New joy for old recipes

Flicking through well-thumbed pages she spotted a recipe for potted cheese, then made some for Christmas and watched as jars flew off the shelf to be given as presents by customers. She has since made ginger oat biscuits, ginger cake and chocolate pear tart, all of which became popular choices at her business in Devonshire Road.

Nikki's grandmother Mary Bowyer was a farmer's wife from Suffolk, and mother of three, who died in July 2009 at the remarkable age of 95. Her memory lives on in the cherished books which bear testament to a lifetime of cooking, baking, celebrating and making do.

Nikki thinks back to long afternoons of sitting at Mary's kitchen table, talking food, drinking pots of tea and looking through the books together to find ideas for C-Side, the cafe she was then planning to open.

"She loved the idea of the cafe. She never came here...but she loved it. She knew I was passionate about food - we both were."

Having run C-Side for two years now, Nikki came across a recipe she decided to use while flicking through the book after Mary had died: "The potted cheese was a good way to use a little precious cheese or to accommodate the leftovers. I made it for the cafe at Christmas as I was doing quite a lot of homemade things in jars.

"A lot of people decided to give each other homemade presents or foodie gifts instead of spending excess money they didn't have. Me and my friends decided to give secondhand, homemade or recycled, and I think my customers felt the same way too.

"I decided to make homemade stuff for Christmas and jar it up, and told people it was something I found in my grandma's recipe book, that she was 95 and had recently died, and this was a way of me reliving her memory.

"I think that was why it was so popular - customers loved the fact of regenerating a recipe which has been handed down from generation to generation...and it tasted good as well.

"It gives me pleasure to make something my grandmother used to make twenty or thirty years ago. And this is a really good time for nostalgic food as well as using leftovers.

"Now I am working my way through - there is a lot of recipes I want to adapt for the cafe to make them gluten-free, which is a big part of what we do."

Nikki finds old recipes appealing in her home life as well as for work, and said: "When we got married last year instead of presents we asked for everyone to bring us a family recipe for us to put a book together, recipes from friends, best friends and families. I thought it would mean much more to me over the years than traditional presents - it's much more personal, isn't it? We did get some interesting ones...someone brought me one for hedgehog carbonara."

In the meantime she's continuing to relish searching through her grandmother's collection, the suggestions for a tonic comprising no less than three types of citrus juice with a blast of epsom salts and cream of tartar, the chocolate cream tart with a handwritten recommendation of a little extra rum, or pineapple mousse with the personal note that 'Ken likes this with deep frozen strawberries'.

Nikki added: "I didn't see grandma that much over the past few years but when I flick through this book and see her handwriting she's right there. Mum and I go through it and have a good old giggle - at things like how to clean carpets with methylated spirits and ammonia. It's all in there."