On Moving to The Sea: Part One
Why I stepped away from the busy London life I built to live more slowly by the sea. With a recipe for seaweed potatoes
Hello my dears, I hope you had a most wonderful long weekend full of food and friends and good things. Perhaps you had a chance to rest and recuperate a bit? Or maybe, like me, you hosted and cooked and found yourself energised by that? I made my (and, happily, lots of your) very best brined, barbecued chicken recipe for some pals, along with homemade tarragon mayo, Jersey potatoes and asparagus, with a really easy homemade focaccia that I’m going to share soon. Dessert was my quick bake rhubarb and custard pavlova, which I go back to again and again because it’s always a smash hit.
We found ourselves ‘fossiling’ in Folkestone on Bank Holiday Monday, and, once I got my eye in, I found a couple of ammonites, ancient marine animals dating back to the Jurassic period. Not only are they absolutely beautiful to look at, with their pleasing swirls and ridges, but they’re part of the cephalopod family, so related to my favourite squid and cuttlefish. It was amazing to find something so unbelievably old and hold it in my hand. I think I’ve found a new hobby/addiction (anyone else keen?), and will be going back for more! That brings me nicely to the focus of this newsletter, which is something a little different this time: a personal reflection on why I chose to leave London all those years ago and start a new life by the sea.
I thought it might be an interesting read for anyone who’s curious as to how we ended up on this special little stretch of coast, or for those of you who might have a yearning in your bones to leave the city in search of a different way. I’ll caveat that by saying this isn’t a ‘how-to’, but rather some very individual thoughts on our reasons for leaving behind the life we’d made in the city. As always, this sort of deeply personal writing is reserved for paid subscribers, whom I’m so grateful to have supporting this newsletter and my writing.
Before we dive in, and in the coastal spirit of this email, I wanted to share with you a really nice method for cooking Jersey potatoes (or failing that, the freshest, most mineral new potato you can find), which I’d like to encourage you to cook with a big old handful of samphire thrown in at the end. It’s more of a method, rather than a recipe, but as you know, I like to be precise, so here it is, as first published in my debut cookbooks A Lot On Her Plate. Cooking Jerseys with samphire feels so right, as they bring a juicy, briny bite to the pearly, creamy, slightly sweet flesh of the potato, and both work well doused in lots and lots of butter. But also, Jerseys are fertilised with seaweed, so there’s a gorgeous harmony at play when you add a little seaweed into the eating, too.
Jersey Royals With Samphire
Serves 2 as a side dish
350g Jersey Royals (or Yukon Golds, Cornish news or other seasonal new potatoes, washed and scrubbed lightly to remove any soil
100g samphire, washed
A large knob of unsalted butter
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A squeeze of lemon
Put the potatoes in a large saucepan, fill it with cold water and add two large pinches of sea salt. Bring it up the boil, skimming the surface of any impurities, and cook for 15-20 minutes, until the potatoes are squashable with your fingers. Don’t be afraid of overcooking them: you want them tender, not in any way al dente. Just before you drain them, add the samphire in and blanch for about a minute, then drain. Transfer to a large serving bowl and add the butter, tossing to coat, then season well with salt and pepper. Squeeze over the lemon juice and serve. This is particularly good with fish.
I’ll be back in your inboxes very soon with some more recipes, but for now, here’s part one of ‘Moving to the Sea’. I hope you enjoy, and I’ll be following up with more about how it’s going in ‘Part Two: Five Things I’ve learned these past Five Years’ in due course. Please do grab a cup of coffee and tune in tomorrow at 11am in the Substack App to my final ‘Kitchen Hang’ of the season, with the incredible Leyla Kazim of ‘A Day Well Spent’. Leyla is a wonderful writer and presenter, and an all round inspiring human being, and I’m lucky enough to call her a friend. She has just revealed the news of her debut book ‘Pathways: To The Land’ and a massive lifestyle change: she’s upping sticks to move to rural Portugal and live off the land (!), and I’m so excited to be speaking with her about this news, and swapping notes on leaving city life behind for a slower path. I’ve had the pleasure of reading some of Leyla’s book in the proof stages and I can promise you it’s compulsive reading. It’d be great to see you there.
On Moving To The Sea…
The other morning I was walking along the seafront, the sun warming my face, the pier stretched out beyond me, the first of spring’s wild fennel sprouting from the shingle, and I had a sudden jolt of realisation that almost stopped me in my tracks: I am now living the dream I once had as a burned-out Londoner. Rewind seven years, and I was quite probably running late for a meeting, or jumping on and off the tube/bus, or sitting in a sweaty cab in traffic with bags full of rapidly-wilting ingredients, my fingers racing to keep up with emails.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED my life and career in London throughout my twenties and early thirties, and I feel hugely privileged to have ever called that magnificent city my home. I will always adore London (there were years when I truly couldn’t imagine living anywhere else), but by the time I got to my mid-thirties, something shifted in my experience of how we were living there, and I started to realise that the life we’d built in the city wasn’t sustaining me in many of the crucial ways I needed it to.
We’d been married a few years and had privately started to think very tentatively trying for a baby, hoping that it might ‘just happen’, but to no avail.