Would any of you, many of whom have been given fairly scary (or sim­ply bor­ing) pud­dings at my house, BELIEVE that I cooked this myself? And it tasted good, too. I hon­estly can­not tell you the howls of glee that emanated from me when this lovely dessert was finally plated up in my kitchen on Sun­day after­noon. Let me tell you more.

I have been in a pos­i­tive marathon of cook­ing lately, due to the pig­gy­back­ing of two very impor­tant din­ner par­ties in my life, on Sun­day and Mon­day. I have lain awake many hours try­ing to think what starter, what main course, what salad, and finally, ago­nis­ingly, what pud. Not to men­tion did I have enough truly proper forks for three courses for 10 peo­ple? It turns out I did, but did I have enough nap­kins for two par­ties in a row? Yep, I did. But these thorny ques­tions and deci­sions took up a lot of time. As a result, how­ever, I have two fab­u­lous party menus to give you, both of which are easy and requir­ing no spe­cial exper­tise. What the fab­u­lous pud does require, how­ever, is a kitchen imple­ment new to my kitchen, but for which I have been long­ing for some months now: a steel ring, for presentation.

I know, it sounds unbear­ably pre­ten­tious. But it’s indis­pens­able. Here’s how it works.

It’s like a tall-ish tuna-fish can with no top and no bot­tom, and made of a heav­ier mate­r­ial. But what you do is make your cheese­cake (or indeed your risotto, your par­fait of crab, gua­camole and oven-roasted toma­toes, or your scal­loped pota­toes), and you press your metal ring down onto the sur­face, lift it up, or pile the ingre­di­ents inside and lift it up, and there is… a per­fect cir­cu­lar serv­ing. I have tried it only with cheese­cake, mind you, but I feel cau­tiously opti­mistic that the same method will work with any­thing that isn’t des­per­ately wob­bly or liq­uidy. I am so excited, need­less to say. Because while I am fairly con­fi­dent family-feeding cook, I have long known that my food suf­fers from bad pre­sen­ta­tion. I tend to take a big spoon, scoop up a serv­ing of what­ever, and plop it on a plate, and then plop another thing down next to it, lay some aspara­gus spears next to that, and bob’s your uncle.

But watch­ing lots of cook­ing shows and eat­ing at some very chi-chi restau­rants in my fair city and abroad have taught me that… it’s just not enough. Ugly food isn’t as yummy. So I read a recipe for the rasp­berry cheese­cake while on our hol­i­day in Burgh Island, made a few changes (and would make even more changes next time, which I shall incor­po­rate in the recipe here), and thought, “If only I had a lit­tle metal ring.” So while in Isling­ton last week I dar­ingly acquired a set of rings (some tall and rather wide, and some shorter and not so wide), and had a go. I sim­ply can­not tell you of my mood when this glo­ri­ous thing appeared on the plate. You give it a try, now, do.

It’s funny: this recipe is one of those exam­ples of how Eng­lish and Amer­i­can are NOT the same lan­guage, nor the same cul­ture. Every­thing in it seems to need a trans­la­tion! Includ­ing the mea­sur­ing meth­ods: I am going to give you the United Kingdom’s (and most of the rest of the civilised world’s) method of not­ing quan­ti­ties in weight, not vol­ume. When I make it next, I’ll trans­late every­thing into cups instead of grams, because I am fool­ish enough to pre­fer the way I’ve always done things to learn­ing some­thing new. When it involves maths, that is.

The recipe calls for “curd cheese,” which is a sort of com­bi­na­tion of cream cheese and cot­tage cheese, and is as far as I know not avail­able in the States. I did my shop­ping at a Lebanese food mar­ket, and so there was no curd cheese there, so I sub­sti­tuted cream cheese. John says he would pre­fer the cheese­cake to have a lighter heft, so prob­a­bly curd cheese would achieve that. I’ll obvi­ously be mak­ing this again, so I’ll play around and let you know if any­thing here should be altered.

Rasp­berry Cheese­cake with Fresh Rasp­berry Glaze
(serves ten, in pretty rings, with some scraps left over)

75 grams but­ter, melted
400 grams diges­tive bis­cuits (you could use gra­ham crack­ers in Amer­ica), whizzed till fine crumbs in your Mag­imix (that’s Cuisi­nart to you across the pond)
750 grams cream cheese
220 grams dou­ble cream (whip­ping cream in the States)
175 grams icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar back home), plus some to dust
36 grams corn­flour (corn­starch in the States)
4 eggs and 1 egg white, beaten
2 tsps vanilla extract
zest and juice of 1 lime
400 grams grams fresh rasp­ber­ries
2 tbsps Amaretto
1/2 cup caster sugar (in Amer­ica, ordi­nary white sugar will do)

Pre­heat (I actu­ally hate that word, I take it back). Heat your oven to 170 degrees cel­sius or about 325 fahren­heit. Spray a 9 x 13 inch pan with non­stick spray. In a medium bowl, mix the whizzed cook­ies with the melted but­ter and press the mix­ture into the pan.

In a large mix­ing bowl, mix cream cheese and cream with icing sugar and corn­flour. Then add eggs and vanilla and lime juice and zest and mix till smooth. Fold about half the rasp­ber­ries and pour onto the cookie base. Bake for 35 min­utes or until firmly set but not browned. Let cool on counter and then refrig­er­ate overnight.

Half an hour before serv­ing, count out five rasp­ber­ries per serv­ing of cheese­cake and set aside. The rest, put in a small saucepan with Amaretto and caster sugar and cook over medium heat until berries dis­in­te­grate com­pletely. Press through a fine sieve.

Now, the RING! Run the ring under hot water and press onto the cheese­cake at the outer edge (so as to make as many rings as pos­si­ble). Press until you feel the bot­tom of the pan, then lift up. Magic! Press it with your hand on the top of the cheese­cake ring onto a plate, very gin­gerly and grad­u­ally so as not to dent the cheese­cake and to get it out evenly. Place five rasp­ber­ries on the top, driz­zle with the glaze and dust with icing sugar. Voila!

I felt like The Queen. You will too. More recipes for your two super din­ner par­ties tomor­row. I have three chil­dren and a hus­band due back from Wicked! any moment and I must get sleep­over bed cosy for their return…

Well, I must con­fess that I am in one of my favorite moods right now: still clear­ing up in a mild sort of way from one din­ner party, and already plan­ning my menu for… tomorrow’s din­ner party. I know that sounds like the Sev­enth Cir­cle of HE-Double Hockey Sticks for some of you, but I love it. Tomor­row I’ll tell you how tonight’s din­ner went in more detail than merely SUB­LIME, but right now, I am wax­ing all nos­tal­gic. We just heard, via John’s mother’s eagle eye to the national (yea, inter­na­tional for us) press, of the clos­ing of Clare­mont Rid­ing Acad­emy after 115 years. I have mixed feel­ings about this, since while Avery began her love affair with ponies there (look how TINY she was! four years ago! and how big she has got­ten now), it wasn’t a great sta­ble, the horses weren’t in great con­di­tion, she didn’t learn much. However.

It was in cen­tral Man­hat­tan! For­get that, it was in just plain Man­hat­tan, the last of its kind. And now, poof. There have been sug­ges­tions that the clo­sure is due to the unbe­liev­able real estate value of the build­ing. Fair enough. But when I look at this dear lit­tle face and body, and how dear and tall she has become, I have to give credit where credit is due: Clare­mont began in tall. Rest in peace, 89th Street between Ams­ter­dam and Colum­bus (since all addresses in New York include the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of between what and what).

Any­way, tomor­row I await the arrival of one of my old­est friends, who I have not seen in 10 years. Cyn­thia was one of my trea­sured col­lege room­mates, lo these 20 years ago, and her hus­band Mark was one of John’s room­mates. I think they’re bring­ing two chil­dren I have never met. That is, I have never met their two chil­dren and I think they’re bring­ing them. It will be a marathon of… beyond “catch­ing up,” more like, “Who did you become?” I can’t wait. So back to plan­ning the menu… And Happy Memo­r­ial Day. I won­der how the Indy 500 went?

At least, that’s what my friend Amy is try­ing to tell me. Enough recipe test­ing, din­ner par­ties, lun­cheon par­ties. Get your mind around some­thing… intel­lec­tual, they say. (Isn’t this a gor­geous pho­to­graph? It’s by an artist called Frank Tschak­ert, really tal­ented.) Any­way, I made a good stab at using my brain at the school Book Fair on Tues­day, I must say. It was a funny coin­ci­dence: Avery and I had run over to the won­der­ful Daunt Book­shop on Sat­ur­day, just for a good browse, always a good thing. Some­how we ended up at the till with a stack of books, sev­eral for her, two for me (new fac­sim­ile reprints of Agatha Christie clas­sics, in repli­cas of the orig­i­nal dust jack­ets, to cel­e­brate the 80th anniver­sary of Her­cule Poirot’s emer­gence on the mys­tery scene, what fun), and sev­eral for sweet Baby Jane at home in Con­necti­cut (sadly, not a baby any­more). The fel­low behind the till was not at all covertly mon­i­tor­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, which went some­thing like this. “How are we going to explain this to Daddy? We always end up with such a… stack.” “Well, some are for you, some are for me, and some are gifts, and any­way, it’s always good to spend money on books.” “That’s right, it’s not as if it were fash­ion things that will be SO 2007 in about a week, or some fancy roast that will just dis­ap­pear. It’s BOOKS.” The fel­low laughed, and said, “That’s the spirit. And I’ll throw in a nice can­vas Daunt bag, too, to make your pur­chases even more justifiable.”

It was such a nice mother-daughter moment, a real shop­ping spree and a real con­ver­sa­tion, with an actual per­son, not a lit­tle child to be taken care of (as lovely as they are). We walked out, feel­ing pleased with our­selves and a lit­tle naughty. Avery remarked, “It’s nice to be helped by some­one who really likes his job.” So when I turned up at school to help with the Book Fair, the two staff mem­bers from Daunt explained the dif­fer­ent tables of books for dif­fer­ent ages, and lis­tened to Mrs D and me chat­ting about the PGL trip, and the com­plaints about school lunch. They were two lovely peo­ple, the girl, Trina, heav­ily preg­nant and the fel­low, Adam, kind and obser­vant. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that I realised the fel­low was our friend from the week­end shop­ping trip! I told him what fun we had had, and he said, “Now I remem­ber you! I thought at the time how nice it was to see a par­ent incul­cat­ing proper val­ues in her child.” “Spend­ing money, you mean?” “Pre­cisely! On books, that is.”

So the after­noon pro­gressed as all Book Fairs do, with mys­ti­fied Form Three gulls try­ing to get their minds around the prices of books and the rela­tion­ship between that infor­ma­tion and the money they held in their hot lit­tle hands. “Mrs Cur­ran, I have 4 pounds and 3 pence. Can I buy this book?” “Yes, it’s only 3.99, Libby, you have enough money.” “But I have 4 pounds 3 pence,” she said, clearly not happy with the unmatch­ing nature of the two amounts. “You’ll get a penny back, and then you will have four pence.” “But I want to spend it ALL.” And then so happy to give her change to a class­mate, never mind that it didn’t make any dif­fer­ence. It reminded me so clearly of the last Book Fair at PS 234 in New York, when lit­tle Isabella was quite des­per­ate to spend her last dime. “But, sweet­heart, there isn’t any­thing you can buy for a dime. Look at your lovely pile of books, though. You can take your dime home.” “No, I want to spend EVERY­THING!” she wailed. She must have come back to the till four or five times, implor­ing us to find some­thing she could buy for her dime. Finally I had a brain­wave. “I thought of some­thing you can buy with your dime, Isabella,” I said, and gave her two nick­els. Her sigh of relief was so won­der­ful. “At last! I spent it all.”

Then the Form Fives came, a lit­tle more sophis­ti­cated about their money but still need­ing sup­ple­men­tary pounds here and there. “You can find Avery tomor­row and give the money to her,” I assured them. And they needed help decid­ing between Joan Aiken and Philippa Pearce, between Anthony Horowitz and Eva Ibbot­son. I had no idea that Anthony Horowitz wrote, in addi­tion to all the children’s nov­els and the tele­vi­sion series “Foyles War,” the first episode of Mid­somer Mur­ders, and a dozen Poirot screen­plays, includ­ing “Evil Under the Sun,” filmed on Burgh Island where we just had our roman­tic hol­i­day! What would it be like to be that talented?

Then the super-sophisticated Form Sixes saun­tered in, secure in the knowl­edge that they have passed their senior schools exams, their futures are set, and they can devote the remain­der of the school year to find­ing new and cool ways to tie their PE sweaters around their waists and shoul­ders. Max­i­mum bar­gain­ing, bor­row­ing, lend­ing, and a polite dis­re­gard for any­thing we adults, includ­ing the Eng­lish teacher might rec­om­mend. So funny to be 11 and so, so clever.

Well, other than that day of intel­lect, I haven’t made much head­way in being smart. Emily and I think we will make a trip to a gallery in Great Titch­field Street to see some curated stu­dent art, which from the descrip­tion online includes some sculp­ture made from Hoover fluff, a real must-see, I have to say. I can’t be too snooty, how­ever, once hav­ing shown a quilt made of human hair in my own gallery. I don’t feel much like being intel­lec­tual. Maybe it’s spring fever, or maybe it’s the end­less house-hunting get­ting me down, or feel­ing like I’m just sort of good at lots of things, but not really, really good at any­thing in par­tic­u­lar. I’m feel­ing a bit lack­adaisi­cal. Yesterday’s school Spring Fes­ti­val of Thanks­giv­ing at All Souls church was a lovely event, very uplift­ing and sweet, and so hard to believe it’s been a year already since Avery’s first King’s Col­lege Fes­ti­val. Where does the time go, she asks orig­i­nally. I really am dull today!

Well, John has gone off to look at yet another house. Tomor­row, Isling­ton beck­ons, although I really do think it’s too far away. When I say that, every­one sug­gests help­fully that we look at an entirely new set of schools for Avery, all in the north­east cor­ner of Lon­don, instead of the south­west cor­ner I had got my mind sort of com­fort­ably around. Maybe that’s what’s get­ting me down. The con­stant aura of uncer­tainty! At least today I’m hav­ing lunch with Becky, always a calm­ing, cheer­ing influ­ence. Maybe she can get me out of my funk. And keep me away from the stove for one more after­noon! But in the mean­time, do try the side dish we had last night. Then, I promise to stop cook­ing, at least until our… lun­cheon party on Sunday.

Scal­loped Pota­toes
(serves four generously)

6 medium pota­toes, a waxy vari­ety like Char­lotte, peeled and sliced thin
1 cup light cream, plus 1/2 cup skim milk, mixed
salt and pepper

Spray a square glass bak­ing dish gen­er­ously with non­stick spray and cover the bot­tom with sliced pota­toes, fanned out so they over­lap slightly. Pour over the cream mix­ture just to cover, and add salt and pep­per. Layer more pota­toes and pour over cream until the pota­toes are fin­ished. Salt and pep­per the top and bake at 400 for about an hour, stir­ring occa­sion­ally so that the pota­toes on top do not dry out, but tak­ing care not to break the pota­toes up. In the last 15 min­utes, all the top to brown nicely. You may also add gar­lic in between two of the potato lay­ers or add bread­crumbs and but­ter, or cheese to the top at the last 15 min­utes (I may not because my daugh­ter is a scal­loped potato purist). Deli­cious with braised pork chops and sauteed red pep­per strips.

At least my hopes are high. I have had only one visit to the new Nat­ural Kitchen in the Maryle­bone High Street, and that one accom­pa­nied (not to say ham­pered) by my 10-year-old daugh­ter whose inter­est in food shop­ping is, say, one tenth of her inter­est in book shop­ping. But I had clev­erly fit­ted in a book trip right before we came upon the new food shop, so I think I got the most out of her that could be got. In any case… Nat­ural Kitchen is the new “it” shop in Maryle­bone. And only half of it is open so far. Let me tell you more.

It takes up a huge amount of square footage in the block begin­ning at Devon­shire Street, on three floors. Sur­pris­ingly, I can find almost noth­ing about it on the inter­net except vague sug­ges­tions that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is involved in some way, he of the River Cot­tage restau­rant fame. I’ve also read rumours that the peo­ple behind Nat­ural Kitchen plan an assault on the Whole Foods dom­i­na­tion of cen­tral Lon­don organic food sources. The Kens­ing­ton High Street store is slated to open June 6, and they’ve already taken over “Fresh and Wild,” but if Nat­ural Kitchen has its way, the dom­i­nance will be two-headed.

In any case, the place is hugely impres­sive as a piece of real estate, to begin with. Gor­geous ren­o­va­tion with high ceil­ings, lovely dis­plays, very ener­getic staff. I don’t know if they had opened just the day before (a so-called “soft open­ing”?), but there was a def­i­nite feel of a work in progress. The lower floor was not yet open and the shelves were some­what sparsely filled, but the bak­ery sec­tion alone is enough to make you go in. A beau­ti­ful baguette came home with us, and the baker was giv­ing away sam­ples of patis­serie goods that Avery said “are as good as any­thing I’ve had in Lon­don, but not as good as Paris.” Fair enough. A very appeal­ing pro­duce sec­tion, and a dairy case boast­ing many fancy yogurts and creams. But the butcher counter? I thought I was beyond sticker shock, liv­ing here, but some num­bers get me even now. Suf­fice to say I will not be pur­chas­ing any of the fil­let of beef for, get ready for it, 54 pounds a kilo! Yes, $50 a pound. For some­thing to EAT. Not in our house. I do think the prices are absolutely out­ra­geous and can’t imag­ine that even with friendly staff and a lovely atmos­phere of clean­li­ness and cheer, the neigh­bor­hood clien­tele will be ready to sup­port them. I can see pop­ping in for, say, mint, if Wait­rose is out. Or a baguette on the way to school. But gen­eral shop­ping, no.

That being said, they do stock all the Wind­sor Farm Shop items, from lux­u­ri­ous rose­mary and parme­san bis­cuits to spe­cialty oils and pas­tas, and they looked won­der­ful. And fruit and veg from Sun­ny­fields, so I chose a huge hand­ful of broad beans in the pod and ended up with… about a table­spoon of beans. Clearly I did not reckon on the pack­ag­ing tak­ing up most of the room, in a broad bean. Next time I’ll know. And I’ll have to try the pre­pared foods (sal­ads and rel­ishes) from taste mat­ters (don’t you love com­pa­nies that shun all cap­i­tal let­ters, like lit­tle com­mer­cial food-purveying e.e. cum­mingses). I just went on their web­site and it is quite stun­ningly pre­cious about itself, in an earnest and defen­si­ble organic way, not so much twee as just… tak­ing itself really, really seri­ously. “Taste, bal­ance and sea­son­al­ity are cen­tral to our beliefs about what con­sti­tutes healthy con­ve­nience food.” Wow. I didn’t know peo­ple HELD beliefs about con­ve­nience food (except that one should shun it). And in all the lit­tle cat­e­gories of the web­site the print gets smaller and smaller as you go down, like an eye exam. Why am I mock­ing these peo­ple? No good reason.

Last night I slaved away cook­ing two items from the Gladys Taber Stillmeadow Kitchen cook­book, as befits the girl who’s slated to re-issue the cook­book at some point. Gladys’s grand­daugh­ter Anne, our beloved neigh­bor across the road in Con­necti­cut, is going to announce the re-issue project next month, which makes it fright­en­ingly real. I’ve got to buckle down. The first line of inquiry is to test these recipes. Of course, rootling around in the back (and some­times front) of my mind is the com­men­tary, the his­tory, the sto­ries around the re-issue, but I have to con­front the fact that the recipes must be cooked. So last night was “Broiled Young Chicken” and “Scal­loped Corn.” I present them for your delight. No con­ve­nience foods, and no really strong beliefs either, but darn good food. I’m going to give you the recipes ver­ba­tim, and you can see what you think of Glady’s expo­si­tional style. She assumes a fair exper­tise, I have to say. I warn you that with the chicken, the but­ter will splat­ter you, so beware. And I’m not sure what a “mod­er­ate” broiler means: mine has only one set­ting, and it cooked fast, but in the end I think these direc­tions are fair.

Broiled Young Chicken
(serves four gen­er­ously, with great bones for stock)

Split a plump young chicken down the back with a sharp knife. Lay it skin side up on a flat sur­face and flat­ten it out by press­ing firmly on it. You may cut out the back­bone if you wish. This makes it eas­ier to han­dle at the table. Wipe dry. Brush both sides with melted but­ter and sprin­kle with salt and pep­per, put skin side down in a shal­low pan and place it 4 inches under a mod­er­ate broiler. After 20 min­utes turn it over and con­tinue to cook until well browned and ten­der, about 25 min­utes. Baste sev­eral times with the drip­pings or with melted but­ter. Pour the drip­pings over the chicken before serving.

***********

Now, I have to say that the drip­pings are SIN­FULLY rich, brown and suc­cu­lent, and I resisted the temp­ta­tion actu­ally to pour them on the chicken. But the skin was beyond crisp, like noth­ing I’ve ever tasted before. It was messy to do, and a bit smokey, but a mind-bending improve­ment on a roasted chicken. So there you are. With it I served:

Scal­loped Corn
(serves four gen­er­ously)

Cut 2 cups of raw corn [about six ears] from the ear and add two beaten eggs, 1/2 tea­spoon salt, and a table­spoon of diced or chopped green pep­per, or both. Place 1/2 this mix­ture in a bak­ing dish or casse­role, cover with bread crumbs, dot with but­ter and pour in the rest of the mix­ture. Pour on 1/2 cup top milk or thin cream, then top with bread crumbs and but­ter. Bake in a mod­er­ate oven for 30 minutes.

***********

There are two things that tickle me about this recipe: one being the green pep­per sug­ges­tion (so old-fashioned in these days obsessed with red pep­per, espe­cially roasted), and the ref­er­ence to “top milk.” This must be the top of the milk bot­tle (what my unre­pen­tant mother reports drink­ing straight from the bot­tle as a lit­tle girl), or in fact cream. I still love to buy raw milk, whole milk, from the farmer’s mar­ket and see the thick stuff at the top, unless you shake it.

So there you have it. I cer­tainly wel­come com­ments on these recipes, since they are the maiden voy­age of Gladys Taber’s work on this blog. I didn’t change a thing, and I wouldn’t. There are other recipes with which I could regale you in which this could hardly be pos­si­ble: any­thing that calls for com­bin­ing two cans of pre­pared soup, for exam­ple, or my all-time favorite, “Boiled Tongue With Raisin Sauce.” Enough said.

I’m off to din­ner with my friend Amy while Avery and her father have their favorite din­ner, “noo­dles and but­ter.” This is sec­ond only to “but­ter and noo­dles” in their lex­i­con of gourmet cook­ing. She deserves it: she just jumped her high­est jump ever (bless that barn, what greaet peo­ple), on pre­cious Amber: over two feet high. Show Jump­ing at Olympia can­not be far behind.

First, I have to tell you where I found this lovely pho­to­graph. It’s a really clever web­site ded­i­cated to… I don’t really know! Odd sci­en­tific facts? Little-known myths debunked? Give it a click.

Well, in our never-ending efforts to find a house, we have entered into nego­ti­a­tions with that part of our brains that gov­erns rea­son­able behav­ior: how far is too far to live, from Avery’s school? This ques­tion of course begs the larger one, which is where she will go to school in the first place. The hal­cyon days of King’s Col­lege Prep will not last for­ever, sadly. A year from Sep­tem­ber will find her in quite some other loca­tion, and all indi­ca­tions so far put her in the south­west cor­ner of Lon­don. So why, you might well ask, would we be look­ing for a home in… north­east Lon­don? Fair enough.

I’ll tell you why. It’s because we have many require­ments for a house, a dream house, all of which taken together have ousted us from the more con­ve­nient areas we might look in. Here’s the prob­lem. John wants an inter­est­ing archi­tec­tural exte­rior. He also wants a fair amount of space. I want period details left in place, and a truly great kitchen-entertaining space. He’d be hap­pier than I would be with a dodgy-ish neigh­bor­hood, and I’d be happy with less square footage than he would be. So either one of us could be made happy within our bud­get, but not both of us. So Ham­mer­smith and Shepherd’s Bush, chock-a-block as they are with lovely LIT­TLE houses, are out because they make John feel claus­tro­pho­bic. And to be rea­son­able (as I’m try­ing to be), a man shouldn’t have to duck in his own house. But then, say, we try for Not­ting Hill, or even North Kens­ing­ton, where the ceil­ings are higher, the houses wider. Sud­denly they become almost twice as expen­sive. Partly the size, partly the trendy neigh­bor­hood. Get this: on Thurs­day we saw a five-storey house in North Kens­ing­ton (or was it West Kens­ing­ton) filled to the BRIM with the belong­ings of not only one fam­ily, but the inher­ited belong­ings of three dead branches of the same fam­ily. Every wall cov­ered with oil paint­ings of dead rela­tions, sketches of remote coun­try dis­tricts, bird stud­ies, hounds with dead pheas­ants in their mouths, sil­hou­ettes of long-grown chil­dren. And car­pets, and books, and man­tel­piece sculp­tures and vases, and sev­eral dozen quilts in var­i­ous stages of quilt­ing. Four-poster beds with draperies, like a hotel in the Cotswolds.

Just as we were leav­ing, we vis­ited the kitchen (dread­ful) one more time, and the elderly, white-haired, blue-cardied owner lady was sit­ting at the table, arrang­ing her bits and pieces in her elderly hand­bag, prepar­ing to go out. We apol­o­gised for barg­ing around and she was very gra­cious. As we left, the estate agent whis­pered, “She was the nanny for the royal fam­ily, you know.” What? Appar­ently before the likes of Tiggy Legg-Bourke entered the scene.

But my point is, what’s a fam­ily of three, spoiled rot­ten from New York loft liv­ing, to do?

Get thee to Isling­ton, it would seem. At least we’re giv­ing it the old col­lege try. Yes, it’s a hike from the poten­tial school neigh­bor­hoods. But Geor­gian houses on lovely reha­bil­i­tated squares, where you can see from the front pave­ment through the liv­ing room win­dows straight out the back win­dows onto a leafy, plush gar­den? It’s hard to resist. So far all we’ve done is write down addresses of houses for sale, and drive up there to look around from the out­side. We spent most of yes­ter­day after­noon walk­ing all over Barns­bury, Canon­bury, Dun­can Ter­race, all sorts of lovely streets with all the flow­ers just bloom­ing, the pave­ments filled with young fam­i­lies push­ing pushchairs (all look­ing, no doubt, for a house). And the high street, Upper Street, is sim­ply crowded with lovely lit­tle restau­rants, antique shops and a sur­pris­ing pro­fu­sion of hair dress­ing estab­lish­ments. And the inevitable pres­ence of estate agents, of course. I’m con­vinced that estate agents are the new High Soci­ety. They seem to hold all our future plans in their hot lit­tle hands, gloat­ing, “Yes, who can explain it? Prices seem to rise every week! It’s hor­ri­ble, isn’t it?”

Any­way, the neigh­bor­hood looked lovely enough to war­rant at least mak­ing some appoint­ments with these estate agents to see the houses from the inside. And we found one absolutely gob­s­mack­ing antique shop called Cas­tle Gib­son Fur­ni­ture where we wanted one of every­thing in the place. We’re pretty sure that wher­ever we go we’ll need wardrobes and chests of draw­ers, since built-in closet space is not, or should not be, a fea­ture of a Geor­gian house. There were great painted Vic­to­rian chests, beat-up leather chairs, a really beau­ti­ful zinc-topped din­ing table, all sorts of things I wanted des­per­ately. But while buy­ing a car­pet in Morocco for a house we don’t have is one thing (at least it can be laid flat while you pre­tend it isn’t on top of another car­pet), stack­ing up din­ing tables and chairs is a lit­tle silly, even for me.

Then we found a great kitchen sup­ply shop called Gill Wing, in Upper Street, that sup­plied to me two sets of those metal rings that every cook appar­ently must have these days, to allow us to build ver­ti­cal stacks of per­fectly round dishes. Say you have a big saucepan of risotto. My nor­mal approach to serv­ing would be to… plop a big ladle-ful on the plate and maybe lean a chicken breast up against it, then dig in. No, no, no. Not in 2007 you don’t! No, after obses­sively watch­ing two sea­sons of Great British Menu, the fab cook­ing show where ego-mad chefs from var­i­ous regions of Great Britain com­pete with a four-course meal to rule their regions, Avery has informed me that my pre­sen­ta­tion must get up to snuff. So as of today, any­thing I put on a plate will be in the shape of one of these lit­tle metal discs. Lamb’s let­tuce salad with chili vinai­grette? Check, round salad. Scram­bled eggs with creme fraiche and chives? Check, round scram­bled eggs. We’ll see.

Then we had a lovely lunch at one of the Belgo industry’s out­posts, Biero­drome Isling­ton. John had a pretty good kilo of steamed moules clas­siques, which while fresh and good, were accom­pa­nied by a rather more bor­ing bath than they should have been. Try my mus­sel recipe instead. Don’t be shy with the gar­lic, either. I had a gor­geous plate of king prawns with a really flavour­some red chilli and gar­lic but­ter sauce. Yum. John had the “Beer of the Month,” a really very tasty brew called Brugge Zotblonde.

Well, at any rate, no house yet. What I most do not want to do is have John cave to the property-ladder pres­sure (as in “must own some­thing so I can some­day sell it at a profit, which I can’t do if I don’t own any­thing”). That would mean we buy a puny house just to have a house, move in, and watch John spend the rest of his life look­ing for the house he really wanted. But we have to draw the line at Grade I listed houses in Bed­ford Square. We really can’t look at any more houses that we can­not afford. It’s too depressing.

But hey: the good news is that Avery’s home! Safe from her five-day school trip to the Isle of Wight. All the Form V moth­ers and fathers lined up in front of the school yes­ter­day to see the coach pull up and dis­gorge 26 dirty, rum­pled, sun­burned, exhausted but bliss­ful gulls, full of shaggy-dog sto­ries and shared annoy­ing camp songs, plus boasts of how high/far/deep or what­ever they went on what­ever chal­lenge. We dragged her home, run­ning a cou­ple of errands in the high street on the way home and enjoin­ing her not to tell either of us any­thing with­out the other there to hear. Home to a bath, and her favorite bolog­nese sauce, and a cosy time read­ing together. It was nice to be on our own, but it’s nice to get her back. Even if we didn’t find a house while she was away…

I’m sit­ting here with my desk pos­i­tively cov­ered with the del­i­cate flat stones that make up the beaches sur­round­ing Burgh Island. Why are they all so flat? It must have some­thing to do with the tidal move­ments. In any case, I could not resist putting (I thought) just a few in my pocket. And also some sea glass that is almost as beau­ti­ful as the pieces we col­lect in Maine. But now I’m home, the pile is rather… immense. Some are des­tined for a trip across the pond to Iowa, for my mother in law who col­lects rocks. Seriously.

At any rate, stone gath­er­ing occu­pied our time on Mon­day until we felt the strong need of a nap, and a nice read on the bal­cony out­side our room. Then it was a bath, and get­ting dressed for din­ner, which is black tie there every evening (on Wednes­days there’s a dance, in case you like that kind of thing). It sim­ply isn’t fair. All men look stun­ning in black tie, but a woman has to make an effort. And I am just not the shop­ping kind, at least not for things I don’t wear every day. How­ever, I man­aged to squeeze into the same black skirt I wore last year to Glyn­de­bourne, and that had to do. Out on the ter­race out­side the din­ing room we suc­cumbed to a cock­tail of what turned out to be a stag­ger­ingly dis­gust­ing com­bi­na­tion of ingre­di­ents: the Burgh Island Breeze. And John had a Mintini. What ever made any­one, even in 1929, think that mint and vodka went together? Most odd. The canapes, how­ever, more than made up for the cock­tails: dates wrapped in pro­sciutto, aspara­gus wrapped in puff pas­try, and the fat­test tempura-battered oys­ters in the world. Divine.

Onto din­ner, which was also lovely, in the period din­ing room com­plete with murals of danc­ing flap­pers: one of which is a por­trait of the owner of the hotel, and her hus­band (we saw him later the next day, every bit as dash­ing in gar­den­ing clothes as in a two-dimensional tuxedo). We had the most sub­lime foie gras I think I have ever had, per­fectly sauteed, then lamb and fil­let steak with kumquat puree and Jerusalem artichokes.

To retire to our room with cof­fee, pep­per­mint tea and a nice neat Scotch (no more six-ingredient col­ored things, no sir) was relax­ation itself. The bed had been turned down, the lights lit, and alto­gether I was sur­prised not to feel the room sway with the waves, it was so much like being on a ship. Not that I ever have, but from what I’ve read! Radio 3 on the vin­tage radio (with sta­tions marked by their cities of ori­gin!), the cur­tains blow­ing in the sea breeze, the high tide splash­ing out­side. Really won­der­ful. Day two beckoned…

That’s the first thing I learned upon approach­ing the Devon coast, look­ing for the “Sea Trac­tor” that would take us across the incom­ing tide to the Island. It’s pro­nounced “Burr”, I sup­pose sort of like “Edin­burgh,” Scot­land. The real dum­mies like me start out pro­nounc­ing it “Edin­burg,” with a ‘g’, and then move onto the only slightly less dumb ver­sion, “Edin­bur­row.” No, it’s just “Burr Island.”

But I’m skip­ping ahead. Hav­ing seen Avery off on her school trip, we hopped in the car and headed south. Well, south/southwest, through beau­ti­ful Wilt­shire, where we stopped in a lit­tle town called Chilmark and had the req­ui­site plate of Wilt­shire ham and a “brace of eggs,” very deli­cious. The ham is actu­ally cured, instead of being smoked, and the fla­vor is very del­i­cate and the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to a plate of fried eggs. Get some, do, at the Black Dog pub in Chilmark.

Then through Som­er­set, which is just about the pret­ti­est coun­try­side you can imag­ine, the set­ting of one of my favorite mys­tery series by Janet Lau­rence. I must say, in an igno­rant way it’s hard to get really worked up about the deple­tion of our nat­ural resources when you drive through hun­dreds of miles of seem­ingly end­less land­scapes, filled with sheep, cows, pigs, horses, as far as your eye can see. It does make me won­der why on earth we live in Lon­don, but then we have to admit we love it here, too. Yet another of life’s apho­risms proved true: it’s con­trast that makes hap­pi­ness. Right on through Devon, then, with its hills full of red cows. Not black and white, not brown, red. And all the miles of slightly drunken-looking right angles of hedgerow, so beau­ti­ful under the change­able grey-blue sky. Just as we got into Mod­bury, the lit­tle vil­lage that’s the clos­est to the island, the sun came blaz­ing out and we could put the top down on the car. Gorgeous!

We should have stopped in the lit­tle town of St. Anne’s Chapel, as the hotel guide told us too, and phoned the hotel to get across the tide-swept expanse of Big­bury Bay between the main­land and the hotel island, because they were quite cor­rect in say­ing mobile phone ser­vice was iffy (how lovely not to have a phone), but in the end it worked out just fine because as we were oohing and aahing over the view of the hotel from the other side, we saw the nutty “Sea Trac­tor” com­ing across and waved our arms at the dri­ver. I ran down with our bags and the lovely guy (I wish I knew his name but I don’t) went up in his Land Rover parked on our side of the water and showed John where to park, then they both came down and joined me on the Trac­tor. As you can see in the pic­ture, it’s a restored 1966 vehi­cle that reminds me of the thing they did space walks on: a sort of hayride wagon fit­ted with long spindly legs and enor­mous tyres, designed to drive right the way across the beach in two feet of water. Crazy, but a lot of fun. The Burgh Island Hotel staff ran out to let us into the hotel, which is like walk­ing back into 1929. Every piece of fur­ni­ture, work of art is a period piece, joined by lots of framed reviews of the hotel from 1929 to the present.

We dumped our bags in our room, called the “Cunard,” (which felt just like the descrip­tions of ocean liner cab­ins I’ve read) and went on an explor­ing tour of the hotel first (a real bil­liard room!) and then the grounds. Rab­bit war­rens every­where, and some glimpses of bun­nies, until they saw us com­ing. It reminded me of the hours Avery and I spent in Scot­land hud­dled out­side rab­bit door­ways, wait­ing for a lit­tle face to peer out. I men­tioned this to John and he said, “No way am I crouch­ing on wet grass to wait for a rab­bit.” Well, that’s why peo­ple have chil­dren, to have some­one to do that with.

Enough tour guide from me today. I’m off for a mam­moth gro­cery shop in prepa­ra­tion for our tired, dirty and no doubt starved child’s return tomor­row. More on Devon presently!

Well, strictly speak­ing, an island right off the coast of Devon beck­ons. Just the two of us. But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

The last few days have been insane. There was Fri­day spent look­ing at houses: one too small but in a per­fect loca­tion (plus owned right now, I learned from the estate agent AND the paint­ing of their “coun­try house” over the fire­place which was a CAS­TLE, by a Duke and Duchess of quite peer­less beauty), and then there’s the sort of nasty one in an even more per­fect loca­tion, but it was, I’m not kid­ding, uphol­stered. I mean the walls. Uphol­stered. And a truly evil kitchen. Sigh.

From there we picked up Avery and Jamie and quite ALL their belong­ings in the world from school and took them ice skat­ing, where I hung around with Becky, and my new skate-mother friend Heidi who has the two most beau­ti­ful lit­tle girls in the world. Heidi is going, guess where, Mar­rakesh for the long half-term hol­i­day, so we had a lot to talk about. From there to the most deli­cious din­ner at Man­darin Kitchen where we ate every­thing in sight (I think my hands-down favorite dish ever there is the soft-shell crab lib­er­ally sprin­kled with sliced red chilis, scal­lions and cilantro, quickly deep fried. Divine. Avery and Jamie are peas in a pod, talk­ing over each other in an attempt to bet­ter each other’s sug­ges­tions for their favorite word game, “You think of a word that starts with the last let­ter of my word,” really cute. Off to home and movies (we had thought about pop­corn but were too full to con­sider it once we arrived), and a suit­ably late bedtime.

In the morn­ing we had to drag poor Jamie off to see house #3 with us, an old favorite in a yucky street, now on the mar­ket for longer than it should be: why? Jamie and Avery were full of per­spi­ca­cious com­ments, and the house did not wear well for me on this the sec­ond visit. A scary reno inter­nal stair­case, ugly, ugly, ugly. But a gor­geous ground floor kitchen-eating space which, given my ten­dency to live in the kitchen, is a bad thing indeed. Will we ever find a house?

We dropped Jamie at home, dropped Avery at her act­ing class, raced home to do all the lit­tle house­hold chores, then raced back to get Avery and head off to the Royal Wind­sor Horse Show! I’m sorry to say, how­ever, that for all the fun it was last year, this year was a bit of a dis­ap­point­ment. For one thing, it rained. Not a drench­ing, but enough to make all the pub­lic thor­ough­fares a big, muddy, sucking-at-feet dis­as­ter. And for some rea­son there was much less seat­ing for the hoi pol­loi (I admit I tried to get Mem­bers’ Enclo­sure tick­ets, but they were sold out), and so we were pressed six-deep at the fence of the Arena try­ing to see what was going on. Finally, though, peo­ple at the front got tired of watch­ing and we moved up to the gate and could see the show jump­ing and the tail end of the Shet­land Pony races. By the time we’d had a pretty decent grilled chicken wrap for lunch, there were open seats in the bleach­ers and THEN we could relax. I went off to the Food Fes­ti­val and what hap­pened there? Dayles­ford Organic was miss­ing, the Prince of Wales Duchy label was gone, there was only one pro­duce stand with fruit and veg. I won­der if it turned out to be unprof­itable last year, so peo­ple stayed away? I also think I’ve got spoiled with farm­ers’ mar­kets and food shops and so I’m harder to impress this year. In any case, I got some things for our Sun­day din­ner with Vin­cent, so that was good.

As always, the best events were the Accu­mu­la­tor and the Puis­sance wall, so we stayed for those and then headed back in the bloomy almost-dark to arrive home quite late. I accom­plished some desul­tory pack­ing for both Avery’s trip this week and ours, and then Sun­day dawned rainy and nasty, which put a bit of a damper on my Maryle­bone Farm­ers’ Mar­ket trip, but I per­se­vered. Poor John has a nasty, lin­ger­ing cold, so he stayed home while I got Avery to the sta­ble (icky to imag­ine rid­ing and muck­ing out in the rain, but the girls don’t seem to mind).

I came home and spent the after­noon cook­ing. And what did I learn? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. As in, if one’s roast chicken is always good, don’t be a sucker for the lat­est Angela Hart­nett recipe that insists you steam the chicken part of the cook­ing time and then open the foil pack­age for the last 15 min­utes to “brown.” Why not? Because it doesn’t brown, and you find your­self turn­ing the heat up super high for an extra ten min­utes hop­ing the skin will crisp but… it doesn’t. It tasted fine (why not, with tar­ragon, fresh thyme, lemon halves, but­ter and gar­lic slathered all over it?) but roast­ing in open air is bet­ter. Sorry, Angela. Maybe all Gor­don Ramsay’s bul­ly­ing is tak­ing its toll.

Then, too, if I always have suc­cess with nice mashed pota­toes (this time a lovely bag of Clarets from the Potato Shop at the mar­ket), why mess about and add cele­riac to the mash? Either I didn’t add enough and so it was just a dull hint of cele­riac, or I added too much and it over­whelmed the pota­toes. Bor­ing! And in my bid to be not just the cook but part of the party, I let the aspara­gus cook too long and it was too soft! What a dis­as­ter, in minor pro­por­tions. The best parts of the din­ner party were the guests (Vin­cent, Pete and Vincent’s two lit­tle girls, Estee and Ines, eas­ily the most charm­ing chil­dren I know). Oh, and the salad with spicy chili oil dress­ing. No, the best part was the…

Coquilles St. Jacques au gratin
(serves four as a starter)

1 dozen fresh scal­lops
1 cup white wine (or dry Ver­mouth)
1 tbsp Madeira wine
dash cayenne pep­per
3 tbsps but­ter
2 tbsps flour
2 shal­lots, finely minced
1 hand­ful curly pars­ley, finely minced
1 egg yolk, beaten slightly
salt and pep­per
fresh soft bread­crumbs
grated pecorino or parme­san cheese

If you’ve got your scal­lops on the shell, as I did (first time! scary), care­fully remove the red roe and the mem­brane that con­nects it to the scal­lop. Remove the tough mus­cle that clings to the out­side of the scal­lop, too. Is it all nice and smooth and white and clean? Wash and rinse and lay the scal­lops on paper tow­els, then scrub out four of the shells and rub with butter.

Pour the wine and Madeira in a small saucepan, dust with cayenne and bring to a sim­mer. Place scal­lops in the saucepan and sim­mer (don’t boil!) for five min­utes, then remove with a slot­ted spoon to a cut­ting board and cut each scal­lop in half, and place six halves in each scal­lop shell. Add the flour, but­ter, shal­lot and pars­ley to the saucepan and whisk until mixed, then add the egg yolk. Pour this mix­ture over the scal­lops and top with bread­crumbs and cheese. You can do all this ahead of your din­ner. Five min­utes before you want to eat, place the scal­lop shells in a glass dish big enough to hold them all and put in a very hot oven (425 degrees) for five min­utes. Serve hot, with a fork AND a spoon. You will want every bite.

**************

My cheese board was good, at least: one good cheese from our Wait­rose, a prince among super­mar­kets: an ash-covered goat’s cheese. And from the Food Fes­ti­val yes­ter­day I brought back a lovely Cotswold Brie from Simon Weaver, a blue from the Cor­nish Cheese Com­pany, and a ched­dar from Wyke Farms.

Well, we’re off! We’ve deposited Avery at school with her gar­gan­tuan bag, for her five days’ away on the school trip… when we walked into school with the bag, her back­pack, her lunch and her bot­tle of frozen water, the thought of climb­ing the six flights of stairs to her class­room was too much! Luck­ily the PE teacher (cen­tral cast­ing: young New Zealan­der, always in a track suit with a bot­tle of water in her hand, call­ing Avery “sweet­haaat”) Miss Ellis said cheer­ily, “Just leave you bags in the library, and head on up,” so with a min­i­mum of good­bye, she was off. And we’re headed to Burgh Island. I’ll report on our adven­ture (no ser­ial mur­ders, though, one hopes?) when we return…

Now I have to realise that we’ve come back down to earth (Lon­don) and I have no rea­son to post any more pho­tographs of Mar­rakech. Sob. This is it.

How­ever. I have a recipe for you that jus­ti­fies just this one more Mor­ro­can post. I know, it’s not so hor­rid com­ing back to real­ity when real­ity is the totally cool town of Lon­don. Pretty soon I will be back in the mode of appre­ci­at­ing all things Eng­lish. In fact I did laugh in a recent con­ver­sa­tion with my sworn inter­preter, Avery, when we were watch­ing some­thing on tele­vi­sion and I said, “Wait a minute: ‘the dog’s beans,’ what does that mean?” Avery con­sid­ered for a moment and then said, “It’s a lot like ‘the cat’s paja­mas.’ Or ‘the cat’s whiskers.’”

Thank you, bilin­gual child.

So, din­ner time in the real world beck­oned last night. And although we left behind the actual tagine (the pot­tery dish so typ­i­cal of Mar­rakech, with a wide flat base and a high, stocking-cap-like top) that the car­pet guys offered me (and a good thing since I don’t know how we would have fit one more item in our lug­gage), I decided I could try to repro­duce the chicken dish we had on the birth­day evening. Why not? I have to say that as much as one com­plains about Tesco, it’s hard to crit­i­cise a bor­ing, enor­mous super­mar­ket that con­tains ingre­di­ents like pre­served lemons and pit­ted oil-cured black olives. Who’s buy­ing this stuff? If it takes even me, no slouch at gro­cery shop­ping, a year and a half to want such things, who else is keep­ing them afloat at the Cromwell Road Tesco? Well, any­way, enough spec­u­lat­ing. The point is, if you can find the proper ingre­di­ents (and I’ve given you proper links so you can order them online if you have to), a truly superb and exotic chicken dish is in your future. Granted, I was lucky enough to have the mys­te­ri­ous spice blend called ras el hanout fresh from Mar­rakech, but you can order it too. And here’s the link for lemon grass pow­der, which I think is half of the “lemon gin­ger” I bought at the Moroc­can spice shop. Pow­dered gin­ger should pro­vide the rest. The recipe I’m giv­ing you begins with cut­ting up a whole chicken. This is designed to pro­vide you with the unwanted bones to pop into a stock­pot with car­rots, onions, pars­ley and salt, cov­ered with water, and give you a very nice chicken stock at the end of the evening. When I’m lazy and shop at super­mar­kets where all the meat is pack­aged up and you can’t choose the pieces you want, it’s impos­si­ble to find a whole chicken cut up. If you can, more power to you. But then you lose the stock, which today is sim­mer­ing on the stove with cele­riac root, for soup for lunch. Any­way. I digress.

Djez Makalli (Moroc­can Chicken Braised with Pre­served Lemons and Olives)
(serves four)

5 cloves gar­lic
2 shal­lots or 1 onion
large hand­ful flat pars­ley leaves
juice of 1 lemon
2 tsps salt
1 tbsp ras el hanout
1 tsp lemon-ginger pow­der
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pep­per
dash of brandy
1 large roast­ing chicken, cut into legs and breasts
2 tbsps sun­flower or rape­seed oil
1 tbsp but­ter
3 large car­rots, cut in disks
2 cups tiny new pota­toes, scrubbed
2 small or 1 large pre­served lemon, finely chopped
1 cup oil-cured black olives, pit­ted
chicken stock to cover (about 600 ml, or 2 1/2 cups)
4 tbsps flour

Place first nine ingre­di­ents in blender or Mag­imix and whizz until it achieves a rough paste. Place chicken pieces in a large bowl and rub with the paste. Set aside while you melt the but­ter and oil together in a large, heavy pot with a close-fitting lid. Put chicken pieces and all the paste into the pot and stir over high heat until lightly browned on all sides. Throw in car­rots and pota­toes, pre­served lemon and olives, and pour over stock until every­thing is cov­ered, give it a good stir. Cover the pot as tightly as you can and turn heat down to a high sim­mer. Cook for at least 1 1/2 hours, stir­ring only very occasionally.

At the very end, ladle 1/2 cup or so of the broth into a cup and add the flour. Stir until com­pletely mixed and then add the mix­ture to the broth in the cook­ing pot. Stir (with a whisk if nec­es­sary to break up any lumps) until the broth achieves a nice gravy-like consistency.

You could serve this dish with cous­cous, rice, or I sup­pose noo­dles. I found the pota­toes to be just enough starch.

****************

It was so good! And really quite close to the dish we had in Morocco, so if I had been able to add men in tuxe­dos, live Mar­rakech music, lots of wine flow­ing freely, and a hol­i­day atmos­phere, it would have been… perfect.