pork
Preheat oven to 220°C/gas mark 7.
In a bowl whisk flour, salt, and pepper.
Make a well in centre of flour, pour in eggs, milk and melted butter. Whisk in with flour until smooth. Cover and let stand for 1 hour.
Add oil to a frying pan, add sausages and brown on all sides.
Coat bottom and sides of a heavy dish with oil – never extra virgin, which has an extremely low flash point and should not be used in frying/hot cooking.
The oil in the dish has to be sizzling before adding the sausages and batter. You can put the dish in a hot oven and wait for the oil to heat, but I use a heavy Le Creuset pan, and heat the oil on the hob. As soon as the oil sizzles, add the sausages, then pour the batter over.
Cook for about 25–30 minutes, or until the batter is golden and puffy.
Seven
J ennifer grins at her from the other side of the room, watching as Grace pulls the knife honer out of the drawer and starts to sharpen the knives.
‘What?’ Grace looks up, surprised to see Jennifer still in the doorway.
Jennifer shakes her head. ‘You and I go back years, and to me you’re always just Grace, but every now and then I’ll open a magazine, or watch a TV show, and there you are, wife of the famous Ted Chapman! I just can’t ever compute the glamorous woman in the magazine with the woman who shows up here and cooks her arse off five times a week.’
‘You mean, the woman who shows up here looking like crap?’
‘You could never look like crap, sweetie,’ Jennifer says. ‘Your beauty shines through, whatever the exterior. I mean it, though. I constantly forget who you are.’
Grace straightens up. ‘I’m no one, Jennifer.’ Her voice is soft. ‘I’m no one. Just a girl who loves to cook. The only reason anyone has ever taken notice of me is because of what my husband does. And even that doesn’t make him better than anyone else. He just happens to be incredibly talented. We’re shockingly ordinary.’ Even as she says it, she knows it’s not true. In many ways she is still unchanged, but how could Ted not have been affected by all the years of everyone telling him he was wonderful?
How could Ted think he is no better than anyone else when all he has heard, for years and years, is that he is superior in every way?
She still loves him, of course. But she loves him partly because she sees beyond the veneer, because although his persona is firmly in place, she sees the insecure little boy hiding behind that, and it is him that she loves.
She loves him even when he drives her mad and she tolerates his ego that has, despite what she has just said, grown exponentially over the years.
Harmont House has been her refuge, the place where she finds a sense of peace; she honestly doesn’t know how she would have survived without it.
When Grace was twenty-three, her mother died. The last time Grace saw her, six months earlier, her mother had been living in a refuge behind Oxford Street, a place Grace thinks of every time she steps over the threshold of Harmont House.
They took in homeless women, provided them with a roof over their heads, fed and cleaned them before attempting to put them on the path to rehabilitation. Unlike Harmont House, however, it was a state-run facility – Harmont House without the love.
Which is what brings Grace to Harmont House five days a week. Why she bonds so closely with the women who live there, with Jennifer, who runs the home. This isn’t about Grace doing a good deed for those less fortunate than herself; this is about Grace assuaging the guilt of not being able to do anything for her mother; this is about Grace having the ability to love these women, these women being able to receive her love, in a way her mother never could.
Ted’s refuge may be his barn. Grace’s? Surrounded by women who have come to feel like her family; there’s no question that hers is Harmont House.
Jennifer looks after Harmont House and is the driving force behind the organization. It was
Preheat oven to 220°C/gas mark 7.
In a bowl whisk flour, salt, and pepper.
Make a well in centre of flour, pour in eggs, milk and melted butter. Whisk in with flour until smooth. Cover and let stand for 1 hour.
Add oil to a frying pan, add sausages and brown on all sides.
Coat bottom and sides of a heavy dish with oil – never extra virgin, which has an extremely low flash point and should not be used in frying/hot cooking.
The oil in the dish has to be sizzling before adding the sausages and batter. You can put the dish in a hot oven and wait for the oil to heat, but I use a heavy Le Creuset pan, and heat the oil on the hob. As soon as the oil sizzles, add the sausages, then pour the batter over.
Cook for about 25–30 minutes, or until the batter is golden and puffy.
Seven
J ennifer grins at her from the other side of the room, watching as Grace pulls the knife honer out of the drawer and starts to sharpen the knives.
‘What?’ Grace looks up, surprised to see Jennifer still in the doorway.
Jennifer shakes her head. ‘You and I go back years, and to me you’re always just Grace, but every now and then I’ll open a magazine, or watch a TV show, and there you are, wife of the famous Ted Chapman! I just can’t ever compute the glamorous woman in the magazine with the woman who shows up here and cooks her arse off five times a week.’
‘You mean, the woman who shows up here looking like crap?’
‘You could never look like crap, sweetie,’ Jennifer says. ‘Your beauty shines through, whatever the exterior. I mean it, though. I constantly forget who you are.’
Grace straightens up. ‘I’m no one, Jennifer.’ Her voice is soft. ‘I’m no one. Just a girl who loves to cook. The only reason anyone has ever taken notice of me is because of what my husband does. And even that doesn’t make him better than anyone else. He just happens to be incredibly talented. We’re shockingly ordinary.’ Even as she says it, she knows it’s not true. In many ways she is still unchanged, but how could Ted not have been affected by all the years of everyone telling him he was wonderful?
How could Ted think he is no better than anyone else when all he has heard, for years and years, is that he is superior in every way?
She still loves him, of course. But she loves him partly because she sees beyond the veneer, because although his persona is firmly in place, she sees the insecure little boy hiding behind that, and it is him that she loves.
She loves him even when he drives her mad and she tolerates his ego that has, despite what she has just said, grown exponentially over the years.
Harmont House has been her refuge, the place where she finds a sense of peace; she honestly doesn’t know how she would have survived without it.
When Grace was twenty-three, her mother died. The last time Grace saw her, six months earlier, her mother had been living in a refuge behind Oxford Street, a place Grace thinks of every time she steps over the threshold of Harmont House.
They took in homeless women, provided them with a roof over their heads, fed and cleaned them before attempting to put them on the path to rehabilitation. Unlike Harmont House, however, it was a state-run facility – Harmont House without the love.
Which is what brings Grace to Harmont House five days a week. Why she bonds so closely with the women who live there, with Jennifer, who runs the home. This isn’t about Grace doing a good deed for those less fortunate than herself; this is about Grace assuaging the guilt of not being able to do anything for her mother; this is about Grace having the ability to love these women, these women being able to receive her love, in a way her mother never could.
Ted’s refuge may be his barn. Grace’s? Surrounded by women who have come to feel like her family; there’s no question that hers is Harmont House.
Jennifer looks after Harmont House and is the driving force behind the organization. It was
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