What Tony wanted to ask Brother Conradus.

The thing about Brother Conradus is that he’s always busy. It took me a little while to find a time when he was free to chat. But I waited and an afternoon did eventually arise that looked promising. So this is what happened.

The kitchen faces east, and the door leading out to the garden and the well stays open most of the time through the summer months — more or less from late April until the middle of October, where we nearly are. So the morning light comes in, a good time for food preparation; handy because their main meal is at midday. Now, after the bowls and mugs and spoons and all the serving dishes from that main meal have been washed, the serving platters and tureens stacked on their shelves in the kitchen and the rest of the crockery returned to the frater in readiness for supper later on, there’s a moment of relative calm in the kitchen. Brother Benedict has gone for a walk, Brother Cyril is in his cell pursuing his studies, and the couple of men who come in from the village to help out have gone home — pleased to each take with them a bag of apples from the store and a small barley loaf from yesterday. They’ll bring the bags back with them; Conradus always finds he has a bit of this and a bit of that he can spare for hungry mouths at home in their cottages.

The afternoon light is more diffuse and dim, but not enough to need a lantern lit at this time of day. The open door lets the room air, but the main kitchen fire is kept in, for the soup that hangs over it to simmer in its iron pot, and also for the bread to rise in half an hour or so.

Because that’s what Brother Conradus is doing right now — making the bread. I watch him measure out the flour and the oil, the dried herbs and the salt, and fetch the jug with the barm in it for raising the dough. Then as he starts to mix it, I read out to him what Tony wanted to know, which was this:

“Lent is a difficult time for an enthusiastic cook catering for the needs of a monastic community. What is your favourite Lenten meal? How do you reconcile the requirement to feed hungry men and to embrace the spirit of the Lenten fast? What is the first meal you serve at the end of Lent?”

“Oh, Lent!” says Brother Conradus. “Yes! Glory be! It has its challenges. We eat just the one meal a day in Lent — and it’s a very cold time of the year. And damp. Very damp. Everyone wearing his mittens and a drip on the end of his nose. 

“The responsibility of the cook is to find something sufficiently sustaining to help them through the fast without getting dispirited. You know — I take it — that the brothers never eat the flesh of fourfooted beasts? Well, that is, except anyone in the infirmary who is frail enough to need building up, and for them we make exception. So, most of us rely on birds and fish, eggs and cheese, along with plenty of butter and cream, for the strength and substance we need to get through the day. But in Lent all that is gone. It’s down to grain and herbs, nuts, and such fruits as we have still in store or dried.

“So anyone might wonder, do we eat our bread with no butter then? Do we make our porridge with just water? Penitential indeed!

“Now, I take the view that the requirements of the fast are stringent enough — no need to make them harder.” He scoops a scant handful of flour from the wooden tub of it standing open on the table where he’s working, and sprinkles the surface in readiness for kneading his dough. 

“So, yes, we have no milk, no butter, no eggs — but that need not defeat us! There are options, there are possibilities! My mother always used to say there is always hope, and that — it turns out — is entirely true. With patience and a pestle and mortar you can reduce cob nuts to a butter. It takes ages, and of course it isn’t as smooth as butter, but with a little salt in it the result is very pleasing. Tasty. And you can make a kind of milk from rice, or from almonds. Not the same as from the cow, of course, but palatable enough if you understand even Lent doesn’t last for ever. I believe you can make milk from some beans too, but you have to be careful with beans. They can be poisonous if you don’t cook them long enough, and a bit barkish on the tongue, furthermore. Acrid, you know? Rice or almond milk are better, especially with a couple of dried dates in to sweeten them. Honey’s frowned on in Lent, of course — after all, it is a fast! But fruit we can have. Dates do very well. They're expensive, of course; we can't grow dates in Yorkshire! I have to be frugal in my use of them, very sparing.

“But I think the meal the brothers most look forward to in Lent is hot bread. The herbs and a little salt make it flavoursome, it elevates pottage to something you can actually enjoy, and served with cobnut butter it is very sustaining. Sometimes we add a bowl of rice pudding to end the meal, especially if the bread wasn’t hot that day, and the pottage was less hearty. They also appreciate herb dumplings to go with the pottage. Anything hot and filling. But with all that said, for sure it doesn’t take you through like a nice flan with plenty of eggs and butter, or a roast bird basted with plenty of butter. And then of course, in Holy Week, we go down even deeper; just bread, herbs salt and water. The whole week.  As you can well imagine, the bread had better be good!”

I watch him kneading his mound of dough, so deft and practiced, stretching it, turning it, adding a little oil, a little flour; watch it grow pliable and silky under his capable hands.

“And my favourite recipe for the end of Lent, you said? Well, it’s lovely to enjoy something sweet again; I always make them a simnel cake. Oh, it’s delicious! Lots of eggs, a generous dash of wine, fruity and spicy and plenty of almond paste on the top — March bread, as they call it — with rosewater and honey and a handful of cob nuts ground in with the almonds. And then eleven little balls of it on the top, one for each of the apostles after Judas — Lord have mercy on him — had taken himself off. I think our brothers would be bitterly disappointed if Easter Day dawned and I’d not made them a simnel cake. Outside the wall, of course, they often make them on Laetare Sunday, because they’re allowed that break from their fast. But here in the cloister we plod on right through to Easter morning; and then it’s eggs back on the supper table, porridge made with milk, and cream and honey on it as well for a special treat.

“Lent — it’s a special time, a holy time, recalling us to the serious purpose of our lives, a time to sit quietly in the presence of Jesus and open our hearts to him. Lent is a treasure, in the journey of faith. But to my mind it’s all the better for knowing there’ll be a good wedge of simnel cake waiting at the end of it.”

He takes the kneaded dough in a great bowl covered with a dampened cloth, and sets it down to rise on the hearth, near- — but not too near — to the embers of the fire.