You know, when you look out the win­dow and the lit­tle sub­con­scious hope you had of lunch out fades in the face of the del­uge? I had really promised myself a bit of time in my local cafe, drink­ing a decaf latte and eat­ing some­thing I had not labored to pro­duce myself. Alas, I just couldn’t bear the thought. So after rum­mag­ing through the larder and the fridge, I came up with a fright­en­ingly good salad, and with a lit­tle advance plan­ning, you can eas­ily have every­thing on hand, all the time. The only fresh ingre­di­ents are things you prob­a­bly pos­sess any­way: lit­tle toma­toes and sugar snap peas.

Every­thing Tuna Salad
(serves two eas­ily, as in me, two days in a row)

190g jar of tuna fil­lets, the most pre­ten­tious and expen­sive you can get, packed in olive oil
1/2 cup black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup lentils, rinsed and drained
hand­ful sugar snap peas, sliced on the bias into bite-size pieces
hand­ful lit­tle toma­toes, sliced in half
hand­ful pit­ted olives, sliced in thirds
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbsp peper­on­cino olive oil
1 tbsp olive oil drained from the tuna (dis­card the rest)
freshly ground black pep­per
salt to taste
2 hard-cooked eggs, quartered

Sim­ply mix every­thing together but the juice and oils: shake those up in a jar, sea­soned to your taste, and pour over the salad. Arrange one of the quar­tered eggs on a plate and place a nice mound of the salad beside it. It is sat­is­fy­ingly pretty, and with a piece of Ryvita (or toast if you’re feel­ing self-indulgent), it is quite the per­fect lunch.

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

Alas, I DID have to go out. It was Wimsey’s day for his sort of monthly shot of anti-crazy steroids, and he was def­i­nitely look­ing crazy so it was no time to be self­ish. I wedged him into the car­rier and set out with him over one shoul­der and an unwieldy umbrella over the other, and felt dis­tinctly sorry for myself. We were soaked by the time we reached the vet, which is that annoy­ing dis­tance away that is too short for a taxi (if such an appari­tion were to man­i­fest itself in my neigh­bor­hood, which is unlikely), and slightly too long to walk in the down­pour. I had set­tled him down on a chair beside me when the wait­ing room door opened and admit­ted a heav­ing, hurl­ing, snarling canine thing that sim­ply LEAPT at my poor cat, nearly knock­ing the car­rier to the ground and com­pletely ter­ri­fy­ing the poor soul. “Geor­gia!” shouted the owner, grasp­ing her by the col­lar and drag­ging her away. He was a pic­ture: a huge, beefy, tatooed, tooth­less old sol­dier type, grunt­ing and strain­ing to con­trol her. Geor­gia? For heaven’s sake. With Geor­gia and her lov­ing owner was a sec­ond man, a shriv­eled, tiny Japan­ese fel­low smil­ing shyly and look­ing as if he wished he were wear­ing a bathing suit. I think they were a cou­ple, and Geor­gia their lov­ing off­spring. For good­ness’ sake.

Wim­sey put up with his shot and we came home. I felt quite, quite mar­tyred. Now as a reward for my good behav­ior, after school I must shut­tle Avery to the den­tist to have two teeth extracted. I can tell you with absolute cer­tainty that she has spent the entire day at school suf­fer­ing in advance of this ordeal and I can­not say I blame her. Poor child. Do you think a per­son who’s lost two teeth by pro­fes­sional inter­ven­tion can eat lasagna for din­ner? It’s the only thing I could think of that was com­pletely soft and yet with nutri­tional value. So in order to have it ready after the den­tist and the com­pen­satory trip to the swim­ming pool, I have under­ch­effed it and the dish reposes proudly in the fridge, ready to be slipped in the oven when we get home.

I’ve spent the day glued to my desk, absolutely deter­mined to make some­thing of my next book chap­ter: but it’s hard going. I am begin­ning to think that when a chap­ter is suck­ing, and suck­ing badly, it’s time to aban­don it and move onto another topic. While bela­bor­ing and tin­ker­ing and per­se­ver­ing may work for writ­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion (actu­ally I didn’t bela­bor that one much either), it does not seem to work for more expres­sive, cre­ative projects. The piece has to FEEL right, there has to be a sort of heart-pounding, “I’m lov­ing writ­ing this” feel­ing, a sparkle. I have felt it often enough to know when I’m not feel­ing it. So I’m going to walk away, try not to beat myself up too much, and come back to it later. You know it’s bad when you’ll do ANY­THING: fill out Christ­mas Fair raf­fle tick­ets, clean the lit­ter­box, make a dish of lasagna: any­thing to avoid writ­ing that *&^* chapter.

Right: I can delay it no longer. The den­tist beck­ons. Wish me luck.

I am increas­ingly of the opin­ion that I am not, in fact, a real cook. Cer­tainly I am not a chef. I read of my men­tor Orlando’s bril­liant escapades with sour­dough, with triangular-shaped rolls that he bakes close together so that his restau­rant guests can lit­er­ally “break bread” together. The only bread that will ever be bro­ken in my kitchen will be the hope­lessly solid con­coc­tion that I am sure would be the result of me and yeast get­ting together. I just don’t have it in me, the pre­ci­sion, the patience, the dedication.

And tonight yet another indi­ca­tion of my ama­teur sta­tus: deer. I mean, veni­son. But you get my point.

I am fine with chicken, beef, pork. As Avery points out, it’s because the ani­mals are not appeal­ing. Lamb give me a minute, MINUTE pause. Partly because I can remem­ber feed­ing their lit­tle selves at our Con­necti­cut farmer friend’s barn, and Avery later being given a hat made with their wool. But I tell myself they have had a long (well, not so very) and happy life in the fields of the very Cotswolds hills where we take long week­ends. We should all have such a happy life and end up being eaten and appreciated.

Then, this week­end at my beloved Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket (my weekly haunt when I lived nearby last year), I suc­cumbed to the lure of the most beau­ti­ful dis­play of meat I have ever seen: the butcher of Cleeve Farm, Devon, cut­ting up gor­geous veni­son into fil­lets, and “short-cook steaks.” While John was wait­ing in the queue of Mal­don Oys­ters, I ven­tured over and pur­chased three steaks. The deep pur­ply red of the flesh! The soft tex­ture, the assur­ance from the butcher that I would be back next week after I cooked his veni­son. And NO pho­tographs of actual deer, at the stall.

I came away excited to try them. And I thought Orlando’s sauce for fil­let steak would be per­fect with them, with a side of potato puree with creme fraiche and a nice big bowl of sauteed sugar snap peas with chili olive oil.

And… they were. Per­fect, I mean. Gen­tly sauteed in a mix­ture of olive oil and but­ter, sea­soned per­fectly, just medium rare so that the flesh was rosily pink. The sauce was a divine inspi­ra­tion to go with veni­son, the sweet­ness of the shal­lots and Marsala a per­fect foil for the intense fla­vor of the meat. But it was… deer. As in, the ani­mals that crossed our lawn and our road in Con­necti­cut this sum­mer, to our awe and delight.

John had no such scru­ples. He hap­pily devoured his steak, ate the rem­nants of Avery’s once she had been defeated by her emo­tions. He was unmoved by our doubts, say­ing sim­ply, “Just once, I wish you would cook some­thing I like,” grin­ning down at his plate scraped clean, and head­ing off to the new Apple store at West­field to try to fix my com­puter. I was left to do the con­sid­er­able dishes from this extrav­a­ganza, and to con­tem­plate my moral dilemma. Deer.

The rest of my adven­tures at the farmer’s mar­ket were quite peace­ful and non-productive of eth­i­cal issues. I bought buf­falo milk cheeses (one young and soft, almost like a moz­zarella, and one a hard Cheddar-like con­fec­tion called Junas, quite delight­ful) from Alham Wood Cheeses, and they were per­fect to sam­ple right at the stall. Although how we can have had any appetite for sam­ples is beyond me, as we had con­sumed with total gusto a total of 18 oys­ters at the Mal­don stall, farmed in the Black­wa­ter River in Essex, ordered six at a time, and slurped down with the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of shal­lots in vine­gar, Tabasco and lemon juice. There is no more divine thing to eat in this world than Mal­don Oys­ters shucked as you speak, freez­ing cold and slip­pery. Heaven. Would you believe that on a given Sun­day in my mar­ket he shucks 500 of the lit­tle darlings?

Then it was onto World Coun­try Organ­ics where I was suck­ered, I can only think of it now, into buy­ing a quan­tity of small, GREEN toma­toes. Why did I do this? The stall­holder assured me they would make lovely chut­ney. I don’t want to make green tomato chut­ney. I bought them, God save me, and brought them home, and we tried to eat them, but they were a hor­rid com­bi­na­tion of rock-hard and bit­terly acidic. My mother in law, no mean cook, advises me to roast them with olive oil, gar­lic, maybe a real tomato or two and a red pep­per to add sweet­ness… I will try tomor­row. Advice grate­fully accepted.

This evening, before my deer adven­ture, found us at Avery’s new school for Par­ents’ Evening, to trail round the enor­mous Great Hall sit­ting down at five-minute inter­vals with her var­i­ous teach­ers, being told of her exploits. And may I kvell? While we tried really hard, last year, not to obsess over school choice, it really was a thrill to have all six of her schools to choose from, and to feel we’d made the right deci­sion pair­ing her up with this par­tic­u­lar august insti­tu­tion. Tonight we were told in no uncer­tain terms that she’s thriv­ing. Absolutely doing won­der­fully, ask­ing thought­ful ques­tions, look­ing out for her class­mates, con­tribut­ing imag­i­na­tive ideas to the atmos­phere. We both felt rather over­whelmed by hap­pi­ness that she’s been such a con­sis­tent per­son­al­ity: patient, intense, rather socially cau­tious (hmm, is that her father’s influ­ence or her mother’s, one asks?), focused and ded­i­cated. So funny to think that that is exactly how her kinder­garten teacher described her, 8 years ago. I think there is actu­ally not very much wig­gle room in a child’s per­son­al­ity: you get a cer­tain per­son and it’s the best you can do to nur­ture it and make sure it is lis­tened to and appre­ci­ated. Well done, young Avery. We are very proud.

I have saved the best news for last: I am a new aunt! Devoted as I am to my beloved niece Jane, I have, in the last 36 hours or so, acquired a new lit­tle sprout, dear baby Molly. My sis­ter is thriv­ing after her ordeal, proud and peace­ful, and happy to have it all over. I can­not wait to meet her, at Christ­mas time. Con­grat­u­la­tions, every­one, on a new mem­ber of the fam­ily. How funny to think that sud­denly, overnight, Novem­ber 9 is someone’s birth­day. We love you already, Molly.

I know: it doesn’t look like much. I was tempted to wait for a sunny day to make it appear at least mar­gin­ally appeal­ing, but I might as well wait for a rab­bit to come down my chim­ney. This is Lon­don, after all, where we, like the Eski­mos and snow, have at least 200 ways to describe “grey.”

But my point is not the aes­thetic, but rather the gas­tro­nomic plea­sures of Shepherd’s Bush Mar­ket. Some­day I will dis­cover why my neigh­bor­hood has such a funny name: it has either a bucolic or eccle­si­as­ti­cal ori­gin, I’m sure, or just a city plan­ner with a sense of humor. In any case, when I first moved here all the neigh­bors waxed lyri­cal about “the mar­ket” and I high­tailed it there right away. To find… squalor. A bit. Pave­ments lit­tered with scraps of rot­ted fruit and veg, shop­pers rou­tinely slap­ping their chil­dren, who never seem to mind, piles of base­ball hats for sale along­side rayon under­wear of every descrip­tion. But I per­se­vered. And what you really must do is judge the inside of the mar­ket by the very first fruit stand. Solid, bright red pep­pers, British sweet­corn on the cob, unwrapped, beau­ti­ful cau­li­flower, you name it. And I am a sucker for endear­ments from veg guys, so being given my change along with “my dar­ling” or “my love” warms my heart.

Ven­ture into the mar­ket and you will shortly come to a very mingy, tem­po­rary look­ing fish stall, but do not be fooled: these ladies know their sea bream from their plaice and can fil­let a whole salmon faster than you can give them your recipe for a Marsala-creme fraiche sauce for it. I once bought two dozen scal­lops in the shell from them, for which I had to place an order a week in advance, and I was nearly ren­dered sense­less by the dis­gust­ing chore that is clean­ing a live scal­lop. But the fresh­ness over­whelmed me. Always in their freezer are enor­mous frozen raw prawns in the shell for your Thai prawns (scroll down, my patient read­ers). And here are two fun facts: their stall must close every night, so all the fish is com­pletely fresh EVERY day. And, there is no fish­ing on Sun­day, so guess what? No fish stall on Monday.

Fur­ther into the mar­ket you’ll find many more fruit and veg stalls, so be patient if the first two don’t have your cilantro. And there are sev­eral halal butch­ers for your chicken fil­lets (can you tell I’m mak­ing my biryani this after­noon?). Just please, don’t do as I did when I first arrived in Shepherd’s Bush and encoun­tered my first halal butcher. Do not go in, look around, and then ask, “No pork chops today?” I am lucky I got a butcher with a sense of humor. “No pork chops ANY day, my love, we are Mus­lim.” For god’s sake, you’d think I just got off the boat, from some very igno­rant place.

There are count­less lit­tle spicy-smelling shops where you can buy your bas­mati rice (in 20 kilo bags, if you pre­fer), your Greek yoghurt and your olive oil. But you must ask for the saf­fron at the till, because it’s kept under lock and key and sold in 100g incre­ments. I LOVE that. You feel you’re get­ting a secret stash.

It must be said that along with all your food-shopping needs you may also assuage your desire for a gen­uine cubic zir­co­nia tiara, a base­ball cap with the Amer­i­can eagle embla­zoned on it, a plas­tic rolling pin dec­o­rated with tur­tles and frogs, the best falafel wrap you have ever had, fin­ger­nail var­nish (five for a quid), fake flow­ers in fune­real arrange­ments, and wed­ding dresses. Some­thing for everyone.

I am feel­ing par­tic­u­larly bloggy today because I had the nicest, most unex­pected encounter in my local cafe with two blokes who have inspired me to ever fur­ther jour­nal­is­tic heights. I sat down at one of the com­mu­nal tables and ordered a latte and then over­heard the two guys sit­ting oppo­site one another dis­cussing the turnout in our recent elec­tion. “You know, it was right around 64%,” one said, “which is pretty much unheard of.” I couldn’t stop myself. “Which is really pathetic, when you think about it, what was the other 36% doing?” And they didn’t mind at all let­ting me in on their con­ver­sa­tion, which rapidly turned to telling me a bit about their pro­fes­sions: a rather political/documetary-ish writer one, and a com­edy writer for radio the other. Writ­ers! Wasn’t I just singing their praises? We dis­cussed the elec­tion, the state of BBC fund­ing and fir­ings, the pol­i­tics of hunt­ing (whether foxes or pheas­ants), and finally, food. I told them about my blog and invited them, and I got a lot of invec­tive against the sit­u­a­tion that made me go pri­vate. “There’s a story for the tech­nol­ogy sec­tion some­where,” Chris thought. Maybe when Avery goes to col­lege. The morals of blog­ging and how much of a con­ver­sa­tion or expe­ri­ence is yours to blog? Don’t know the answer to that.

I ratio­nalised sit­ting there for ages chat­ting with these two lovely young men as… research. There is a par­tic­u­lar energy about talk­ing to writ­ers, and on my walk home I analysed what it is, and came up with: curios­ity. They are end­lessly curi­ous, look­ing for a story, for a char­ac­ter, for an anec­dote, a rela­tion­ship between ideas. My cafe is full of them and I felt I should go and sit there more often, rather than hunch­ing over my desk with a cup of tea by myself.

Right, must go cook, and then swim. I’ve been so good lately about fit­ness, with ten­nis and swim­ming, that I feel com­pletely jus­ti­fied in an extra help­ing of biryani, with my writ­ing friends, tomorrow.

My friends and fam­ily will tell you that I’m tire­somely addicted to anniver­saries. Many of my sen­tences begin, “Just think, it was only a year ago that…” or “Just think, this time last week we were…” So it is no sur­prise that I’m think­ing today about arriv­ing a month ago at an obscure train sta­tion in the wilds of Devon in a spit­ting driz­zle, div­ing into the unknown for a week of what was billed some­what dully as “food writ­ing,” but what was ulti­mately rather a life-changing few days. I wrote, yes, but more impor­tantly I spent a few days learn­ing to give up a cer­tain self-importance about my writ­ing, self-preservation, self-consciousness. It may have been only the group that we were, but we formed an atmos­phere where self-expression was de rigeur, dragged out of you rather unwill­ingly some­times like a forced con­fes­sion in a police sta­tion, other times explod­ing almost with­out will in a story of unex­pected sig­nif­i­cance, but always into a space where that expres­sion was pro­tected and val­ued. The words were ana­lyzed and val­ued (or not) for what they were. There was no pre­tense and very few bar­ri­ers between us and our work.

It’s intrigu­ing what hap­pens when you find your­self sur­rounded by other writ­ers. You lose the sort of dis­tance and anonymity you take for granted in other groups of peo­ple, peo­ple who go through life just liv­ing. Writ­ers, even bud­ding writ­ers, go through life observ­ing other peo­ple, find­ing hypo­thet­i­cal rela­tion­ships among them, hypo­thet­i­cal words to describe them, imag­i­nary sit­u­a­tions to put them into. Writ­ers live every­thing at least twice: once in the liv­ing and once in the imag­in­ing what sort of story the liv­ing would make. It makes no dif­fer­ence that we were all osten­si­bly writ­ing about food, because as became abun­dantly clear dur­ing the week, to write about food is to write about life. As the great radio pre­sen­ter and writer Simon Parkes said to us out loud (we had all been think­ing it as the days went by), “You can ask peo­ple about their pol­i­tics, about their fam­i­lies, about their lives and they will tell you noth­ing, but if you ask them about food, you get their obser­va­tions on all the above.” It’s true. There is an inti­macy, an inher­ent warmth to speak­ing about food, a con­ver­sa­tional trick that sneaks up on you and before you know it, you’ve laid bare your most trea­sured and, until then, unspo­ken thoughts and memories.

I sup­pose if we’d been in Devon writ­ing about crime fic­tion or screen­plays or children’s sto­ries we’d have forged some sort of bond. It’s inevitable when you have no other means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion: no phone, no tele­vi­sion, no news­pa­pers, no com­puter. You have to bond with some­one about some­thing, for *&^%‘s sake (we swore a lot that week). But we weren’t there writ­ing about crime fic­tion. We were there writ­ing about food, and that meant we wrote about our child­hoods, our par­ents, our trav­els, our mar­riages, our chil­dren, our lovers. And then to com­pound the inten­sity, we read it all out loud to each other and sur­vived the process of reac­tion: indi­vid­ual words ana­lyzed, rejected, replaced with other words, the whole inti­mate project on pub­lic display.

I miss it. Tomor­row is my once-monthly Lon­don writ­ing sem­i­nar, a four-hour ses­sion with six peo­ple I’ve got to know fairly well over the past year or so. It’s at my house and I’m cook­ing a biryani for lunch. We’ll accom­plish some­thing. I’m read­ing out some­thing I wrote in Devon, and I know there will be a silent dia­logue in my head run­ning some­thing like this: “Just think, a month ago…” Thank you, every­one, for an unfor­get­table experience.

Chicken Biryani
(serves 8)

2 cups bas­mati rice
5 car­damom pods
5 whole cloves
1 tsp black pep­per­corns
1 bay leaf
1 stick cin­na­mon, snapped in half
1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup oil (not olive, bet­ter sun­flower)
3 onions, finely sliced
1/2 cup yogurt
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 1/2 tsps grated fresh gin­ger
4 green chill­ies, finely chopped

2 lb diced chicken
1/4 cup chopped toma­toes
5 car­damom pods, slightly split
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp ground cloves
dash freshly ground pep­per
2 bay leaves
1 tsp ground cin­na­mon
2 tsps corian­der pow­der
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

3 tbsps lemon juice
hand­ful chopped corian­der
large pinch saf­fron, soaked in 4 tbsps warm milk
but­ter for dotting

Now. I know that looks like a lot. But I’ve divided the ingre­di­ents up into the cat­e­gories in which they’re cooked together. Pic­ture the rice and spices as the pota­toes in a mous­saka, or the pasta in a lasagne. Then then onions and chicken and such are the meat sauce. And the last bits are the parme­san cheese top­ping. Trust me.

So steam the rice with all the spices in it, wrapped in cheese­cloth or a lit­tle empty teabag like they sell at Japan­ese tea mar­kets. Stop the rice cook­ing just before it’s fin­ished as it will cook more in the oven. Remove the spices and set the rice aside.

Now brown the onions in a large skil­let until quite, quite brown. Save about 2 tbsps on a dish, and put the rest in a large bowl. Com­bine with the yogurt, gar­lic, gin­ger and chillies.

Brown the diced chicken in the onion skil­let for about five min­utes, and then add the yogurt mix­ture. Mix well, add all the other ingre­di­ents down to the cin­na­mon and cook VERY VERY low for 30 min­utes. The oil will begin to sep­a­rate. This is good. Remove the bay leaves.

Now you’re ready to layer. Start with a chicken layer, then a rice layer, then chicken, then fin­ish with a rice layer. Spread with the remain­ing sliced browned onions, then sprin­kle the lemon juice over, the corian­der, then the saffron-milk mix­ture. Dot with but­ter, cover tightly with foil, and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

I can’t really express how proud we are all feel­ing here in Lon­don: to have played our part in the most open-minded and forward-looking elec­tion of our life­time. It felt won­der­ful to wake Avery up at 5 a.m. just in time for Obama’s accep­tance speech and to see how proud she felt to be con­nected to a coun­try that would make the deci­sion we made yes­ter­day! I know it’s a lot to live up to, all those promises. But it’s the sorts of promises that have been made, and the pri­or­i­ties that are reflected in them that make me happy. To have elected some­one who is pos­i­tive, inter­ested in the world out­side Amer­ica, gen­er­ous prob­a­bly to a fault, curi­ous, gen­tle and opti­mistic feels like such an ener­getic change that I am anx­ious to for­get the old dia­logue and watch the new script play out. It feels a bit far away here, but the jubi­la­tion of our adopted home and the excite­ment all around the world makes us feel closer to home. I know the real world will come crash­ing in, but for just today, I am ready to think we’re poised for bet­ter times. Onward and upward! Just keep him safe.

So I have no pho­to­graph for this dish, which is a reflec­tion upon its inher­ent… ugli­ness. Any sug­ges­tions you have for mak­ing it pretty I will fall upon with grat­i­tude. But it is sub­lime, and your fam­ily will sit up and beg. Make it tonight, do. I’m giv­ing it a proper French title, but it’s really roast chicken stuffed with mushrooms.

Poulet Roti aux Dux­elles
(serves at least 4)

1 large organic roast­ing chicken
2 tbsp but­ter
6 closed-cap mush­rooms, chopped fairly fine
2 shal­lots, minced
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
good splash white wine
2 rash­ers bacon, diced (with­out fat)
sprin­kle dried thyme, or 1 stalk fresh thyme leaves
100 grams goats cheese
extra slab but­ter
1 tbsp creme fraiche
tiny splash Marsala

Place your chicken in a large roast­ing dish lined with foil (MUCH eas­ier cleanup). Now, in a medium skil­let melt the but­ter and sweat the mush­rooms, shal­lots and gar­lic until thor­oughly soft and cooked through. Add the white wine and cook until wine is nearly absorbed. Remove to a bowl. In the same skil­let, fry the bacon dice until cooked thor­oughly, sprin­kling with thyme as it cooks. Throw the bacon in the bowl with the mush­room mix­ture and sprin­kle with the goats cheese, crum­bled as best you can. Stir well. Now comes the slightly tricky part.

With­out tear­ing the breast skin, lift it off the breast and spoon the mushroom-bacon mix­ture into the space between skin and breast. Shove it down as well as you can with­out break­ing the skin, tak­ing care not to sep­a­rate the two breasts. Poke the mix­ture down on each side of the breast. Once you’ve exhausted the mix­ture, press down the mix­ture from the OUT­SIDE of the skin, mak­ing sure it spreads as far as it can onto the breast.

Place a fair-ish slab of but­ter on top of the chicken breast and roast for 2 hours at 350 F, 180 C.

When the chicken is roasted, pour off the juices into a gravy sep­a­ra­tor and then cover the chicken with foil to rest. Pour the good bits of the gravy into a skil­let and add the creme fraiche and Marsala. Just leave until you’re JUST ready to eat.

Mean­while mash your pota­toes or what­ever your side dish is, saute your side veg­eta­bles (we had a mix of red pep­pers and off-season aspara­gus, sorry). Then carve the chicken onto a warm plate, and sim­mer the gravy, whisk­ing in the Marsala and creme fraiche. Pour the gravy over the slices of roast chicken. I promise you, this is divine.

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

What I want to know is this: how can I make this pretty? The carved chicken was not espe­cially pretty, sliced up. But can I tell you? My fam­ily devoured it, sneak­ing bites of the stuff­ing off each other’s plates, act­ing like it was rationed. THAT is what you want when you’re feed­ing peo­ple. But I’d wel­come any sug­ges­tions on presentation.

And why, you ask rea­son­ably, did I need a treat? Because really, a child’s birth­day is on some level a thank-you to the mother! Or it should be. So I deter­mined that I would begin writ­ing my next book chap­ter TOMOR­ROW, def­i­nitely, and spend the day in Not­ting Hill, bum­ming around, just for me. And it was a good plan.

I had a long talk with Louise on the way about the book she wanted me to look for at my beloved Books for Cooks, and arrived there on the misty lunchtime day to find it is… closed on Mon­days! How frus­trat­ing. But it did leave me with 45 min­utes or so to bum around Por­to­bello Road and its envi­rons, find­ing The Spice Shop open for lemon grass and some­thing called “lemon salt” which will be very nice in a sim­ple salad dressing.

Then to the gen­er­ally unaf­ford­able but GOR­GEOUS Gro­cer on Elgin where every­thing is pack­aged in a way that makes you sit up and beg: I bought, purely on spec, chicken wings in gar­lic, honey and chili, vac­uum packed to die for. And I bought a tub of basil may­on­naise, although I could eas­ily make it myself, because, you said it, the pack­ag­ing was so appeal­ing. And dear read­ers, in case you think I am not budget-conscious, I saw beet­root pesto, but did not buy it at 6 pounds 50 for a small con­tainer! Dear me. I can def­i­nitely make THAT at home.

Into the Por­to­bello food mar­ket proper, and I was com­pletely side­tracked by a dis­play of real straw­ber­ries, an aroma to die for, red all the way through: although Bel­gian, of course. So I ini­ti­ated a dis­cus­sion with the stall owner about… one’s car­bon foot­print. I am very much of two minds on this sub­ject of sea­son­al­ity: of course I enjoy Eng­lish straw­ber­ries in June more than I do any other straw­ber­ries at any other time of year. But if they are so fra­grant and tasty and lovely from Bel­gium in Novem­ber, and they’re for sale… I don’t know the right thing to do. For cer­tain, and maybe this is some­thing most food writ­ers and chefs don’t have to con­sider because they don’t have chil­dren or some­one else is feed­ing them: if my daugh­ter begs for sauteed red pep­pers and aspara­gus, I am hard put to say NO, they’re not in sea­son, when there they are, from Spain or wher­ever, right in front of me. It’s hard to say no to a child beg­ging for veg­eta­bles. I sup­pose I could learn.

To salve my con­science, the lovely pro­duce lady offered, “here’s some lovely rocket, grown just this side of Heathrow!” Of course I bought it. It was prob­a­bly flown in from Heathrow.

From there it was onto one of my favorite of Not­ting Hill restau­rants, the brain­child of bril­liant Aus­tralian Simon Tred­way, E & O with my dear friend Jo: we feasted on pep­pered tuna with miso aioli (and tiny bit of some­thing I would have iden­ti­fied as swiss chard, but the waiter said, “we call it a spring green,” leav­ing aside the fact that it’s Novem­ber, speak­ing of sea­son­al­ity). The whole thing was obvi­ously rolled in the greens, then fin­ished with a crunchy, paper-thin phyllo enve­lope, really only one layer, and sliced into thick slices which sim­ply melted in the mouth. With this we had spicy tuna tem­pura maki, ice cold as I believe sushi and sashimi should be, the ulti­mate in fresh­ness. Then very sim­ple sig­na­ture prawn chive dumplings with chilli sauce. Heavenly.

You would have thought at this point we had had enough of food, but we headed imme­di­ately to Mr Christian’s del­i­catessen where I indulged myself in a really minute slice of pheas­ant pate with a sin­ful block of foie gras run­ning through it: a great can­di­date for my mid­night snack. That plus enor­mous garlic-stuffed olives for John’s mar­tini, and we fig­ured we had done Not­ting Hill for the day.

Believe it or not, I was up this morn­ing for a fur­ther jaunt to Shored­itch for lunch with my friend Twiggy. She and I never seem to see each other often enough, with real life inter­ven­ing far too often, but when we do I am always thrilled. She is anyone’s choice for a purely visual lunch date: a china doll of per­fec­tion, and I always feel lucky to be seated oppo­site her and spend a cou­ple of hours enjoy­ing the view! This time was a real adven­ture and we had to be ded­i­cated to our sense of rel­ish­ing the unknown. I had told another friend this morn­ing that Twiggy and I were meet­ing at Spi­tal­fields, which although strictly speak­ing true, did not really place me at the tube stop that would be expected. There­fore when my other friend said, “It’s walk­ing dis­tance from there,” she wasn’t count­ing on my arriv­ing at Liv­er­pool Sta­tion and being com­pletely at sea. Although you all know that my being at sea in terms of direc­tions is entirely to be expected, and must be taken into account.

Twiggy and I found each other with­out too much dif­fi­culty and squinted at the index card I brought with me. “Did you write down the post­code?” she asked rea­son­ably, and of course I had not, but we had the phone num­ber and Twiggy’s iPhone and finally reached the restau­rant, Rochelle Can­teen. Incom­pre­hen­si­ble direc­tions ensued, only under­lined by the drown­ing traf­fic sounds where we stood. Finally we flagged down a taxi (never hard to find when one is with Twiggy!) and shortly were deliv­ered to the restau­rant which is ENTIRELY UNMARKED. Well, just between you and me it IS marked: it’s the door­way with “BOYS” carved above it, in Arnold Cir­cus at Rochelle Street.

We slipped in, and there was, sure enough, noth­ing more or less than a can­teen: white formica tables, com­mu­nity style, a paper menu. Very lit­tle choice, espe­cially for veg­e­tar­ian Twiggy (and there must be a spe­cial degree of dif­fi­culty for veg­e­tar­i­ans who don’t like mush­rooms, as they seem to be the faux-meat of choice in many dishes). But she eas­ily set­tled for a lentil stew with cele­riac, car­rots, cel­ery and a par­tic­u­larly tooth­some goats cheese called Tyms­boro from south-west Eng­land, the whole lot topped with a nice gar­nish of water­cress. Dare I say it? The dish was meaty, sat­is­fy­ing (I nicked a good spoon­ful from her), with a rich though strictly veg­e­tar­ian stock.

And I? I went for some­thing I could never make at home: crab tortellini. Some­day, per­haps the day after I learn to bake, I will make home­made pasta. But not today. This arrived as what I realised was a starter por­tion, to my dis­ap­point­ment because I could have eaten, quite hap­pily, TWICE the three very large tortellini in my dish. Pasta per­fectly al dente, the crab­meat all white and tast­ing tan­ta­lis­ingly of the sea, with a firm bite and total fresh­ness. The crab­meat was flecked with noth­ing more than a lit­tle chopped pars­ley and the sauce a sim­ple but­ter one laced with lemon juice, the whole dish topped with tiny leaves of baby tar­ragon. Could not have been bet­ter. The bread was firm and full of per­son­al­ity, and the dish of olives is more than two peo­ple can share, nei­ther of whom is an enor­mous male person.

But more than the food, which is remark­able: the atmos­phere and the clien­tele all made me feel as if I were… back at my writ­ing sem­i­nar in Devon! Many peo­ple with note­books and pens, many peo­ple in groups of three or four talk­ing indus­tri­ously and look­ing as if they alone were peo­pling our BBC screens with well-written scripts. Inter­est­ing young peo­ple, lots of peo­ple eat­ing alone. Alto­gether a place full of energy and dis­tinc­tion and food to match.

Now I have an amaz­ing chicken dish to tell you about that I invented (ha! one thing our writ­ing tutors insisted upon was that noth­ing new is inventable under the sun, fair enough) this evening. But that must wait because elec­tion cov­er­age is begin­ning and I will go turn my atten­tion to it. As a foodie I can share with you this joke from David Sedaris’ recent col­umn in the New Yorker (I’m para­phras­ing, sorry). “To those so-called ‘un-decided’ vot­ers I can only say it’s like being asked by a flight atten­dant, “Would you like the chicken, sir, or the bro­ken glass?” and you ask, “How is the bro­ken glass pre­pared?” It seems clear to me what the choice is, but tomor­row will tell us.

It’s offi­cial: Avery is twelve. Well, strictly speak­ing she will not be twelve until 11:31 p.m. New York time, but I’m being mag­nan­i­mous. She has had her favorite banana apple cake for break­fast, her favorite choco­late mud pud­ding for lunch, and I brought her white camel­lias at school pickup. Her friends forced their ultra-conservative music teacher to play a very elab­o­rate ren­di­tion of “Happy Birth­day,” and every­one sang (except the teacher, Avery snorts). As soon as John gets home we’ll open presents, and then head around the cor­ner to Chez Kristoff for her favorite din­ner, steak frites. I dare­say tomor­row will be a let­down, a bit of an anti­cli­max, but for now, the world’s her oys­ter. Happy birth­day, darling.

I can’t really blame the British. The entirety of mea­sur­ing sys­tems around the world are con­sis­tent only in their incon­sis­ten­cies. I grew up (why, I can’t imag­ine: how many times can the adage have come in handy?) chant­ing, “A pint’s a pound the world around.” But it isn’t. The British can use, legally, the word pint to refer in fact to 20 fluid ounces, but ONLY of lager. Other ref­er­ences to pints have to con­form to the 16-ounce vari­ety. And as you know, I fre­quently find the Euro­pean obses­sion with weigh­ing ingre­di­ents to be annoy­ing, but I can see that’s only a mat­ter of famil­iar­ity. I’m sure it is more exact to weigh but­ter than to squint at the lit­tle “tbsp” mea­sur­ing lines on the tinny paper used to wrap sticks of but­ter in Amer­ica. I think I pre­fer the mea­sure­ment “knob” of but­ter to all others.

But today I am really flum­moxed. I have in my hot lit­tle hands the trea­sured recipe for Isles­ford Dock Chow­der, quite sim­ply the best incar­na­tion of clam chow­der on this earth. How­ever. Who on EARTH mea­sures bacon in QUARTS? I under­stand that I’ve been given the restaurant-size recipe, which is actu­ally amus­ing and brings back happy mem­o­ries of mak­ing vast quan­ti­ties of soup for a home­less men’s shel­ter when we lived here in the 1990s. How much fun I had pro­duc­ing gal­lons of tomato-fennel soup with cheese crou­tons, vichys­soise for 50, creamy car­rot and lentil soup to feed the masses. So it’s not the NOTION of the quan­tity that’s both­er­ing me, it’s how on earth you mea­sure a quart of bacon. If a pint’s a pound the world around and there are two pints to the quart, and you need two quarts of bacon, then how many Iowa school­child­ren does it take to detas­sel a field of corn? Sorry, that’s actu­ally a ques­tion on the Grad­u­ate Record Examination.

And another thing: can any­one tell me why the word “lieu­tenant” is pro­nounced here with a mys­te­ri­ous phan­tom “f” in the mid­dle? “Lef­t­enant?” John reports lis­ten­ing to an inter­view on BBC Radio 4 with an Amer­i­can sol­dier who, halfway through the dis­cus­sion exploded: “Stop call­ing me ‘Lef­t­enant,’ it’s LOO­TENANT!” I really don’t understand.

Today will see us reluc­tantly vis­it­ing the new West­field Shop­ping Cen­tre at the dreaded Shepherd’s Bush round­about, reput­edly the largest shop­ping cen­tre in all of Great Britain, the con­struc­tion site of which was the scene of so many anxiety-making traffic-clogged school runs last sum­mer. My feel­ing is that if we neigh­bor­hood res­i­dents are to be tor­mented with the crowds of peo­ple and cars caused by this mon­stros­ity of cap­i­tal­ism, I should at least see what the new Wait­rose cheese room is like. And I’ve heard great things about the fish counter, so tonight could well be my friend Vincent’s creamy salmon piled with juli­enned veg­eta­bles. It’s a fid­dly, time-consuming, obsessive-compulsive dish and there­fore ideal for a rather grey, frus­trat­ingly dull day. I’m giv­ing you Vincent’s exact phras­ing because I can hear his voice, and it brings him com­fort­ingly a lit­tle closer to me as I cook.

Vincent’s Salmon with Cream & Vegetables

Prepa­ra­tion time: 10–15 min­utes
Cook­ing Time: 25–30 min­utes
Level of Dif­fi­culty: Very Easy
Occa­sion: Din­ner Party or Sun­day Lunch

Approx 1 Kilo of Salmon Fil­let in one piece if pos­si­ble — (Enough to
feed 4 gen­er­ously or 6 if you’re hav­ing a starter)
3 Medium to large car­rots
1 Large fen­nel bulb
1 Medium Onion
1 Large Red Pep­per
2 Large Cel­ery Stalks
200g Green Veg­eta­bles (Green Beans, Aspara­gus etc.)
3 Tbsp Chopped Flat Leaf Pars­ley
1 1/2 Tbsp Chopped Dill
1 1/2 Tbsp Chopped Chervil (Not absolutely nec­es­sary)
Grated Rind of 1 Lemon
Juice of 1 Lemon
400 ml Creme Fraiche
150 ml White Wine (Chardon­nay, Viog­nier, Sauvi­gnion Blanc)

Pre­heat your oven to 200C (Medium hot oven). Put the veg­eta­bles through a food proces­sor with a shredding/julienne blade. Trans­fer the grated veg­eta­bles to a mix­ing bowl. Add the grated lemon rind. In a sep­a­rate mix­ing bowl, add the Creme Fraiche, lemon juice, white wine, chopped herbs and mix well. Sea­son this with gen­er­ous amounts of pep­per and some salt. Pour the liq­uid mix­ture over the veg­eta­bles and mix thor­oughly. When you’re done, you should have a very wet mix of veg­eta­bles sit­ting in but not cov­ered by liquid.

Par­tially strain and arrange 3/4 of the veg­etable mix­ture evenly on the bot­tom of a large and flat back­ing pan/tray. Place the salmon fil­let skin-side down on the veg­eta­bles. Sea­son the salmon. Strain and place the remain­der of the veg­eta­bles on the fish. You should have about 1 1/2 cups of liq­uid left in the bot­tom of your mix­ing bowl. Pour that over the salmon.

Bake the salmon for 25–30 min­utes, check­ing half-way and bast­ing the fish with some of the cook­ing liq­uid. When the time is up, check that the fish is cooked. It should be a bit “pink” in the middle.

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