An absolutely clas­sic cou­ple of days: fran­tic wrap­ping of presents (“Don’t come NEAR this table until I tell you you can!” “Who took all the Scotch tape?” “Why do you get the good scis­sors EVERY time?”), last-minute gath­er­ing of ingre­di­ents (ice cream, water­cress, ALL the votive can­dles that KMart had to offer — I stripped them bare in the sum­mer as well), impromptu vis­i­tors. Rol­lie and Judy appeared last evening just as I was light­ing the last can­dles for Anne and her fam­ily to come from across the road for oys­ter stew, to deliver a flaw­less poin­set­tia and news of their new stone wall, the wed­ding of young Rol­lie in Octo­ber, the mas­sive annoy­ance of their new milk­ing cows… as always, I felt imme­di­ately that I should have invited them for oys­ter stew as well, but I would have had to seat them in the dish­washer, as we were awfully cozy already in this tiny farm­house with 8 for dinner.

Oys­ter stew. Is there any­thing bet­ter? Why do I never make it except Christ­mas Eve? John avers that one year I did make it again, over and over, hav­ing asked myself just that ques­tion, and finally he had to say, “Stop, enough oys­ter stew,” so per­haps once a year is just the ticket. But­tery, stud­ded this year with no less than 8 pints of oys­ters. Can a pint per per­son be true? There was almost noth­ing left over of the creamy celery-laden broth, spiked with a touch of Tabasco, lemon juice, a gen­er­ous amount of cel­ery salt from the great Welsh Angle­sey firm Halen Mon). Huge hand­fuls of oys­ter crack­ers, that was IT. Pure oys­ter stew with its briney breath of the sea, the Christ­mas Eve tra­di­tion. Anne and David and baby Kate, Anne’s mother Con­nie and sis­ter Alice, all gath­ered around the can­dlelit table and we all slurped our way through the evening.

Old friends, John’s mom smil­ing around us all, pho­tograph­ing every moment as always, admir­ing Kate’s absolutely unusual achieve­ments (breath­ing, turn­ing her head, that sort of thing), all of us grate­ful to be there, and together, in what is unde­ni­ably a mag­i­cal house at Christ­mas. Why is it? I can’t account for the immea­sur­able peace that every­one feels in this place, this tiny crooked house perched on a meadow and a pas­ture, flanked by barns and ancient trees and per­me­ated over all by the his­tory of what must have been happy fam­i­lies, or at least hap­pi­ness tri­umph­ing over grief, at times.

Then today… presents, and the cook­ing marathon. Need­less to say, the turkey who had been brined in kosher salt, fresh rose­mary, thyme, oregano, mar­jo­ram, bay leaf and pep­per­corn for two days, was slow-roasted (sorry, Joel, for being too chicken to use your clever free-standing roaster) in the old-fashioned oven, all day long, as John’s mom and I chopped, sauteed, but­tered and washed up our after­noon away: dress­ing with fresh sage, cel­ery, Baby Bella mush­rooms, gar­lic, the one pre­cious onion I had left, cream and chicken stock all soaked up by good hon­est white bread torn into lit­tle bits and dried overnight. Spinach casse­role made of nearly 2 pounds of fresh chopped spinach, swirled into a purely Amer­i­can con­coc­tion of but­ter, gar­lic, evap­o­rated milk, Mon­terey Jack cheese with jalapeno pep­pers, and more cel­ery salt (the condi­ment of the hol­i­day, clearly). Untold pounds of pota­toes peeled and rest­ing in a salty bath, wait­ing to be boiled and mashed with yet more but­ter and cream. A hol­i­day menu not for the faint of heart.

There was time at sun­set to fol­low Avery up the hill to John’s dad’s bench, to sit and reflect for a moment on our last Christ­mas with him, a year ago, to be glad he has such a view over the mead­ows and hills from that bench. Then she was off sled­ding! As you see, even with the melt­ing snow, or per­haps because of it, she was able to get up a decent speed, whizzing over the lit­tle grassy hillocks and threat­en­ing the ancient stone wall. Her shrieks echoed over the bee­hives of Young Rol­lie and the pas­tures hayed by Chris in the sum­mer. There is noth­ing but good feel­ing in those places. I could feel John’s dad all around me, as the set­ting sun’s light lit up Avery and John on their sled­ding hill.

Home to make the gravy, let the turkey rest, and light the can­dles on the hydrangea tree, my most quixotic and anxiety-making hol­i­day tra­di­tion. Will it rain on Christ­mas day? It has done in the past, and extin­guished every can­dle as I light it. Will it be windy and blow them out as we light them? There was a bit of that tonight, but not enough to spoil the fun. Anne and David came across with baby Kate to see the lights, and as we gazed and thought our sep­a­rate, pri­vate thoughts, a waft of wind came and every can­dle flame turned to a frag­ile, tem­po­rary blue. “No, don’t go out!” we all breathed, and as we waited, the blue, waver­ing light drew breath and turned bright gold again, with a strong, steady flame. I am sure there is a les­son there to be learned, about per­se­ver­ance and faith.

Three lit­tle girls! Tiny baby Molly slept, largely, held by some­one or other (not me, who has never been the biggest fan of tiny babies), Jane ran around play­ing crazy games with her toy cars (now, Jane, I could eat whole she is so lovely), and my own Avery, gra­cious in her nearly-teenage dig­nity, bend­ing down to play games and sing songs with Jane. Gravy bub­bling, John beat­ing pota­toes with a vigor that made us all look at his undu­lat­ing bot­tom! “Go for it, shake your booty,” we all had to sing, with great matu­rity. Joel carved the turkey with pro­fes­sional aplomb. We ATE.

And then opened presents. John explained to Jane that the whole point of her new col­lec­tion of felt char­ac­ters and acces­sories was to THROW THEM in the air. Her poor father will suf­fer for this, I fear, and equally I fear this was John’s entire inten­tion. Those two boys.

A jolly, warm, cozy, gen­tly famil­ial, deli­cious hol­i­day. I felt so grate­ful for my sis­ter, a great com­pan­ion dur­ing child­hood but even more so now, pro­vid­ing me with nieces to cra­dle and appre­ci­ate, a hus­band to love, old jokes to appre­ci­ate. And for my mother in law, com­ing to us this year, to remem­ber and cel­e­brate and feel both the weight and the lift of the past. Thank you, all.

Christ­mas Eve Oys­ter Stew
(serves 8 generously)

6 tbsps but­ter
4 tbsps flour
6 cloves gar­lic, minced
6 stalks cel­ery, finely minced
1 white onion, finely minced
8 pints shucked oys­ters with their liquor
1 tbsp cel­ery salt (how­ever fancy you can go, or not, is fine)
1 quart whole milk
1 pint heavy cream
to taste: more cel­ery salt, Tabasco, lemon juice, pepper

In a large heavy stock­pot, melt the but­ter, then add flour and cook till frothy but not brown. Add gar­lic, cel­ery and onion and saute until slightly soft, then add oys­ters with liquor. Stir over medium heat until the edges of the oys­ters curl up (this means they are nearly cooked). Add cel­ery salt, milk and cream, and heat gen­tly until the broth is hot. Try not to let it boil, but if it does, whisk it thor­oughly to pre­vent any cur­dling. Sea­son with more cel­ery salt, Tabasco, lemon juice and pep­per till it’s just to your taste. I must warn you: a great deal of tast­ing may be nec­es­sary, but try to avoid get­ting a bowl to taste. Limit your­self to a tea­spoon at a time. Glo­ri­ous. Even bet­ter if you can make it a day ahead and bury the stock­pot, firmly lid­ded, in a snow­drift overnight. Serve with plenty of oys­ter crackers.

As promised, just to get right away — from the pres­sures to achieve some­thing, be on time, say the right thing, remem­ber people’s names, the whole list — is a tonic. Our flight was late leav­ing, long fly­ing, late arriv­ing, the drive up to Red Gate Farm impos­si­bly long. But all it takes is to leave the main road, to turn up onto Jeremy Swamp Road, to remem­ber the thou­sands of times (“How many times have we made this turn­ing?” John asks as always after a long absence) we’ve… left the main road, as it were, to arrive here, to peace.

We found home­made chili in the fridge from Judy, a roasted chicken, eggs, bread, juice, but­ter from Anne and David (who also made the beds), the heat and lights turned on by Farmer Rol­lie, the walks shov­eled, per­fec­tion at midnight.

It isn’t as if bad things haven’t fol­lowed us to Red Gate Farm. The place has seen jobs won, jobs lost, ill­ness, worry, fear and recov­ery. But the pre­vail­ing sense, in the small pan­elled entrance way, smelling of wood­fires, wool and leather, is one of accep­tance. All can hap­pen here, and most has. The place has stood for nearly 200 years. The peace is in part the tiny scale of the house itself, set inside the hilly, rang­ing land­scape of its set­ting. As the great cook­ery writer Peg Bracken always said, “Just give me a win­dow over the sink,” and mine looks out over the expanse of my back lawn, lit­tered in sum­mer with tram­po­line, slid­ing slippy thing, bird­bath filled with goldfinches… and today over­laid with a qui­eten­ing blan­ket of snow, punc­tu­ated by red barns and per­me­ated with the gur­gling of an over­filled brook run­ning into the pond.

But then you enter the house, whether through the lovely front entry into the warmth of the Christ­mas tree, or more likely, through the messy kitchen door into the smell of chicken stock on the stove, the sound of kids singing, peo­ple wrap­ping presents, some­body shout­ing, “Get me a Phillips screw­driver, quick!” and “The Holly and the Ivy” play­ing in the back­ground. It’s always full of boots peo­ple have shoved off their feet in a mis­guided hope to keep the wide floor­boards clean, shop­ping bags full of ingre­di­ents for some dish I’ve decided I can’t wait to make: pesto, meat­loaf, pota­toes dauphi­noise. And then some­one knock­ing at the back door: Anne and David with baby Kate, here for the first din­ner of the hol­i­day, Rol­lie in his win­ter work­suit and hat, ask­ing, smil­ing, “Was the Christ­mas tree what you wanted, then, Kris­ten?” a bone-crushing hug, his only expres­sion of his feel­ing for me. Then the UPS guy, “You’re back, I see,” and then Jill pok­ing her bright face in this morn­ing, “Just mak­ing sure you’re here before I bring in Molly,” and my mag­i­cal, gor­geous, sprite of a new­born niece… and her big sis­ter Jane, giv­ing me a hug with arms AND legs tucked tight around me.

Bliss. Can­dles lit in the win­dows, the sil­ver bells John’s mom gives us every year with a leg­end from the past twelve months engraved on them, the stock­ings hung by the fire, rib­bons strung along the din­ing table, an enor­mous pot of pork ribs sim­mered in gar­lic tomato sauce ALL after­noon. An entire lux­u­ri­ous after­noon with my sis­ter to chat, get to know her baby (“she’s really just a baby,” we say, uncon­vinc­ingly to each other), admire Jane’s grow­ing per­son­al­ity of stag­ger­ing humor and mem­ory for all our con­ver­sa­tions and fun of the past, thank­fully hand­ing over the task of wrap­ping presents to my crafty, clever daugh­ter who ENJOYS it, bless her heart! It must have skipped a gen­er­a­tion, the love of wrap­ping, because I have clear Christ­mas mem­o­ries of my own mother con­tent­edly run­ning through roll after roll of paper, tape, ribbon.

Today the snow­storm had stopped and the land­scape was that impos­si­bly per­fect Ver­sion Num­ber Two of what every­one back in Eng­land expects we have when we’re here: in sum­mer, it’s the green, green grass, the blue sky, rush­ing brook, wav­ing tiger lilies. Today it was blue sky, yes, but also the red of the barn against the blind­ing white snows­cape, the dead hydrangea blos­soms wav­ing in the wind, white picket fence with the red sign my dad made say­ing “Red Gate Farm” hang­ing close beside the (you guessed it) red gate. One moment when John said, “Would you have time to help me to get every­thing look­ing really nice for when my mom and dad get here?” And silence for that moment… He’s on his way to get his mom at the air­port right now, and while some of the mem­o­ries will be sad, his dad will be here with us, and the bliss­ful, grate­ful mem­o­ries of years of fun will over­come the sad bits, I know. Noth­ing here has ever changed, even when every­thing does. This place remains to open its for­giv­ing arms to us, “I know you’ve been away for months, but come on inside, it’s all still here.”

It’s not all sweet­ness and light, of course. There are the many evi­dences of our furry friends, for exam­ple, tak­ing refuge in the house while we’re away, and hastily removed by Rol­lie before we arrive… when we used to come here every week­end, I left but­ter out on the counter so it would be nice and soft when we arrived. I will never for­get the LAST week­end I did that: on the Fri­day night we stag­gered into the house with all our clob­ber to set­tle in and find… dis­tinct rows of TEETH­MARKS in the but­ter. So not invit­ing, so not yummy.

And today, would you believe: I made a gor­geous pot of red pep­per soup with thyme and brandy, and poured it through the sieve into… a stock­pot full of SOAPY WATER. Truly. Yep, home­made stock from the roasted chicken Anne left us, pep­pers labo­ri­ously picked up by me and John in TWO sep­a­rate trips… and I poured it into Fairy liq­uid. But here’s my fam­ily for you. I said, “That’s the dumb­est thing I have ever done,” and what does my hus­band say? “I bet not,” while my lov­ing sis­ter chimes in, “You mean today?” Well, we’re none of us per­fect, I say, while pour­ing cups and cups of lovely red ambrosia down the sink. Grr.

After a pro­longed search through the house’s many book­shelves, we finally found the scat­tered favorite Christ­mas pic­ture books: A Pussycat’s Christ­mas, A Child’s Christ­mas in Wales, A Christ­mas Carol, The Birds’ Christ­mas (a little-known lovely story by Kate Dou­glas Wig­gin), and my per­sonal can’t-read-without-crying favorite choice“When It Snowed That Night”, by Norma Far­ber, which I first read about in my favorite Christ­mas mys­tery, “The Body in the Bouil­lon,” by Kather­ine Hall Page. It sums up my Christ­mas: moth­ers, presents, Kings, chil­dren, babies, and chicken soup, plus a fair num­ber of mir­a­cles, actually.

The Queens came late, but the Queens were there
with gifts in their hands and crowns in their hair.
They’d come, these three, like the Kings, from far,
fol­low­ing, yes, that guid­ing star.
They’d left their ladles, linens, looms
their chil­dren play­ing in nurs­ery rooms,
and told their sit­ters:
“Take charge! For this
is a mar­velous sight we must not miss!”

The Queens came late, but not too late
to see the ani­mals small and great,
feath­ered and furred, domes­tic and wild,
gath­ered to gaze at a mother and child.
And rather than frank­in­cense and myrrh
and gold for the babe, they brought for her
who held him, a home­spun gown of blue,
and chicken soup –with noo­dles, too–

and a lin­ger­ing, last­ing cradle-song,
The Queens came late and stayed not long,
for their thoughts already were strain­ing far -
past manger and mother and guid­ing star
and child a-glow as a morn­ing sun -
toward home and chil­dren and chores undone.

I know one of the car­di­nal rules of enter­tain­ing is NEVER to make a dish for guests that you’ve never made before. I have never adhered to this rule. I think that if you choose your guests wisely, invit­ing only peo­ple who are adven­tur­ous and gen­er­ous of spirit (and come to think of it, why would you have any friends who are not?), all will be well. Make sure your guests are in the exper­i­men­tal mood, tell them in advance what inven­tion they’re in for, and let the bells chime.

It was in this spirit that Annie and her fam­ily arrived for my much-dramatized spiced beef on Wednes­day. As you will recall, I acquired a solid gold 2-kilogram chunk of brisket from my dear butcher, Mr Sten­ton of Brack­en­bury Vil­lage, nearly two weeks ago. In the inter­ven­ing time, I had to wait for the fed­eral author­i­ties to vet Mr Sten­ton, ascer­tain that he was not a card-carrying mem­ber of the IRA or any other para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion, and let him pur­chase 46 grams of salt­pe­tre. Then I had to trek up to Not­ting Hill to the Spice Shop and hunt down juniper berries and all­spice, plus some very intrigu­ing sort of black pep­per­corns. Once this was accom­plished, I was ready to go.

Row­ley Leigh’s Spiced Beef
(serves 10 at least)

1 2-kilogram piece of brisket, with fat but no sinew or mem­brane
100 grams Demer­ara sugar
15 grams salt­pe­tre
125 rock or sea salt
30 grams black pep­per­corns
15 grams all­spice
15 grams juniper berries

Rub the beef with the sugar, top and bot­tom, cover with cling­film and refrig­er­ate overnight. The next day, grind the spices coarsely in a mor­tar and pes­tle or in a food proces­sor and com­bine with the salt and salt­pe­tre. Rub this mix­ture vig­or­ously into the meat, cover again with film and refrig­er­ate for 10 days, turn­ing the meat from time to time and ensur­ing it is evenly exposed to the cur­ing mixture.

After 10 days, remove the meat from its brine and rinse off any adher­ing spices. Place the meat in a tight-fitting casse­role with two inches of water. Cover with grease­proof paper and the lid of the casse­role. Place in a mod­er­ate oven 150C for three hours so that it gen­tly steams and braises.

Remove the meat from the oven and leave to cool in the casse­role. Once cool, remove to a dish and place a weighted plate –four tins of toma­toes is the usual pre­scrip­tion — on top. Refrig­er­ate overnight. The next day, serve the meat cold, in thin slices.

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

Well. I can report that this dish, pos­i­tively Rube­nesque in its audac­ity and flesh­li­ness, is MAG­NIF­I­CENT. I put my nose down to it right away and was trans­ported to the cor­ner of Hous­ton and Avenue A, the loca­tion of the most superb Jew­ish del­i­catessen on earth, Katz. The aroma is at once robust and del­i­cate, smelling faintly of a gin and tonic (that’s the juniper for you) and mak­ing you think of Henry the Eighth with a stein of ale in one hand and a huge roasted turkey leg in the other. This beef is not for the faint of heart, but then what good food is? It’s hearty, gen­er­ous, and very, very exotic.

We rev­elled. The can­dles gleamed, the Christ­mas snow that we’d sprin­kled on the table pro­vided the per­fect vehi­cle for young Fred to write mes­sages to every­one, Annie’s usual ring­ing laugh­ter.  And the side dishes were per­fect, though I say it. I had intended to pro­duce Orlando’s out­ra­geously rich straw pota­toes in goose fat, but the after­noon got away from me and I did not have time to juli­enne any­thing or any­one. So it was mash: rich and deca­dent with dou­ble cream. I had also intended to serve a lovely crunchy red cab­bage slaw with fen­nel, but some­one had cru­elly bought all the red cab­bage in Shepherd’s Bush, so I impro­vised and ended up with:

Sauteed Savoy Cab­bage with Fen­nel and Fen­nel Seeds
(serves 10 generously)

3 tbsps olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 head Savoy cab­bage, shred­ded as for cole slaw
4 heads fen­nel, sliced thin (be sure to include the ferny tops)
2 tbsps fen­nel seeds

Heat the oil in a large skil­let and fry the gar­lic until just soft. Throw in every­thing else and saute gen­tly, tak­ing care not to burn the gar­lic. When the fen­nel is soft, you’re done.

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

Keith was right when he said that the soft (and dare I say it) unc­tu­ous veg­eta­bles were the per­fect foil for the beef, and with a nice dab of mash on one’s fork to go with it… heavenly.

Inter­est­ingly, the meat that weighed nearly exactly 2 kilo­grams when fresh had dimin­ished to about 1.3 kilo­grams when we were ready to cook it. And yet there was noth­ing approach­ing 700 grams of liq­uid in the dish the beef mar­i­nated in. A mys­tery, to be sure. It was intrigu­ing to note how, as the days went by, the tex­ture of the beef changed; it started out that rather pli­able and lumpy feel­ing of raw meat, but by the end of the mar­i­nat­ing process it had solid­i­fied and hard­ened. Fas­ci­nat­ing. And deli­cious, too. John mused that he might pre­fer the beef with­out the final step of refrig­er­a­tion, just lifted from the hot brais­ing brine and eaten imme­di­ately. Per­haps next time.

The din­ner was the per­fect fes­tive occa­sion to usher in a lit­tle more Christ­mas spirit. I look back on that evening now with nos­tal­gia, as I am writ­ing now from a bed of dizzi­ness and mis­ery. I have the Virus That Ate Shepherd’s Bush, or even the Greater Lon­don Met­ro­pol­i­tan Area. Just mis­er­able. I only hope I don’t pass it on to Avery, and that I feel some­what less dire when it’s time to get on a plane tomor­row evening and head to Con­necti­cut. Peo­ple have been frown­ing darkly when they find out I am under the weather and mut­ter­ing things like, “Mine hung on for two weeks.” That is not on, not at all.

I’m wad­ing through Christ­mas cards and stamps and piles of presents and books I can­not live with­out for two weeks and cam­eras and all the other detri­tus needed for our hol­i­day. I feel nowhere near ready to leave home for such a long time, but I know from expe­ri­ence that once I arrive at Red Gate Farm, my cares will melt away and I’ll be ready to celebrate.

The brisket.

Remem­ber, the enor­mous slab of beef that I mar­i­nated in the con­trolled sub­stance and all sorts of pep­per­corns and juniper and eye of newt and what­ever else? I have mas­saged the beef every day, and I must report a rather eerie devel­op­ment of its sub­stance. It went from a rather flabby, large red piece of meat to, over the course of ten days in its mari­nade, a much more com­pact, flat­ter, dark piece of meat. Inter­est­ing. Well, the day of judg­ment is nearly here. Today I took it out of its mari­nade, washed it off, place it in a nice watery bath and clapped the lid of the pot on tight, and cooked it low for three hours. Now it’s cooled off, and been placed on a plate with another plate and two cans of hari­cot beans, one can of lentils and one can of peeled plum toma­toes on top. I know it may not seem rel­e­vant to spec­ify the con­tents of these cans, but lately I am tak­ing recipe writ­ing very, very seriously.

Tomor­row, then, my good friend and culi­nary victim/guest Annie and her fam­ily are com­ing to sam­ple this beef, and to com­ple­ment the beef/rescue the din­ner if the beef is hor­ri­ble, my men­tor Orlando’s straw pota­toes in goose fat. Plus red cab­bage and fen­nel slaw, and some rocket salad, I think, plus I had bet­ter come up with a dessert in case the the beef is… really bad.

In the mean­time, let’s see, I’ve been devoted to the Christ­mas card list, and to putting fin­ish­ing touches on the Christ­mas tree dec­o­ra­tions. I admit it: now that Avery’s old enough to care about the tra­di­tions and the sto­ries behind all the orna­ments, she has the temer­ity to ask to hang some of them her­self. And as the kind of nasty mother who doesn’t really want to share her kitchen with her child, I feel I should at least let her share in the hang­ing of orna­ments. But… secret of secrets… once she’s asleep I… rehang them. Isn’t that awful. And she lets me, and never seems to mind see­ing that this or that angel or sil­ver ball has mys­te­ri­ously moved place in the night. That is the sort of real-life angel she is.

The tree is just lovely, this year, and hav­ing a tree in the kitchen is per­fect for me, since I spend all day in there any­way. If you look closely at this pho­to­graph, you can see on the far right a fig­ure that hung from my baby mobile that, in her typ­i­cally gen­er­ous way my mother let me have, and down low a red bow that I bought for my first mar­ried Christ­mas 19 years ago, and the two pump­kins small and large that my mother in law gave me, and the gift-toting fairy that appeared in Avery’s advent cal­en­dar this morning.

I also just reread “The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Scream­ing,” by Lemony Snicket, a gift from my best friend Alyssa two Christ­mases ago. Do not, repeat do NOT attempt to read this book if your child or a house­guest is try­ing to sleep nearby. “Nearly every­thing in this world is born scream­ing, and the latke was no excep­tion, even though the latke wasn’t con­ceived and born in the way you and I were con­ceived and born, but instead was fash­ioned from grated pota­toes, chopped onion, beaten eggs and dash or two of salt. Once these ingre­di­ents were prop­erly mixed, the latke was slepped into a pan full of olive oil heated to a very high tem­per­a­ture, and this is when it began to scream. AAAAHHHHHHH!”

Report on brisket tomor­row evening… unless it’s bad and then I might just keep it to myself… espe­cially since Alyssa reported by text to me that she was pick­ing up her brisket in New York at Whole Foods, and when I think of her delec­table brisket I just want to lie down and wish I’d never thought of try­ing some bizarre Euro­pean ver­sion of my own. Involv­ing high explo­sives, no less. We’ll see.

As usual, I’m in the posi­tion of explain­ing how two such dis­parate things can pos­si­bly be occu­py­ing my mind at the same time, but that is my life. It’s been a nearly equally foodie and the­atre sort of autumn for me, where it seems that every week I’m hav­ing the taste expe­ri­ence of a life­time and also see­ing some incom­pa­ra­ble dra­matic per­for­mance. And it won’t slow down in Jan­u­ary. I am apply­ing for an Arvon Foun­da­tion fel­low­ship (Arvon is the insti­tu­tion I hold entirely respon­si­ble for the dizzy­ing expe­ri­ence of a week away food writ­ing in Octo­ber) which would, if I won it, mean another week away in March, and another the fol­low­ing Jan­u­ary, plus a whole kitchen­ful of men­tor­ing meet­ings with a pub­lished author in the year of 2009. And, we have tick­ets to both “War Horse” and “Twelfth Night” in the new year. So I have my work cut out to stay cutting-edge in my two loves, here in this mar­vel­lous city where my heart always beats a lit­tle faster than is good for it.

Cau­li­flower. I think I spared you the tale of my failed cau­li­flower soup, some weeks ago. I had been to The Botanist restau­rant in Sloane Square and eaten the soup of my life: a per­fect puree/veloute of cau­li­flower with diced scal­lops swim­ming under the sur­face, topped with tempura-fried flo­rets and driz­zled with truf­fle oil. Out­ra­geous. And I came home filled with hubris and the firm inten­tion of mak­ing the exact soup in my own kitchen. Well, pride goeth as they say and it was an unmit­i­gated dis­as­ter. Sticky, grey­ish gold because of the home­made chicken stock I boiled the poor hap­less cau­li­flower in… just AWFUL. I threw it away.

Well, on Thurs­day my nov­el­ist friend Jes­sica threw down the gaunt­let and invited me to Tex­ture, a restau­rant in Port­man Square with chef Aggi Sver­ris­son from the Manoir aux Quatr’ Saisons run­ning the show. “Eng­lish with a Scan­di­na­vian flair” is the order of the day, although the only sign of such a fusion I saw was a sin­gu­larly dis­gust­ing crunchy slice of some fish skin, offered with my sparkling water, tast­ing pre­cisely of crunchy cat food (the salmon fla­vor). That was nearly the only wrong note of our lunch, how­ever. “You have to try the cau­li­flower,” Jes­sica baited me, “it’s done some­thing like five ways, with scal­lops, and one way is… that puree.” Done.

But first we were given an amuse-bouche of diced Jerusalem arti­choke, in a tiny cup, under­neath which was a layer of chervil sor­bet, and under­neath that a mys­te­ri­ous creamy WARM cus­tard. Nei­ther of us could iden­tify the cen­tral ingre­di­ent of the cus­tard, and what­ever answer my extremely authen­ti­cally Scan­di­na­vian waiter gave, I could not under­stand it. I asked twice. No chance. There is such a thing as TOO authen­tic. But per­me­at­ing the lot was a tiny hint of Perig­ord truf­fles, and there is noth­ing wrong with truf­fles in Decem­ber. Lovely, unusual. Then we each had the win­ter veg­eta­bles with a cele­riac infu­sion, and it was lovely. I hate to be com­pli­ant and say that the… tex­tures of each veg­etable were highly iden­ti­fied and sub­tle, and par­tic­u­lar to each one (a com­pletely dif­fer­ent bite to the parsnip ver­sus the morel mush­room ver­sus the chicory), the name of the restau­rant is entirely apposite.

Then came… the scal­lops and cau­li­flower. I salaam and say, “I’m not wor­thy, I’m not wor­thy,” because the clev­er­ness of the dish could not be denied. How do we feel about clev­er­ness? If it is truly faint­ingly deli­cious, is clever accept­able? I think so. Let’s see: two per­fectly caramelized scal­lops, melt­ingly ten­der inside, and sur­rounded by: cau­li­flower puree, but­tery beyond what I would have thought was the capac­ity of a veg­etable to absorb but­ter. And then paper-thin slices of raw cau­li­flower dusted with fine black pep­per. And then vinegar-marinated tiny flo­rets. And… you knew it was com­ing… cau­li­flower foam. Now, here I knew I was done for. I hate foam. Full stop. It’s spit. I can­not wait for the mania for spit on plates to fade, or at least lose its bub­bles and drib­ble off the plate. But I was stymied in this case. The foam was delight­ful. Thick enough not to engage me too strongly with… spit, and sub­tly fla­vored with cau­li­flower, yet not a hint of acid­ity. Then, clever­est of all, cau­li­flower cous­cous. Some­one, some poor per­son serv­ing com­mu­nity ser­vice for points on his license, had sep­a­rated the flo­rets of the veg to its small­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor. TINY tiny scraps, mixed with chopped hazel­nuts and pump­kin seeds, quite lovely.

Some­how as we ate (and oohed and aah­hed) we made a sig­nif­i­cant amount of progress in our ongo­ing dis­cus­sion of writ­ing, not writ­ing, being crit­i­cised, hat­ing being crit­i­cised, hav­ing writer’s block, read­ing too much of other people’s work… Jes­sica is a true pro­fes­sional as well as a for­mi­da­ble intel­lect, and, bless her, a New Yorker. I felt ter­ri­bly home­sick for that inde­fin­able some­thing (atti­tude, acer­bic wit, twin­kle in the eye) that is the New York spirit. It is very dif­fer­ent to (see? in New York we say dif­fer­ent “from”) the Lon­don sort of spirit which can be a bit rev­el­ling in defeat. New York­ers have unde­ni­able spirit that can be expressed only in even mild exple­tives, and I miss it. No mat­ter how long Jes­sica lives here, she will main­tain it. I tend to cave to my sur­round­ings, but I love it when I’m with it.

From Tex­ture that day, I found myself at my Lon­don writ­ing class yes­ter­day for four hours, at which we ALL sub­mit­ted work and were in fine fet­tle for crit­i­cism, both giv­ing and receiv­ing. The art of crit­i­cism is as com­plex as a recipe. There is absolutely no point, as far as I can see, in express­ing crit­i­cism to ANY writer that amounts to, “I don’t like your type of project,” or “Your style doesn’t res­onate with me.” Of course, a British expres­sion of this reac­tion will not be so upfront as a New Yorker, or Euro­pean might be. It will take the form of some phrase like “This could be so much bet­ter.” A sort of back­handed, use­less com­pli­ment that is in real­ity a form­less slap. Much bet­ter is to try to under­stand what the per­son is try­ing to achieve, whether or not it’s some­thing you’ll ulti­mately want to read, and THEN approach the text on the basis of its ulti­mate goal. And yes­ter­day we worked hard on that, for each of the five of us. Among us we have a thinly veiled pri­mary school mem­oir, an eccle­si­as­ti­cal cycle of moral sto­ries, a novella of Mex­i­can love and pol­i­tics, a (per­haps) vision of Sto­icism and obsessive-compulsive wor­ry­ing, and a mem­oir with recipes. And we have all been able to find ways to read it ALL and offer help­ful crit­i­cism. It’s a gift, to be with these peo­ple every week.

What is “voice”? From Jes­sica to my writ­ing class to my daugh­ter, the pre­vail­ing opin­ion seems to be that it’s inex­tri­ca­bly linked to who you are. You can change your style of writ­ing, or your “tone,” but not your voice. Or if you do, you’ve defeated your­self, silenced your­self, killed your­self. I’ve man­aged, in the last few weeks, to change my voice in reac­tion to enor­mously painful crit­i­cism. NO MORE. I can’t help my voice. I always sound the same, unless I sit down and try to kill it. Which I’m able to do, it turns out, but then I feel very sad. And my read­ers report sad­ness. So no more. Because if there isn’t even a use­ful pelt to be had from the dead body of my voice, if it’s all just garbage, it’s not worth it in order to please an unpleasable body of read­ers. They can just read some­thing else.

Which is not to say I don’t wel­come crit­i­cism! But I’m begin­ning, through tears and emo­tional blood­shed, to be able to tell the dif­fer­ence between crit­i­cism that runs along­side my project, cheer­ing it on but say­ing, “Hey, adjust your stride,” and crit­i­cism that places a giant tree branch in my path while insist­ing that falling down and bleed­ing is part of the process. Sorry, don’t think so.

Then it was onto more the­atre. It’s a good thing that tick­ets to events are sit­ting on my desk, or wait­ing at a box office. Why? Because if I counted on merely fol­low­ing up on a vague plan to do some­thing on a rainy Fri­day night after a gru­elling writ­ing class AND ses­sion at the ice rink, I’d never go out of the house. So off we were to Cin­derella at the Lyric Ham­mer­smith. Not for the faint of heart, I would have said, incred­i­bly cre­ative in its stag­ing and use of no more than seven play­ers, not a wasted phys­i­cal ges­ture or prop, mys­ti­cal and evoca­tive Nor­we­gian music. Avery’s favorite bit: the fairy god­mother is replaced by dozens of flut­ter­ing white pigeons, brought in on the hands of the play­ers. And the inter­val hap­pens just at the moment when she’s about to go to the ball, and I won’t spoil it for you, but the inter­val is… not quite what it seems at first! Go with the flow! Quite a crush­wor­thy Prince in the lead, a cer­tain Daniel Wey­man, impos­si­bly frag­ile and yet pas­sion­ate, and then clearly a clas­si­cally trained bal­let dancer… heart­break­ing and gor­geous. At the end, hun­dreds of white paper pigeons flut­tered down from the ceil­ing… just gorgeous.

Well, today brought us to Not­ting Hill and Books for Cooks, the Spice Shop and Ped­lars, trawl­ing for Christ­mas presents. I was absurdly moved when the founder of Ped­lars (such a clever and pleas­ing shop) said, “Your daugh­ter has the most pro­found sense of style I’ve ever seen in a child! She could be a 1950s fash­ion designer, or a set designer, or… I just love it.” “Well, I’m par­tial to her myself,” I said, and he said, “Of course you are! I could look at her all day.” Avery her­self glowed when I told her. We man­aged to cross sev­eral things off our lists, and then head to an entirely buzz-killing and mis­guided trip to West­field Shop­ping Cen­tre in Shepherd’s Bush. HATE­FUL. The crowds of hideous, grasp­ing peo­ple, the mil­lions of energy-sapping lights dec­o­rat­ing the mile-expanse of nasty exte­rior, and the miles of foot­steps to go between where we ended up and where the car was parked. No more. Not us. SO NOT US.

But home for a fab din­ner of my sec­ond go at foc­ca­cia. I could shout with tri­umph! And I can report that the sec­ond ris­ing (meant to be a cod­dling 15 min­utes in a warm place under a damp towel) can take place on a cold coun­ter­top for three hours cov­ered with noth­ing, and no harm done! I also got brave and sprin­kled grated Pecorino on top before bak­ing, and com­bined fresh thyme, mar­jo­ram and rose­mary all together: a delight. With this we enjoyed an old veg­e­tar­ian favorite. Give it a try. Your house will smell like a proper Ital­ian restau­rant, and your heart will swell with pride.

Orrechi­ette ith Two Broc­co­lis, Tomato and Pinenuts
(serves four)

1/2 pound dried orrechi­ette (or far­falle or another sort of stubby pasta)
1 tsp but­ter
1 tbsp olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
1 tbsp Ital­ian sea­son­ing
1/2 cup pinenuts
1 soup-size can plum toma­toes
8 flo­rets broc­coli
8 stems ten­der­stem broc­coli
1/2 cup grated Pecorino or Parmesan

Put water on to boil for the pasta. It will need to cook for about 12 minutes.

Heat but­ter and olive oil in a shal­low skil­let and cook gar­lic and onion till soft, then add Ital­ian sea­son­ing and mix well. Set aside while in a food proces­sor or blender you mix the pinenuts and toma­toes till com­pletely blended and a pleas­ing sort of red­dish pink. Pour the mix­ture into the skil­let with the gar­lic and onion and heat until bub­bling, then turn off heat.

Steam the two broc­co­lis until they smell good, and like broc­coli. I can’t explain it bet­ter than that: you’ll know they’re cooked (five min­utes or so?) when they smell like you want to eat them.

When the pasta is cooked through, drain it nearly all the way and dump it into the skil­let with the sauce, then throw in the two broc­co­lis and toss all together. Serve with the cheese, and ENJOY.

All right, you’ve got me, this isn’t the Grosvenor Chapel. It’s my own kitchen coun­ter­top where Avery and her friend Emily con­cocted their wax and flocked-tree Christ­mas vil­lage last evening. I took pic­tures of them doing it, but they’ve sud­denly hit an age where instead of look­ing up smil­ing falsely and charm­ingly when you say, “Hey, look up, girls!” they hide their faces and say, “I hate hav­ing pic­tures taken of me.” What a nice mem­ory: the girls get­ting so involved in the dec­o­ra­tions that they couldn’t bear to be parted; secur­ing per­mis­sion for Emily to stay, find­ing in the freezer a cou­ple of salmon fil­lets to feed an unex­pected din­ner guest, lis­ten­ing to her silly fam­ily sto­ries, watch­ing the two girls throw their heads back and howl with laughter.

But seri­ously, I know it’s Christ­mas when the annual can­dlelit con­cert rolls around at the incom­pa­ra­ble Grosvenor Chapel in May­fair. Now in years past we have been the guests of Grosvenor in their capac­ity as our enor­mously over­com­pen­sated land­lords, liv­ing as we did in the shadow of the Amer­i­can Embassy. This year I sighed a sigh of both dis­ap­point­ment that we would not be invited because we had moved away, and sheer relief at the lift­ing of that enor­mous rent bill every month. And you know what? Some­one in the heav­enly sphere reached out and said, “Kris­ten, you SHALL go to the ball even though you live in dark­est Shepherd’s Bush.” That some­one took the shape of my dear friend Annie who lately seems to be my part­ner in crime in so many lit­tle jaunts. She has done work for the Home Farm Trust, recip­i­ent of the concert’s ticket income, and so had four tick­ets and only her­self and her daugh­ter, my dear Emily, to go. What luck! So my hol­i­day sea­son could begin bang on sched­ule, in the pine-scented, white-pillared ele­gance of the Chapel.

The con­cert came on the heels of the after­noon gath­er­ing at Avery’s school of all the pupils of the two singing teach­ers. They’d organ­ised them­selves into groups, or soloists, and had lov­ingly cho­sen their music, accord­ing to the staff. (Although Avery, typ­i­cally refus­ing the sen­ti­men­tal­ity of school­teach­ers, denied this account of events say­ing, “I hardly know Emma and the teacher said we had to sing a duet, and do you really think I’d choose ‘Amaz­ing Grace’ if I had any­thing to say about it?”). Fair enough, what­ever the organ­is­ing prin­ci­ple, there they were, 30 girls in all, rang­ing in age from the lit­tlest MIVs (Avery’s age) to young women of 18, and fill­ing every con­ceiv­able rank of tal­ent as well! There were sev­eral phe­nom­e­nal singers, sev­eral aston­ish­ingly ter­ri­ble singers, and lots in between. Avery and Emma were, con­trary to the expec­ta­tions that had been raised by Avery’s prac­tic­ing at home, extremely good and very touch­ing. There is some­thing affect­ing and pure about that song, and also they looked so very small and defense­less com­pared to the big girls who had gone before. They had also dressed up, unlike the older girls who seemed to make a point of turn­ing up in ratty tie­less sneak­ers, short skirts with tat­tered tights under­neath, and the ubiq­ui­tous fringey scarf. Dread­ful sound­ing, I know, but with their extreme youth, squeaky clean hair, hes­i­tant shy smiles and hands pluck­ing at the clothes with nerves, they were all irre­sistibly vul­ner­a­ble and lovely.

Why must I cry at these events? It is impos­si­ble to pre­tend I have an itchy eye. I end up spend­ing so much emo­tional energy try­ing not to make a fool of myself with a tis­sue that I miss a good part of the per­for­mance. I’m sure there’s a metaphor­i­cal les­son there somewhere.

From there we jumped on the bus and headed to May­fair. In one of the moments that defines liv­ing in Lon­don, I read on the pro­gramme that we would be “In the Pres­ence of HRH Princess Michael of Kent,” how thrilling. The lady lead­ing us in gave us each a tall white can­dle and sug­gested, “Why not try a seat upstairs, where you will be directly oppo­site the speak­ers in the pew?” Speak­ers! Another quick glance at the pro­gramme: the Princess her­self! Charles Dance, Patrick God­frey, Amanda Walker, Tim Piggott-Smith! What a galaxy of stars, and two of them we’d seen onstage in the Lon­don the­atre in the past year, Charles Dance in “Shad­ow­lands” and Tim Piggott-Smith in “Pyg­malion.” They did not, I must clar­ify, so much speak, as READ.

I am an absolute devo­tee to the art of read­ing aloud. From the time Avery was born, John and I propped her up between us on pil­lows and, hold­ing a book above her, read to her at bed­time, each tak­ing a page in turn, for an hour or so before she went to sleep. She thrived on the rit­ual, tak­ing com­fort, I think, in the pre­dictabil­ity, the close­ness, and in turn she bestowed on the writ­ten and then spo­ken word a sort of trust that has stayed with her all her life, and with us too. When­ever she has one of her peri­odic and mys­te­ri­ous lit­tle day-long fevers, the first thing she asks for is for me to read aloud to her. It is a pre­cious return to a long-ago rit­ual, one that seemed to last so long for the years it did, and yet now reveals itself to have been short-lived indeed. She is so inde­pen­dent now that those nights of the evening read-aloud seem like a chap­ter from some fic­tional person’s life.

Being read to as an adult takes on more nuanced mean­ing, of course. We have all been in sit­u­a­tions where some­one reads aloud a deeply affect­ing text. Per­haps the reader is a famously dulcet-toned actor, hold­ing his audi­ence almost unwill­ing in its rap­ture, or per­haps only a beloved per­son close to one’s heart. One is caught up in the moment, spell­bound by the per­for­mance, seduced for that moment into believ­ing the per­for­mance to be true. How mag­i­cal it is, that sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief! How ready we all are to lis­ten, to absorb, to take away some­thing that will ease the unex­pected pain and con­fu­sion of human relations.

How easy it is, really, for one to read aloud some­thing pro­found: the act requires noth­ing more than a reveal­ing, wise and emo­tional text from the writer, con­cen­tra­tion and deliv­ery from the reader, and a rapt audi­ence. How much more dif­fi­cult it is, as an adult, to under­stand what one has read aloud, and infi­nitely more dif­fi­cult still to live by the tenets of what one has read. We can choose care­fully all the ele­ments, but some­times putting them together is beyond our capability.

But there are times when one sus­pends all such judg­ment and merely rev­els in the beauty of the voice alone and hears only the wis­dom of the words, revealed by the one wis­est enough to have writ­ten them down. That was my expe­ri­ence at the Grosvenor Chapel this week. We lit our can­dles, then watched the col­lec­tive smoke rise when we blew them out. We lis­tened as each reader ascended the podium and read: from Dylan Thomas and Clare Boy­lan, from Dick­ens and “Yes, Vir­ginia, there IS a Santa Claus,” and from Isa­iah. I lis­tened, and as is my wont tried to absorb some bit of knowl­edge through lis­ten­ing that might help me with my thoughts. We stood and sang when it was time to sing, and sat back and admired the choir and tiny orches­tra when we were meant merely to admire. I felt that par­tic­u­lar sort of unplaced grief you feel when you look around and remem­ber that every­one in your sight is the most impor­tant per­son in the world to some­one. I thought a great deal about the peo­ple dear to me who have been deliv­ered enor­mous losses in the past few weeks, with more to come in the weeks to come.

Some­times it is awful being an adult.

But then I looked around at Annie and Emily and Avery and I could feel my heart con­tract at the luck of being with them, in such a beau­ti­ful place, sur­rounded, in the heart of Lon­don, by the best and bright­est of the stage and screen, by HRH for heaven’s sake, and by lus­cious green­ery and can­dle­light. It all exists at the same time, and in the same place, and that means it’s Christmas.

It is a truth uni­ver­sally acknowl­edged that when a cer­tain type of per­son pos­sesses a skill, he or she will look with con­tempt and scorn at another per­son who does not pos­sess that skill. And not just look, mind you, but express that con­tempt and scorn quite read­ily, with appar­ent blind­ness to the pos­si­bil­ity that there are things he or she is also not capa­ble of doing. This is such an unpleas­ant human qual­ity that I’m mak­ing it an early New Year’s Res­o­lu­tion never to do it again, if I ever have.

The prob­lem with the con­tempt and scorn school for me is (aside from the basic one that it makes me feel bad) that it stops me doing things I don’t know how to do. I just crawl away into a safe dark place where I can carry on doing the things I already know how to do. And while that gen­er­ally works out all right, since I can do a fair num­ber of things, in my cur­rent mini-mid-life-crisis mode I don’t want ANY­THING stand­ing in the way of my get­ting some­thing I really want.

As a result of all this analy­sis and a sud­den deci­sion to step up to the culi­nary plate, I resorted to the method that nearly always solves a prob­lem for me: I found a friend. Yes­ter­day I wel­comed into my kitchen one Han­nah Goodyear, of The Kitchen Queen, to help me over­come some of my most per­sis­tent kitchen fears. You know we all have them. I know a lot of peo­ple who are scared silly of a whole chicken. These same peo­ple will hap­pily cook the much more intim­i­dat­ing ver­sion of this, the Thanks­giv­ing or Christ­mas turkey, but would blanche and even faint at the notion of roast­ing a chicken every Sun­day, for exam­ple. I know other peo­ple who would never con­sider gut­ting and fil­let­ing a whole fish. That would be me. For some rea­son, though, I feel no need to acquire this par­tic­u­lar kitchen skill, whereas I do have a secret desire to be a butcher.

My par­tic­u­lar kitchen ter­rors were, until yes­ter­day, three­fold: bread, fresh pasta and bak­ing. All three of these areas seemed to me to involve a cou­ple of areas in life where I am at my weak­est: sci­ence and math­e­mat­ics. I tend to avoid activ­i­ties that require more than a pass­ing acquain­tance with either of these sub­jects, and I was absolutely cer­tain that to bake a loaf of bread, make ravi­oli or pro­duce a suc­cess­ful dessert, I would have to shake hands with not only sci­en­tific rules, but also NUMBERS.

Now, in this I was cor­rect. But in my ambi­tious heart of hearts, I knew instinc­tively that all I really needed was a teacher. Until yes­ter­day, every­thing I ever knew about cook­ing I learned by myself, just slog­ging along imi­tat­ing other people’s successes.

I speak from expe­ri­ence as a long­time teacher myself when I tell you that there are two sorts: the sort who rev­els in being smarter than other peo­ple, and the sort who remem­bers very well not know­ing ANY­THING and just wants to help peo­ple out of their igno­rance. There is room for both sorts: it can be sur­pris­ingly moti­vat­ing, in a sick sort of way, to learn by fear and intim­i­da­tion. But that’s not the sort of per­son I wanted in my kitchen. Hap­pily for me, I got Han­nah. And so should you.

I found her in the way that peo­ple in the mod­ern world find every­thing: by googling. “Cook­ery lessons Lon­don,” got me to an array of cook­ery SCHOOLS. The trou­ble with an insti­tu­tion, how­ever, is that you have to do things their way. You have to sign up, for exam­ple, for “Bak­ing.” But I knew I didn’t want to spend a day learn­ing to make bis­cotti or a choco­late cake. I wanted to learn to make a tart. Or I could have had a day of “Pasta, Pizza and Risotto,” and while it would have been fun, I already know how to make pizza and risotto, and I knew I didn’t want to learn to make spaghetti. I wanted to repro­duce the glo­ri­ously deca­dent ravi­o­lis I have been encoun­ter­ing at some of my Ladies Who Lunch adven­tures. Even the most lux­u­ri­ous ready-made ravi­o­lis on the com­mer­cial mar­ket fall short, I think, and have to be cov­ered in a gar­licky, creamy sauce and topped with fried sage to make them inter­est­ing. And by the time I’d done all that, I found, the whole point of ready-made food had been lost.

The beauty of Hannah’s approach is that I got to tell her EXACTLY what I wanted to learn, and I got to learn in my very own kitchen. So a flurry of emails and phone calls later, I had a mas­sive shop­ping list and a huge sense of purpose.

I felt as if I were wel­com­ing a blind date into my house! Only even more so: at least on a date you’re look­ing at three, four hours, max­i­mum. Han­nah and I cooked together for over seven hours yes­ter­day, and I can tell you that it was one of the best days of my life. I love noth­ing more than spend­ing a day cook­ing in any case, but to spend the day WITH some­one in the kitchen, and to know that as every hour passed I could do some­thing I couldn’t have done before was a tremen­dous thrill. And you know what: there’s noth­ing to any of those jobs that had scared me so. I just needed a help­ing hand.

We started off at the deep end: mak­ing foc­ca­cia dough. Why was I so scared of a lit­tle knob of fresh yeast? I bought it two weeks ago, and every time I opened the fridge it stared at me from its plas­tic bag, mock­ing my fear. But with Han­nah here, I bravely put it on the scale (a scale in my kitchen! who would ever have thought), mixed it with sugar, and watched as it turned liq­uidy, just as Han­nah said it would. Like magic. I mixed and kneaded and shaped it and stuck it in an oiled bowl and that was that. Left in a warm oven to rise while we attacked pasta. A chal­lenge! I con­fess to being a cook who tends to use a uten­sil to mix messy things, but there was no tool to replace my own two hands, get­ting sticky with eggs and flour. I made a well in an enor­mous pile of flour on my gran­ite counter, plopped in the eggs, and watched as they ran away from me. “Just catch them with your hands and bring them back into the flour!” Han­nah laughed, and in no time there was a lovely ball of pasta dough, to chill while we made sweet pas­try for the tart.

Tarts and I have had a stormy rela­tion­ship. The pas­try shrinks, the fill­ing doesn’t set, the fla­vors are dull, the whole pre­sen­ta­tion has a sort of Girl Scout rough-and-ready qual­ity to it. Not yes­ter­day! I learned to roll the pas­try out so it more than fills the tart pan, and we made a creme patissiere, a very thick cus­tard, to fill the case, and then VERY pre­cisely cov­ered the whole top with straw­ber­ries and rasp­ber­ries, and glazed it all with melted apri­cot jam. So sim­ple and perfect.

The foc­ca­cia dough was turned out onto the counter and I punched it down and put it in spring­form pans to rise again, then we made dim­ples on the two loaves with our knuck­les, painted the tops with olive oil, sprin­kled rose­mary and thyme and sea salt on them and baked them. Absolutely noth­ing to it. And as you see, they turned out just like a restau­rant. I could feel my doubts slip­ping away!

We made four deca­dent fill­ings, one of which turned out to be very bor­ing and so we didn’t use it. It was a pump­kin base, and no mat­ter how much gar­lic, lemon juice, pep­per, pine nuts we added, it was just… dull. It tasted of all the things we added, but not of pump­kin, and it wasn’t pump­kin col­ored, as the ravi­oli I had had at Peter­sham Nurs­eries had been. Any sug­ges­tions accepted. I hear from my men­tor Orlando, how­ever, that pump­kin fill­ing is tricky. Maybe the Lebanese pump­kin I started out with was the wrong ingre­di­ent. I really don’t know. But the lob­ster, crab and tomato fill­ing was divinely rich, as was the saf­fron cream sauce to go with it. Then there was crab and chest­nut mush­room stuff­ing (John’s favorite), and finally Avery’s requested spinach, ricotta and pro­sciutto mix­ture. With that I served a fried sage and but­ter sauce, and I can tell you right now, you can­not make enough fried sage leaves to make a din­ner party happy. We invited my friend Annie and her fam­ily to join in the delights, and oh! It was a delight.

Han­nah has all the right qual­i­ties to make her a plea­sure to spend seven straight messy hours with: she’s super speedy and effi­cient (the fastest washer-upper I have ever known), she’s flex­i­ble and unflap­pable, she’s seen it all twenty times and so is sur­prised by noth­ing, and she’s encour­ag­ing. She gets you down and dirty and asks all the time, “Would you rather be doing…” to make sure you’re get­ting the expe­ri­ence you want. She is also drop-dead gor­geous which doesn’t hurt when you spend the whole day with her. Best of all, she truly enjoys bring­ing her charge up from igno­rant to capa­ble, and no ques­tion was too stu­pid for me to ask. And she stayed far beyond the time limit, to make sure I was really ready to feed my guests. When she left, I felt a bit like a babysit­ter must when the par­ents leave: was I really in charge?

The din­ner went off with­out a hitch. One caveat I would offer you about fresh pasta: make sure you don’t let it get too warm before you cook, because it will stick to what­ever sur­face you put it on. On the off chance that some­thing wouldn’t be edi­ble, I had decided to roast a cou­ple of chick­ens as a sup­ple­ment (we didn’t even TOUCH them!), and as a result the kitchen was very toasty. Some of the lob­ster ravi­o­lis died a sad death on their grease­proof paper, no mat­ter how much flour I sprin­kled on to try to save them. But I was feel­ing so con­fi­dent by then that you know what I did? I sim­ply scooped the lovely savoury fill­ing (fully cooked) out of the sad dead pasta, and shook it up in my salad dress­ing. And it was the best dress­ing ever, for crisp, strong rocket, baby beet­root leaves and spinach. I am not nor­mally very inclined to think out of the box, but it was lovely to find lit­tle bites of crab, lob­ster and tomato in that salad.

What a tri­umph! I am try­ing to think now if there are any other fright­en­ing spec­tres lurk­ing in my kitchen cup­boards, mock­ing me with my incom­pe­tence. Because I have no doubt that Han­nah dis­pel them. Give her a call, do. What a great Christ­mas present, thank you, John.

Fresh Pasta

800 grams Type 00 (or pasta) flour
8 large free range eggs

Place the flour in a heap on a work sur­face and make a well in the cen­ter. Pour the eggs into the well (catch them when they run away!) and mix well until you have a ball of really stiff dough, then knead it really well. You want to end up with a nice silky, glossy, smooth ball of dough, quite firm. Be patient and scrape your hands off now and then and don’t worry if you can’t incor­po­rate every scrap of flour. You will need to knead at least 10 min­utes. When fin­ished, wrap in cling­film and chill for at least half an hour in the fridge.

After the rest­ing period, pinch off a piece about the size of three fin­gers, and feed it through your pasta machine first in the widest set­ting. Then fold it in half and con­tinue at the widest set­ting sev­eral times, and then con­tin­u­ing through to the finest set­ting. Lay the pasta out on a floured sur­face and place an egg-yolk-sized spoon­ful of the fill­ing of your choice about 2 inches apart, then brush with egg white around the fill­ing to make the top layer of pasta stick. Then play another layer on the top and press all around the mound of fill­ing. Cut around the fill­ing leav­ing an inch or so of pasta all around. Drop into boil­ing water for no more than three min­utes and drain well.

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The Kitchen Queen’s Lob­ster, Crab and Tomato Ravi­oli with a Saf­fron Cream, Served with Pan-Fried Cour­gette and Leek Rib­bons
(serves 8 as a starter)

enough fresh pasta for 16 large ravi­o­lis
2 medium lob­ster tails
1 tbsp but­ter
splash olive oil
100 grams white crab meat
2–3 tbsps tomato puree
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and pep­per to taste
pinch chilli pow­der
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
100 grams mas­car­pone cheese

Sauce and Topping

large pinch saf­fron
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup dou­ble cream
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
salt and pep­per to taste
4 toma­toes, deseeded and finely chopped
2 cour­gettes, made into rib­bons using a potato peeler
white part of 1 leek, julienned

Bring water to boil in a saucepan and cook the lob­ster tails until not quite fully cooked, about 4–5 min­utes. Let cool and then shell and cut off the very end (about 2 inches) of the tail and set aside. Chop the remain­der of the lob­ster fairly fine and fry in the but­ter and olive oil until fully cooked. Lift out of the skil­let and leave the skil­let to one side to fry the cour­gettes and leek in later.

In a mix­ing bowl, mix the crab, tomato puree, lemon juice, salt and pep­per, chilli pow­der, thyme and mas­car­pone, then the cooled lob­ster. Taste and adjust sea­son­ings. Chill until ready to stuff the pasta. Cut the small ends of lob­ster tail into eight equal pieces and set aside.

For the sauce, mix the saf­fron with the chicken stock in a saucepan, then add the cream, 1 clove of gar­lic, and salt and pep­per and sim­mer high until the sauce reaches a nice thick con­sis­tency. Set aside until nearly ready to serve. Make the cour­gette rib­bons and leek juli­enne and saute them with the remain­ing clove of gar­lic in the skil­let you used for the lobster.

To serve, boil the ravi­oli for no more than 3 min­utes and place two on each plate. Place the chopped toma­toes in the sauce and heat through, then pour the sauce over the ravi­oli and top with a lit­tle cour­gette and leek. Finally top each plate with a bit of lob­ster tail and serve right away.

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The Kitchen Queen’s Rose­mary and Rock Salt Foc­ca­cia
(serves eight)

30 grams/1 ounce fresh yeast
1/2 tsp sugar
600 ml/1 pint 2 fl ounces warm water
4 tbsps olive oil, plus more for oil­ing bowl
680 grams/ 1 1/2 lbs strong white flour, plus more for dust­ing
2 tsps rock salt, plus 1 1/2 tsps for top­ping
leaves from 4 rose­mary sprigs

Mix the yeast with the sugar in a small bowl and stir until the yeast liq­uidizes. Stir in two thirds of the water and the olive oil. In a large bowl stir together the flour and salt. Pour the yeast mix­ture into the flour and salt and mix with a wooden spoon to form a soft dough. Add more water if the dough is a bit dry (rather it be wet than dry).

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured sur­face and knead for ten min­utes until smooth and elas­tic (Han­nah does this by hold­ing onto the dough with one hand and then FIRMLY push­ing half of it away with the other, then turn­ing the dough 90 degrees and repeat­ing many times). Place the dough in an oiled bowl and put in a warm place (my 50-degree oven worked fine) under a damp teatowel and rise till dou­bled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.

When the dough has risen, knead it again for about five min­utes on a clean floured sur­face to “knock it back.” Then shape the dough into two cir­cles and place them each in an oiled 9-inch spring­form pan. Place in the warm spot and let rise again to twice their size (about 10–15 min­utes). Make 20 or so “dim­ples” in the dough with your knuck­les and brush gen­er­ously with olive oil. Then sprin­kle with salt and press rose­mary leaves into them, then sprin­kle the rest of the rose­mary over the top.

Bake at 220/400 for ten min­utes, then lower heat to 190/375 and baker for a fur­ther 20–30 min­utes until cooked through and golden brown on top. Remove spring­form and when bread is slightly cooled, remove to a cool­ing rack. The foc­ca­cia is best eaten the day it’s made. Enjoy!

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The Kitchen Queen’s French Rasp­berry Straw­berry Tart
(serves eight)

For the Creme Patissiere:
2 tsps vanilla extract
scraped-out seeds of 1 vanilla pod
560 ml whole milk
50 grams plain flour
4 tsps corn­flour
8 egg yolks
120 grams caster sugar

For the Sweet Pas­try:
200 grams plain flour, plus extra for dust­ing
50 grams icing sugar
125 grams cold but­ter, cut into small cubes
1 large egg, beaten
tiny splash milk

Top­ping:
3 tbsps apri­cot jam
1 pun­net each rasp­ber­ries and strawberries

Whisk the egg yolks, vanilla and sugar together, then add flour and corn­flour. Boil the milk and whisk it slowly into egg mix­ture. Pour the mix­ture into a clean pan and bring slowly to the boil, until it thick­ens (it gets very thick!). Sim­mer for another minute and then chill com­pletely, under a piece of cling­film to pre­vent a skin forming.

Mix the flour and icing sugar together in a big bowl. “Rub” the cut-up but­ter into this mix­ture, shak­ing the bowl occa­sion­ally to bring the lumps to the sur­face. If your hands are hot (mine always are), run them under a cold tap to keep you from melt­ing the but­ter. Mix until you achieve a tex­ture of bread­crumbs. (Han­nah says this can be done in the food proces­sor, but we did it the old-fashioned way so I’d know how.) Add the egg and splash of milk so that a dough forms. Wrap in cling­film and chill for an hour if possible.

Get your flan/tart tin. (Mine did not have a remov­able base, and it was fine, but one with such a base is prefer­able.) Roll out pas­try on a floured sur­face until it’s large enough to fit over the tin, up the sides and with some left over. Press the dough into the tin and up the sides, then trim to be even with the edge of the tin. Lay some grease­proof paper over the dough, then put a cou­ple of hands of rice, pasta, or bak­ing beans on top of the grease­proof– this helps stop the pas­try from ris­ing when we cook it, and is known as “bak­ing blind” (i.e. with noth­ing else in it).

Bake for 15–20 min­utes until pas­try is dry and biscuit-like (you don’t want a soggy bot­tom on your tart!). When the pas­try case has cooled, trans­fer it to a nice plate and fill it with the creme patissiere. Top with halved straw­ber­ries around the edge and fill the rest of the top with rasp­ber­ries, hole side down. Paint with the melted apri­cot jam and enjoy!

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Thank you, Han­nah, for mak­ing my day so excit­ing and reward­ing, for not laugh­ing when I pan­icked and for answer­ing every ques­tion thor­oughly and never giv­ing away when it was a silly one, for the incred­i­bly pre­cise and read­able instruc­tions (left with me on lam­i­nated, beau­ti­fully dec­o­rated recipe cards), for the Kitchen Queen apron and can­vas tote. But mostly, thank you for your will­ing­ness to help me with my kitchen demons. I’m a hap­pier per­son for our time together.

I’ll begin with my poul­try romance. I didn’t bring them together in the hopes of cre­at­ing a culi­nary cos­tume drama, obvi­ously, but some things just have their own energy. I wanted to buy just one whole chicken, in my lovely local Shepherd’s Bush Mar­ket, plus a whole breast on the bone, to joint up and cook for us and Avery’s swim­ming chum Emily (who is an occa­sional dilet­tante veg­e­tar­ian and I had been advised was on a car­niver­ous day). But the butcher said, “Cheaper for you to take the whole two birds, my love,” so I did. I don’t mind joint­ing the odd chicken or two, plus get­ting the back­bones and such for stock. But when I brought these two home and lay them on my cut­ting board… well, the chem­istry leaps right through the ethernet.

And they made a lovely baked chicken dish as WELL as a damn good stock.

Chicken aside, two words: Ralph Fiennes. I know he is a rat of the first order, when it comes to love affairs. First it was Alex Kingston who he famously left for the youth-challenged but still lovely Francesca Annis. Far be it from me to say that there isn’t some­thing in an older woman to charm a younger man. I have seen it hap­pen. But then (we knew it would hap­pen) he left Francesca for… I do not know. Some­one very young, I fear, which means that in addi­tion to being a ser­ial phi­lan­derer, he’s incon­sis­tent as well.

Never mind. We saw “Oedi­pus” at the National on Fri­day and gasp, gasp. We took Avery because I felt that if the National said “twelve and over” they knew whereof they spoke, but I was a bit ner­vous nonethe­less, a feel­ing that was under­scored when we reached our seats and craned our necks to see the rest of the audi­ence and she was, in fact, the ONLY child. Only. But in fact she was riv­eted from start to fin­ish. Fiennes at times over­reached the emo­tion needed to con­vey his mis­ery, con­fu­sion, hys­te­ria, I felt. He could have been con­sid­er­ably more restrained and yet have stim­u­lated much the same feel­ings in the audi­ence. But it was an intense, over­whelm­ing the­atri­cal expe­ri­ence, shored up by a business-suited Greek cho­rus, a fab­u­lous Clare Hig­gins as Jocasta, and the appear­ance at the ulti­mate moment of four small chil­dren as his off­spring. A jar­ring and fright­en­ing expe­ri­ence for the actors, I would have thought. “That was beau­ti­ful,” Avery said as soon as the bows were taken. It was.

In the morn­ing I stepped up to my culi­nary plate and faced up to 45 grams of… salt­pe­tre. Have you ever heard of it? It’s quite famous, or infa­mous, as a sub­stance that has been admin­is­tered to sex offend­ers in prison to dampen their sex drive. So nat­u­rally it was but the work of a moment for me to pro­cure some from my local butcher to mar­i­nate my sil­ver­side of beef.

I am not mak­ing this up.

It’s also a mas­sively unsta­ble ingre­di­ent in explo­sives, it turns out. So why did I want 45 grams of this sub­stance? Because it’s the essen­tial com­po­nent in pro­duc­ing top-quality “Spiced Beef,” a la Richard Cor­ri­gan (one of my favorite chef-writers) by way of Row­ley Leigh of Cafe Anglais, in a recipe in the weekend’s FT. I am not exactly sure what role the salt­pe­tre plays in the 10-day mar­i­na­tion of my price­less cut of beef, but like a good girl I went straight to Mr Sten­ton. As I sidled up to the butcher counter, tell­tale pink pages of the Finan­cial Times in my hand, he said, “This looks dan­ger­ous.” Then he explained the his­tory of salt­pe­tre and the IRA, and said, “Give me two days. I’ve got to get onto Boots with my butcher’s license, and then you can come col­lect it.”

So I did. And I mixed it with a ver­i­ta­ble moun­tain of Mal­don salt, and pounded-up pep­per­corn, juniper berry and whole all­spice. Rubbed it all over the beef, wrapped it in plas­tic, and there he reposes in my fridge, to be mas­saged every day or so until it’s time to roast it, VERY slowly, place it under a plate on which are piled four tins of toma­toes, and then slice it VERY thin. Serve it with Orlando’s straw pota­toes in goose fat, I’m think­ing. So if you can prof­fer your heart surgeon’s cer­tifi­cate of good health, I’ll invite you over for the fin­ished prod­uct, ten days from now.

Tomor­row beck­ons an unbe­liev­able culi­nary adven­ture for me. Would you believe I have lived for 43 years with never hav­ing had the first cook­ing les­son of any kind, at all? As much as I love the field, and activ­ity, it seems very silly that I’ve come this far with­out any pro­fes­sional help. Well, that ends tomor­row morn­ing when a cer­tain “Kitchen Queen” arrives in my kitchen with two pasta mak­ers to help me make: focac­cia, fresh ravi­oli with four dif­fer­ent fill­ings (among them pump­kin and sage, crab, lob­ster with mas­car­pone and Avery’s request: spinach, ricotta and pro­sciutto). Plus a win­ter fruits tart. I am ter­ri­bly, ter­ri­bly excited. Reports to follow.

We are get­ting excited, on this side of the Atlantic, for our trip “home” for Christ­mas in Con­necti­cut. Added to our hol­i­day plans is a long-planned trip to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., for a hard-won behind-the-scenes tour of pri­vate bits of the White House. John’s mom feels very strongly that Avery needs a shoring up of her Amer­i­can roots, and that the best way to accom­plish this (or at least one way) is a visit to the nation’s cap­i­tal. This should be a thrill. Avery’s first response to this news was to con­ju­gate the word “Obama” into full-on Latin, so that “I Obama, You Obama, We Obama,” and so on. And they say Latin is a dead lan­guage. But since our tour is orga­nized by a major Repub­li­can much beloved by all of us, we’ll wait for the Obama chant till Jan­u­ary 21st. D.C., here we come.

It turns out the credit crunch isn’t all bad: it’s con­vinced the great Rich­mond restau­rant Peter­sham Nurs­eries to offer a shock­ingly rea­son­able prix fixe lunch. I would never have thought of going, so famously pricey is this brain­child of Aus­tralian import Skye Gyn­gell, but my jour­nal­ist friend Louise emailed, “They’re hav­ing a Christ­mas bazaar in the nurs­eries and even if we can’t afford lunch, we can get a cup of soup in the cafe and wan­der around.” Our dear friend Sam was in from Bath to spend the day with us, so a short tube ride it was, and Louise picked us up from the sta­tion and took us on a quick tour of Richmond’s hid­den trea­sures, among them a trip through the enor­mous Park. Rather unnerv­ing was a sign announc­ing a deer cull, which although undoubt­edly nec­es­sary, made me hope there wouldn’t be veni­son on the Peter­sham menu, given my recent squeamish-making encounter with that too-red meat.

Upon arrival at the restau­rant we decided we’d take a look at the sam­ple menus just to make our­selves mis­er­able, and lo and behold, prix fixe. Three courses, 27 pounds. Done. Min­utes later we were sam­pling paper-thin square ravi­oli filled with vel­vety pump­kin and flecks of fried sage, in a sauce that was described as “sage and but­ter,” but my good­ness, that but­ter had under­gone the most reli­gious of clar­i­fi­ca­tion because it was all but trans­par­ent, with just the essen­tial fla­vor of but­ter. Magic. Sam went for grilled squid with chorizo (a word our dear tutor Orlando appar­ently hates to say, as I feel about “moist”), padron pep­pers and a paprika aioli. I am no fan of squid, but we all shared and shared alike and I will say that if I were to like squid, it would be in that dish. Not a hint of rub­ber, very chewy and dense and charred to perfection.

Then it was onto baked ricotta for me, a too-generous wedge of it with fresh thyme and mar­jo­ram, and topped with an olive and tomato crush (this seems to be a new and to me annoy­ing foodie term: every­thing lately that isn’t a foam is a crush when to me it is a sauce, pure and sim­ple, or since mine was room-temperature, per­haps a salsa?) and what was described as a “win­ter salad.” Sam diag­nosed lemon mint, and I could iden­tify beet leaves, but beyond that it was purely fresh and sim­ple and not drenched in dress­ing, just enough of a gar­licky vinai­grette. Sam and Louise both had a monk­fish curry with coconut milk (very lit­tle, which made the curry pleas­ingly light and sub­tle) and kaf­fir lime leaves and bhatura. What, you ask, is bhatura? So did I. It’s a fried Indian bread, in this case thin and slightly crisp, topped delight­fully with fen­nel seed.

As you know, I do not grav­i­tate to sweet things, but it was a three-course lunch, so sweet things came. We ordered one of every­thing and shared. Hazel­nut ice cream served clev­erly in one of those gilded and painted short glasses that Indi­ans drink tea from, and choco­late mousse with a very gin­gery caramel sauce, and a dis­ap­point­ingly ordi­nary apple gal­let with creme fraiche. To my essen­tially tidy mind, apples need to be peeled or not peeled, but not both in one dish. It’s dis­con­cert­ing and looks like some­one wasn’t pay­ing atten­tion. As well, the creme fraiche was just that: a rather messy blob of pure creme fraiche. A sprin­kling of vanilla bean or cin­na­mon would have added a note of thought­ful­ness. Small complaints.

It’s a treat to find one­self in a restau­rant offer­ing only eight dishes, and among them no fewer than five ingre­di­ents I had to look up in a food ency­clo­pe­dia to know what they were. I still don’t know exactly what sort of cheese is “caprini fres­chi,” so please enlighten me if you do. Farro? It turns out to be the sort of mother of all grains, and I wish I knew what it was doing with a beef fil­let, but none of us ordered it, dash it all. Far­i­nata? A sort of pizza-like Ital­ian pancake.

A funny aside about ingre­di­ents, pre­ten­tious and oth­er­wise: Sam has been help­ing out a rather famous chef and food writer, test­ing recipes and such, and he had lots of juicy sto­ries to tell, in his inim­itable Sam man­ner: wickedly teas­ing, very much in the Eng­lish taking-the-piss tra­di­tion. But he’s harder on him­self than any­one else. “She asked me, ‘could you fetch harissa for me, Sam?” and I won­dered if that was her child, need­ing to be col­lected from school. It’s tomato paste.”

All in all a gor­geous, lux­u­ri­ous meal. We talked over and over each other, rem­i­nisc­ing about our insane writ­ing course, com­par­ing notes on the feed­back we’ve got from our erst­while tutors and from each other. I’ve hit a wall, how­ever, when it comes to my writ­ing (of course I except my dear blog from this; this isn’t writ­ing, really, it’s con­ver­sa­tion). The wall is due, I fear, to too much read­ing of other people’s work. This over­ex­po­sure hits with a dou­ble whammy: it makes me want to write like these other peo­ple, and con­vinces me that I can’t write any­thing near as good as their work. This is a bad sit­u­a­tion. There is some­thing almost mys­ti­cal about the pub­lished word any­way: work takes on an aura, deserved or not, of qual­ity when it’s between the cov­ers of a book, while mine lan­guishes on a com­puter screen, or even worse, trapped within my shad­owy brain. So I’m tak­ing a bit of a break from my chap­ters right now, to try to see with some per­spec­tive the gap between what I want to accom­plish and what I’ve actu­ally done.

The same conun­drum occurs with cook­ing, actu­ally. I read too many recipes, have too fine a lunch out, and come home feel­ing that I can­not myself pro­duce any food of great inter­est. It’s a hell of a lot eas­ier to cook than to write, how­ever, so I can dis­pel my fears on that level pretty easily.

Sea Bass with a Polenta Crust
(serves four)

4 sea bass fil­lets
1/2 cup polenta (yel­low corn­meal)
2 tsps Pen­zeys Fox Point Sea­son­ing
dash gar­lic pow­der
dash olive oil

Trim and rinse and de-bone the fil­lets if your child is extremely finicky about fish issues, as mine is. One bone will put her off the entire dish and I can’t say I blame her. Mix the polenta and sea­son­ings in a small bag and shake the fil­lets in it till thor­oughly coated with the mix­ture. In a heavy, non­stick skil­let, heat the oil till very hot and place the fil­lets in, skin side down. Fry till skin is crisp, about two or three min­utes. Turn over gen­tly and fry for another minute and serve imme­di­ately with:

Cous­cous with Savoy Cab­bage and Gar­lic
(serves four)

1 cup cous­cous
1 1/4 cup hot chicken stock
1 tbsp but­ter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small head, or about 2 cups finely chopped Savoy cab­bage
4 cloves gar­lic, minced

Cous­cous makes me laugh because it pre­pares itself right before your eyes. Place the dry cous­cous in a bowl that can accom­mo­date twice its bulk. Add the hot stock and watch. Just a few min­utes and you can fluff it with a fork and stir in the butter.

Heat the olive oil in a skil­let or saucepan and saute the Savoy cab­bage and gar­lic till soft. I know it may look like too much oil, but this is essen­tially the only dress­ing the cous­cous will have. Mix the cab­bage and all the oil with the cous­cous and fluff well. Lovely and so light.

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Avery didn’t rave about the cous­cous and cab­bage but she ate it. Her ver­dict was “I’ll eat it if you give it to me, but I prob­a­bly won’t ask for it.” Fair enough.

Lis­ten, we’re dash­ing off to see Ralph Fiennes (one of my orig­i­nal crushes, but I don’t think he ever knew) in Oedi­pus. Avery keeps scream­ing at me to pro­nounce it with a long “E.” “My act­ing teacher AND my drama coach can’t be wrong!” she says, but I’m stick­ing to my Amer­i­can roots. Ralph won’t mind, and I DO know that’s with a long “A” and no “L.” Good­ness, the­atre is com­pli­cated these days.