Third Place Biscuits

‘Daily life, in order to be relaxed and fulfilling, must find its balance in three realms of experience. One is domestic, a second is gainful or productive, and the third is inclusively sociable, offering both the basis of community and the celebration of it’

Ray Oldenburg, ‘The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community’

Platt Fields Market Garden functions as more of a community centre than a garden. Gardening happens, of course, and is the reason why there is almost always someone on site; doing the rounds of watering in the summer, or keeping the back gate open for a woodchip delivery. The growing, selling, and eating of vegetables offers an explanation as to why we are all there - it is the basis of our community. But there is so much valuable work taking place all the while that has little to do with gardening at all.

Located in the middle of a park, we are, as Oldenburg defines it, a third space - that is, a public place, separate to the realm of home or work, where people can gather, for free, and spend time in communion. In this way, we are not dissimilar to a library. Just as the role of libraries has expanded beyond the loan of books, to providing internet access, printers, childcare, a heated space, and signposting to various support services, under the guise of a a market garden, Platt Fields can wear many hats.

We lend out a squeegee to the skaters, so that they can clear the puddles off of the ramps at the skate park. We charge phones and bike lights and the batteries of power tools. We rinse the muck off of a plastic toddlers plate so that their parents can take it home clean. We fill water bottles with cold water, flasks with hot. We give asylum seekers a list of useful phone numbers and addresses, the names of organisations that might be helpful. We leave parents alone, for half an hour of quiet, while their children play in the shade of the willow sandpit, and chat chat chat away to the elderly resident who hasn’t been out in a while, perhaps after a fall.

People come to us seeking all sorts of things: company, a coffee, advice on getting the balance of green and brown material right in their home compost. Others are hoping for local honey to cure their hay fever, a baby change, a wheelbarrow, or something sweet to give to a friend whose blood sugar is low.

But what is wonderful is that people give things to the garden in exchange. The kitchen receives a powerful blender, glass jars to use for preserves, a handmade ceramic platter, marbled and as wide as our arms. Stacks of plant pots and seed trays are left at the front gate, as are envelopes of seed saved from allotments, sheeps wool fleeces to drape over the chilli plants, a metre long kombucha scoby to feed the compost. I am brought a punnet of strawberries, a jar of pickled rhubarb, a glitzy pair of false diamond earrings, an apron with the Guinness logo stamped all over it.

Recently, whilst away from the garden, I was left another gift. I came back from some time in Wales to an old plastic sweet jar full of firm Italian biscuits, left on the side and labelled ‘4 Katie, from Bianca’. They are a dry biscuit, especially good dunked in hot coffee, though Bianca says desert wine would be best. Containing little fat, they last a good while. Stored on the shelf in the container, they are reached for by many different hands. Bianca returns a few weeks later with an even bigger jar.

This jar contains a slip of paper with a handwritten recipe. The recipe is a simple one - it is essentially a list of ingredients, transcribed by Bianca’s daughter. Bianca moved from Italy to the UK when she was 15. She is now 93, and while she speaks perfect English, she struggles to write in it. I therefore asked her to talk me through the method, and have added a couple of useful snippets from that conversation.

BIANCA’S BISCUITS

• 500 grams plain flour

• 1 small glass of oil

• 1 small glass of wine

• The grated skin of 1 lemon

• ½ tsp baking powder

• 125 grams sugar

The method is simple: you place everything in a bowl, and mix to a dough with your hands, until it reaches the texture of gnocchi.

Leave the dough to rest, while you wash your hands.

You can then either form the dough into a skinny log, and cut it into small pieces, to then stretch and shape into bows. Or, using a rolling pin or a wine bottle, roll out the dough, it doesn’t need to be too thin, and use a knife or pastry cutters to cut out the shapes you’d like.

Bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes.

• You can also add in a glass full of chopped walnuts, a handful of fennel seeds, some strands of saffron, and vanilla.

• The amount of sugar you use depends on if you have a sweet tooth or not. Bianca whizzes up regular granulated sugar in a blender to make icing sugar, both to use within the dough and to sprinkle on top of the baked biscuits - this way, if she is making for them for people who won’t want them to be too sweet, she can leave out this last step.

A rasberry bush dropped off outside of the cafe, and Chris’s pickled rhubarb