Robin Ellis

I sprinkled a dessert spoonful of sunflower seeds on the tuna salad for lunch yesterday without immediately making the connection with what is happening in the fields around us.

Toasted sunflower seeds

Giant harvesters are scything the blackened flower faces and spewing the processed seeds into large rectangular skips.

It has been an exceptional year for sunflowers. Great painterly swathes of yellow covered the countryside for weeks before succumbing to the heat of the sun and bowing their heads in submission.

Their span has always suggested soldiers to me–from green recruits through seasoned professionals to weary veterans–a life in the field.

Witnessing this pattern repeat itself each year is one of the many pleasures this old townie looks forward to, living as we do, en plain campagne [in the heart of the countryside].

The thrilling cycle continues–the ever-changing face of the countryside ’round here.

Now’s the time to “plough the fields and scatter”–a hymnal phrase from my childhood. Never much thought about at the time, but now it’s happening outside my front door.

Never too late to learn.

Also, a scene in an early episode of POLDARK episode comes to mind.

Exactly what I was doing on a cold autumn day 40 years ago with Jud (Paul Curran ) by my side.

Too chilly for baring the chest 😉 !

Field-to-table–a connection not always made by city-dwellers.

No sooner has the seed spewer done its job than a smaller niftier tractor with plough attached behind starts in to turnover the stumps and transform the field into a plantable plot again.

Garlic this time around perhaps; l’Ail Rose de Lautrec (our very own pink garlic).

Lightly toasting the sunflower seeds over a lowish heat makes them even more delicious–but keep an eye on them, or they’ll quickly burn.

From my third cookbook, Mediterranean Cooking for Diabetics

Tuna Salad

A handy, quick standby, when you feel at a loss for something to serve for a light lunch. 

for 4

2 tbsps dijon mustard

4 tbsps tarragon vinegar

300 ml olive oil

4 tbsps plain yoghurt, drained through a sieve (to thicken it a little, and extract the liquid)

2 tbsps parsley–chopped fine

2 tbsps chives–chopped fine

2 tbsps chervil–chopped fine (optional–a plus, if you can find it!)

Salt & Pepper to taste

1/2 a cucumber–peeled, quartered, deseeded, and chopped fine

2 spring onions– cleaned and chopped fine

1 tbsp  sunflower seeds– lightly toasted in a dry frying pan

2  200gms/7oz tins/cans of tuna–drained and flaked (I like it best when packaged in olive oil.)

a little extra parsley– chopped fine

1. Place the tuna in a favourite serving bowl;

2. Whisk the first eight ingredients together into a thick sauce;

3. Add the cucumber, onions and seeds;

4. Pour the sauce over the tuna;

5. Mix carefully;

6. Sprinkle over the remaining parsley;

7. Serve with a crisp, green lettuce. 

I often serve them on “little gem lettuce” which serves as “boats” for the cargo–and in this case, with hardboiled eggs.

Spot Lucette in the corner, ever hopeful..!