• Three scoops of vanilla frozen dessert (low-fat ice-cream substitute)
• Two ripe bananas
• Semi-skimmed milk

Put the frozen dessert and the peeled bananas into a blender. Top up with milk to around the 500ml mark.

Process until smooth – add more milk if you prefer a less intense banana flavour.

I cracked open six eggs from a local producer who delivers to where my wife works. You count the yolks!

Even a cooking fiend like myself gets overwhelmed and to the stage where he can’t really think about making something really nice.

So, last week we had Sunday lunch in a very nice place in Swanage. If you find yourself in that neck of the woods, try the simple fresh food at the Moonlight Bistro. They were kind enough to serve us a couple of Moby Dick-sized sea bass off the evening menu.

Dessert was some fantastic sorbet from the local producer, Purbeck Ice Creams (Dairies? – someone tell me which is right). Somehow or other, you just have to try their Elderflower flavour – just fantastic!

And, as if someone had been listening in on my brainwaves, when we went to our favourite local place, the Levant, last night, we were told they were just about to stock the very same stuff.

Life is good!

Details:
Moonlight Bistro
67 High Street
Swanage
Dorset
BH19 2lY

Telephone 01929 475615

But the visit got me to thinking about the food I’d be eating when we were there. Pasties, of course. Proper meaty, peppery Cornish Pasties. And there’s all the fish, I guess raised in popularity by the activities of Rick Stein and his Padstow-based empire.

Two of the most memorable meals of recent years have been an Asian-flavoured sea bass in a restaurant right on the beach at Newquay, and the calamari and chips (oooh, what chips! Possibly the best I’ve ever had) at a café on the beach at St Ives.

So what about Sussex food? Having lived here for four years, I really haven’t got a clue what Sussex food is. There’s just one recipe I can think of, Sussex Pond Pudding – and I’m sure I have one somewhere in amongst my 130-odd cookbooks, but I can’t find it.

But what else? We keep finding lavender-flavoured cakes and biscuits in teashops, but I can’t find any real evidence they’re local. Maybe it’s just a fad.

So where do I find Sussex food?

Update, 29 May:

I couldn’t find a recipe for Sussex Pond Pudding in my cookery books, so I Googled.

The recipes on the Net are remarkably consistent, and go something like this:

Serves 6

Suet crust pastry:

• 275g self-raising powder
• 1tsp baking powder
• A generous pinch of salt
• 150g shredded suet (beef or vegetable)
• Cold water to mix

Filling:

• 175g butter
• 175g brown sugar
• 1 large unwaxed lemon, washed and pricked all over with a skewer

Butter a 1.2 litre pudding basin. Make the suet crust pastry – sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Stir in the suet and stir in sufficient cold water to form a soft dough.

Cut off a quarter of the dough and roll it out to fit the lid. Then roll the rest out and line the basin.

Put half the butter and sugar in the bottom and the lemon on top. Add the remaining butter and sugar on top of the lemon. Moisten the top edge of the pastry and attach the lid.

Cover with foil, or waxed or greaseproof paper, and secure under the rim, allowing a fold to a leave space for the pudding to rise.

Steam for 3 hours.

Turn out and slice for serving. The sauce flows out into the ‘pond’ of the pudding’s title.

Now the confession: I haven’t tried it. I haven’t even dared point the thing up for my diet, and it’s definitely a pudding for winter.