Cradock - Lemons. Proof that in something apparently awful can lurk something that is utterly sublime.
Lemons are the antidote to commonsense, which tells you that everything should be taken at face value. They are the contradictory voice, the guy in the submissive audience who gets up and says, hang on, that’s not right. And wins everybody around to his argument.
Lemons are the black sweet in the packet of Liquorice Allsorts, the blue one in the Smarties box. You couldn’t take a mango, or a banana, and add to to your stew, your cake, your roast or your soup, and be happy with the surprising lift that it gives it. That’s the job of the humble lemon.
They’re the maverick among fruits, the solo operator among ingredients. They show themselves as one thing, but behind the sour, tongue-curling facade lies utter heaven.
I adore them. If I were to choose the foodstuff that typifies my own approach to life, that would be it. Which doesn’t mean I have a sour outlook or a bitter perspectve of things. It’s the opposite of that. The sweetness in the lemon is the silver lining in the cloud. It is the one ingredient that you can add to a million dishes to just give it that extra, often indefinable, zing. Few other ingredients can do that.
And they take me right back to my childhood days in Oranjemund and watching my mom with the big beige baking bowl, beating and whisking and letting me swipe a thumbful of the cake batter once it’s been poured into the cake tin.
And I wonder, when is it that you become the individual you’re on the way to becoming? Is it as early as that, watching your mother bake a cake or make a pie, watching the methods and understanding that just one wrong step – omit one egg, add too much flour – and your recipe for success is messed up?
And then I wonder, when or where was it that you decided to try to do things differently, to turn off the main drag and head down side streets in search of the less than bleedingly obvious. Was it the Sunday morning when your dad took you to the field round the corner from your house and said, we’re getting breakfast here.
And dotted around the soccer field were plump white button mushrooms, and we each had a small knife and we picked them all and took them home where he sliced them and cooked onions and added them and then added cream and, after it had bubbled away to thicken up, and seasoned it, poured it on to crisp, buttered toast and it was so yummy.
And the feeling of that – having come from the thought of it, just the spark of the idea that there might be mushrooms on the field today. And there were.
I don’t remember if he used any lemon, but I almost invariably cook mushrooms with lemon juice, and I have adored mushrooms since.
And so we get to my penultimate column, just once more after this before I go, and often when you leave something you cast your mind all the way back to where you began, at your parents’ knees, and you wonder whether you appreciated them enough, and you think back to the last time you saw her, and the last time you saw him.
The last time I saw my dad was in the early ’80s, in Durban, in that little rented room in a nondescript building in Point Road, with his bedside drawer full of the odd little tools that had been with him all his life. Such a small world his had come down to, the man who had once sailed the world with the Royal Navy, his life truncated.
Somewhere in a cupboard would have been his medals, including the one for his valour in saving the lives of many of his shipmates when the frigate went down in the eastern Mediterranean. You never know where life is going to take you, athough his always had to be under the sun, so it was no surprise that he ended up in Durban. And he died, suddenly, in 1983, and that was that.
I last saw my mom in the dining room of the awful old age home where she spent her last days, and it pains me still to picture her there. I could have done better for her, and we have to carry those burdens with us through our own lives. And her asking: “Just answer me one thing, Tony, will I ever go back to England?” And you saying, “Mom, I don’t know, I hope so, I’ll try my best…” And her having that sad look on her face and you walking away. And then.
So you remember the sweetness that the lemon brings once you have worked your magic with it, and it’s the better days that you fill your mind with, and you send all the love in the world through the ether and beyond the clouds in the hope that somewhere over the invisible rainbow is the essence of the ones who are gone.
When life throws you lemons, remember the good things even while knowing that the bitter, the sour, yet lurks there somewhere.
Lemon Fridge Tart
Betty Jackman used to make all manner of sweet things, including this old-fashioned lemon fridge tart, bright with citrus flavour, sinfully calorific thanks to all that condensed milk, and very old-school.
Crust
1 packet Tennis biscuits
125g melted butter
Crumble biscuits into a bowl. Melt the butter and stir it in thoroughly. Grease a pie dish. Pour in the crumble and pat it down evenly, as well as up the sides. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to set the butter.
Filling
1 tin condensed milk
Juice of 2 medium lemons
Zest of 1 lemon
120ml cream
Mix together and pour into biscuit base. Set in refrigerator for several hours.
Weekend Argus