White asparagus, purple artichokes, Tajin, Murano glass, travels to Venice and Suffolk

Recipe

White asparagus clafoutis recipe The white asparagus season has started. The purple artichoke season, the ones you use for carciofi alla giudia, has finished.

Ingredient:

fruit salad with Tajin

Tajin is a Mexican ingredient, a dried powder version of salt, lime and chilli. In Mexico, they put it on everything: crisps, fruit, on salsa, ceviche, on tacos, quesadilla, around the rim of cocktails.

I’ve always bought it online from Mexican grocers and latterly, Amazon. You can buy a tiny travel bottle for your handbag, plus a glass rimmer set. Tajin also do a tangy mild chilli chamoy sauce.

It’s the perfect combination of salt, acidity and heat.

Two recipes:

Use it on fruit salad.

Or on BBQ elotes, which are Mexican style sweet corn spears covered with cheese and sour cream.

Interiors:

Murano glass

Murano glass, France Thierard

I went to see artist France Thierard at her beautiful flat, overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. I first saw her work on instagram. During lockdown, when Venice was empty and nobody had any work, she started to visit Murano every day, to work with the artisans. ‘Their businesses were dying’ she told me.

She has a new take on the classic designs and colours of Murano glass. This latest collection was inspired by an 18th century window, a series of circus swirls in vivid hues, in her 19th century flat. Yes the window was there before the building. ‘I’ve never seen a window like this anywhere else in Venice’ she confessed, ‘it felt like a sign’.

The glasses cost 95 euros (although she will do a little discount if you buy several), the vases and jugs around 300 euros.

Watching:

Where the crawdads sing, Netflix

Set in the marshes of North Carolina, but somehow realities like it must be a mosquito-ridden muddy swamp is never mentioned.

Instead it is beautifully styled (that cottage!) and dreamily photographed but the pacing is too slow and the plot too mushy. People are caricatures: the manic pixie dream girl lead, the evil southern hick town boyfriend, the weak blonde boy who abandons her, the angelic black shop-keeping couple who are the only ones who show compassion. I’ve not seen Normal People so I didn’t recognise the actress Daisy Edgar Jones who plays the lead role. But I kept thinking she was a bit of a weird choice, not classically beautiful and therefore needs to be carefully photographed.

The girl is abandoned by her family in the marsh, never goes to school, has just a few grits to eat. Nobody really comes looking at this lone child living in isolation in the middle of nowhere. The cottage must have been a slum. It bothered me that she sleeps on a mattress on the floor but insects are not a problem.

She becomes a naturalist, proficient in Latin, who does books on shells and feathers. She earns 5000 dollars advance for her first book even though it’s set in the 1950s/60s. And with the dosh manages to pay off the taxes owed on the land sought by developers. Yeah right.

There’s a twist at the end, but no spoilers.

IRL: Turns out the author of the book, Delia Owens, the film is based on, is being investigated in connection to a death.

FYI: Crawdads are crayfish.

Travel:

Venice

Last week is the third time I’ve been to Venice but it’ll probably be my last. Venice is possibly the most beautiful city in the world, but she’s a bitch. I had an incident on a vaporetto boat (the water taxi) where I was physically assaulted by an Italian young woman and an older man, which was very distressing. I realised then in the aftermath that when I visit Venice I feel like I’m treading on eggshells all the time, so great is the hostility towards tourists. I don’t speak Italian but I do understand it and I hear what they are saying about us.

As of last weekend, there is a daily tax on tourists who don’t spend the night. But spending the night is so expensive that the only way to get halfway decent accommodation if you aren’t very rich is to go elsewhere.

Last time, in 2022, I paid 70 euros a night to share a room with two strangers, a sort of Airbnb where you didn’t get breakfast.

This time I stayed at Generator Hostel on Giudecca island, opposite San Marco. I booked through hostelworld.com which was a huge mistake. The price I clicked on, approximately 45 euros a night, for a dorm bed, wasn’t the price I paid. In fact I paid 210 euros for three nights. When I complained to hostelworld, they pointed at that in the small print it says ‘average price per night’ which is very misleading. I didn’t check the confirmation email because I assumed it was just confirming what I thought I’d booked. If I’d booked through booking.com I would have saved 60 euros.

DON’T USE HOSTELWORLD.COM (I’m not even going to link to them)

The hostel is the same one where my parents stayed in 1959, under a different name, at a time when being unmarried, they wouldn’t have been allowed to share a room. My mum twisted her engagement ring around on her finger to pretend it was a wedding ring.

Today, the common parts downstairs are lovely with sofas, armchairs, pool tables, a tiled floor, a bar, like a cool co-working space. But the dorms upstairs were small, dirty, stuffy and noisy. You get sheets but you have to pay for a towel.

There were two showers for men and two for women, so four to a floor which houses around 90 people. It was hard to tell the men’s from the women’s as the logos on the door were virtually indistinguishable from each other (the female had a marginally wider triangle for a body). In the cluttered crowded shower, you had to edge past each other to get in. We were all squashed in, treading through wet floors, vying to put our makeup on in the tiny steamed up mirror. The hostel is making money hand over fist, you’d think they could invest a little in decent private shower booths.

I got about three hours sleep a night so felt tired the whole time.

Why do I stay in dorms? Well I’m single and travelling on your own is very expensive. Plus a hostel is a place that you can hang out with others in the evening and not feel so lonely.

UK Travel:

Suffolk

I stayed at my friend’s house, a medieval farmhouse, in Suffolk on my return. She’s Claire Halsey, a painter and potter. I’ve known her since the age of seven; we went to primary and secondary school together. We’ve been back in touch since 2020, when I hosted a South Hampstead reunion.

I love her taste. Her house rings softly with tones of cream, white, ivory, apricot. The style is French and Suffolk. Surfaces are blonde and worn –reticulated chippy paint. For years, she ran a celebrated antiques shop in Norwich with finds from France. She worked in textiles too, so there is play with stiff linens and soft rush mats, lime plaster, pressed zinc, and rustic beams. It’s a great place to cook and to photograph food. Check out her instagram. She has an honesty shop, a rustic corrugated shed, next to the house where you can buy her ceramics. Here is a little film:

Ophelia: