, I suspect not.

In line with my original pitch and the news that I’d been selected as a giver, I’ve been in touch with relevant Oxford charities to find suitable places to donate my 48 copies of Sarah Waters‘s brilliant writing. Whilst being sensitive about the content of Fingersmith, it’s less graphic, in my opinion, than say, The Finkler Question and less disturbing than Never Let Me Go.

I’m hopeful that someone enlightened is administrating these charities, someone who will see 48 free books for their group as a gift of friendship from a sincere book lover to a recipient (or 48) who would get a great deal of pleasure from the gift. I want these books to go to people who would not, in their current circumstance, walk into their local bookshop and buy a brand-new, world-class novel. Perhaps their uncertain status means they can’t yet join a library, perhaps they don’t have the money to buy books, new or secondhand, perhaps they don’t have the confidence to try – perhaps though, they’d really like to.

I’m hopeful that in future years, when those same recipients are settled here (assuming their cases are approved) and have become part of our society, one that has, over many centuries, been created from different cultures, races, creeds and religions, that they will have their own book collections, will be members of their local library and will be buying and passing on books themselves.

That’s not to discount the pleasure a middle class, middle income reader would get from the gift of a World Book Night book. But giving to the converted was never part of this deal, I thought. Encouraging a whole new community of readers was always at its heart.

http://www.refugeeweek.org.uk/simple-acts/

Oxford Women’s Festival

Simple Acts

A Christmas of Crime

I’m not usually a crime reader. In fact, I’ve had two books written by mistresses of the genre sitting on my shelves for years waiting for me to read them. They were mistakes from the days when I belonged to one of those book clubs which sent you the choice of the month if you were not quick enough to tell them not to. I’m useless at admin – ask my accountant – so they arrived and I stuck them on my “to read when I’m desperate” pile. Truth be told, I’ve long felt there was enough crime going on in the real world without fictional tales adding to the body count. But those of you who are kind enough to follow my blog will have noticed the summer brought me an annoying, nagging, idea which refused to go away. And so I started writing Fallen.

Set in my home county of Norfolk (I’m an exile, who has pangs of homesickness), it features a former journalist who has fallen from grace, (not me) married to a school teacher (not my husband) who finds a dead body (apparently fallen from nowhere) on Holkham beach (that’s never happened to me and I hope it never does). Urged on by a few friends who were kind enough to let me know they were enjoying the instalments, I’ve kept adding to it, though I have only a vague idea where it’s going.

In the run-up to Christmas and nursing an almighty cold (call it ‘flu it you like) I found myself looking for something unchallenging to read in bed. Bed is where most of my reading is done. It’s been a habit as long as I can remember. Because I was a sleepless and tiresome child, as soon as I was old enough my parents left me books and a nightlight to read by – sleeping draughts, cajoling and other efforts having failed. The last thing you want, if you’re reading in the hope you’ll get back to sleep, is a book that gives you nightmares.

I started my crime-quest with a return to Fingersmith. A crime story if you like, it’s more an historical literary novel in my eyes, but it did win the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger for historical crime fiction. Which reminds me, I had a bit of a soft spot for Ellis Peters in the Eighties, but then I was brought up in the shadow of an abbey in a Norfolk market town and could always imagine the monks going about their daily business whenever I passed it or saw its twin towers across the valley.

Thinking I could put my enforced period of inaction to good use I proceeded (not in a westerly direction – I haven’t taken up police speak as well as crime fiction) on to Ruth Rendell’s Chief Inspector Wexford novel, The Babes in the Wood, and then Fox Evil, Minette Walters. Both were un-gory enough for my tastes and just as I was wondering what to move on to next, my husband presented me with Philippa Gregory’s The Red Queen and Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson for Christmas. I last read Kate Atkinson around 10 years ago – I’d loved Behind the Scenes at the Museum, but didn’t get Emotionally Weird. Perhaps I was emotionally weird at the time, I had three small children to look after by then and so I didn’t bother reading anything more of hers. More recently, I’d seen that she’d mixed her literary writing abilities in with crime fiction, but I doubt I would have bought Started Early, Took My Dog, for myself, even though I love the title. I wish those editors or agents who change long book titles because they think something punchy and brief works better would think again. I bought Everything is Illuminated based on its title, not its content – other favourites include The God of Small Things; The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam; Astonishing Splashes of Colour; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

I received many lovely Christmas presents. An antique jewellery box, a chicken-shaped stapler, a wine bottle holder that counterbalances itself – don’t ask me how – it just does. But I think my favourite present this year was Started Early, Took My Dog. Perhaps it just hit the right spot at the right time. My only gripe is – how can I possibly go back to writing Fallen now? Honestly, I am trying, but Kate does it so much better.

December update – Lights, Strictly Christmas and action

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I’ve been busy interviewing, writing and bringing up my (not very small) babies… and I’ve got the lurgy. Here’s a taster of what my diary has been filled with recently.

My daughter celebrated her 18th birthday last week. It’s true to say I have no idea where the time’s gone since she was born. It barely seems two years since I was asking myself how my son had reached 18. I can’t say I don’t feel my age since bits of me are creaking and, with the lurgy, croaking, but 18 years? Really? I’d better get used to the idea my baby is all grown up, however, she’s interviewing for a place to study medicine at various universities around the country – another pull on my time as well as hers.

The night before her interview at Liverpool University I whizzed along to Waddesdon to see the Christmas lights at the Manor. This is one of my favourite invitations of the year. Waddesdon Manor ‘s current series of Christmas themes is the great European cities settled in by the Rothschilds’ banking sons – last year was Frankfurt, this year, Paris. Waddesdon Manor really is magical any time, but with the bachelor’s wing specially decorated for Christmas (the planning takes months) and the trees outside spectacularly lit it’s well worth a visit. I went on the guided tour with an acquaintance who also happens to be the marketing director at another of the nation’s grand houses. I’m sure she won’t mind me mentioning she was more than a little wistful when she saw how beautiful the Manor’s Christmas decorations were, and she had to have two buns at the press tea to make up for it.

Galloping through to December I found myself interviewing Fern Britton (that’s the Ready Steady Cook Fern, not the other one, in case you’re one of those people who get Fearne Cotton and Fern Britton muddled). It required a quick turnaround with only a day’s notice. I was busy all morning and into the afternoon, but Fern and I arranged to meet at the Iain Rennie Hospice at Home office at 5pm – it’s a charity she’s supporting with her renewed enthusiasm for cycling. I sat in the car park waiting for a while, then knocked on the door and met up with the IRHH’s PR officer, Gemma.

As we made a cup of tea, Fern arrived and what struck me was her poise and elegance and down-to-earth entrance. She parked her little run around in the car park and skipped in from the rain. Everybody complimented her on her looks – she was glammed up thanks to the make-up artists at the BBC, where she’d spent the afternoon recording the trailer for Strictly Christmas. There was no mistaking the subtext in the comments – she’s lost stones in weight and every woman in the office noticed. Fern was candid enough to tell me about her battle with the bulge in the interview. I’ll post it here just as soon as it’s published.

Within days of interviewing Fern an e-mail inviting me to interview House of Commons Speaker John Bercow turned up in my in-box. I’ve been chasing this interview for several months, but with the election and his busy schedule there’s been no space in his diary for me. I always approach my interviewees with an open mind. That’s not to say I don’t read up on them before I meet them or I give them an easy time, but there’s also no point standing on the sidelines with an agenda and if you want a fair interview you have to be an impartial observer. I did ask John Bercow for his views about the HS2 Link (which will affect many of his constituents adversely) and question why there was such a furore over the omission of LibDem and Labour candidates from the Buckingham ballot paper last May. I hope my interviews give you the feeling you were in the room with us and that the questions I asked were those you wanted answered. You can let me know what you think of the interview when I’ve posted it, but in meantime it’s on hold for a couple of months until the magazine that is paying me for it can fit it in.

In the run-up to Christmas I’m writing an article for The English Home which has been fun, though with my lurgy flattening my senses, I’m feeling slightly worried about when I’m going to chase up all the loose ends. The deadline is next week.

It’s been a busy month, so I’ve had little time for fiction writing – I know there are people out there who say you should make time if you want to be a writer of fiction. I assume these people don’t have five children at home and have a living to earn and a household to run at the same time. Or maybe they have a wife. I have been working on Fallen, since my other fiction has taken a bit of a back seat at the moment. I have taken to reading a couple of light (if there is such a thing) crime novels while I get over my ‘flu-like lurgy. They’re not my usual thing, but I thought I ought to get a bit more of a handle on the genre if I’m writing what seems to be shaping up into a crime mystery sci-fi thriller. I’ll post the next instalment of Fallen soon, I promise.

In the meantime I wish you a Happy & Healthy Christmas. Now where’s my box of tissues?