Summer: the taste of the outdoors

The Taste of the Outdoors

The salmon flesh is soft, flaking away easily in pastel pink segments with the gentlest nudge of your fork. The Jersey royals are piping hot and buttery. A side salad of garden green runner beans, dressed with olive oil and a dash of white wine vinegar is ready and waiting. But the taste of summer truly comes when you pick up your plate and carry it out through the patio doors into the sun-soaked garden. With that gentle step past the walls of the house that encircle the inside like a protective membrane, you are transported to a new culinary land, a land where food sounds like the hum of the bees and butterflies around you. A land where food smells like green things growing in the rich dark soil. A land where food tastes, quite simply, like summer on a plate.

The outdoors. It is that elusive magic ingredient that transforms food into the very essence of summer. Fish ‘n chips just doesn’t taste as good at home as it does on that sandy strip of beach where the salty air whips your hair round your face as you try to scoop a piece of battered cod with a tiny wooden fork. You watch the ships sailing over the blue horizon as you pop hot fluffy chip after hot fluffy chip into your mouth. Sure beats the view of the wallpapered dining room any day. And somehow, the tang of vinegar becomes almost sweet as you breathe in great gulps of the clean sea air. It is as if the outdoors heightens your senses, bringing the food alive in a way that fish and chips on the sofa in front of the telly just can’t match.

But the outdoors doesn’t merely elevate the taste of your food. It also acts as the glue that brings people together for those great summer feasts – the BBQ parties where you see uncles and aunts you’ve not met in years, and the campfire gatherings where cider is plentiful and toilets are scarce. We all know that a summer BBQ isn’t really made by the smoky grill or the deli style 3 for 2 packs you picked up the other day. No, a summer BBQ is made of the sound of glasses clinking outside and gentle background laughter as people chat and ignore the fact that a blob of blood-red ketchup just plopped onto your shorts without you noticing. A summer BBQ is made with the task of juggling a napkinned soft white bun with a juicy sausage in one hand and a glass of crisp white wine in the other while trying to pay attention to Great Uncle Ned talk about the walking holiday he did over Easter. Quite the feat, we know. But you wouldn’t have known about Great Uncle Ned’s expeditionary exploits were it not for the fact that you secretly love this annual family BBQ out on Nanny’s veranda, overlooking the slightly yellowing grass and the border of pink and blue hydrangeas. There simply isn’t a better summer feast than a BBQ here in this garden, the one you’ve been coming to since time immemorial. Ooh – the sweet charred corn on the cob is ready – rush to the grill everyone!

Outdoor summer dining isn’t restricted to the napkin and paper plate food though. It can be luxurious. Opulent even. What feels more like a treat than a date night out on the balcony, sipping prosecco and drinking in the view of the valley spread beneath you? The table is adorned with a small white candle which flickers between you like a symbol of your budding romance. Even the occasional fly swooping past is all part of the magical atmosphere of the outdoor summer date. You sit back and relax on the garden chair as your date heads into the kitchen to check on the sauce. He returns, carrying two plates of chili fishcakes and asparagus. The little patter-cakes are wobbly and unevenly fried, giving them a charming lop-sided look about them. Within seconds he is back with a small white jug of sauce – a heavenly tarragon, wine and cream concoction that makes you close your eyes to savour every last beautiful flavour.

After the leisurely first course, through which you laugh and joke and flirt a little, he carries your plate back through the sliding doors to retrieve the dessert. And there it is, little round bowlfuls of Eton Mess – crumbly white meringue atop a mound of whipped cream and luscious bright-red strawberries. He apologises, he isn’t good at puddings. Not at all, you reply. What could be better than summer’s finest strawberries and cream on the balcony? To reassure him, you lean over and take his hand. An electric touch surges through you, leaving you slightly breathless. The enchantment of the outdoors weaves its subtle spell over you both.

As summer draws to its close, you savour every last long golden evening out in the garden. You enjoy grilled chicken with a fresh salad of floppy salad leaves and peppery radishes, drizzled with some balsamic vinegar. You have friends over for iced lemonade and beers on the patio, debating politics and gently teasing Matt about his new girlfriend. You treat yourself on a solo night with a magnum in the garden, hearing the satisfying crisp snap of that first bite into the smooth chocolate case. You eat dribbly plums and peaches, their juice running down your chin and making your fingers and wrists all sticky. You catch the whiff of autumn, and start taking a blanket outside once it gets past 8 o’clock to help counteract that slight chill that creeps longer and longer into the evenings. You start to wish that summer could go on for ever and ever so that you could live in this delectable outdoor lifestyle always.

And then comes the day when you pack up the garden furniture. Back into the shed it goes, to keep the spiders company for another year. You do not quite intend to stop grilling, but somehow the ridged pan just stays in the cupboard of its own accord. One day, you even find yourself making the first soup of the season – a creamy butternut squash with a hint of chili. And that is when you know that the taste of summer, the taste of the fresh outdoors, has passed for another year. The time of the indoor comfort cooking has arrived. Winter will soon be upon us, and you laden the shopping trolley with ingredients to make those warming cosy pies and stodgy puddings with custard that sustain us through the inside months. You look wistfully out into the garden, now too chilly to want to sit in for any period of time. But it will bide its time until next year, when it will bring that summer joy of outdoor feasting once more. Until then, you think. Until then.