Morning Light
How the sun's movements affects the day, two recipes and eating notes
Hello! My name is Rebecca May Johnson, I am a writer and cook and this is my Substack. This week’s newsletter is about following the light and how my day is changed by the movement of the sun, with two recipes for breakfast, and eating notes.
Morning light
Light begins to move down the wall in the yard an inch at a time a few months after winter solstice. When the thin bright line first kisses the top of the bricks my heart really leaps. The pursed line yawns, becoming a beam, an expanse, and then the whole wall is illuminated by June. I watch it obsessively, yearning for more. Light light light! Everything is about it.
It was not until I lived in a house with an east, north-east facing walled yard with houses all around that I understood or really thought about the fact that the sun is at a different height in the sky at different times of year. In the winter, the sun does not touch the wall in the yard at all. It does not rise above the house directly to the east in the morning, nor does it peep through the gap between buildings to the west in the afternoon. The plants in the yard receive no direct sunlight at all in the winter and I lose interest in them. I might plant some bulbs, but looking outside will not bring me joy. After the shortest day the sun begins to climb and climbs slowly until the thin line appears again. Then, I begin to think about light and how I will live in relation to light. The leaf tips that will first be touched by the sun after months in the shade; where to position seedlings in the house so that they can grow; where to put pots to receive as much light as possible. I orient myself to the sun and organise the day around its movements. By summer solstice the sun covers just over half of the yard in the morning for several hours, and in the afternoon a broad light ray comes in from the west through the gap between houses.
This week I moved an old wooden kitchen table covered with yellow mock oilcloth to the side of the yard that the sun touches. I put as many pots as I could fit on top so that the sun would reach them earlier in the day and shine on them for longer. I hung twine netting from a nail quite high up the external wall of the adjacent flats so that sweet peas growing in the pots on the table will hopefully climb 12 feet above our heads and surround us with pink and purple flowers and fragrance in the mornings. I swept mud and dead leaves and debris dropped by birds and roof felting ripped from neighbouring houses during storm Eunice into a pile to take to the tip. Dwarf lilac is in flower, radiating sweet powdery scent, and a first deep pink bud of the Gertrude Jekyll rose is opening. I have also returned to making breakfast to eat in the kitchen, which has a door into the yard. During the winter lockdowns in the pandemic we got into the habit of eating breakfast in bed, carried up on a tray. We listened to the radio and drank coffee, chatting for longer and longer and holding off the day.
I have begun to linger in the kitchen again this past week, walking in and out and in and out of the yard. I do not want to leave! I like to inspect every plant the sun touches and spend a long time doing so. I have not had time to cook in the evenings the past week, but have taken my chance in the mornings, making breakfast to eat in the sun.
Recipes
Morcilla, chickpeas, fried eggs
I made this breakfast in memoriam one of the best cooks I have ever known, who died last week. She introduced me to so many new flavours and ways of looking at food from a young age; she showed me there are no hard rules about what to eat when. I channelled her when making this dish, including several ingredients she loved. The morcilla is soft and collapsing into the chickpeas in this dish.
Ingredients (serves 2)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 morcilla sausage per person, cut into 1 inch pieces (or black pudding)
300g cooked chickpeas
1 green chilli, deseeded and finely sliced.
1 teaspoon tomato paste
½ teaspoon sweet smoked paprika
½ teaspoon hot paprika (or chilli flakes/ chilli powder/ a little harissa paste)
1 tablespoon of roughly chopped parsley
2 fried eggs (1 per person)
Toast and butter
How to make:
Cut the morcilla into 1 inch pieces and fry them gently in two tablespoons of olive oil for two minutes, turning gently so that each side touches the heat. Don’t worry if it begins to fall apart a little. Then add the green chilli and fry for a minute, then add the tomato paste and hot and sweet paprika and stir in the oil. Then add the chickpeas (drained), and gently coat with the spices and stir. Cook gently, turning occasionally for 5 minutes until it is all hot and cooked through. Taste and season with salt and pepper and add a little more paprika to taste. Then turn off the heat to rest for a few minutes while you fry the eggs. Garnish with parsley and put the fried eggs on top of the chickpeas and serve from the pan on the table. Eat with buttered toast and coffee.
Tahini French Toast with Greek Yogurt and Muscovado Sugar
In fact, this was eaten in bed on a morning when we were both very tired after getting home late. The combination of nutty French toast with the cheesy thick yogurt and depth of the sugar is delicious. Use maple syrup if no muscovado sugar.
Ingredients (serves 2)
3 thick slices of crusty bread
2 tablespoons of tahini
1 egg
75 ml milk
2 teaspoons caster sugar
40g unsalted butter
To serve
2 heaped tablespoons Greek yogurt per person
butter
muscovado sugar (or maple syrup)
cinnamon powder
How to make
Pre-heat the oven to 100C to keep the plates and French toast warm. Whisk the tahini, egg, milk, and sugar together in a dish you can use to soak the bread. If it is too thick to soak (rather than coat) the bread, add more milk. Place two slices of the bread in the dish with the mixture and turn it over so both sides are well doused in the mixture. Melt a 40g piece of unsalted butter in a frying pan to melt. When the froth is subsiding, put in two pieces of bread and fry until golden brown on that side, then turn and fry the other side. Put in an oven to keep warm while you soak then fry the third piece of bread. Cut the third piece in half and give each person 1.5 pieces of toast. Top with Greek yogurt, a good sprinkle of muscovado sugar, a dusting of cinnamon, and a little piece of butter to melt on. Eat with coffee.
Eating Notes
Sam made a very delicious smoked haddock mornay (in a cheese sauce) using more of the fish I ordered from Pinney’s. Smoked fish with cheese sauce is one of my favourite things to eat; its pale appearance belies is tangy, rich and deep flavour. He served it with carrots and savoy cabbage, bread and butter.
A plate of chips cooked in beef dripping from the fish & chip shop for lunch, with coca cola.
I am boringly obsessed with the Ordinance Survey Maps app, which I pay a subscription to use. I love to look at all the myriad footpaths and plot out routes with a variety of altitudes and thus views, oriented round a pub where I can take a break and have a drink or a meal. I design walk lengths to suit different energy levels and make sure there will be interesting things to look at. It means that I do not accidentally go on a walk that is far too long or too short and can spend more time looking at the landscape than the map itself. The app has opened up so much new countryside to me. (You see, I am dull on this subject!). This past week I took my parents on a loop round Dedham in the early evening, past the painter John Constable’s house. Afterwards we had dinner at the Sun Inn, which was very good. I had some asparagus with chopped egg mixed with smoked salmon, skirt steak and chips.
A rapidly prepared breakfast eaten in the kitchen sun of a fried eggs with garlic yogurt and paprika butter with aniseed on top (an edited version of Nigella’s Turkish eggs dish).
The most beautifully seasoned roasted potatoes par boiled then cooked in the oven with butter, olive oil and rosemary made by my friend Cornelius for their partner’s birthday – brought round in a bowl to be eaten hot with fingers and a drink in the other hand. What a revelation! The ideal party food. No ketchup required. Only blurry party photos exist!
I read this quick Turkish eggs idea at just the right time... thank you!