We all have them, don’t we? Fam­ily trou­bles too far away to help, can’t-find-a-house trou­bles, no-job trou­bles, what­ever they may be, we have dev­ils. My dev­ils fol­low me around dur­ing days when on the sur­face all is well: nobody I love in jail or in the hos­pi­tal, which my Scan­di­na­vian father only some­what jok­ingly claims are his cri­te­ria for a good day. Avery’s thriv­ing in school, at least we have a nice flat to live in while we search for the right house, and my unem­ployed hus­band seems per­fectly happy with his state. But rum­bling under the sur­face are my dev­ils. So what is a girl to do?

Well, I have a num­ber of tried and true meth­ods (I have to con­fess that today my new method is writ­ing them all down, since actu­ally using the other meth­ods hasn’t helped yet). First, I take a pic­ture of Avery at her rid­ing les­son to remind myself that it is a cosy and good place for her to be. Just look at these faces. One would never dream, look­ing at Alexa in this mood, that she actu­ally spends most of her time scream­ing at the lit­tle angels to cor­rect some (to me) incom­pre­hen­si­ble trav­esty of eques­tri­an­ism that they have per­pe­trated at that moment. Here she looks quite jolly! She’ll be super­vis­ing Avery’s Pony Camp in Sur­rey this week­end, and I quizzed her mer­ci­lessly yes­ter­day about safety stan­dards (yes, that has been added to my list of dev­ils: one’s child at the mercy of instruc­tors and ponies 60 miles away in the Eng­lish coun­try­side. I have to remind myself that the one time Avery had a seri­ous fall at Ross Nye Sta­bles, far from being vig­i­lant as I always intend, I had my nose buried in Peo­ple mag­a­zine and didn’t even see what hap­pened. A fat lot of help I would be on the scene in Sur­rey, for sure.)

So OK, we’ve tried appre­ci­at­ing our child’s men­tor. Black mood pre­vails. How about an unde­served extrav­a­gant din­ner out with friends? Now, dear read­ers, you know how I love to cook. I have even been known to count cook­ing din­ner as one of my devil-chasing meth­ods. But some­times, after weeks and weeks on end of load­ing the dish­washer every sin­gle night with the used dishes of one’s labours, it’s time for a night off. So my pal Amy and I met up at… wait for it… Nobu. Wild, rank extrav­a­gance, since the prices are fully dou­ble the already-outrageous New York costs. But every once in awhile? Yes. I arrived some­what early for our reser­va­tions, and sat nurs­ing a Mat­suhisu mar­tini, so deli­cious with its under­tones of sake, and float­ing tiny cucum­ber slices. Amy appeared and opted for a Cos­mopoli­tan, which are pret­tier than mar­ti­nis, but too sweet for me. The snobby bald wait­ress in black did her best to ruin our fun, but we were hav­ing none of it. “Are you ready to order, ladies?” she purred, com­mit­ting one of the few wait-staff sins I notice: if I am still hold­ing my menu open and my eyes are still glued to the del­i­ca­cies on offer in print, I’m NOT READY to order. She began cir­cling us like a shark, and then finally said in exas­per­a­tion, “You know that this book­ing has an end time.” End time? What’s that? “When you booked, you got the table just for a cer­tain period of time; they should have told you at recep­tion.” “Well, they didn’t, so per­haps you could tell us what the ‘cer­tain period of time’ is?” I asked patiently. “You must vacate the table at 8:30,” she said with sat­is­fac­tion, since we had faffed our way to seven o’clock already. “She thinks we will,” Amy said, and when it comes to Amy get­ting her way ver­sus a mean wait­ress get­ting her way, my money’s on Amy.

Did we ever eat. I shall detail the dishes for you so you know how much I appre­ci­ated my treat: yel­low­tail with jalapeno and cilantro in a ponzu sauce, soft shell crab roll, spicy tuna roll, wagyu beef in some spicy sauce I couldn’t break down (and I for­got to ask for a menu as I left) with a sate-like dip on the side, and pick­led gin­ger. Then lob­ster ceviche on lit­tle curls of but­ter let­tuce, DIVINE. Then large prawns in a spicy sour sauce, THEN rock shrimp tem­pura with a creamy spicy sauce, with lots of tiny chive snip­pings on top. So rich and deli­cious. Finally just when we were about to admit defeat, along came a slab of sea bass in a sticky mari­nade, a bit over­grilled on top but lus­cious enough to make us try to make our way through it. Then unac­count­ably, at the dot of 8:30, the wait­ress asked if we wanted cof­fee. Mixed mes­sages! Every par­ent knows that mixed mes­sages are the kiss of death for dis­ci­plin­ing your depen­dent. She saw the error of her ways, but it was too late. Every­one ordered tea, and when she said, “Can I bring you the cheque?” I said, “Cer­tainly,” and as she departed Amy said, “We just won’t give it back, but yes, you can bring it.”

Ah well, it was a lovely evening of friend chat­ter. I just don’t know what one would do with­out girl­friends. And guess who was there? Kyle MacLach­lan, once one of my absolute favorite crush actors, although I haven’t seen him lately because I refuse on prin­ci­ple to watch “Des­per­ate Housewives.”

But the gloomy thoughts were back this morn­ing, so I tried another old favorite: good Eng­lish tele­vi­sion drama. This time we were onto “The State Within,” a BBC pro­gramme quite mind-bendingly com­plex, so that we have to pause it every so often to ask each other, “What just hap­pened there? Was that the sen­a­tor who is brib­ing the chem­i­cal plant CEO…” We inter­rupted it so I could go fetch Avery and Anna from school, and I have to admit, a ride top-down in a Mini Cooper is a pretty good way to chase the blues, espe­cially with two girls chat­ter­ing in the back about com­ing up with 75 words to describe the achieve­ments of the Earl of Sandwich.

Well, Avery’s asked for chicken in her favorite sauce, fea­tur­ing paprika, sour cream and mush­rooms (I know, I can’t explain it either, but hey, it works for me too). I will take refuge with my chop­ping board, prob­lems that can be eas­ily solved in under an hour (like minc­ing gar­lic and keep­ing a sauce from cur­dling), and if it turns out well, I’ll post the recipe. Then I’ll count my bless­ings, and the dark dev­ils will be ban­ished for another day.

It’s prov­ing daunting.

I’m really try­ing hard these days to plow through the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of Gladys Taber recipes, to choose the absolute best in all the myr­iad cat­e­gories, to test, update pos­si­bly, and sur­round with some mean­ing­ful ver­biage. She cooked so much! And I have to say, as I’ve said before, that many of the recipes are dated to the point of being fun to read, as per­haps fic­tion, but not some­thing you would ever want to cook. The dire words “dried” and “chipped” often appear in a sin­gle sen­tence, some­times fol­lowed even more depress­ingly by “beef.” And the things that appeared in tins in the 1940s, to fol­low the unsus­pect­ing cook home from the super­mar­ket and take up res­i­dence on her pantry shelves, there to sit men­ac­ingly until used in some way on her inno­cent fam­ily. Canned sausages! Canned oys­ters! The things she thought to grind up, mix with gela­tine and sour cream, and bake into one sort of “loaf” or another. Every­thing designed for min­i­mum cost and max­i­mum fill­ing­ness. And ways to use left­overs that nearly always involve a can of cream of mush­room soup. Plus turkey with spaghetti! What? And I adore any recipe that includes the word “mock.”

And some of the read­ing is enjoy­able purely on a vocab­u­lary level. It took me a moment to real­ize that “edible-podded peas” were not some­thing from Star Trek, but rather what was called in my child­hood “peapods” (appear­ing only at the Hong Kong Chi­nese restau­rant, never at home), and are now called “snow­peas” in Amer­ica and “mange tout” in England.

What really shines through the writ­ing, under­neath the recipes, is her bound­less hos­pi­tal­ity. How many dishes had to be invented from what she had on hand because some­one dropped in unan­nounced and fully expected to be fed? And she did. “Baked Noo­dle Ring,” “Cheese Dreams” and “Mrs. Bewlay’s Rhubarb Crusty.” Some­how I think the sub­sti­tu­tion of the word “crum­ble” for “crusty” would bet­ter con­vey a thing to eat than, say, a med­ical condition.

Oh, and if you feel in need of a laugh, here is a com­pletely hilar­i­ous web­site con­tain­ing Weight Watch­ers food pho­tographs from the 1960s, dishes like “Fluffy Mack­erel Pud­ding,” with cap­tions like “Once upon a time the world was young and the words “mack­erel” and “pud­ding” existed far, far away from one another. One day, that all changed. And then, who­ever was respon­si­ble some­how thought the word fluffy would help…” Reminds me of the cook­book pub­lished by the asso­ci­a­tion at the lake where we had a sum­mer house. I am absolutely pos­i­tive there was a dish called “Twinkie Tuna Seven-up Bake.” Really!

In any case, last night found me star­ing at a con­tainer of chicken liv­ers I bought in a moment of weak­ness at the farmer’s mar­ket on Sun­day. Organic, free-range, you name it. About a half pound, I think. What to do? Then into my mind snaked the mem­ory of a Christ­mas Eve party at Red Gate Farm sev­eral years ago to which I invited Anne and David of Stillmeadow (Gladys Taber’s beloved farm­house), our farmer friends Rol­lie and Judy, and both our sets of par­ents hap­pened to be vis­it­ing. My mother-in-law and I spent the after­noon con­coct­ing var­i­ous party foods from the Stillmeadow Cook­book, includ­ing a lovely cucum­ber dip, and… chicken liver pate! My clever mummy made hand-calligraphied menu cards for the table, and with many, many can­dles lit and glasses of wine poured, the fun began. And the pate was so good. I really felt Gladys’ spirit would have been pleased, to see us all enjoy­ing the Con­necti­cut win­ter with a nice neigh­borly party, and with her food to bring us together.

So I made the pate again last night, while John read his news­pa­per in the kitchen to keep me com­pany, and Avery labo­ri­ously glued rhine­stones on her skates to cel­e­brate Level 10. A cosy evening together, and the taste of Madeira-laced chicken liv­ers in but­ter did not dis­ap­point. Give it a try.

Gladys Taber’s Chicken Liver Pate
(serves many at a party, on toast)

1/2 lb fresh chicken liv­ers
1 medium white onion, sliced
4 tbsps but­ter
about 1/2 cup Madeira wine
salt and pep­per to taste

In two sep­a­rate skil­lets, divide the but­ter and melt gen­tly. Saute the onion in one skil­let and the liver in another, tak­ing care not to brown either skil­let. Just sweat them gen­tly. After about five min­utes, they will be cooked through and can be com­bined in your food proces­sor. Add the Madeira and whizz until as smooth as pos­si­ble. Add more Madeira if the tex­ture is too thick. Salt and pep­per to taste, and then if you insist on a purely smooth pate, you can run the mix­ture through a sieve. Enjoy this afford­able and gen­er­ous post-War treat.

Before you get all scared, this pho­to­graph is not a soup of any kind, it’s the mac­a­roni and cheese I made as an anti­dote to the soup, which was odd. Wasn’t it Abra­ham Lin­coln who said, “If you like that kind of thing, it’s the kind of thing you’ll like”? If not, then I said it, because this homily per­fectly expresses the way I feel about the soup I invented today (vaguely inspired by a recipe in Hello! mag­a­zine, maybe that’s the root of the prob­lem). I think it was good, if only I liked that kind of thing. But I don’t. And nei­ther does John. So I passed it along to Becky, who is the sort of friend who will try some­thing you pref­ace with, “I didn’t really like it, so why don’t you have a go?” The jury is still out with their fam­ily, as I fear she may make every­one try it. The more taste­buds the better.

But before I go any fur­ther with that, my mac­a­roni and cheese turned out com­pletely won­der­ful, and I’m ashamed to say that in the run-up to din­ner, when Avery is meant to be in her bath, I should be doing the salad, John’s pay­ing bills online, in real­ity we are all snatch­ing lit­tle bites from the per­fect bub­bly sur­face. So all was not lost in my culi­nary day.

And the mem­o­ries of last night’s din­ner in Lon­don Bridge at Vincent’s house should have been enough, alone, to pro­pel one through a Sun­day after­noon. For a ton of peo­ple, includ­ing lots of chil­dren, on a cold, spitty, rainy Sat­ur­day night in Lon­don, the enor­mous pot of ragu he served (with penne and shaved parme­san) was the per­fect dish. Now do not be intim­i­dated by the num­ber of ingre­di­ents. For one thing, all the veg­eta­bles can be chopped in your food proces­sor. And any­way, this is the type of recipe that you put­ter at, while lis­ten­ing to Edward Pether­bridge read­ing “A Pre­sump­tion of Death.” Have you heard about Jill Paton Walsh’s stew­ard­ship of the Lord Peter Wim­sey legacy? Dorothy L. Say­ers left behind notes for sev­eral Wim­sey books, after her death, and Walsh has done a remark­able job with this one, recre­at­ing the char­ac­ters of “Busman’s Hon­ey­moon” per­fectly, but not as a par­ody. Any­way, with a great audio­book at your ears, you can tie on your apron and get cooking.

Spicy Party Ragu
(serves 8 easily)

1 pound minced lamb
1/2 pound each: minced beef, veal, pork, smoked streaky bacon (Amer­i­can style)
2 large chorizo sausages
1 large onion, roughly chopped
1 pound mush­rooms, roughly chopped
1 each red, green, yel­low pep­pers, roughly chopped
1 medium aubergine (egg­plant), roughly chopped
4 fresh toma­toes, roughly chopped
2 soup-size tins peeled plum toma­toes
1/2 large bot­tle of tomato sauce
2 tbsp of tomato puree
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp each dried oregano, basil, thyme
chili flakes to taste (but don’t be a wimp!)
2 bay leaves
1 cup red wine
Hand­ful fresh oregano
Hand­ful fresh basil
Hand­ful fresh thyme
4 large cloves of gar­lic, minced

Optional:

3 cups frozen prawns
3 cups frozen oys­ters
3 cups chicken pieces cut into 1cm cubes

Put a large pot to the side of the stove. As you cook each batch of ingre­di­ents, place them in the large pot. In a large fry­ing pan, begin by cook­ing all the meat (In sep­a­rate batches, though you can com­bine veal and beef) until browned and sea­son with salt and pep­per to taste. Whizz the bacon in your food proces­sor till it is in 1 cm pieces. Cook until crispy, and be sure to add at least some of the ren­dered bacon fat
with the meat to the pot. Saute the chorizo last. When the sausages are done, set aside to cool. In a food proces­sor, pre­pare the vegetables.

With plenty of olive oil, start by saute­ing the onions in the same pan you cooked the meats in. When they are start­ing to brown, add the mush­rooms. When the mush­rooms have soft­ened a bit, add the aubergines and finally the pep­pers. When the veg­eta­bles are all done, add them to the pot with the meat. Whizz the cooled chorizo to the same size bits as the cooked ground meat you already have in the pot, and add to the pot. Add the fresh, tinned, pureed and pasted tomato to the pot along with the bay leaves and the red wine. Bring the mix to a roil­ing sim­mer and turn the heat down to a medium-low level. Add the rest of the dried herbs, chili and sugar. Cook for at least 2 hours (the longer the bet­ter), stir­ring from time to time. The sauce will ren­der quite a bit of liq­uid and look soupy for a while, and then as you con­tinue to sim­mer it, the liq­uid will boil away. Turn the heat down low and add the optional ingre­di­ents if you choose to use them. Just before serv­ing, add the chopped fresh herbs and the gar­lic. Taste for salt and pep­per, give it a good stir and leave it alone until you’re ready to serve. Serve over penne with shaved parmesan.

***********

This was sub­lime. Of course as well there was a beau­ti­ful salad with beet­root sprouts, a lux­u­ri­ous cheese­board and an enor­mous, mas­sive, lime-spiked cheese­cake for pud­ding. There with us were Vincent’s ele­gant French step­mother, two rather famous Eng­lish archi­tects and their beau­ti­ful blond chil­dren (I think we could fix up the lit­tle boy with Avery right now and save all that dat­ing non­sense later on), an Amer­i­can diplo­mat and his Ger­man wife, and a Niger­ian fash­ion designer. It was like eat­ing at the UN. And we stayed so late! I am so old now that I really feel it if I’ve been up late, plus I find I have to stay up for a cer­tain num­ber of hours after I get home, think­ing about what every­one said and did. So Sun­day found me rather lazily walk­ing around the Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket, try­ing to be inspired. Unfor­tu­nately what I was inspired to do was this soup, on which I wel­come com­ments, or bet­ter ver­sions. Was it too much orange?

But­ter­nut Squash Soup with Orange
(serves 6)

3 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 but­ter­nut squash, seeded and peeled and cut in small cubes
juice and zest of 4 oranges
800 g chicken stock
2 tsps curry pow­der
1/2 tsp chili pow­der
salt to taste
1/2 cup creme fraiche
chives to garnish

In a medium saucepan, melt the but­ter and soften the gar­lic, then add squash and stir till coated with but­ter. Cover with stock, add juice and zest, and sim­mer until soft, then puree with a hand blender and run through a sieve if you like a finer tex­ture. Add spices and whisk in creme fraiche. Sim­mer until thick, and gar­nish with chopped chives.

***********

So what went wrong? I tasted it, John tasted it, we added more spices, more salt. It was tasty. But I didn’t like it, and nei­ther did he. So I packed it up and took it to Becky, who tasted it and at first she liked it, then she thought per­haps it had a bit­ter after­taste. Did I sim­mer it too long and the zest got nasty? Too much orange? I don’t know. I still think the con­cept is good, and it was cer­tainly very pretty and undoubt­edly nutritious.

But din­ner time saw us crouched hap­pily over our mac­a­roni and cheese, and bangers, and a huge salad of my favorite lamb’s let­tuce and rocket, with cucum­bers. Ah well, you exper­i­ment, some­times you suc­ceed, friends cook bril­liantly for you, and then you end up with the old favorites on a Sun­day evening. I’m sure there’s a moral in all that somewhere.

This will be rather an odd week, I think. Or at least toward the end. Avery’s school term ends on Thurs­day at noon, at which point she and her lit­tle friends will repair to Build-a-Bear in Covent Gar­den for beloved Anna’s birth­day party. Becky is a saint to host them there yet another time. Then a sleep­over, then Fri­day we drive Avery down to Sur­rey for three days and nights of… pony camp! At the coun­try out­post of Ross Nye Sta­bles, where she’ll sleep in some­thing called a yurt (?) and eat who knows what, and spend all the days muck­ing out stalls and rid­ing. She has never been away from home for more than a sin­gle night, and I don’t think she’s ever done any­thing that John and I have never done. Been some­where we’ve never been! What a mile­stone. I won­der what on earth John and I will find to do in her absence. Well, for one thing we’re going to spend the Fri­day night in a very sweet-sounding coun­try hotel, the Angel Post­ing House, near the camp. But then we’ll have the whole week­end on our own. I’m sure we can find some­thing to keep us out of trouble…

Ah, you ask: why a film reel when I’m meant to be talk­ing about risotto? Because I want to give you the links to my film friend’s amaz­ing blogs, all about the films and plays she man­ages to see in this glo­ri­ous town of ours. Go on, you’ll learn a lot about all the things you’re not doing while you’re stir­ring your risotto instead of going to the the­atre. Oh, wait, that’s my life.

But yes, about risotto. I am hav­ing a whole bunch of peo­ple over for Sun­day lunch tomor­row, which would be a no-brainer, an ordi­nary enough event, except that Twiggy and Eddie are very ded­i­cated veg­e­tar­i­ans. So I’ve been ask­ing all my friends what I should make. These lovely peo­ple have been here before and I admit to cook­ing two of my best veg­e­tar­ian dishes then, a lovely creamy red pep­per soup and an aubergine (that’s egg­plant to us Yanks) stew with toma­toes and tons of gar­lic. You can cook them too; here are the recipes. But alas, what now?

Well, my Ital­ian friend Vic­to­ria said to me yes­ter­day that “arancini” are the answer to a maiden’s prayer. By typ­ing “arancini” into my google search engine, I found a hilar­i­ous and very use­ful blog called “Ama­teur Gourmet” that I think you would enjoy. He’s posted over 1000 posts. I can but admire, with my lowly 200-something efforts. But I admit to a cer­tain ner­vous­ness, not to say trep­i­da­tion, at cook­ing some­thing I have never cooked before, for… Vin­cent. I know he’ll try to be kind, but friend­ship will not get in the way of a gen­uine response to a mis­con­ceived or badly exe­cuted dish.

But how hard can it be to roll up some lovely risotto (mush­room, saf­fron and pars­ley? with white wine? fresh thyme, as my friend Susan made this sum­mer?) in a ball, stuff it with moz­zarella and tomato sauce, roll it in bread­crumbs and fry it? It can’t really go too far wrong, can it? With cream of cele­riac soup to start, per­haps? Except that, hmm, both dishes will be white? No, fry­ing the risotto will make them crispy and brown. Sigh of relief. I know, I know, I’ve been watch­ing too much “Mas­terchef.” I find myself wak­ing up in the mid­dle of the night wor­ry­ing that my pre­sen­ta­tion is tepid. Clearly I need to get a life. John just lis­tened to my poten­tial menu and said sternly, “What else will be on the plate?”

Avery has a life. Yes­ter­day she achieved Level 10 in her skat­ing les­son, and the world is her oys­ter. In a moment of mater­nal weak­ness I agreed, months ago, that when she got to Level 10 she could buy sparkly some­things to put on her skates, so last night found her glued to the com­puter look­ing up “crys­tals,” and find­ing all sorts of ridicu­lously priced options that seemed, sud­denly, unlive­with­outable. We shall see. As well, I can report that she achieved the cov­eted “Dis­tinc­tion” for her efforts with the Eng­lish Speak­ing Board, talk­ing about her stamp col­lec­tion (thank you, Grandpa Paul!). A big improve­ment over last year’s mere “Merit,” how amaz­ing that it’s been a whole year. So some of us are thriving.

Well, we’re off to take a nice long walk on this grey day, through the park. I’ll still be think­ing about side dishes…

Say you’re in a mood. You have some­thing on your mind you don’t want to think about, some­thing you can’t help, can’t con­trol, can’t stop from affect­ing the peo­ple around you that you love. Say, per mirabile, you also like mess­ing about with food. I have you covered.

Get your long-suffering hus­band to pick up a baguette for you, the only fresh thing you won’t have to hand when you get home. Then stand in the hail and snow and freez­ing rain watch­ing your child go round and round on a pony and think up cros­tini ideas. What are cros­tini, you ask? Ah, let me enter­tain you.

Cros­tini are, quite sim­ply, crusty slices of bread (in my case the baguette brought home by my long-suffering hus­band) driz­zled with olive oil and toasted on a cookie sheet, then set aside. Now comes the fun. Gather up all the tasty bits and pieces in your fridge. No, don’t tell me there aren’t any. You’ve got fresh moz­zarella, I bet (if not, add it to the hus­band gro­cery list). And a jar of tape­nade from your adorable friend Becky who often gives you comestibles just to see if you can fig­ure out what to do with them. If you don’t have tape­nade, you can chop up some olives. Then some­where in your pantry you’ve got a jar of anchovies. Scoop out five or six in their olive oil and put them in a tiny saucepan with some but­ter, over low heat, and with a potato masher mash them up and simmer.

Then how about that dish of pesto you made and didn’t do any­thing with, except slather it on a chicken sand­wich? Get that too. Goat’s cheese? Left­over roasted pep­pers? Mar­i­nated arti­choke hearts? Sure, you bet. And for a truly scrump­tious added touch, if you have a lit­tle glass of sage leaves, stand­ing in water by the side of your sink and lan­guish­ing slightly, pull off the leaves and put them in a skil­let with some melted but­ter, on low heat, until they’re crispy. That’s heavenly.

Now, line up your lit­tle toast slices. Start pil­ing things on. You could also add some tiny toma­toes cut in half, open sides up. Just add any­thing to any­thing. By the time you’ve fin­ished assem­bling them all, a sort of zen calm has come over you (trust me, it has). At that point you make:

Totally Lazy Creamy Tomato Sauce
(serves four)

1/2 stick but­ter
3 tbsps olive oil
1 large can or two soup-size cans peeled plum toma­toes
4 cloves gar­lic
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
salt and pepper

Melt the but­ter with the olive oil in a medium saucepan. Whizz the toma­toes and gar­lic together in your Mag­imix and add to saucepan. Sim­mer low while you fin­ish your cros­tini, then boil water for pasta. We used a sort of snail-shape whose name I can­not remem­ber. Whisk in ricotta and salt and pep­per. Drain pasta, add to sauce, and sim­mer while you put your cros­tini in a medium oven for 8 min­utes, or until the moz­zarella is melted, then arrange them on a plate. If you hap­pen to have a ripe avo­cado, you could add a lit­tle slice and a squirt of lemon juice, to any of your crostini.

Pro­vide plenty of grated pecorino, parme­san, moz­zarella or a com­bi­na­tion of all three (I did end up hav­ing all three sit­ting around) to scat­ter on top of the pasta.

There. Easy, cheap, com­fort­ing. And with the added bonus of cosy prep and assem­bly which helps you feel in con­trol of life. (Hint: you’re really not. In con­trol of life, I mean. But tonight’s din­ner: you’re all over it.)

Now, nor­mally noth­ing in the world would induce me to post a por­trait of myself on this blog. Nor­mally it would not enhance your per­cep­tions of me, dear read­ers. But I have to tell you about my friend Vincent’s pho­tog­ra­phy, so you can say you knew him when. And he man­aged to make a not cringe-worthy image of me, so that tells you something.

I’m going to go out on some­thing of a limb now and pro­vide you with a link to Vincent’s artis­tic web­site, but with a very clear caveat: you must be 18 or over to look at his site, and I will tell you that some of the images are quite shock­ing, even to my rel­a­tively pro­fes­sional artis­tic eye. He con­cen­trates on the nude male body, no holds barred (so pho­tograph­ing me was a com­plete depar­ture and an awfully nice favor!). I see his work as stand­ing on the shoul­ders of the great activist pho­tog­ra­pher Robert Map­plethorpe, since no one can pho­to­graph men’s bod­ies with­out incur­ring the legacy of those works of the 1970s and 1980s. But because Map­plethorpe achieved what he did polit­i­cally, Vin­cent doesn’t have to be polit­i­cal. He can choose to explore the pure phys­i­cal­ity of the body, and cel­e­brate the lim­it­less vari­ety of the human body, and revel in quite riv­et­ing and star­tling detail, with­out hav­ing to make any polit­i­cal state­ment at all. His gen­er­a­tion of pho­tog­ra­phers reminds me of my gen­er­a­tion of fem­i­nists: because of what peo­ple achieved with their intense boundary-testing 30 years ago, we can now hap­pily enjoy cook­ing and rais­ing our chil­dren, AND hav­ing a job, or not, with­out mak­ing a new polit­i­cal state­ment with every choice.

As Mapplethorpe’s orga­ni­za­tion pub­lishes on their web­site, “Some of these pho­tographs were shock­ing for their con­tent but exquis­ite in their tech­ni­cal mas­tery.” I think Vin­cent goes beyond tech­ni­cal mas­tery (although he has that qual­ity with­out ques­tion) and imbues his sub­jects with sen­si­tiv­ity and a great sense of humor.

In any case, my take on Vincent’s work is that he is tremen­dously tal­ented and expres­sive, and he takes incred­i­ble joy in bring­ing out the true spirit of his sit­ters, all of whom know we’re in the pres­ence of a really gen­er­ous artist. And there’s always a chance that some­one read­ing my blog will be taken enough with his work to give Vin­cent some cool oppor­tu­nity. He’s already been approached by the fab­u­lous inter­na­tional pho­tog­ra­phy mag­a­zine Eye­maz­ing, for a spe­cial fea­ture in the autumn. Good on you, Vin­cent, and may the art world embrace you. Plus you’re an awfully enter­tain­ing com­pan­ion, and about the best friend any­one could wish for, in good times and bad.

Well, enough seri­ous busi­ness! I had such fun yes­ter­day meet­ing up with a new friend, who I will iden­tify only as “6point7” as she appears on the inter­net. Can you imag­ine (prob­a­bly you can, but I am very old-fashioned, really) hav­ing a friend you’ve met only online? We tip­toed around each other on the super-entertaining Matthew Mac­fadyen fan room, real­iz­ing that we share not only our enthu­si­asm for him, but even more for Lon­don. We both sim­ply adore the fan­tas­tic spirit of this city, she rather more for its film and the­atre worlds, and I more for… what? Its food side, and the fun of rais­ing a child here, and just the irre­press­ible British per­son­al­ity that walks its pave­ments. So we cau­tiously decided to meet for lunch, and yes­ter­day after­noon found us at Getti’s in the Maryle­bone High Street. I stood out­side the restau­rant in the over­whelm­ing wind, feel­ing buf­feted and wish­ing I was car­ry­ing a rose between my teeth, when a lady approached me and said, “Are you Kris­ten?” and there she was! It wasn’t even a bit awk­ward, as I had thought it might be. It’s funny how you can gain a real impres­sion of a per­son just through writ­ten cor­re­spon­dence, and it was very intrigu­ing to try to match up the typed per­son with the real per­son, sit­ting oppo­site me in the sun with impos­si­bly blue eyes.

We had a lovely time. She was very sweet ask­ing about Avery; I think it is a spe­cial and unusual qual­ity when child-free peo­ple have any inter­est in other people’s chil­dren. Lord knows I could not be both­ered to give the time of day to anyone’s kids before Avery, but then I think we’ve estab­lished I am more self-centered than the aver­age bear. We talked movies, tele­vi­sion, star encoun­ters we have rev­eled in, fam­ily, every­thing. She expressed the opin­ion that she’s less intense in real life than onscreen, and I would have to say that seemed true; her real per­sona was unex­pect­edly gen­tle and warm, when I think I was antic­i­pat­ing a very strong opin­ion on lots of things. I won­der how dif­fer­ently I present myself on line? When I get the link to her film/theatre blog I will pass it on.

And the food was lovely. I had, I have to say, a com­pletely for­get­table plate of sliced toma­toes (I’m pretty sure I ordered tomato and moz­zarella, but who knows), but it was fol­lowed by the best carpac­cio I’ve had in Lon­don. I do tend to order it when I see it, because done well it’s so sim­ple: just thinly-sliced raw beef ten­der­loin with tra­di­tional accom­pa­ni­ments of shaved parme­san and a lit­tle salad. This beef was quite per­fect, com­pletely ten­der, and added to the plate were beau­ti­ful lit­tle crispy curls of cel­ery. I am an utter sucker for cel­ery in any form, like­wise cucum­ber, so it was such a nice addi­tion. And a tiny dol­lop of fresh pesto, always a good thing. 6point7 reported that her pump­kin soup and risotto were very good as well, so I think it’s two thumbs up for Getti’s.

Speak­ing of pesto, I have come up with pos­si­bly the per­fect sand­wich (I do love a good sand­wich), and it’s prac­ti­cally free. I am, as you know, devoted to roast chicken. It’s cheap, it cooks itself, it’s com­fort­ing, and after din­ner you can make roasted chicken soup, and then you get sand­wiches with the left­overs. Here’s what to do. Click here and scroll down for instruc­tions on roast­ing your chicken and mak­ing your soup. Then, once you’ve got your nice lit­tle dish of the chicken breast meat that you didn’t fin­ish at din­ner time, at lunch time the next day you get it out of the fridge (hop­ing no one has eaten it at mid­night, but since you’re the only one up at mid­night this should not be a prob­lem). Then:

A Per­fect Chicken Sandwich

1 whole meal pita, toasted and opened into a pocket
1 roasted chicken breast (skin on PLEASE), sliced thin
1 slice red onion, sep­a­rated into cir­cles
1 tbsp fresh pesto
1 tsp but­ter
four slices Dou­ble Glouces­ter cheese

Sim­ply slather the inside of the pita with but­ter on one side and peso on the other, then tuck your chicken, onion and cheese inside. The result is pretty, with the pur­ply onion and bright green pesto, and it’s got crunch, herbs, creamy cheese and vir­tu­ous whole wheat. Plus, as I say, it’s prac­ti­cally FREE. Of course if you wanted to skip roast­ing a whole chicken (one won­ders why that would be, but one never knows), then you could eas­ily buy a chicken breast alone, herb and but­ter it up, and roast in the oven for 30 min­utes. In any case, tuck in.

Have you seen “Becom­ing Jane”? Well, it’s worth see­ing, I think, espe­cially if you are a chick look­ing for a flick for your­self and for your 10-year-old daugh­ter. Tak­ing a jet-lagged male along with you is ask­ing for trou­ble, because really not enough hap­pens in it to keep a man’s atten­tion (aside from look­ing at the delec­table Anne Hath­away) even if he were fully awake, which mine wasn’t. Avery said, “But, Daddy, there was good real estate,” which was sweet of her, but really, they were just coun­try houses. At least in “Miss Pot­ter” the real estate was in Bed­ford Square, where we were actu­ally look­ing at a house.

But that’s not the point. The point is, James McAvoy is, while not an actual cur­rent crush, def­i­nitely crush-worthy and may be called upon by me at a later date if one of my other can­di­dates is unable to ful­fill his duties. He played the faun in “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,” and as the mes­sage boards say (yes, I’ve looked him up), for a man with hooves, he’s very nice-looking. A sim­i­lar type to, dare I say it, Matthew Mac­fadyen (although slight instead of beefy) and Edward Nor­ton, really ver­sa­tile and intel­li­gent. “Becom­ing Jane” is like a fluffier “Pride and Prej­u­dice,” partly I think because Anne Hath­away brings a lot of plucky humor to what­ever role she plays (although I did not see “Broke­back Moun­tain,” in which I can­not imag­ine plucky any­thing played much of a role). And whether or not all these roman­tic inter­ludes actu­ally did hap­pen to Jane Austen or not, it is fun to com­pare the things they claim hap­pened to her with the var­i­ous events por­trayed in her novels.

Well, see­ing movies aside, the last few days have remark­ably unpro­duc­tive for me. I decided that I needed to branch out from cook­ing the same old things I always cook, and for three nights run­ning have been an absolute (or almost absolute) washout. Branch­ing out reminds me why I usu­ally cook the same old things I always cook: because they’re good. But I had to learn this the hard way. On the advice of nearly every­one I know, I recently acquired the River Cafe Cook­book. I have never eaten there, because I almost never eat any­where, but every­one raves, and it’s paper­back, so I thought, why not? Well, maybe it’s just me, but…

The recipes don’t work! That’s actu­ally not fair, since I messed with both the recipes I tried. I just can’t seem to leave a recipe alone, so I know it’s my fault. But first I tried a pasta dish that was meant to be with crab­meat but it was so ruinously expen­sive at Sel­f­ridges (36 pounds a kilo! sorry, no) that I sub­sti­tuted tiger prawns, and prob­a­bly they did not pro­vide the juice that would have helped the dish. The sauce was meant to be just olive oil, chopped pars­ley and gar­lic, and red chilies, and obvi­ously with seafood, no cheese. Well, it was just plain BOR­ING. Too much spaghetti for the amount of sauce, and too oily, and just plain dull. Then last night, I tried a veal chop recipe, only all the veal chops in Lon­don seemed to have run back to the coun­try in fear, so I sub­si­tuted pork chops, which should have been fine. I was meant to rub them with a paste made of pro­sciutto fat, lemon peel, gar­lic, fresh sage and salt. Which smelled divine. Only I was also meant to grill them, but I don’t have a &^%$ grill, so I decided it could not hurt to pan saute them. Only it did hurt, because they sim­ply stuck to the pan and all the paste burned. It still tasted rel­a­tively all right because all the ingre­di­ents were so good, and John and Avery man­fully downed them, but what a bummer.

Set in between these two unsuc­cess­ful and demor­al­is­ing din­ners was another total dis­ap­point­ment: I tried to recre­ate the deli­cious chopped beef-in-lettuce that I had with my friend Julia at E&O last week. Only why do I do this? Try to recre­ate things I’ve had in restau­rants where, say, an actual CHEF is in charge? It was totally labor inten­sive to chop the beef, and along­side I had sliced mush­rooms and pears, red radishes and a chili dip­ping sauce, AND home­made fried rice, and can I tell you how bor­ing it was? It was edi­ble, but every­thing tasted like I had been put on a diet where no fla­vor was allowed.

Grr. Through it all, Avery and John have bravely sat at the kitchen table, eat­ing these dull and failed din­ners, accom­pa­nied by untasty side dishes, and offered their sug­ges­tions. But my friend Becky this morn­ing offered the most sane advice of all: go back to the basics. So I think tonight will be… meat­loaf and mashed pota­toes. No new inno­va­tions, no weird uncharted veg­etable on the side, maybe I’ll even be rad­i­cal and have NO veg­etable on the side. And if any­one says, “But we have this all the time,” I’ll… well, let’s not think about that.

In the mean­time, I’m off to meet up with a lady I have met only on the com­puter screen! Through a mes­sage board! How excit­ing. A new friend, and maybe a snow­storm. Who could ask for more, on a Tues­day in March in London.

Kristen’s Pre­ten­tious Meat­loaf
(serves six eas­ily, with leftovers)

1/3 pound each: minced beef and minced lamb
1/3 pound pork sausage
4 slices whole­meal bread, with­out crusts, torn into shreds
1 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup grated parme­san
3/4 cup ricotta cheese
1 medium onion, minced
3 stalks cel­ery, minced
1 hand­ful curly pars­ley leaves, chopped
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried basil
salt and pep­per to taste
six slices streaky bacon

It couldn’t be any sim­pler: mix every­thing together, except for the bacon, which you drape over the loaf once it’s shaped in a glass dish that you’ve sprayed with non­stick spray, or lined with alu­minium (note the dar­ling extra “i” there) foil. Bake at 400 degrees for one hour.

Are you ready for a true trav­el­ogue from my esteemed city? I almost hate to tell you about the Lon­don Walk I went on yes­ter­day, because… it’s the last one of its kind. Why do I so often get in on the tail end of some­thing won­der­ful? Although that’s a very typ­i­cally glass-half-empty way of look­ing at it. A more pos­i­tive, chirpy per­son would think, “How lucky I am to have gone on Edward Pether­bridge’s Last Lon­don Walk.” But no, I just growl about how deprived I am that it was The Last. It’s hard not to be carp­ing when you’re about to be deprived of any more con­tact with a gen­uine crush. But I digress. Let me explain.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing found John and me shiv­er­ing slightly at the Embank­ment Tube Sta­tion at which we were to meet up with the group to fol­low my lovely Edward around on his “The­atre Walk,” one of the most famous of all the Lon­don Walks (we went on the Jack the Rip­per walk many years ago and it was really enter­tain­ing as well). What made Edward so much fun was his infec­tious sense of humor! Right from the begin­ning, stand­ing up on a flight of steps above his ador­ing audi­ence, his white hair lift­ing in the wind when he took off his straw boater to make a point, he had us all in stitches right away. “I’ve been told by one Amer­i­can lady that hav­ing me take her around Lon­don was like being shown around New York by Dustin Hoff­man. It’s won­der­ful that he has that to fall back on.”

We were off, a group of per­haps 25 strong, around the cor­ner to the Play­house the­atre which the infa­mous Jef­frey Archer bought some years ago (and quite soon gave up on). He and Edward had starred together in 2000 in “The Accused,” which Archer wrote, with the inno­va­tion of an audience-dictated end­ing: was his char­ac­ter guilty or inno­cent? The audi­ence decided, and then there were two alter­nate end­ings to play out. Quirky. I won­der if it was any good? Edward’s demeanor on the sub­ject was (I thought) reserved and per­haps a bit self-deprecating on the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing any­thing to do with such a nut as Jef­frey Archer. Appar­ently on his last night, he turned to the audi­ence and said his last line, as he did every night, “Now I’m going to go back to work,” only on that last evening he added, “Mak­ing 75,000 pounds as an MP and 15 mil­lion as a nov­el­ist.” Terrible!

From there we were onto Craven Street, where Ben­jamin Franklin lived, sub­ject of what must be a won­der­ful radio play, called of all things “Craven Street: Ben­jamin Franklin in Lon­don.” Edward pointed out elo­quently the fact that while we have the gift of hind­sight and can quite eas­ily imag­ine being dressed like, liv­ing like Ben­jamin Franklin, the sight that would have greeted his eyes if he opened his door to us would have bog­gled the mind. Then we fought the wind and fol­lowed Edward through to the low-ceilinged curve of the arches under the Hunger­ford Bridge, lead­ing to Char­ing Cross sta­tion, to stand out­side what was once a Gatti music hall, and has now become Play­ers’ The­atre and lis­ten to Edward sing a lovely, touch­ing song about sleep­ing rough in Lon­don. It was to our delight! He fin­ished with a flour­ish and said, “We all need hyper­bole in our lives. Actors get it auto­mat­i­cally, but even we have to add some… For exam­ple, I often lose my keys. When Emily, my wife, sug­gests, ‘Where did you see them last?’ I sim­ply have to shout, ‘Well, if I knew THAT…!”

We came upon a statue hon­or­ing Sir Arthur Sul­li­van, com­poser of among other things “The Mikado,” draped as you see here with a nearly-naked woman. “She is ‘the Muse,’ nat­u­rally,” Edward dead­panned. “She is so over­come with her muse-like respon­si­bil­i­ties that all her cloth­ing has sim­ply fallen away. One does not like to imag­ine what the Muse on a statue of Oscar Wilde might be, here in our cul­ture that so prob­lema­tises sex. My daugh­ter is read­ing Eng­lish, and so I have learnt words like ‘prob­lema­tise.’ They do make me feel so… aca­d­e­mic.” At the river he stopped to tell us about the events of Jan­u­ary 24, 1965, when he was rehears­ing “Much Ado About Noth­ing” at the National The­atre across the Thames, with Franco Zef­er­elli, and Edward’s obvi­ous clos­est rival in act­ing, Ian McK­ellen. “We were all just con­tem­plat­ing per­form­ing the entire play with Ital­ian accents, when the death of Churchill was announced. We all, Franco included, stopped in silence. And then here, on this side of the river, Noel Cow­ard sat in his hotel room at the Savoy, just behind you there, and con­tem­plated the event as well. What a moment, both great men on either side of the river, at that great moment in his­tory. And the cranes on the river, when the funeral barge passed them by, all bowed in respect.” To think I was just two weeks away from being born, when all this was hap­pen­ing a world away.

Then we were onto the back entrance of the famed Savoy The­atre, sub­ject of the Mike Leigh film “Topsy Turvy,” which I would love to see, and the old stomp­ing grounds of Henry Irv­ing. And directly across the road from it Edward pointed out a gaslight, per­ma­nently lit, which is appar­ently fueled by the sewer fumes from the Savoy! Ick, if true. But enter­tain­ing as a story even if not. We crossed over to Covent Gar­den to stand out­side the now-defunct The­atre Museum, whose demise Edward greatly regrets. “I went by early in the day on the final day the place was to be open, to find a sign say­ing, ‘The museum will not be open today.’ I found some janitor-ish fel­low and asked him what was going on. ‘Well, it’s like this, sir. They didn’t want no trou­ble.’ So I told him I’d leave my petrol bomb in the bin.” From the cor­ner where they museum used to be we could see the enor­mous The­atre Royal Drury Lane, as well as the infa­mous Bow Street Police Sta­tion, the only police sta­tion in the coun­try with no blue lamp! Edward explained that once Queen Vic­to­ria had come out of the Royal Opera House nearby with guests, and when they asked what the blue lamp meant, she was forced to admit that it was a police sta­tion. Appar­ently this dis­clo­sure spoiled her evening, and so the lamp was ordered removed. She was not amused, one gath­ers. The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police have a dif­fer­ent expla­na­tion for the removal, namely that the lamp reminded her of the blue room in which Prince Albert died. Now that would be an incon­ve­nient sore spot. One does encounter blue in the world. “The police sta­tion is one no longer, unfor­tu­nately. It has been bought by a investor and will be turned into… a lux­ury hotel.” Laugh­ter. “One won­ders where, finally, any work will be done in this mod­ern world that seems to have become an amuse­ment park,” he said acidly.

Just behind us, then, was the famous Vic­to­rian flower mar­ket that once housed the real ver­sions of Eliza Doolit­tle, sell­ing her wares. And nearby the Royal Opera House, tak­ing up an entire city block. At this point, one of our num­ber spoke up and announced he had once been a stage­hand there! “If any of the rest of you have such gems of the­atri­cal his­tory up your sleeves, do speak up,” Edward enjoined us. At this point, it was time to take our leave of him, sadly. He will be appear­ing next on tele­vi­sion, he says, in an upcom­ing episode of the hugely pop­u­lar series “Mid­somer Mur­ders,” and then, excit­ingly, will be off to New Zealand to appear as Lear. “And can you imag­ine: guess who will also be in New Zealand, at the same time, play­ing Lear? Ian McK­ellen. He has emailed me to say he is search­ing for the nat­u­ral­ism in the words. Hmmm…” I sup­pose it would be tak­ing my crush a lit­tle over­board to fly out to Auck­land, but it’s sorely tempt­ing. What a day. What a man! Right now I am look­ing for a copy of a book of his­tor­i­cal essays on Shake­speare that includes a piece of writ­ing by him, and I have ordered my copy of his new book, “Pil­lar Talk: Back­cloth and Ashes,” about a 5th cen­tury Syr­ian saint.

Ah, well, back down to earth. But sadly, this was his last Lon­don Walk. Just too dif­fi­cult to work into his sched­ule of work. I’m so glad I was in on the last big adven­ture. Even my self-soaking walk home in sleet, hail and rain could not dampen my spirits.

Okay. I fully accept that I have, in the past (all right, also fairly recently) made some internet-purchasing errors. Not seri­ous errors. But some­how the cat lit­ter I order dou­bles, or even triples in quan­tity before it arrives. Not that we won’t use it, but still, stor­ing 40 kilos of cat lit­ter in a rel­a­tively small flat can pose unusual logis­ti­cal issues. My friend Becky can relate to this, once hav­ing acci­den­tally ordered some­thing like ten years’ worth of guinea pig bed­ding all at once. Fair enough.

How­ever, after my lat­est screwup (don’t count on using the guest bath­room any­time soon unless you want to share it with a lifetime’s worth of Klumpfen­bildende Katzen­streu), I thought I was fin­ished. This morn­ing, unac­count­ably, arrived YET another enor­mously heavy box. “Cat lit­ter,” John said suc­cinctly. “But how? I haven’t ordered any,” I protested. “You have no idea,” he replied, and that’s prob­a­bly true. “You know what you’ve done?” he asked. “No, go ahead, what have I done?” “You’ve enrolled your­self in the Lit­ter of the Month Club. This month it’s “Kiwi and Vanilla,” next month “Pine Nuts and Sun­dried Toma­toes.” You’re done for.”

As if that wasn’t enough, then we turn on the news as we’re get­ting dressed to go see a (yet another) house. In Ham­mer­smith. John sud­denly said, “Wait, that’s where we’re going.” And it was, trag­i­cally and oddly enough, the same street where a rare and vicious mur­der occurred yes­ter­day after­noon. Hmmm. “Well, it can’t hurt to look at the house,” John said.

So as we’re approach­ing it this after­noon, we come upon an enor­mous traf­fic jam, and tele­vi­sion vans, snappy-looking pre­sen­ters, and the loca­tion itself, crowded with bou­quets of flow­ers (why don’t the peo­ple donate the flow­ers to the hos­pi­tal which doubt­less tried to resus­ci­tate the vic­tim? much more use­ful than lying on a pave­ment). “Lordy, it’s not even a block away from the house we’re see­ing,” I said. Dou­ble hmmmm. The estate agent met us at the house and said regret­fully, “I can’t tell you how upset the seller is. Today, of all days, just when her house is going on the mar­ket.” A slight dis­arrange­ment of rel­a­tive bad luck, I would say, con­sid­er­ing that an actual per­son had died, as com­pared with her poten­tial drop in prop­erty value. But such is Lon­don real estate these days. That seller prob­a­bly does find her mis­for­tune to be quite on a par with mur­der. It reminds me in a sick way of the line in “When Harry Met Sally,” when Harry won­ders why the New York Times never thought to com­bine the obit­u­ar­ies with the real estate sec­tion… “Mr. Smith leaves a wife, three chil­dren, and a lovely two-bedroom duplex on Cen­tral Park West with a fire­place…” All suc­cumbs to the irre­press­ible energy of real estate.

And it was a nice house, too. A real fixer-upper, but with poten­tial. John has all the vision for this sort of project, while I pre­fer to sit back and imag­ine our first din­ner party in the kitchen that as yet doesn’t exist.

Ah well, it’s Fri­day, we’re all together, and after a good night’s sleep I’m sure all will look brighter. And hey, maybe tomor­row will bring “Parme­san and Ched­dar” lit­ter. You never know.