A Day at the Beach Hut

by Veronica Henry

  SERVES 1

  50ml Campari

  15ml elderflower cordial

  Juice of 1 lime

  Ice

  Ginger beer

  Mint sprigs

  Mix together the Campari, elderflower cordial and lime juice in the bottom of a glass. Add ice and top up with ginger beer. Garnish with a sprig or two of fresh mint.

  Gin spritz

  Campari is a little like Marmite – you either love it or hate it – so for those who are not so keen, this is a gin-based party starter.

  SERVES 1

  ½ cucumber

  50ml gin

  20ml elderflower cordial

  Ice

  Soda water

  Mint sprigs

  Run a vegetable peeler along the cucumber to make thin curls. Drape them around the inside of the glass. Add the gin and elderflower cordial, then the ice, then top up with soda. Garnish with sprigs of fresh mint.

  Plateau de fruits de mer with aïoli

  A huge plate, smothered in ice, on which is perched a kingly selection of dressed lobster, langoustines and crab, the only accompaniment wedges of bright yellow lemon. And, with it, quivering blobs of garlic aïoli.

  SERVES A GREEDY FOURSOME

  Selection of fruits de mer

  Lemon wedges, to serve

  For the aïoli

  3 garlic cloves

  1 tsp sea salt

  2 egg yolks

  1 tsp mustard powder

  250ml sunflower oil

  1 tsp cider vinegar

  Crush the garlic with the salt until you have a smooth paste. Plop the egg yolks into the bottom of a bowl and add the garlic paste and mustard and mix together. Add the oil a drop at a time and whisk until you have a thick mixture – take this stage very slowly and have patience. Once it is properly thick you can start to add more oil, in a thin stream, still whisking diligently. When all the oil has been used up, add the vinegar, stirring it in thoroughly. Taste and adjust with more salt and vinegar if needed.

  Serve the aïoli with your seafood platter and plenty of lemon to squeeze over.

  Potato salad

  Like hummus, potato salad is another of those seemingly dull dishes that has a fanatical following. I have had numerous conversations about the best recipe and after much experimentation I think this is the perfect one – delicious in itself but not overpowering, and the best foil for rich seafood. Mayonnaise is too cloying, somehow, so I prefer an oil-based dressing, and serving the potatoes still warm enhances all the flavours.

  SERVES 4

  650g small new potatoes, washed

  3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

  1 tbsp cider vinegar

  1 tsp honey

  1 tsp Dijon mustard

  ½ red onion, finely diced

  1 tsp capers

  Bunch fresh tarragon or dill, finely chopped

  Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

  Boil the potatoes in salted water for 10 minutes until they are soft but firm when you poke them with a sharp knife. Drain and keep warm. Pour the olive oil, vinegar, honey and mustard into a serving bowl and whisk until emulsified. Swish in the red onion, capers and some tarragon or dill. Add the still-warm potatoes and turn them around in the dressing until they are evenly coated. Season with salt and black pepper.

  Rosemary and cranberry focaccia

  I’ve always been a little terrified of bread-making and used to buy this focaccia in our little local shop, but they stopped using the concession that supplied it. And then I watched an episode of Salt Fat Acid Heat with Samin Nosrat, and became beguiled by the process, my mouth watering at the sight of the golden loaf, rich with olive oil, emerging from the oven. And I asked myself, ‘How hard can it be?’ Not very, it turns out! And probably the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done. My first attempt was perfect – the outside crisp, the inside soft and fluffy, just the right amount of salt and herbs. Ideal for mopping up the remains of the aïoli.

  MAKES 1 LOAF

  500g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting

  1 × 7g packet yeast

  1 tsp olive oil

  350ml warm water

  1 tsp sea salt, plus extra to scatter over

  Handful of dried cranberries

  2 rosemary sprigs, leaves stripped

  Put the flour and yeast in a large bowl and add the olive oil, water and salt. Stir until the mixture comes together, then remove the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead for a good 5–10 minutes until it becomes smooth and elastic. Pat into a ball and return to the cleaned and oiled bowl, covering it with a clean cloth. Leave it for 1 hour until it has doubled in size. Punch the air out of the dough and then stretch it into a rectangle in an oiled 24 × 30cm baking tin. Leave for another 30–45 minutes.

  Preheat the oven to 220°C/fan 200ºC/gas mark 7. Add a glug of olive oil to the dough and gently spread over the top, then poke holes in the dough with your index finger or the end of a wooden spoon. Prod a dried cranberry into each hole and sprinkle the rosemary leaves over the top, patting them into the dough a little along with a scattering of sea salt.

  Bake the bread for 30 minutes until the top is pale gold. Drizzle another glug of olive oil over the top. Rip apart with your bare hands!

  Watermelon, feta and mint salad

  This has become my favourite summer salad and it looks stunning too. It’s a lovely combination of textures and tastes – sweet, salty and crunchy but also really refreshing. I use a lot of mint in everything during the summer but it really sings here. For ease, I use the pre-cut packets of watermelon you can get in most supermarkets.

  500g watermelon flesh

  1 × 200g block feta cheese

  1 tbsp pumpkin seeds

  6 mint sprigs, chopped

  Dice the watermelon into bite-size cubes and put in a serving bowl. Chop the feta into smaller cubes and scatter over the watermelon. Toast the pumpkin seeds until they start to pop and scatter over the top together with the fresh mint.

  Orange and almond cake

  If it’s warm, I don’t want to take an iced birthday cake down to the beach. And besides, I feel a little old for candles and rousing songs. This cake is the perfect alternative. It is the most glorious saffron-gold, dense, moist, not too sweet and it lasts for ages. I serve it with crème fraîche spiked with Cointreau, orange zest and a little icing sugar.

  MAKES 1 CAKE

  2 large oranges

  250g caster sugar

  250g ground almonds

  6 large eggs

  1 tsp baking powder

  Preheat the oven to 220°C/fan 200ºC/gas mark 7 and grease and line a 22cm springform tin.

  Fill a large pan with water and bring to the boil. Plop the oranges in and cook them for 2 hours. Watch them like a hawk. I have ruined more than one pan by letting it boil dry, so keep topping the water up. You can, if you have a microwave, stick them in there for 10 minutes but then your house won’t be filled with a glorious citrussy scent.

  Let the oranges cool a little then cut into quarters and remove any pips with a knife. Put them in a food processor and blitz until they are in liquid form.

  In a large bowl, beat the sugar, almonds, eggs and baking powder for 2 minutes with a handheld mixer. Then add the pulverised oranges and beat for a further minute. Pour into the tin then bake in the oven for 45–60 minutes, checking after 45 minutes. It is ready when a skewer inserted in the centre comes out quite clean.

  A BEACH HUT PARTY TOP TWENTY

  I spent my early teens in America. It was the early seventies, my parents had been posted to Washington DC, and my brother and I felt as if we had stepped into a movie. A fridge that made ice, a telephone mounted on the wall with a long wiggly cord which meant you could wander off for privacy (and no need to wait until after six o’clock for cheap phone calls), air conditioning, a huge car with a brown wooden stripe down the side with a button that wound the windows down automatically … We spent all our summers by the pool at the club we
had joined – searingly hot days where you couldn’t put your bare feet on the pavement (or the sidewalk!). We made baloney sandwiches with mayo and our tiny transistor radio blared out Lynyrd Skynyrd, Elton John and Led Zeppelin. From those days onwards summer has meant music to me. An aural montage of memories.

  Fast-forward on the cassette deck of my life and my eldest son and I sat down to make a beach playlist for this year’s birthday. We took it in turns to pick a song that meant summer to us. Of course, this list is personal, bespoke to us and our experiences. But all playlists are unique, pinned to time, place, emotion, the company you are keeping, the person you are in love with …

  All these songs have an uplifting vibe to them – the feeling of sun on your skin, a breeze on your face, the scent of the sea.

  We will dance on the shore until the fire of the sun dips down below the horizon and the silver moon takes over, lighting up the sands with a pewter glow.

  All I Wanna Do – SHERYL CROW

  Could You Be Loved – BOB MARLEY

  Summer Breeze – THE ISLEY BROTHERS

  Smooth – SANTANA

  Mr Jones – COUNTING CROWS

  Sunday Shining – FINLEY QUAYE

  Dani California – RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS

  I’m Like a Bird – NELLY FURTADO

  Butterfly – CRAZY TOWN

  Misirlou – DICK DALE

  Good Vibrations – THE BEACH BOYS

  What I Am – EDIE BRICKELL & NEW BOHEMIANS

  Havana – CAMILA CABELLO

  Buck Rogers – FEEDER

  Livin’ La Vida Loca – RICKY MARTIN

  Rock Lobster – THE B-52s

  You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No) – DAWN PENN

  West Coast – LANA DEL REY

  Come Away with Me – NORAH JONES

  Summertime – ELLA FITZGERALD

  Seafood suppers

  Catch of the Day

  She couldn’t wait. It wasn’t often Kim and Jim (people laughed at the way their names rhymed, but what could they do?) went out for dinner. Life was exhausting, especially at this time of year. Winter was harder for Jim, of course, for fishing from November to March was perilous and freezing and thankless. But the summer months were full-on for both of them, for demand was high and the tourists were hungry. Kim was up at dawn, cleaning fish, getting the shop and café ready, buttering bread for crab sandwiches, slicing up lemons, pulling ice out of the freezer … And Jim was out on the trawler, sometimes away for days.

  But tonight they had booked dinner at Number 27, the posh restaurant on the quay in Tawcombe. For it was a celebration. Today’s catch was going to represent the very last payment on the loan they’d taken out ten years ago, to buy the Quadrille.

  She could still remember the sick feeling when they’d signed the paperwork. It had been a terrifying amount of money, but it was Jim’s ambition to have his own boat. They’d used the house as collateral. If anything went wrong – if Jim fell ill or was injured, or they had a particularly bad winter, or if the boat was damaged – they would lose the roof over their heads. Their heads and their children’s heads – it wasn’t just their lives they were putting at risk, but Amy and Noah’s too.

  But they’d done it. And next week the loan would be paid off and they would be free. Every penny that came in from now on would be theirs. As Kim looked around, she had to admit that they had done something they never dreamed possible. They’d gone from sending the fish to the market along the coast to setting up their own shop on the harbour. Okay, so it wasn’t grand. Just an old shipping container with a large counter for laying out the fish. But they’d painted it a rich deep petrol blue and put up a chalkboard to display their prices, and people came in their droves to buy crab sandwiches and pints of prawns and cones of cockles.

  And then Kim had pushed for them to open a café area, so Jim had built a platform out of decking so people could sit and eat and watch the boats come and go. And now it was one of the most popular places to eat in Tawcombe, with huge cream umbrellas in case of rain and strings of fairy lights. They were packed out every weekend and pretty much every weeknight too, in the height of the season.

  Some people were jealous, of course. Matty Roberts for a start, from the next town along the coast. Matty was their biggest rival. Flashy, successful, ambitious. His wife Natalie looked daggers at Kim when she saw her in the bank. Natalie, who’d never done a day’s work since she’d married Matty. And there were women at the school gates who had raised an eyebrow when Kim had bought an old soft-top Audi to whizz around in. It was ancient and limped through its MOT every year, but they seemed to think she was showing off. Kim didn’t care what they thought. She had worked her fingers to the bone and if she wanted the roof down and the music up when she drove along the coast road, then that’s what she would have and she didn’t feel any guilt. You could have whatever you wanted if you worked hard enough, that was her philosophy.

  Hard work and risk and teamwork. They couldn’t have done it without each other. Jim wouldn’t have had the will to go out and battle the elements without Kim to come home to. She was the one who fed him and washed his filthy clothes and warmed him back up in bed. They’d both sat at the kitchen table and done the maths: worked out the repayments, and what would happen if something went wrong, and how long it would be before the house was taken off them if there was a disaster.

  And after today, they wouldn’t have that hanging over them any more. No one could ever take the house away. The boat was theirs.

  Kim’s favourite part of the day was laying out the fresh fish on the ice in the counter. It was like a work of art, and the colours were stunning: steel greys and blacks and silvers; cream and coral and orange. There were scallops and mackerel and turbot like flying saucers; salmon and crab; red mullet and sea bass. Brill and John Dory and deep red tuna. And bowls of dark green samphire, too, that tasted of the sea. She loved talking to customers about how they were going to cook their purchases: mostly all that was needed was butter and lemon, but she had her own recipes that she would gladly share: crab linguine, or mussels cooked in local cider, or a luxurious creamy fish pie.

  She sold tubs of her own aïoli, too, to eat with lobster. And tartare sauce, to go with fried fish, sharp with capers and cornichons and the aniseed kick of tarragon. And she always had a box of big bright unwaxed lemons which she often threw in for nothing.

  She’d gone from being a girl of little confidence to becoming the queen of the harbour. It was Jim who’d brought her out of her shell. She’d been miserable when she met him. She was pulling pints at the pub, having just left school without even taking her exams, convinced she was going to get nowhere, saving up to run off to Bristol. She didn’t have the nerve to run to London, and she had cousins who lived on the outskirts of Bristol, so it felt like a safe place to escape to.

  Bristol wasn’t as safe as Jim, though. Jim was older than her by eight years, but she found that comforting, because he wasn’t a show-off. Wasn’t going to drive her too fast in his car or sell her dodgy pills or get off with someone else behind her back, like the other boys in Tawcombe. He was kind, thoughtful, steadfast. By that Christmas, they were married, and everyone said it would never last, she was too young, at only just seventeen.

  They’d certainly proved them wrong. Kim smiled as she arranged a dozen dressed crabs, the white and brown meat neatly divided inside the pale-pink shells. Two kids, a bright and sunny bungalow on the outskirts of Tawcombe with a sea view, the boat, the shop and café – and as from this week they would be debt-free. It had taken them over twenty years, but it proved she had been right to let the man with the bright blue eyes buy her a drink that evening. She still loved him, those eyes still sparkling in his weathered skin, his beard growing through white now. And his hair. She clippered that for him in the kitchen every two weeks, close to his head. He looked good.

  Her first customers of the day were hovering by the counter and she looked up to smile at them.

  ‘Let me know
if you need any help,’ she said. She was never pushy. She didn’t need to be. People often became overexcited and got carried away, ordering more than they could possibly eat. They were on holiday, and wanted to spoil themselves, so they did. She loved watching their faces and listening while they debated what to choose. She would hand over the bags, groaning with the day’s catch, and they wouldn’t find fresher anywhere.

  ‘What do you recommend?’ It was a woman, probably in her early fifties, with a much younger man. Kim eyed them curiously, wondering about their relationship. The woman was a bit older than Kim but very glamorous, with huge sunglasses and a turquoise beaded kaftan, her hands flashing with diamonds. Her companion was rock-star skinny in his faded jeans and Ray-Bans. They both looked as if they were somebody. Yet there was a politeness between them that suggested they didn’t know each other all that well. She was asking him what his favourite shellfish was – not his mum then, though she was certainly old enough to be.

  Then Kim looked closer and realised who the woman was, and her heart leapt with excitement. They often had celebrities down on the harbour. It was a popular weekend destination for a quick holiday. She’d seen soap stars and footballers and, of course, the occasional TV chef who would engage in conversation. She was never starstruck, but this woman was different.

  Caroline Talbot. Kim had every single one of her books. Jim bought them for her in hardback, every Christmas, and they were her absolute guilty pleasure. She was lost in another world for the time it took to read them. She had them all lined up in a row on a shelf in the front room, in order. She knew everything there was to know about Tuesday DeVille.

  Would it be wrong, to be a total fangirl? Caroline was pointing at a magnificent turbot in the centre of the counter – the king of the display.