Living on a smallholding with a tenanted farm attached means at 6am my first chores are feeding animals, letting chickens out and collecting up eggs. My favourite breakfast is a two-egg omelette with chilli, tomatoes and coriander. But I have a pathological fear of hard-boiled eggs. It’s very distressing to think of a hard-boiled egg being included in any meal without my knowledge.
When we went on holiday abroad one year, to Corfu rather than Minehead, it felt unspeakably glamorous. I’d never had a non-tinned peach before, but in Corfu there were incredibly juicy peaches which, in my small hands, were like footballs. It felt like the sun was captured under their furry skin.
At 19, feeling immortal and a bit rebellious, I took off with 800 quid and a rucksack to South Africa. It was in the thick of apartheid and had a whiff of danger and would therefore annoy my parents. But I had a wonderful time there – waitressing, driving a truck and working on a crocodile farm. I’d never tasted sweet potatoes, Mrs Balls [chutney] or avocados, which were five rand (25p) a box. Ouma’s Rusks were absolutely delicious dunked in tea and I liked bunny chow (half a loaf of bread hollowed out and filled with meat and beans). In Cape Town I’d go to the port and buy snoek, a very ugly long-nosed fish, and put it on the fire wrapped in silver foil and it would taste fantastic.
For our first wedding anniversary, I was inspired to make quails with rose petal sauce for Ludo, like the girl consumed by love in [Laura Esquivel’s] Like Water For Chocolate. Ludo returned from visiting a friend in Ibiza on the night of our anniversary and, before serving, I asked him what he’d done there. He replied, “We ate lots of amazing quails.” I felt like throwing the meal at him.
I persuaded Ludo to move out of London to Monmouthshire. I first met our new neighbour over the fence while he was chainsawing. I said, “You must be Mr Parry,” and he said, “We know who you are. You did Farmers Weekly Awards.” A few days later he appeared at the back door with a sack of turnips. I could see he was thinking, “Is this woman from London going to know what to do with my root crop?” I said, “Oh, I love turnips,” and he said “Oh, really?” and I said, “They make great soup. But they really make you fart, don’t they?”
What you get from feeling rams’ testicles is you learn (i) they’ve got testicles and (ii) whether they’re roughly the same size. I didn’t get to eat any until recently, filming in the Gobi desert. And I can tell you, they’re very delicious. I ate a lot of ram’s testicles and drank a lot of vodka all in one morning. I said to the Mongolians, “Wow. If I’d been brought up like this I’d probably be quite a different woman.”
I’ve never eaten an eyeball – I think that would finish me off – but I’ve eaten lots of flying ants, which are fine, and termites, which taste like carrots. I went on a hostile environment course before going to Afghanistan and learnt that with a crisp packet and some gaffer tape you can save the life of someone with a serious chest wound. I once read in an SAS survival guide that you should never eat a polar bear’s liver raw because all the vitamin A will kill you – you bake it first in milk.
Late last year I lived with a nomadic family of reindeer herders in Siberia.It was impossibly cold and all the food was frozen. I watched them dispatch a reindeer to eat – they skinned it and gathered around to devour, with great relish, the offal and the blood, salted to solidify it. They handed me warm reindeer liver and I said, “Could you make it a bit smaller?” It didn’t taste as bad as it looked. They disliked anyt hing we offered them, apart from wasabi and dried fruit. I’d brought my homemade muesli and they just hated that.
The Humble by Nature Big Day Out festival is on 4 July, Upper Meend Farm, Penallt, Monmouth NP25 4RP. For more info, humblebynature.com
