Nigella Eats Everything

Summer: it’s the season to brave the heaving weekend markets, jostling old biddies with their shopping carts. It’s the time to drink iced coffee in the morning, and share a sliced peach so juicy you need some paper towel on hand. It’s the smell of the mosquito spirals burning, their smoke blowing through your window. It’s the deafening chirrup of cicadas. It’s floppy hats and days by the river, it’s ice cream, affogatos, ice lollies, and peach and apricot clafoutis.

And it’s also the summer of cinema blockbusters apparently?

Does anyone remember the summer movie releases last year? No one? Last year was so roastingly hot I thought my insides were going to boil, so all I wanted to do was de-sweat in a cold cinema. In fact, Gaylord and I did just that during that unfathomable UK heatwave (since when was it acceptable for that rainy little island to reach 40C?) and we spent two afternoons watching Minions and Thor, and both were terrible. Which is normal, summer film releases usually are.

This summer, though, the movie-release gods are having a laugh. Either that or they’ve been replaced by savvy marketing geniuses. Releasing Christopher Nolan’s long-awaited next release Oppenheimer on the same day as the eagerly anticipated and aggressively marketed Barbie movie, in the middle of July is unprecedented. Summer movies are famous for being snooze-fests. It’s the time of year to release Godzilla and hope some teenagers on their summer holidays will take the bait.

And so, those south of France summer dreams have faded in favour of the call of Hollywood – I like to think I have a defence mechanism against big money-making conglomerates but, evidently, I am putty in their hands and I will spend 15 euros on tickets twice this month, and buy popcorn because resistance is futile.

So far, I have seen Barbie, and my review will be coming soon to a newsletter near you – sign up here so you don’t miss it! Although, I will say I have attempted to replicate Margot-Robbie’s Barbie hair, specifically her fringe, by cutting my hair with nail scissors. It’s too soon to say whether it’s a disaster yet. I’m staying positive.

This weird cinema season aside, there have been the market visits, me tripping over trolley wheels, there have been hot, muggy metro journeys, and the inevitable mosquito massacres, bed time delayed as we charge around our room after the last rogue mosquito, who has wily learnt from his brothers and sisters’ mistakes to blend in against the dark window shutters. And there have been ice creams, and salads, and of course, there has been peach and apricot clafoutis. Which has been enough to distract me from any cinema antics.

French baking: Peach and Apricot Clafoutis

Clafoutis is the French summer in a baking dish, so this isn’t my first recipe for it, Gaylord’s favourite cherry clafoutis was my first baked treat when I touched down in France two years ago. Clafoutis to a French person simply tastes of their childhood summer holidays, much like Angel Delight (the chocolate flavour) reminds me of mine.

That market sojourn was a success despite the doddery elderly – I bought a sweet-smelling melon, and paper bags of round fuzzy-skinned peaches and apricots, so large and heavy they were like cows’ organs. A little bashed and bruised from the market scuffles, they returned home for Gaylord to slice and toss in demerara sugar as he was eager to make a peach and apricot clafoutis.

He merrily bustled around the kitchen – the day was falafel day too, so he enjoyed his kitchen projects – and I basked in the sweet scent of roasting peaches and that creamy sweet egg smell of baking batter. Once out of the oven and sprinkled in its crystalline coating of jewel-like sugar, this peach and apricot clafoutis just needed to be cut into generous helpings. Still soft from the oven’s heat, the creamy vanilla batter and heat-drunk fruit were dolloped onto our plates, no need for presentation.

We ate two portions each then and there, then went back for thirds after falafel later.

Summers may not be made for cinema but they are perfect for a dish of peach and apricot clafoutis. Now to combine them in one – a roaring trade of clafoutis slices next to the cinema pick ‘n’ mix?