my love affair with Richard Corrigan

Isn’t this pho­to­graph won­der­ful? I com­plete­ly for­got, in my zeal to tell you about Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to describe our most won­der­ful expe­ri­ence of all: the self-pho­tog­ra­phy project at the Cor­co­ran Gallery! An artist called Mark van S has ini­ti­at­ed a ridicu­lous­ly sim­ple inter­ac­tive project: he’s set up a cam­era against a white screen, and vis­i­tors can pho­to­graph them­selves with a lit­tle remote but­ton, and the pho­tographs are shown imme­di­ate­ly on an enor­mous screen in the muse­um lob­by, then acces­sioned onto a com­put­er sys­tem. It’s open until Jan­u­ary 25, and I can­not tell you how much we enjoyed it! Sil­ly expres­sions, John held up his shoe, then Avery hor­i­zon­tal, then Avery’s back of head. A love­ly, spon­ta­neous way to express your­self. Go! Do it.

Well, as for my sub­ject line, I exag­ger­ate as usu­al. It’s a love affair only in my book­shelf, on my coun­ter­top, in my oven. Richard Cor­ri­g­an is a divine­ly Irish Irish­man, and a divine cook, and what’s more, he can write a mean cook­book with recipes that actu­al­ly WORK. Which is no easy task, as I can tell you try­ing to do the same myself (with­out the Irish­ness or the divinity).

But first, how on earth has near­ly a week gone by with­out my speak­ing to you? Oh, no no, I’m being too hard on myself: it’s only since Mon­day, the last day of Avery’s school hol­i­day. And would you believe, that very day I got an email from some­one ask­ing about our plans for HALF-TERM?? That’s right, she has anoth­er week off in just a MONTH. Lord have mercy.

Trag­i­cal­ly the most mem­o­rable event of our week was the unbear­ably sad memo­r­i­al, yes­ter­day, to the daugh­ter of friends, a child who went to school with Avery and died of a brain tumor after a year of suf­fer­ing. It seemed unbe­liev­able to be gath­ered, yes­ter­day morn­ing, in the same church where count­less Spring Con­certs, Christ­mas Fes­ti­vals and Har­vest Thanks­giv­ings had been sung with Avery’s school, all faces alight with smiles and pride and indul­gent love. Yes­ter­day all was dark­ness, to me. So much black cloth­ing, so many tears and tis­sues. Heart­break­ing recita­tions and read­ings and singing from the child’s best friends, her head­mistress­es, fam­i­ly. Final­ly fin­ished and I could go home to wait until time to col­lect Avery at school, hold her tight, appre­ci­ate her whinge­ing about home­work, rejoice in her annoy­ing requests for per­mis­sions to be signed, bathing cos­tumes found. The joy in feed­ing her din­ner, watch­ing her talk with her father, chase the shy cats.

And we were invit­ed next door to meet our new neigh­bors: two tiny black kit­tens! Indis­tin­guish­able, one boy, one girl, Mid­night and Smokey. I think we will be fre­quent visitors.

And per­haps the sin­gle fun­ni­est moment of all of John’s ongo­ing job cri­sis. I told Avery this after­noon that he’d spent all day on the phone with his “erst­while part­ners.” “What does erst­while mean?” Avery’s friend Emi­ly asked ingen­u­ous­ly. “Used to be,” I said suc­cinct­ly, but Avery added, “Well, they went from ersatz part­ners to erst­while rather quick­ly.” God love her education.

No, the sin­gle fun­ni­est moment for a long LONG time came when Avery burst out of school to ask us if we’d heard of the lat­est Ben and Jer­ry’s fla­vor of ice cream, “Yes Pecan.” That is what makes Amer­i­ca great, and may we have MORE of it in the com­ing four years.

Today bat­tling my stu­pid cough once more, which seems to come and go, some days lead­ing me to believe cock­i­ly that I’m through, and then I am com­plete­ly wind­ed by run­ning up and down five flights of stairs to do laun­dry. Either I have some dread dis­ease or… I don’t. Either way, it’s mak­ing it a bit of a chore to host 30 ladies tomor­row after­noon from… Lost Prop­er­ty. Yes, lunch tomor­row will be all of us dis­cussing every­thing under the sun from pol­i­tics to chil­drea­r­ing to art his­to­ry to cater­ing to… what­ev­er these mind-bend­ing­ly impres­sive vol­un­teers from Avery’s school can get their minds up to. And my con­tri­bu­tion? Ah, here’s where Richard Cor­ri­g­an comes in. It’s my irre­place­ably lux­u­ri­ous, ridicu­lous­ly caloric, every-bite-counts crab tart. Just you wait, Lost Property.

Crab Tart with Scal­lions and Goats Cheese
(serves 12)

175 grams plain flour
75 grams corn­flour (corn­starch)
1 tsp salt
120 grams cold butter
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
2 eggs, beaten
sprin­kles cold water

250 grams white crabmeat
250 grams goats cheese
1 bunch scal­lion, minced
600 ml dou­ble cream
6 eggs, beaten
salt and pepper
1 egg, beaten

Make the pas­try by mix­ing, in a food proces­sor, the flour, corn­flour, salt, but­ter (in lit­tle pieces, grad­u­al­ly), and thyme. Then add eggs and water to make a nice stiff dough and form into a ball. Wrap in cling­film and refrig­er­ate for at least 20 minutes.

Roll out pas­try to be at least 2 inch­es larg­er all round than the tart tin (21 cm diam­e­ter and 3 cm deep). Line the tin gen­tly with the pas­try, drap­ing the extra over the sides (do not trim yet). Line with foil and weight with beans and bake at 160C for 40 min­utes, then take out the foil and beans and check to see if the pas­try is dry. If not, bake again for 5 minutes.

Mean­while, beat the eggs with the cream and sea­son well. Beat the left­over egg and brush the baked pas­try crust with it, all over. Scat­ter the scal­lions and crab­meat over the bot­tom, then pour over the cream and eggs. Bake at 180C for 20 min­utes, then low­er the heat to 160C for anoth­er 40 min­utes. Leave tart to cool to room tem­per­a­ture before serving.

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You will roll over and beg like a dog when you have tast­ed this recipe. I have rephrased Richard’s (can I call him that? after all, I do love him) instruc­tions as I do not have his cook­book to hand right here. It’s called “The Clat­ter of Forks and Spoons” and is a delight to read, but I can tell you now it is also a COOK­BOOK. Bless his lit­tle Irish heart, and may my Lost Prop­er­ty Ladies enjoy the fruits of my labors.