Family Life

(Corgi Books, 1996)




www.amazon.co.uk/Family-Life-Birth-Death-Whole/dp/0552145440/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244147573&sr=1-1

Not everyone goes to school on a donkey, keeps an eagle owl in the spare bedroom cupboard, or plays chess for the French Foreign Legion. But for the four Luard children, all this was perfectly normal. As normal as taking the scrap bucket across the stream to feed the household pig, or knowing how to hitch up a mulecart.

Elisabeth Luard's not-so-simple tale captures the spirit of bringing up four children as they travel across Europe, their lives a series of old-fashioned adventures. Littered with anecdotes and a scattering of their favourite recipes, this book is a celebration of family life. But no family is immune from tragedy - still less one which lives life to the full. In Francesca, the eldest of the three daughters, we find a true heroine. Passionate, honest, perceptive, she tells her own story - until that moment when she can tell it no more.

SAMPLE RECIPE from Family Life

Four-quarter cake

The recipe is easy to remember: same weight of eggs to butter to sugar to flour, a little milk to soften. This was my family’s favourite cutting-cake on the journey from where lived in southern Spain to spend the summers in London. It’s portable, easy to make and perfect for summer picnics. It was the first cake I learned to bake when I was a child, though in those days we didn’t have mechanical mixers and my arm always ached from all the beating.

Serves 6-8

6 eggs
Same weight of butter (1 large egg weighs about 50g)
Same weight of sugar
Same weight of self-raising flour
Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
Milk

Weigh the eggs and then weigh out the butter, sugar and flour to match.
Soften the butter in a warm bowl, and beat in the sugar with a wooden spoon. Beat the mixture until it is pure white and fluffy - a mixer will do the job for you, but this basic mixing is very important and will dictate the lightness of the cake at the end.
Beat in the eggs whole, one at a time. After you have incorporated 4-5 of the eggs, the mixture may look a little grainy and you will need to stir in a spoonful of flour (sprinkle it in through a sieve) to soak up the extra moisture. When all the eggs are beaten in, beat in the lemon juice and zest, and sieve in the flour, a spoonful at a time, and fold it in with a metal spoon. Add enough milk to give you a soft smooth mixture which drops easily from the spoon.
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
Butter a 20cm cake tin or 1k loaf-tin and line the base with greaseproof paper cut to size. Drop in the cake mixture and push it well into the corners. Smooth down the top. Bake it in the middle of the oven for 1 hour. By this time the cake should have shrunk from the sides and be well-risen and golden brown - if it feels soft to your finger and is still hissing, put it back in for another 5-10 minutes.
Leave to settle in the tin for a few minutes, and then tip it out onto a rack. Peel off the paper. Store when cool. Best in a day or two, and keeps well. Ice it, if you like, with a thick layer of icing made of sieved icing sugar mixed with lemon juice.