Because I do get bored with peppers.

Avery can eat them — red, orange or yel­low, but we both agree that green is loath­some — till they come out her ears. It’s her default set­ting for any side dish, to go with any main dish. She likes them cooked down in olive oil with plenty of Mal­don sea salt, till they’re slightly caramelly and have prob­a­bly left all their nutri­tional value behind in the sludgy oil on the bot­tom of the skillet.

So yes­ter­day I was slouch­ing around my beloved Shepherd’s Bush Mar­ket, killing the time it would take my mas­terly fish­mon­ger to fil­let two sea bream for me, when I came upon a cer­tain veg stand sport­ing red pep­pers. But not your ordi­nary kind that are the size of a half-pint of cream. These were tennis-ball shaped things and very round, with flat bot­toms. “You look like you want to be stuffed with some­thing,” I said, actu­ally out loud, thereby scar­ing the poor veg guy to death, I’m sure.

It was but the work of a moment to bring them home and scoop out their seeds and stringy lit­tle mem­branes and sit them in a foil-lined glass dish, where­upon they became:

Red Pep­pers Stuffed with Mush­rooms and Boursin
(one pep­per per per­son, serves four)

4 lit­tle round red pep­pers
1 tbsp but­ter
2 large flat mush­rooms, or 2 hand­fuls small mush­rooms, chopped rather fine
1 clove gar­lic, minced
1 pack­age Boursin (an easy-to-find soft French cheese), with gar­lic and herbs
olive oil to drizzle

Line up your pep­pers and make sure they can sit with­out falling over. Saute the mush­rooms and gar­lic in the but­ter till soft, then spoon in equal mea­sures into each pep­per. Stuff in as much Boursin as you can fit (it will obvi­ously depend on the size of the pep­pers). Driz­zle olive oil over as much of the sides of the pep­pers as you can reach. Do not add salt: the Boursin is salty enough even for me.

Place the dish in a hot over (around 400F, 200C) and roast the pep­pers for about ten min­utes, then take them out and spoon the accu­mu­lat­ing oil and juices over the pep­pers and return them to the oven for per­haps ten more min­utes, or until the pep­pers have begun to look black­ened and shriv­elly around their cut tops. Divine.

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

Avery ate the entirety of her pep­per, devour­ing every last scrap of mush­room and cheese, before she even began on the sea bream and mash. I was so pleased! Admit­tedly the sea bream was blame­less but a bit dull: super fresh, but I didn’t do any­thing very inter­est­ing with it, just brushed the skin with olive oil and stuck it under the grill, and any­way, we take the skin off, so why bother with the olive oil? Sheer habit. I was pay­ing so much atten­tion to my lit­tle pep­per friends that I neglected my lovely fish. Ah well, next time I’ll be all com­pla­cent about my pep­pers and I can do some­thing cre­ative with the bream. But one dis­cov­ery per day is quite enough for me.

I’ve been writ­ing up a storm, here at my soli­tary desk, bro­ken up only by my weekly ten­nis game and instal­la­tion of what­ever bizarre activ­ity is occu­py­ing Rocco the Mad Ten­nis Pro. That and mak­ing apple and banana cakes, for the School Fair, for Avery, and in fact for Rocco, who smelled it last week when I was deliv­er­ing it to school and begged on bended knee for one. The writ­ing is going well enough, I sup­pose. I think I have been READ­ING too much cook­ery writ­ing, and it’s get­ting me down. After a bit I begin to think, “Why bother? There is so much good food writ­ing out there already and I can’t pos­si­bly pro­duce any­thing as good.” That’s when it’s time to walk away for a bit. But my desk is cov­ered with books writ­ten by mind-bendingly impres­sive word­sters, like Adam Gop­nik from the New Yorker, Jef­frey Stein­garten, Lil­lian Hell­man, Reeve Lind­bergh, the list goes on. I am frus­trat­ingly intim­i­dated by them all. But I must persevere.

And get this: I picked up Adam Gopnik’s mes­mer­iz­ing “Through the Children’s Gate: a Home in New York,” just to get a respite from bril­liant food writ­ing, and what do I find? A whole chap­ter called “The Cook­ing Game,” all about his acquain­tance­ship with Peter Hoff­man of the esteemed Savoy Restau­rant in SoHo, our old haunt, and their adven­tures cook­ing and talk­ing about food. The one sim­ple chap­ter blows away any­thing petty I might write on the sub­ject; I do not know any famous chefs, I’ve never held a cook­ing com­pe­ti­tion among three famous ones, that’s for sure. Aargh. Add to that, as I’m trawl­ing the inter­net for a way to tell Adam Gop­nik I think he is next to god­li­ness, I find an arti­cle he wrote for the New Yorker all about… food and writ­ing, cook­ing in fic­tion, and again… diamond-bright, not a wasted word, full of per­fect metaphors… I could go on, but for the sake of my self-esteem, I won’t. Ah well, onward and upward. The least I can do is to include some of these bril­liant people’s ideas in my own writ­ing, because it’s fun to delve into who influ­ences you. Even if it’s a bit exhaust­ing at times.

Right, tomor­row I shall be in the kitchen pro­duc­ing corn­bread and Lau­rie Col­win stuff­ing for our Thanks­giv­ing down the road. What fun to cel­e­brate with new friends, but how we will miss all of you, at home, doing the Amer­i­can things we have left behind. Happy Turkey Day, everyone.

Well. Cast your minds back to the day I told you of my cha­grin at… green toma­toes. So pretty as you can see, so tempt­ingly piled up at the farmer’s mar­ket, so com­pletely ined­i­ble. Impen­e­tra­ble is even a fairer descrip­tion. My esteemed Ital­ian mother-in-law gen­er­ously shared her idea of driz­zling them with olive oil, sprin­kling them with gar­lic and roast­ing them, per­haps with a few pep­pers for sweet­ness. That sounded like a stel­lar idea but I never did it. I left them in their blame­less bowl on the kitchen counter and went about my busi­ness. They didn’t take up too much room and they didn’t say any­thing, so after a bit they became as part of the setup, like an extra drawer or faucet.

Until yes­ter­day, when I real­ized that the green toma­toes in the bowl had been replaced with red toma­toes! In the two weeks that they’ve reposed there, they fol­lowed nature’s call and ripened them­selves with absolutely no help from me. No siesta in a paper bag to col­lect the car­bon diox­ide or what­ever other non­sense peo­ple say about putting things in bags. They just held their heads high and did what green toma­toes do if left to their own devices. I think this devel­op­ment has impli­ca­tions for all sorts of other things in life, like child-raising. I remem­ber once Avery was telling me of the extra­or­di­nary schol­arly exploits of one of her lit­tle friends, extolling her virtues, describ­ing all the events her par­ents took her to to broaden her lit­tle mind, the care that was taken with her home­work. After a bit she said, “I guess she’s like a hot­house flower, and I’m just a com­mon gar­den vari­ety, left to grow on its own.”

Just like my green toma­toes. So there.

And so I decided to thank them for their inde­pen­dence of spirit by invent­ing a side dish just for them. And here it is.

Fen­nel with Toma­toes and Pinenuts
(serves four)

good glug olive oil
2 large or 4 small heads fen­nel, outer layer dis­carded, sliced thin
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
pinch fen­nel seeds
8 lit­tle toma­toes, halved
hand­ful toasted pinenuts

Pour the olive oil into a skil­let over medium heat, then throw in the fen­nel plus seeds and gar­lic. Saute till fen­nel is soft­ish, then add the toma­toes and saute until they just begin to break up. Toss with pinenuts and salt to taste.

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

So sim­ple and good. This dish would be very nice with the pork fil­let I have in the fridge for tonight, but because I was being so very spon­ta­neous, we had it with a scallop-linguini dish and it was an odd combination.

Today, would you believe it, I am going to make a loaf of bread. Seri­ously. I am. I have read a recipe from my dear men­tor Orlando, and it sounds like some­thing even I can do, baking-challenged as I have proved myself his­tor­i­cally to be. But I have acquired, from the lovely Bushwacker Whole Foods in Hammersmith’s King Street, a bun­dle of fresh yeast. And I also came away with a packet of polenta, which the nice organic lady behind the counter assured me is the same thing as corn­meal. Please God let this be true. It’s only to sprin­kle, though, not to be an inte­gral part of the loaf. Even lis­ten­ing to myself I sound so lame that if the bread turns out to have the con­sis­tency of a ten­nis ball I will not be sur­prised. Wish me luck. I’ll report.

My ankle has returned nearly to nor­mal, which is a relief. Being lit­er­ally lame is a drag. Avery’s school Christ­mas fair was an enor­mous suc­cess, and I mean enor­mous: imag­ine 700 school­gulls, with all their myr­iad sib­lings, par­ents, grand­par­ents and any­one else they could drag along, stuffed into the Great Hall and sur­round­ing class­rooms, moth­ers run­ning along with paper plates piled high call­ing, “Mince pies and brown­ies for a pound!” and “Staff panto in the music room at noon!” By the end of the after­noon, after I had col­lected untold amounts of money in our Book Stall, the mother in charge decided she’d almost rather pay peo­ple to take the books than have to box them all up for Oxfam, and the form IV gulls we had with us were only too happy to begin shout­ing, “Six books for a pound! Take as many as you can!”

It was lovely: an amal­gam of all fairs past, from Avery’s baby school through to PS 234 in Tribeca, where after Sep­tem­ber 11 every school event took on mas­sive emo­tional sig­nif­i­cance, right through to the uni­formed pre­cious­ness of her pri­mary school here, and now to this year, where every week she seems to shed more of her little-girl-ness. John gave her money and she set off alone to trawl the fair, gath­er­ing up this or that lit­tle friend as she went. I saw her, out of the cor­ner of my eye, peri­od­i­cally through the day, eat­ing cot­ton candy (or “candy floss” as they call it here), laugh­ing and chat­ting. Another mile­stone: off on her own.

Right, my unfa­mil­iar lit­tle knob of yeast beck­ons. Really, from the counter it’s wav­ing at me: “Come on, Kris­ten, you can do it, put a lit­tle POWER to it!” Nerve-wracking.

I have sprained my left ankle, in a very minor and yet extremely irri­tat­ing way. How? Not as you might expect in my weekly very ener­getic ten­nis les­son with the man Rocco, nor in cross­ing a per­ilous street in Lon­don rife with con­struc­tion detri­tus. Now, I have sprained it in descend­ing the three, or is it four, steps from my study down to my din­ing room. The dis­as­ter lies, as it turned out, in my lack of under­stand­ing of PRE­CISELY how many steps it was. I am in mor­tal pain.

And on the eve of Avery’s school Christ­mas Fair, for which I worked tire­lessly all day help­ing the other moth­ers of her class sort the thou­sands of donated books into The Book Stall, which will be a thing of beauty when we open our doors tomor­row. Dirty, dirty, can I tell you, donated books are dusty. And games. And puz­zles. But the extreme labor was mit­i­gated by the atmos­phere, well-remembered by me at least, of Fairs gone by, both here in Lon­don and at what I per­sist in call­ing, some­times, Home. School vol­un­teer­ing: my strongest mem­o­ries are of PS 234 in Tribeca, home of her kinder­garten days and hence her post-September 11 days, where vol­un­teer­ing meant the dif­fer­ence between the school stay­ing in busi­ness and NOT. And then the super-precious days of her pri­mary school here in uni­form, learn­ing the ropes of words like “Tombola” and “Lucky Dip,” which trip off my tongue these days like base­ball and apple pie.

And while I was slav­ing away, pre-sprain, at the Book Stall? She was swim­ming in the city’s only salt-water swim­ming pool at no less than the River­side Health and Rac­quet Club Chiswick with her new friend Lissa. This child was born and raised in Paris until a few years ago when she arrived here with her Amer­i­can and British par­ents to attend the school most likely to feed into (awful phrase) Avery’s cur­rent school. So added together, this girl is sort of the coolest pro­file you can imag­ine. Amer­i­can accent, flu­ent in French, com­ing from the best British school, and now with a ticket to a vir­tual sea on land. Avery was in heaven. “Mummy, they have machines to dry your suit! And spe­cial sham­poos in lit­tle sil­ver con­tain­ers, and…” Men­tally com­par­ing this Shangri-la to our own grotty school pool where I drag home our wet suits inside our manda­tory rub­ber swim caps and Avery flatly refuses to wash her hair with my tiny travel bot­tles… not cool! Well, she’ll have to wal­low again on Tues­day evening. At least the food at the cool pool was awful.

Any­way, I came home from vol­un­teer­ing and met up with Avery at the skat­ing rink, then home for din­ner, only to fall down the steps and into my cur­rent ignominy.

Which does not in any way reflect the Extreme Excite­ment of our evening last night. Ivanov! At the Wyn­d­ham, with Ken­neth Branagh in the lead role. To see the cur­tain rise, reveal a tiny (not cheesy) bit of dry ice rep­re­sent­ing the Russ­ian bar­ren land­scape, and Branagh him­self, head bowed, back to the audi­ence… you get an inevitable thrill of “there is the man, the man him­self.” I had never seen him per­form live. It is a rev­e­la­tion. The com­pact­ness of his body, every sin­gle move­ment thought out and brought to life with deci­sion and pas­sion, his unex­pect­edly strong arms and hands, ges­tur­ing all the despair of a char­ac­ter we could all iden­tify with! Midlife cri­sis! Rest­less­ness, a sense that life around us was frag­ile… so many ref­er­ences to con­tem­po­rary finan­cial crises that John and I won­dered how much Tom Stop­pard, the playwright’s trans­la­tor, had played around with the text.

Just won­drous. I would say run, go, but… you prob­a­bly can’t get a ticket. Ours came months ago as a fundraiser from Avery’s school, more spoil­ing. We loved it. And our pre-theatre din­ner at Gaby’s Diner was a hoot. Pretty darn good salt-beef, a close sec­ond to Katz’s Deli in our beloved Lower East Side of Man­hat­tan… and sal­ads galore for next to no money. Credit crunch, here we come. But not until my ankle heals.

You would think, wouldn’t you, that a day in antic­i­pa­tion of see­ing “Ivanov” with the divine Ken­neth Branagh would be a day out of the kitchen? Not in my house. Avery is going swim­ming with­out me this evening.  So I have a chicken roast­ing, boiled Char­lotte pota­toes in a skil­let await­ing being sauteed before I go, another skil­let­ful of hari­cots verts in olive oil. And since Sat­ur­day is the Christ­mas Fair at school, a banana and apple cake reposes in the oven to be donated to the cake and cook­ies stall which is receiv­ing every­thing today at school pickup. So even though I have no child to pick up, she being occu­pied at after-school Gym­nas­tics Club, I will still be at pickup, donat­ing a cake. Life does get com­pli­cated some­times. Some­where in there, I must fit in a ten­nis les­son with the always-entertaining Rocco. Then race home to get pre­sentable for the play, which has got rave reviews and should be amazing.

Yes­ter­day, how­ever, I was out of the kitchen, in fact out of the house and the post­code, with my friend Gigi on a Chelsea adven­ture. Have you heard the term “Sloane Ranger”? It’s meant to des­ig­nate a sort of super-spoilt, rich as any­thing Princess Diana sort of socialite, liv­ing in an upscale flat with her equally rich and spoilt mates, dat­ing every­one in sight and spend­ing money. Sloane Square is the nat­ural habi­tat for these crea­tures, and it was here that Gigi and met up for a dose of cul­ture, believe it or not. Because just steps from the Sloa­ni­ness of Sloane Square is the unmatched grandeur of the new Chelsea Saatchi Gallery, housed in the for­mer Duke of York’s mil­i­tary man­age­ment HQ, believe it or not. Pil­lared glory it is, sev­eral old and lovely build­ings stripped of all their admin­is­tra­tive clab­ber, emp­tied of their civil ser­vant dull­ness, and painted white, stream­lined, con­nected by ele­gant min­i­mal­ist stair­cases. And filled with Chi­nese art, at the moment. Most of which we found stun­ningly unap­peal­ing if not down­right dis­turb­ing: bod­ies marked with iden­ti­fy­ing sort of tatooes, hang­ing from the ceil­ing by ropes around their ankles, giant instal­la­tions of black rub­bery rock called “Indi­ges­tion,” mas­sive cartoon-like por­traits. But among all this stood out one piece that made the entire exhi­bi­tion worth a visit.

Called “Love it! Bite it!”, it is an enor­mous instal­la­tion of architectural-model ren­der­ings of famous build­ings around the world: St Paul’s Cathe­dral, the Guggen­heim Muse­ums in both New York and Venice, the Roman Col­i­seum, Les Invalides in Paris, the UN in New York… all sculpted out of… edi­ble dog treats. Of course this des­ig­na­tion of the mate­r­ial implies that there might be a dog treat that was NOT edi­ble, but no mat­ter: it’s rawhide. Gigi and I just looked at each other and burst out laugh­ing. A mar­vel­lous, won­der­ful thing stretch­ing right the length and width of the enor­mous room. “What if you brought your dog?” Gigi whis­pered. There were lovely young scratchy look­ing stu­dents with wonky hair and skin-tight jeans lying on the ground all around it, tak­ing pic­tures. And old ele­gant Euro­pean gen­tle­men walk­ing its cir­cum­fer­ence, look­ing gravely ana­lyt­i­cal. The piece reminded me very much of my favorite New York show almost of any­thing I’ve ever seen: Tara Dono­van at the old and grandil­o­quent Ace Gallery on Hud­son Street. In that show, she filled the entire back wall of a whole room with drink­ing straws point­ing out­ward (you’ve got to click on the thumb­nails on her hotlink to appre­ci­ate what I mean), the entire floor of another room with pen­cils of vary­ing heights look­ing for all the world like a tiny Liliput­ian city, filled a whole room with lay­ers of tar paper, like the lunar sur­face. Mag­nif­i­cent! By an artist called Liu Wei.

You’ll love it. Take the kids. But not the dog.

From there we headed to a fab­u­lous new-ish restau­rant called The Botanist, in Sloane Square itself. Filled to brim with Sloane Rangers in all their high­lighted, blingish glory, the restau­rant was like a sin­gle bea­con of afflu­ence in a sea of credit crunch. There wasn’t a sign of aus­ter­ity as far as the eye could see, and far from tight­en­ing belts, there must have been quite a bit of loos­en­ing of them to accom­mo­date the mar­vel­lous food. I had, as is my wont lately, two starters and no main. It’s per­fect for me: two dif­fer­ent lovely dishes but not too much of any one thing. I started with a quite per­fect and very sim­ple creamy cau­li­flower soup that would be an absolute dod­dle to make, stud­ded with diced seared scal­lops and topped with a driz­zle of truf­fle oil and tiny lit­tle cau­li­flower beignets, or dough­nuts. Really! Then it was onto one sin­gle and very rich lob­ster and salmon ravi­oli, the thinnest pasta I have ever eaten and so ten­der, rest­ing on a bed of pea puree and float­ing in a tomato crus­tacean “dress­ing,” accord­ing to the menu, but I would sooner call it a broth. Fla­vored very sub­tly with lob­ster shells, no doubt, very delicate.

Gigi had what she described as the per­fect rocket salad: absurdly fresh greens, shaved parme­san and a bal­samic glaze, and then a pan-fried sea bream with mus­sels in a saf­fron broth, and some­thing called a crab and pep­per escabeche, which was a new word for me. It turns out to be noth­ing more or less than a seviche, a mar­i­nated dish of fish and other ingre­di­ents that has cooked in its acid. Gigi was very pleased. Our only com­plaints were tri­fling ones: the rather pre­ten­tious front of house fel­low told us that while he could give us a table (this uttered in tones that indi­cated a mild reluc­tance on his part), we would have to vacate it in an hour. I sim­ply hate that. Either the restau­rant wants you, or it doesn’t. Time lim­its are not on. And then, after we rather rushed our­selves out of a cup of tea or even a glance at the dessert menu, we could not get our bill for love or money. Honestly.

And the waiter kept want­ing to take our bread and but­ter away! Why? Why was it all right to have it on the table for the starter, but not for the sec­ond dish? I love bread with soup. We per­se­vered and kept it, but I was reminded of the insanely clever Jef­frey Steingarten’s edict in his “The Man Who Ate Every­thing” that you can judge a restau­rant entirely by its bread. I think not only by its qual­ity, but by the very sim­ple act of offer­ing it up, and let­ting you eat it.

These are carp­ings of very lit­tle sig­nif­i­cance. We had a glo­ri­ous time and felt quite, quite self-indulgent. It’s one of my favorite things: lunch with a girl­friend, and they don’t get any bet­ter than time with Gigi. It’s amaz­ing to me what sheer intel­li­gence can bring to a friend­ship: you laugh more, you say more, you lis­ten bet­ter. Thanks for a great day, Gigi.

My beloved grand­fa­ther has died. I asked my mother’s per­mis­sion to talk about him here, because I have never writ­ten about him before and I would like to.

Firstly, it is no tragedy. He was in his mid 90s and absolutely not aware of his sur­round­ings any­more, and it was more than time to go. But his going made me think of the 30 years he was part of my fam­ily, and how he changed my grandmother’s life.

He was not really my grand­fa­ther at all, he was my step-grandfather. My mother’s father died on the exam­in­ing table hav­ing his retire­ment checkup when I was 12, leav­ing the house one morn­ing never to return, his doc­tor tak­ing off his white coat and walk­ing down the road bear­ing my grandfather’s name, to knock at the door and tell her he had died, in the hos­pi­tal wing again bear­ing my grandfather’s name. He was a big man in a tiny town in south­ern Indi­ana and every last thing in that town that could be named for him was.

My grandfather’s best friend, when he died, was a man twice mar­ried and once wid­owed, some­what younger than he and very much the moral com­pass of their social cir­cle: “I never met a finer man,” my grand­fa­ther said. They raised their chil­dren together, went to the Elks Club together, and fished together, on long manly trips into the Wis­con­sin lake coun­try­side to smoke their pipes, drink their Ken­tucky bour­bon, and fish. After my grand­fa­ther died, this man (Leonidas was his name although all called him Lon), com­forted my grand­mother and looked after her. His wife then died, and he was the sub­dued toast of the wid­owed and divorced pop­u­la­tion of their lit­tle town. But the woman he was after was my grand­mother. After a suit­able period of mourn­ing for his wife, she invited him to din­ner with old friends, in from their Florida snow­bird win­ter home. And he declared him­self. “All these years, Bet­tye, I have wanted you.”

They were mar­ried at Thanks­giv­ing time when I was 15 years old. He was stern but twin­kling, very much the arbiter within the fam­ily of what was right and what was new­fan­gled non­sense that needed to be set right. He and my grand­mother drove me cross coun­try to my (they thought) high-falutin’ East Coast rad­i­cal grad­u­ate school, dis­ap­prov­ing all the hun­dreds of miles, why did I need to leave Indi­ana any­way, plenty of good schools there… but the fact is, they drove me there. And sev­eral years later, they drove again from Indi­ana to my new home out­side New York, to deliver the Indi­ana antiques I had bought and didn’t have a clue how to get deliv­ered: and they slept, with­out protest, under my unmar­ried roof, giv­ing an indi­ca­tion of their feel­ings about my husband-to-be. He would take care of me, they believed, there­fore he was all right, and they could unbend enough to be our guests. I am sure this was this influ­ence of my grandmother’s hus­band: he was going to be modern.

His belts were always notched firmly above his belly, well-fed with good Southern-Indiana cook­ing: deep-fried cat­fish from the Brass Lantern restau­rant in their lit­tle town (there is noth­ing more deli­cious), bis­cuits and gravy, fried chicken and rich coleslaw. His demeanor was dig­ni­fied, a lit­tle removed, slightly starched and folded, until it came time for good­byes after our infre­quent vis­its. Then his arms came around me, his snaggle-toothed smile, inno­cent of ortho­don­ture, lov­ing and warm. “Love you, missy,” he would say, with a bone-crushing hug. “You take care of that hus­band of yours, now, and be a good mother,” he said every time. I’ll try.

I wish I could say I took this lovely pho­to­graph of porcini mush­rooms, but alas the thought never occurred to me until we had eaten them all, so I am bor­row­ing a photo from a really clever and GOR­GEOUSLY illus­trated blog I’d like to rec­om­mend to you, crispy waf­fle. Sheryl has lovely recipes and even love­lier pictures.

But back to the mush­rooms. Does your fam­ily melt down on Fri­day night? Obvi­ously mine does or I would not be ask­ing the ques­tion. We used to have what I called “Thurs­day col­lapse syn­drome,” where every­one was cranky and annoyed and tired, and then bounced back for the home stretch. It may have had some­thing to do with Avery’s old sched­ule of rid­ing on Thurs­day after­noons after school, which by the mid­dle of Novem­ber meant that I was stand­ing in Hyde Park for an hour in the DARK and likely as not some sort of angry pre­cip. Now, Thurs­days are spent at the pool which is lovely, and Fri­days at… the *&^% skat­ing rink. Give me the park any day. Let’s see what about Fri­day after­noons might make me pissy: is it the sub­zero tem­per­a­ture, the smell of hot dogs, the scream­ing chil­dren, or the sight of dozens of highly sexed and caf­feinated teenagers zoom­ing around my daugh­ter with blades on their incom­pe­tent feet…

And these days my long-suffering hus­band trails home on Fri­days thor­oughly sick of the stock mar­ket and every­thing else he’s done all week, so he’s a lost cause. And Avery never fully recov­ered all week from her den­tal ordeal, and so last night turned up with one of her name­less 24-hour high fevers. Oy veh.

What was required was a rich, delec­table, com­plex dish that we could really sink our teeth into. Obvi­ously gar­lic was indi­cated. But what else? Well, I had the fruits of my Good Food Show after­noon to choose from, and it was but the work of a moment to concoct:

Spaghetti With Cream, Porcini and Jam­bon Iberico
(serves four)

25 grams dried porcini mush­rooms
3/4 lb spaghetti
1 tbsp unsalted (impor­tant) but­ter
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 cup sin­gle cream
2 egg yolks
10 slices jam­bon iberico
fresh ground black pep­per to taste
a few grat­ings lemon zest
grated pecorino or parme­san to garnish

This dish is roughly inspired by a sim­i­larly creamy and deca­dent one in the bril­liant Giu­liano Hazan’s Clas­sic Pasta, where he com­bines pro­sciutto and aspara­gus. I love Hazan’s book partly for its no-nonsense advice and obvi­ous chan­nel­ing of his mother’s genius, but also for the pre­sen­ta­tion which has a Dorling-Kindersley appeal: ingre­di­ents lined up with Mon­drian precision.

Now, two things about ingre­di­ents. I spec­ify jam­bon iberico only because I bought some yes­ter­day. You may eas­ily use parma ham or pro­sciutto. Sec­ond, you must set the mush­rooms aside in boil­ing water to cover them, for at least 20 min­utes to rehy­drate them. Remem­ber this at the out­set, because that will take longer than the sauce prep or the boil­ing water for your pasta.

So, set the mush­rooms aside. Poke at them now and then to make sure they are all absorb­ing the water. SAVE that water when you’ve fished out the mush­rooms because it is wildly fra­grant and rich. I’m plan­ning to use mine as a stock in tonight’s sauce for chicken. Sep­a­rate the slices of jam­bon and cut them into strips.

Put your pasta water on to boil about 15 min­utes before you want to eat and start the sauce by melt­ing the but­ter in a large saucepan and sweat­ing the gar­lic till it’s soft. Add the cream and whisk in the egg yolks, then grind in plenty of black pep­per. Do not add salt as both the ham and the pecorino or parme­san are very salty. Take off the heat. Cook your pasta and save out a lit­tle of the water to thin your sauce if necessary.

As the pasta drains, put the sauce back on the heat, throw­ing in the jam­bon and the mush­rooms which you’ve plucked out of the water, and the lemon zest. Whisk until it’s bub­bling softly. Toss in the spaghetti and mix with tongs, adding some of the pasta water if nec­es­sary. Top with grated cheese and serve imme­di­ately, if not sooner.

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

We were revived. Even a lit­tle girl with a fever will eat this, if not the veg­etable you feel com­pelled to serve even though on a Fri­day night no one really wants to eat any­thing vir­tu­ous. I’ve heard all about the heal­ing prop­er­ties of chicken soup, and I believe in them, but I’m plan­ning to pros­e­ly­tyze any­one who will lis­ten on the undoubt­edly med­i­c­i­nal gifts of cream and garlic.

What a crazy Lon­dony cou­ple of days I have had: the sort when I emerge from my self-imposed Shepherd’s Bush cocoon and enter the world of cul­ture that’s liv­ing on my doorstep in this won­der­ful town. And actu­ally there’s noth­ing more Lon­dony than what hap­pened last night at about 2 a.m. (I know, what on earth was I doing awake?) when, upon open­ing the win­dow for some fresh air, I spied a sil­very fox, reclin­ing in the street, lick­ing its tail! Now, see­ing a fox in the mid­dle of my neigh­bor­hood is not unknown to me, but it’s still a bit unex­pected, and this one was far from the usual des­per­ately thin, tail between its legs ver­sion. This fox was quite mag­nif­i­cent: a plumy tail and glossy coat, perky ears. I whis­pered, “Hey you,” and he looked up, right into my eyes and we stared at each other for a rather long moment. Then he went right back to his bath, smack in the mid­dle of the (admit­tedly deserted) road. A Lit­tle Prince moment.

There was, actu­ally, a rea­son I was awake at 2 a.m. We spent the evening with our friends Joyce and Matthew, next-door neigh­bors Sara and Selva, and another cou­ple Emma and Chris, at the Chelsea Arts Club. And dear read­ers, may I report that this expe­ri­ence goes down as the sin­gle most eccen­tric, truly Eng­lish adven­ture I’ve ever had here? For­get stomp­ing the divets at the Prince’s polo field, or pic­nick­ing at Glyn­de­bourne for the opera, or watch­ing Avery ride her pony to Buck­ing­ham Palace on New Year’s Day. Those are all mas­sively cool and to be appre­ci­ated. But the Chelsea Arts Club? As my Devon friends would say, “Oh. My. God.”

First of all, you could walk right past it and not notice the tiny lit­tle sign, along with two ratty buzzers to let you in. But you enter, and it’s a world of uneven floor and ceil­ings (John’s head nearly touched at times, and Selva’s at least as tall), paint­ings of every descrip­tion lin­ing the walls, salon style, floor to ceil­ing, a bul­letin board announc­ing the recent deaths of mem­bers (“So you know how many names there are left on the wait­ing list before YOURS comes up,” John hissed and I smacked him to shut him up, but of course it turns out to be true. Then there’s a fur­ther bul­letin board crammed with notices: “yoga instruc­tor and mother-to-be look­ing for room to share from March,” and “will trade stu­dio in Shored­itch for bun­ga­low in Ibiza begin­ning June,” and so on. And this was merely the entry­way, through which streamed, both in and out, men mostly, in elab­o­rate satin waist­coats and cra­vats, long white beards, ges­tur­ing long fin­gers, or impos­si­bly young men in trousers half falling off reach­ing out to take your coat, or scruffy look­ing men my age look­ing des­per­ate around the eyes and talk­ing six­teen to the dozen to other men look­ing just like them.

We were taken to the bar, a room entirely taken up with a green-flannel-covered bil­liards table and peo­pled with more of the same char­ac­ters. Every­one, I mean every­one, looked famous only I didn’t know who they were. I never know what painters look like, how do you? Where does any­one see them? I thought they should each have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of their work tatooed upon their fore­heads because I could at least iden­tify THAT and get excited. And no Amer­i­cans. Which can be nice. We took our drinks out to a tent in what is allegedly a spec­tac­u­larly neglected and beau­ti­ful gar­den in back, and chat­ted. Chris turned out to be rather a mas­sively famous por­trait painter who has just fin­ished com­mis­sions from the King of Saudi Ara­bia and, oh yes, Queen Eliz­a­beth. He proved incred­i­bly mod­est and charm­ing, and whipped out his iPhone to scroll past pho­tos of his three daugh­ters and come to the paint­ings. Unbe­liev­able. It is this fellow’s mem­ber­ship that will pro­pel our friend Matthew into his own, if he lives long enough.

Finally in to din­ner, which takes place in one of two rooms that one is FOR­BID­DEN to call a restau­rant, but are “din­ing rooms.” And they are, too: one with an enor­mous com­mu­nal table around which were more famous-looking peo­ple, look­ing up to see if we were any­body impor­tant, then return­ing instantly to their food and con­ver­sa­tion. Because peo­ple were con­stantly leav­ing from every pos­si­ble door­way to smoke, there was a sort of old-fashioned smoky air to the room which was a nice com­bi­na­tion of the old days and the smok­ing ban: just enough to give the place char­ac­ter, but you didn’t have to choke.

We squeezed past every­one to our own table in the sec­ond room and sat down to paper menus and really aver­age bread, but who cared? We were in a place Whistler founded, for God’s sake, just on a whim, where invalu­able paint­ings and draw­ings hang in seem­ingly for­got­ten splen­dor. And I was lucky enough to be sat between Matthew and Selva, two of the most atten­tive and charm­ing of men, so it was an embar­rass­ment of riches con­ver­sa­tion­ally speak­ing. Matthew, the painter, is a gen­tle, vul­ner­a­ble soul who punc­tu­ates many of his soft remarks with a beseech­ing glance and a gen­tle stroking of his fin­gers along one’s arm. Selva, quite the oppo­site, epit­o­mises the Anglo-Indian Oxford-trained bar­ris­ter, with his tennis-player mus­cles fill­ing out an impres­sive cash­mere jacket that deserved some stroking too, but I restrained myself. Bril­liant, supremely self-confident hand ges­tures of that Oxbridge Eng­lish type I am totally a sucker for. We’ve been invited one day to lunch at the Law Court Din­ings Rooms in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and that would rank as well as an amaz­ingly Eng­lish thing to do.

We tucked in to starters and mine was a sur­pris­ingly fresh and tasty tuna sashimi with a mouli (white radish), car­rot and cele­riac coleslaw and toasted peanut dress­ing: lovely and light. I had har­bored a totally unfair fear that the Club could not pos­si­bly be mas­sively old-fashioned and Eng­lish AND serve edi­ble food, but hap­pily I was wrong. John had lamb’s kid­neys with green beans and hazel­nuts, and for once I was glad to be sep­a­rated from him as he would have wanted me to try them and I’m too close to the veni­son expe­ri­ence to have any unknown offal, thank you.

The wait­ers rushed around look­ing annoyed and har­rassed and as if they had left paint dry­ing on their can­vases at a MOST inop­por­tune moment, in order to bring us our unde­served food. In fact, all our main courses arrived and were plonked down uncer­e­mo­ni­ously on the table. “Who has the lamb shoul­der?” the waiter barked, to silence.

“SOME­ONE had the lamb shoul­der!” he insisted, only to be joined by a col­league who instantly whisked away all the food except for mine, a lovely plate of sea bass. Hmm. Selva asked, “Doesn’t any­one else look hun­gry? Well, I know Kris­ten will share.” Finally mine was taken away too: we’d been given some other table’s order.

It was a delight­ful evening. Because I am a food writer, I was given lots of sam­ples from other people’s meals: Matthew gave me my first taste of sar­dines not from a tin. Gor­geous! I would def­i­nitely cook them. Which would bring our fam­ily acceptable-fish list up to an impres­sive… five. Bet­ter than none. And Selva donated a scrap of pheas­ant with pearl bar­ley and red cab­bage, and sure enough, there was a lit­tle piece of shot in it. “That’s how you know you’re in Eng­land,” he assured me. “Do you hunt?” I asked, and he said imme­di­ately, “I don’t kill things.” Inter­est­ing answer.

Although there was occa­sional talk about everyone’s chil­dren (rang­ing from 4 to 22), the con­ver­sa­tion was refresh­ingly undo­mes­tic: we talked about paint­ing, writ­ing, the Queen’s per­son­al­ity (sweet), gar­den­ing (can’t), the food, Obama (of course). Joyce has spent time as a food writer and as such was com­pletely encour­ag­ing to me about my upcom­ing meet­ing next with with the Radio 4 fel­low, which I’m stead­fastly not think­ing about in order not to flip with nerves. She’s keen that I join the Guild of Food Writ­ers, which I’d be more than happy to do, but first I have to sell, lit­er­ally sell, two pieces before I can. Want to buy a blog post?

All too soon the cab was out­side to take us home, since we all live within six blocks of one another, and we trooped out, again past all the age­ing (mostly), dan­di­fied, slightly past their sell-by date artists lin­ger­ing over their din­ners. Fab­u­lous. And in the cab Matthew asked if I’d like to write restau­rant reviews, and I laughed and told them a bit about the expe­ri­ence in Devon where we all reviewed the pre­vi­ous night’s meal and how I hated doing it. “I know what you mean,” he said, “One of my best child­hood friends is a food critic and he’s so hate­ful about it! I don’t know how he lives with him­self, some­times, and he’s really a nice chap.” “I always think about A.A. Gill,” I said, “why any­one would want to incur that karma.” “Oh, that’s my friend!” Matthew laughed. For heaven’s sake. Gill did write a hilar­i­ous piece for the Sun­day Times Cul­ture sec­tion a cou­ple of weeks ago, rail­ing against per­sonal farm­ing. I”m para­phras­ing, but it was some­thing like, “Of course you can grow your own food, but it’s like whit­tling an auto­mo­bile. You can do it, but it’s stupid.”

I would have liked to be a lazy bum today and rest on a fab­u­lous evening out, but I had a ticket to the BBC Good Food Show at Olympia, and so I was a good com­pli­ant girl and went. Now here I want some praise: unlike my usual method of telling you about things that are over, or will be over so quickly you’d have to heli­copter in to do them, today is the first day of the Show so you can go Sat­ur­day or Sun­day. It was good fun, although I have made a men­tal note as usual not to go on my own next year. It’s miss­ing some of the fun not to have any­one to ooh and ahh with, frown crit­i­cally with you, eat the last bite of some­thing you don’t like, con­vince you to stop sam­pling EVERY cheese you encounter. So I’m tak­ing names to accom­pany me to the next thing. Still, I had fun.

What you do, as with the Taste of Lon­don, is buy lit­tle tokens that rep­re­sent a cer­tain amount of money (in this case a pound each, which made me won­der what was wrong with using the lit­tle token called a pound coin) and then you go around with a map of par­tic­i­pat­ing restau­rants and have lit­tle two or three bite sam­ples of their sig­na­ture dishes. It’s a great bar­gain, espe­cially for some­one like me who likes a lit­tle bit of a lot of fla­vors and for whom a restau­rant por­tion is always too much. For five tokens I got Kai of May­fair’s unbe­liev­ably ten­der Wasabi Prawns, huge tiger prawns sort of napped with a wasabi may­on­naise and sprin­kled with tiny cubes of mango and basil seed. Two of them! So exotic and while some­thing I prob­a­bly COULD do at home, I never will because of John’s anti fruit+meat stance. Of course this lovely restau­rant is about five blocks from our old flat, but did I ever go? No.

Then I moved on to Sumosan’s T+T Roll, an improbable-sounding but astound­ingly good sushi roll with tuna and truf­fle oil. Oh my. It does sound odd, and I was skep­ti­cal, but it’s a mar­riage made in heaven. The soft­ness of the tuna with the hint of aro­matic truf­fle was hugely pleas­ing, plus there were some very nice crunchy fried leeks tucked in for tex­ture. Three whole portions!

I really, really wanted to like Alan Murchi­son’s cook­ing because he’s such a big per­son­al­ity (and very inter­est­ing on nutri­tion), but I did not. Per­haps I chose the wrong thing. He him­self was there, and enor­mously appeal­ing: a rock­like, aggres­sive face that you wouldn’t want to encounter in a kitchen close to a knife if your dice wasn’t small enough. A true chef’s face, which is both good and bad: good because it reflects strong char­ac­ter and impres­sive achieve­ments, but bad because there’s a LOT of atti­tude present as well, which is a mas­sive turnoff. I always prick up my ears when chefs say there is no room for ego in their kitchens… methinks they doth protest a tad too much? So I had a por­tion of his smoked ham hock and foie gras ter­rine, topped with far too much apple chut­ney, and all I could taste was smoke and salt and sugar. The tex­ture of the ter­rine was nice and firm, but I want my chut­ney on the side if at all, and I don’t want to feel like I’ve smoked a cig­a­rette and had a saline rinse when I eat. But you go, and try his fil­let of salmon in ori­en­tal broth, or the lemon mousse which looked nice if you have a sweet tooth.

I knew I was defeated and had to turn in my remain­ing tokens. Next time, I swear, I will not eat so many cheese sam­ples, but it’s hard to resist! When there’s Snow­do­nia’s Red Leices­ter with Chili and Crushed Pep­pers, and Cor­nish Blue, so smooth and creamy, and … stop me.

OK, there were also the Ross­more oys­ters on the half shell stand… but I couldn’t resist the address. Lis­ten to this, my Amer­i­can friends: Lake­view, Old Hol­low, Worth, West Sus­sex. I’d eat any­thing that came from there. And I sam­pled (I know!) and bought a packet of fan­tas­ti­cally expen­sive but delight­ful jam­bon iberico from Iberico Foods, which I think will work for din­ner tonight in an impro­vised car­bonara: not even cooked, just trailed along the top of the creamy sauce, with some porcini mush­rooms from The Mush­room Troop, who were giv­ing sam­ples of porcini pate, yum. I may ever eat again.

Finally I vis­ited the upper gallery with some­thing like 100 food pro­duc­ers’ stalls (more cheese! be strong), but by then I was flag­ging. I’m sure the Slow Food Move­ment peo­ple were inter­est­ing, so give them a try, but I was too tired. There were an awful lot of peo­ple, and it was HOT, and I hate to be hot. Amaz­ing crowds: school tours, old peo­ple in wheel­chairs, silly spiky-haired young men talk­ing earnestly about wild boar, peo­ple with kids on leashes, ele­gant Euro­pean tourists, you name it. But no Amer­i­cans. I think I was the only one, hon­estly. Two days in a row! Life is look­ing more interesting.

But first: do you, devoted read­ers, notice the tiny lit­tle changes to my blog tem­plate? For one, a rare pho­to­graph of me (not often seen in cap­tiv­ity). It is just about the only pho­to­graph of me that I have ever liked, although my mother in law objects and says she likes laugh­ing pho­tographs bet­ter. Fair enough, but this one is just fine, plus I think it adds a lit­tle piquant, mod­ern touch to my oth­er­wise basic blog. The lit­tle wrenches every­where? Not so sure about those and totally clue­less about how to remove them. Sug­ges­tions grate­fully accepted.

And, although I’m not sure what the point of this is when my poor blog is actu­ally a pri­vate con­cern, you may show any alle­giance you feel by list­ing your­self as a “fol­lower” of the blog. Feel free. Keep­ing up with tech­nol­ogy could be a full-time job if I let it.

Much more to my lik­ing is to hap­pen upon a book, about cook­ing of all things, that makes me laugh out loud on the bus, then slam the book shut and try to look out the win­dow, only to dip in again and again find myself incur­ring covert looks of fear and loathing. Gen­er­ally speak­ing, peo­ple who laugh out loud on Lon­don buses should be avoided. Finally I put the book in my bag. But you must find your­self a copy, The Pedant in the Kitchen. I’ve given you a link to the paper­back, but I am proudly clutch­ing my pre-credit-crunch hard­cover bought at the incom­pa­ra­ble Books for Cooks and appar­ently shelved imme­di­ately, I know not why. I know Julian Barnes to be a nov­el­ist, but I’ve never read any­thing else he’s writ­ten (I did rush to my book­shelf to see if I have any of his other books, some­thing that hap­pens with embar­rass­ing fre­quency: “Oh, look! I won­der where that came from”). I offer you this:

Being a great cook is one thing; being a decent cook­ery writer is quite another, and is based — like novel-writing — on imag­i­na­tive sym­pa­thy and pre­cise descrip­tive pow­ers. Con­trary to sen­ti­men­tal belief, most peo­ple don’t have a novel inside them, nor do most chefs have a cook­book. ‘Artists should have their tongues cut out,’ Matisse once said, and the same — if even more metaphor­i­cally — applies to many chefs. They should be chained to their stoves and merely allowed to pass food through the hatch as we require it.

and

The rela­tion­ship between pro­fes­sional and domes­tic cook has sim­i­lar­i­ties to a sex­ual encounter. One party is nor­mally more expe­ri­enced than the other; and either party should have the right, at any moment, to say, ‘No, I’m not going to do that.’

I’m about halfway through and it’s all good. There’s a com­mon denom­i­na­tor to books I like about cook­ing: they are sto­ries first, and then there is the food. Barnes does not pro­vide a sin­gle recipe, which in a way lets him off the hook rather hand­ily. I’m also greatly enjoy­ing my sec­ond run through a little-known food mem­oir called Pot­boiler, by Robert Can­zoneri, a life­long pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity. The book is summed up in the sub­ti­tle (all aca­d­e­mics add sub­ti­tles to their books), “An Amateur’s Affair with La Cui­sine.” He was the rank­est of ama­teurs when rather late in life he acquired a new, very young wife and with her a kitchen that did not con­tain, nat­u­rally, his old, not so young wife who had cooked every meal for him dur­ing their mar­riage. He plunged in with gusto and the recipes vary from the sim­plest pasta sauce and home­made baguettes to Crab­meat Jus­tine and Rock Cor­nish Games Hens Stuffed with Pine Nuts. But it’s the sto­ries that anchor the book. The recipes are a bit of a cheese course: nice, but not necessary.

Another irre­place­able favorite is Lil­lian Hellman’s Eat­ing Together: Recipes and Rec­ol­lec­tions, which tells you all the dirt you always wanted to know about Dashiell Ham­mett but felt pruri­ent so you never asked. And great recipes. I am heart­bro­ken to dis­cover I left this book in Con­necti­cut over the sum­mer and have, credit crunch or no, ordered another copy to have here. And of course there is Ruth Reichl, whose “Ten­der at the Bone: Grow­ing Up at the Table” is also not to be read on the bus, and none the worse for that: a sim­ply crazy child­hood for the New York Times food critic and edi­tor of Gourmet Magazine.

It occurs to me what all these books have in com­mon: they are writ­ten by writ­ers, not chefs. Of course these peo­ple can all cook, and do cook, and very well I’m sure. But first and fore­most, they write. Our intre­pid tutors Orlando and Tamasin drilled this into our heads more than once in Devon: we are writ­ers first, and sec­ondly food writ­ers. I think that an over­look­ing of this dis­tinc­tion accounts for 99% of the rub­bish cook­ery books out there. You can­not just be able to cook, to be able to write about cooking.

Right, rant over. This evening will bring a reluc­tant me to the swim­ming pool (it’s rain­ing and cold and my fire­lit study is very appeal­ing), and then a rare thing: din­ner out! A cou­ple of new friends are tak­ing us to the Chelsea Arts Club, a place I have never been for the sim­ple rea­son that until now I have never known a mem­ber of it. I’ll report back if it’s a blog­wor­thy story, rest assured.

I often have the best of intentions.

As in, to pick up a recipe, fol­low the direc­tions, behave myself in the kitchen.

And then real life takes over. Such was my expe­ri­ence today. I found myself inspired by my friend Edward’s most recent blog post to try a recipe by his beloved Aus­tralian trans­plant chef Skye (seri­ously) Gyn­gell. She is seri­ous, by the way, very much so, in fact in a way that nor­mally irri­tates me a tiny bit, so per­fect is she. I con­fess that as a non-chef but pretty devoted home cook, I am attracted to very tol­er­ant, relaxed cooks and really read seri­ous chefs only for fun. But because I respect Edward I decided to give it a try. And, hand over heart, I really did. Try.

It was so sim­ple! Grilled sea bass with a sauce called salmoriglio, which for some rea­son all day long I could not spell prop­erly for more than ninety sec­onds at a time. Nor­mally I am quite a nat­ural speller, but this one stymied me. At any rate, recipe in hand, there I was at my super­mar­ket look­ing for the sim­plest of things: fresh oregano. Or even mar­jo­ram, the recipe assured me. Well. No go.

I con­tem­plated a wild run to Wait­rose in West­field and then checked myself: no time. So I turned off my recipe but­ton and turned on the com­mon sense one, and it was but the work of a moment to think, salsa verde. As in, quite sim­ply, green sauce: skip the pos­si­ble capers, no vine­gar, but GREEN SAUCE. There was a pathetic bush of basil. No thank you. What there WAS, in lus­cious green pro­fu­sion, were flat-leaf pars­ley and corian­der. That would work for me, espe­cially with sea bass. So off I went.

And it was mar­vel­lous. The older I get and the more evenings my fam­ily troop hope­fully into the kitchen at 7:30 sharp expect­ing some­thing to get them through the night and the fol­low­ing day, the less I fol­low the rules. Needs must, in wartime.

Skye Gyngell’s Grilled Sea Bass (yes, but a la my instructions),with Samor­iglio (well…)
(serves 4)

2 sea bass, fil­leted and cleaned by some­one other than me, into 4 fil­lets
1 tbsp olive oil
sea salt and pep­per
4 small cloves gar­lic, peeled
pinch dried chilli flakes
1/2 large bunch each (per­haps 12 stems each, but only LEAVES) flat leaf pars­ley, corian­der (cilantro in Amer­ica)
220g olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon

Please don’t sub­ject your fish fil­lets to a grill at fridge temp. It’s shock­ing. Let it rest for a bit on a clean plate as you do every­thing else. Paint it with olive oil and sprin­kle with salt and pep­per and leave it.

In a mor­tar and pes­tle or frankly a food proces­sor, mash up the gar­lic, chilli flakes, then the pars­ley and corian­der. Blend in the olive oil, and leave the lemon juice until you are JUST ready to serve, then blend it in.

Under a hot oven grill, just two inches or so below the ele­ments, grill the sea bass fil­lets skin side up for 5 min­utes. Put on your exhaust fan so your cats and neigh­bors are not unduly upset by the smoke alarm in your kitchen (I speak from expe­ri­ence, about three hours ago). Watch the fish closely and take out just as it is browned.

Serve with the sauce driz­zled over top. We found that a side salad of toma­toes and moz­zarella with chilli oil and chives sat right, plus sauteed ten­der­stem broc­coli. Lovely.

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

My point is, don’t be dis­cour­aged if your purist inten­tions are thwarted. The point is to feed the peo­ple around you some­thing mind-bendingly tasty, nutri­tious, a lit­tle lux­u­ri­ous, a lit­tle rebel­lious if you can’t get exactly what you thought you needed. Give your­self a break and enjoy your job: pro­vid­ing sus­te­nance day in and day out.