Many of you will be famil­iar with the annual tus­sle between my beloved and me. As Feb­ru­ary 27 approaches, my daily query, “What are you in the mood for, for din­ner?” gets the response more and more fre­quently, “Tuna casse­role.” I know what you’re think­ing. Some­thing unprint­able, prob­a­bly. I myself am devoted to tuna. It’s as likely as not to find me eat­ing tuna salad — with pine nuts, lemon zest, sun­flower seeds, chick peas, loads of cel­ery — three times a week for lunch. But HOT tuna? No. Tuna steaks, per­haps. But to open a can of tuna and make it HOT? It’s tan­ta­mount to cook­ing cat food. But every Feb­ru­ary, the topic comes up.

It’s a cher­ished child­hood clas­sic for John (thanks, Rose­mary!). And every once in awhile over the past 20 years or so I have caved. My sis­ter patiently pro­vided the recipe one year, and it was com­pletely suc­cess­ful, in that it was com­pletely repul­sive. Hot tuna! Then there was the year that I agreed silently to make it as a sur­prise… to greet him when he returned from a long busi­ness trip on his birth­day… and the sur­prise was sup­planted by an even more impor­tant one: I found out I was expect­ing Avery. On his birth­day! On that occa­sion we were so over­come that I never thought to cook the noo­dles ahead of bak­ing the casse­role, and every SNICK of liq­uid from the tuna and the canned mush­room soup (I know, I know) was absorbed by them and the con­sis­tency of the whole dish some­where between wet woolen socks and dry­ing clay. You can imag­ine. Only also SMELLY.

Well, today I gave in once more. Would you believe there’s a video on how to make tuna casse­role? I really think you should watch it, if only for the sound effects: wait till the end when the cook tips the nox­ious mix­ture into the bak­ing dish. The suck­ing sound is like some primeval mud let­ting go a trea­sured fos­sil, while it was still wet and alive.

So be it.

He is my trea­sured hus­band, albeit with highly ques­tion­able taste buds. He ate fully half the fin­ished dish for lunch, which, as one of my best friends pointed out, “solves half of THAT prob­lem.” He can eat the other half for lunch tomor­row. And the debate is over for another year. Happy Birth­day, my dear.

I’ve been work­ing so hard on my book! Really. Increas­ingly more of every day is spent doing things to try to pro­duce really good writ­ing to pack, some­day, between two cov­ers and have as a real book. Some of these tasks are a bit tedious, like mak­ing a huge batch of pesto when I didn’t really want any, in order to be able to say with all con­vic­tion how much my alleged recipe would pro­duce! I can’t really say it will feed four as a pasta sauce for a starter if I haven’t a clue how many it will feed since I use it only as a salad gar­nish. But as you can see, even just assem­bling the ingre­di­ents on the kitchen counter is pretty much cre­at­ing a still life, and it was actu­ally fun to mea­sure and taste for con­sis­tency, and come up with a real-live recipe for pesto that does what it says on the tin: feeds four as a starter. So here you go.

Pesto
(serves four as sauce for starter with pasta)

4 cups loosely packed whole fresh basil leaves
¾ cup extra vir­gin olive oil
juice ½ lemon
3 tbsps pine nuts
3 tbsps grated pecorino or Parme­san cheese
2 cloves gar­lic, roughly chopped
pinch sea salt to taste

Place all ingre­di­ents in food proces­sor and blend till smooth, tak­ing care to scrape the pesto away from the sides of the proces­sor to incor­po­rate all bits.

This pesto is equally good as a dress­ing for tomato salad with moz­zarella, or driz­zled over a white fish like cod, sea bream, sea bass or lemon sole. Try adding a spoon­ful to any vinai­grette. It is lovely treated like a salsa verde and served along­side grilled pork, beef or lamb. Stir some into mashed pota­toes for the side dish of your life.

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I cer­tainly don’t want to give the impres­sion that my other recipes are faked by any means, but every once in awhile I say air­ily that a dish will serve four, when all I can really say is that three of us hun­gry fam­ily mem­bers downed it all with sec­onds, so I imag­ine it will serve four! I should really be a bit more accu­rate. I want you to trust me after all!

The idea of think­ing about how many a given dish will feed is so beyond the ken of the chef at whose restau­rant I ate on Mon­day that it makes me laugh to think we both “cook.” I was taken, by a friend from my Devon food writ­ing course, to Mar­cus Ware­ing at the Berke­ley Hotel in Knightsbridge.

There are two kinds of peo­ple in the world, I think (I know I often say this). There are peo­ple who absolutely swoon at food that has been taken apart, rearranged, pressed, tri­an­gu­lated, stacked and foamed. And then there are peo­ple who, when pre­sented with food like this, want to stab the som­me­lier with a steak knife and run for the near­est fryup. I am, unusu­ally for me, some­where in between. As a per­son who truly loves to cook, and who rec­og­nizes her­self for what she is: a pretty depend­able, some­times inno­v­a­tive cook who can be counted on to feed fam­ily and friends, I truly admire finesse and del­i­cacy of touch. I myself can never make a plate of food look beau­ti­ful. My plates look at best… approach­able. So I do like to eat restau­rant food that’s beau­ti­fully pre­sented, that rep­re­sents tech­niques I could never pull off myself.

Before I describe the food, I must say also that while I know it is my own inse­cu­rity, con­stantly hov­er­ing wait­staff that out­num­ber the peo­ple at my table (two) make me ner­vous. Granted, I was with a food critic and per­haps the wait­staff were that much more atten­tive. But. There was a cham­pagne waiter, a water waiter, a bread waiter, a take-your-order waiter, a cheese waiter and a dessert waiter. Dif­fer­ent peo­ple! My com­pan­ion Roger asked sotto voce, “Do you have ANY idea what accent that was?” when one of them sidled away bear­ing aloft what­ever his offer­ing had been. A sort of Intim­i­dat­ing Waiter Esperanto, hushed and polite to the point that I couldn’t under­stand any of what he said and resorted to look­ing at what he held to imag­ine what was being asked of me. And, another first for me: I have never had my nap­kin replaced halfway through a meal. I don’t mean, replaced newly-folded on my chair if I went to the ladies’ room. I mean replaced with a fresh nap­kin, just before the cheese course. Why? I haven’t a clue. I really wasn’t that messy. AND the nap­kins were han­dled with sil­ver tongs. I am not mak­ing this up.

I should make the point right now that I had a lovely time. For one thing, my com­pan­ion is a man of enor­mous sophis­ti­ca­tion, a world-traveller beyond any I have ever known (he’s writ­ing a travel guide to Fin­land while plan­ning his year in Nepal but first would have to spend the day after we were together in Morocco, just for exam­ple). Roger is soft-spoken, dif­fi­dent, hes­i­tant to put him­self for­ward; his con­ver­sa­tion is punc­tu­ated by long pauses while he gazes some­where just beyond me, see­ing Lord only knows what, in his mind’s eye. He needs a lot of time to react to every­thing: to see­ing each other after months of not, to digest a story I tell about Avery’s school, to decide what he thinks about the main course, to react to my ques­tions about his PhD. He is one of the least hur­ried peo­ple I have ever met, and every word is con­sid­ered. I guess, when I think about it, he is truly gen­uine, and unconcocted.

And we both laughed at the same things over lunch. Tiny, tiny tri­an­gles of some crunchy things sur­round­ing a layer of foie gras made us laugh a bit because… what on earth were they? They lay on an excla­ma­tion point of quince jelly, that was dis­cern­able in the waiter’s hushed mono­logue. “What else did he say this was?” I hiss, and Roger smiles patiently. “No idea.” And since they were lit­tle amuse-bouches, a lit­tle heady offer­ing by the chef, there was no menu to fall back on. At this point it came back to me that Mar­cus Ware­ing was trained by and inspired by Gor­don Ram­say, another chef in whose estab­lish­ment I must have the menu beside me at all times. Any­thing could be any­thing! A tiny glass dish of hum­mous with absolutely NO tex­ture of chick­pea: it must have been passed through the finest of sieves to achieve such a vel­vety feel. And under­neath the tiny spoon­ful of hum­mous was a layer of per­fectly sea­soned roasted puree of gar­lic. Sublime.

Then another thing we did not order and so had to ask again exactly what it was: a tall, nar­row glass of hot sweet­corn veloute, topped with a blob of tar­ragon foam. Now, it is well doc­u­mented here that I am no fan of foam. The phe­nom­e­non appeared at about the same time as boys’ trousers hang­ing below the waist­band of their under­wear, and while I can see they arise out of dif­fer­ent moti­va­tions, the two trends are equally unpalat­able to me and can both dis­ap­pear any time they like. This tar­ragon foam was, though, more of a mousse than a foam and as such, and so lovely in anise-ish fla­vor, was accept­able. “Drink it like you would a cap­puc­cino,” our unnamed-starter waiter purred, and thus instructed, we did. Delight­ful and mys­te­ri­ous. As far from my own sweet­corn soup as could be, and yet con­tain­ing the same ingredient.

For the starter we each had a dish of nearly (only nearly) laugh­able char­ac­ter: an enor­mous white shal­low bowl appeared at each of our places stud­ded with sev­eral small spoons­ful of tomato-lobster com­pote, and three tiny gnoc­chi made of ricotta and truf­fle. We looked down at this most Lil­liput­ian of offer­ings and nearly began to snicker, when two wait­ers appeared with lit­tle sil­ver tureens and poured ambrosial lan­gous­tine bisque over all. And that, my friends, is heaven in a soup bowl.

For my main I had sea bass (the most del­i­cately cooked imag­in­able; I even ate the skin and I never do that), on a bed of sur­pris­ingly for­get­table broc­coli flo­rets, but accom­pa­nied by a per­fect potato puree, served in a tiny cop­per saucepan at my place. Roger indulged in pork belly and was under­whelmed. “The pork belly we made on our cook­ing day in Devon was bet­ter,” he said, and I was obliged to feel his fore­head. He seemed fever-free, so I tasted a bit and I could not agree: this dish was but­tery soft, with a per­fect piece of crack­ling on top. Sim­ply superb. I decided he was invest­ing the Devon pork with mem­o­ries of friend­ship, not a bad qual­ity in a companion.

Then the cheese board! Hon­estly, there was a fro­magier, or what­ever the cheese equiv­a­lent of a wine expert might be called. A dar­ling man whose sole job at Mar­cus Ware­ing is to wheel out a ginor­mous trol­ley bear­ing per­haps 40 cheeses, and to describe them each lov­ingly, as one would boast about a baby’s first checkup. There were goats, triple cremes, blues, ched­dars. We chose one of each and they were served in per­fectly pro­por­tioned, del­i­cately arranged slices, as the spokes of a wheel, on a shared plate. A sil­ver dish of every cracker known to man was placed before us, with a dar­ling lit­tle slid­ing lid that swung away to reveal its trea­sures. Really my most favorite piece of kit from the lunch, that cracker dish.

Heav­enly. I could not stop for dessert because I had to leave this shangri-la (escap­ing a dif­fer­ent scary waiter at every step) to pick up Avery at school. A truf­fle waiter (I for­got about that one until now!) came by with an enor­mous tiered uten­sil con­tain­ing at least six dif­fer­ent vari­eties of filled choco­lates. Peanut but­ter and jelly! “Madame will have peanut but­ter and jelly,” Roger said sweetly, then ate it him­self, thank good­ness. And may I say: there is some­thing jolly about hav­ing fin­ished a meal and sim­ply stand­ing up and leav­ing. “Our soci­ety has really got some­where when it pays peo­ple to go eat fancy food and tell other peo­ple what it’s like,” Roger said, but I was only glad that soci­ety also pays for some­one to go along and chat.

We parted at the lux­u­ri­ous cor­ner of Wilton Place and Knights­bridge, so posh that you (well, I) imme­di­ately feel under­dressed (of course I wore all black, hop­ing to dis­ap­pear). It was a lovely after­noon on many lev­els: won­der­ful com­pany (he kissed me into a taxi and was imme­di­ately claimed by his Black­berry and what­ever roman­tic assig­na­tion came next: Cairo? the Suez Canal?), a chance to be in an atmos­phere of osten­ta­tious lux­ury that almost never comes my way, and to eat food that is so beyond my level of capa­bil­ity that it’s like tak­ing a first-year sculp­ture stu­dent to the Uffizi and say­ing, “So, how does that make you feel?”

I try to ana­lyze exactly how the after­noon made me feel. Silly priv­i­leged, to eat such food (two Miche­lin stars!) and not even know how much it cost (no prices on my menu). A lit­tle silly to care, to be hon­est, about such poncy food. But also quite in awe of refined achieve­ment on that scale no mat­ter the sub­ject mat­ter. Enjoy­ing the fruits of labor from some­one at the top of THE game is a treat. But… I must tell you I was long­ing for a piece of poached salmon and a pile of mash by dinnertime.

What HAVE I been doing with myself since Fri­day? Well, the first report is that War Horse, at the Olivier The­atre at the National through March (and thence to the New Lon­don the­atre in the West End) is superb. Incom­pa­ra­ble, and I don’t use that word lightly.

Of course going to this play with a daugh­ter who is not only horse-crazy but extremely horse-savvy could have back­fired badly. One wrong step with the enor­mous and intim­i­dat­ing horse “pup­pets” might have been tol­er­ated, but not more than one. And Avery assured us from the very first move­ments of the gawky, awk­ward but touch­ing foal at the begin­ning, right through to the tear­ful end with the war-ravaged ani­mal sur­rounded by his human co-stars, we were all quite con­vinced that there were liv­ing horses inside those crea­tures. A sweet plot, designed to teach chil­dren (and well, me too) the lessons of World War I and in fact about the futil­ity of any war, well-presented and just fright­en­ing enough to be effec­tive. Adult lan­guage and atti­tudes were han­dled with sub­tlety and humor, and the slightly off, stub­bornly loyal teenage lead… sim­ply a mas­sive tal­ent. It is his first pro­fes­sional engage­ment! What a phenomenon.

Avery was solidly inspired to work even harder at her act­ing classes. In fact, she has an audi­tion tomor­row for some­thing relat­ing to an emu (“a story with a man and his really big bird,” the agent said blithely on the tele­phone to me today).

Sat­ur­day was the last lazy day of Avery’s half-term (which seemed to fall about a day and a sneeze after Christ­mas, to be hon­est). John shot his wad at brunch, wolf­ing eggs Bene­dict at the local cafe, when our gor­geous neigh­bor Selva stopped by our table to say he was on his way to the butcher. “Wild boar tonight, for guests: I’ll let you know if it’s all right.” “Want to stop by the butcher our­selves?” I asked John when he’d strolled away. “Wild boar? I’m game,” he said. Badaboom.

By mid-afternoon Avery and I were frus­trated by John’s enforced immo­bil­ity with his ankle (he finally went to the doc­tor yes­ter­day, incon­clu­sive) and so we ended up at West­field, shop­ping for his birth­day which will be Fri­day. She is such fun to hang around with: puns and silly jokes, sto­ries about her friends and school, mus­ings about what I ought to write my next chap­ter about. Her use of lan­guage is a joy: I nearly for­got to write down the lat­est hilar­i­ous exam­ple, when we were at the Gothic Tem­ple in Octo­ber. We all jumped down from a stone wall to cross the sort of ditch so com­mon in the grounds of Eng­lish coun­try houses, called a “ha-ha.” Avery looked up and down the length of it and said, dead­pan, “Let’s ditch this ha-ha.”

Sun­day she spent at the sta­ble and we adults repaired to Annie and Keith’s house up the street, bear­ing my “Every­thing Bean Salad,” and my new sweet­corn and rocket soup, to be eaten right along with their son Fred’s array of home­made piz­zas. Fred took a much-needed break from his French essays to take orders for top­pings. “Chorizo? Moz­zarella? Olives?” We were all very dull and said “Yes, please” to every­thing. Keith demon­strated his recipe for the delight­ful crisp salty cayenne-y pas­try sliv­ers he’d brought to our house a cou­ple of weeks ago: I watched and learned, and envied him his pas­try thingy on the mixer machine. My pas­try thingy is my hands, sadly.

Annie ran around call­ing doc­tors for John’s ankle, stop­ping then to dis­cuss films we all have to see… I rec­om­mended “La Dou­ble Vie de Veronique,” and Annie waxed lyri­cal about “The Tal­ented Mr Rip­ley.” Then we moved on to “Desert Island Discs.” I can never think of ANY music I would pre­fer over any other, on a desert island or any­where else: my brain sim­ply freezes up. When it came to the “what’s your lux­ury item”?” ques­tion, John dodged all the rest of it neatly by say­ing, “My iPod.” Next time I want to play their other favorite game: “Desert Island Dishes.” Mashed pota­toes, anyone?

We ate and ate and ate. And talked, about par­ent­hood, our child­hoods, the girls’ future edu­ca­tions, swap­ping sto­ries of the funny things they do and say as they tread this space between lit­tle girl­hood and teenage­dom. If they go on as they have begun, we’ll be all right.

Finally Keith took the pas­try for his crispy thingys out of the fridge, and as you can see, went right through the assem­bly of them for my edu­ca­tion. I would always rather learn pastry-making for the first time by watch­ing some­one who knows how. That way I can ask all my gorm­less ques­tions and see it done by the mas­ter. He is the least bossy but most com­pe­tent of teach­ers and, most impor­tant, not mean to me when I don’t under­stand. There­fore I came away with a supremely read­able, fol­low­able recipe, which I offer to you. I have retained his mea­sure­ments, and his style, because… I like him, and I LOVE his ref­er­ence to my sexy new ceramic rolling pin, a birth­day gift from my beloved.

Keith’s Crispy Salty Pas­try Treats
(Makes about 25)

250g plain flour + extra for dust­ing
1 tsp bak­ing pow­der
115 ml cold water
25 ml olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne pep­per
1/4 tsp black pep­per
coarse sea salt for sprinkling.

1) In a large bowl (or in the mixer using the dough hook) mix together all the ingre­di­ents except the sea salt to form a soft dough. You might need to add a lit­tle more water. work it until it becomes firmer, wrap in cling film and put to rest in the fridge for an hour.
2) Heat the oven to 220c/gas mk 7.
3) Turn dough out onto clean sur­face & have bowl of flour ready for dust­ing ( You’ll use quite a bit!) Cut off wal­nut size pieces of the dough. Roll out each piece with your NEW rolling pin until they are paper thin and like long wide cat’s tongues, bout 20 cm long
4) place crack­ers on a bak­ing tray lined with bak­ing parch­ment or one of those super non stick lin­ers. Brush with plenty of olive oil and sprin­kle with sea salt. Bake for about 6 mins until crisp and golden.

I did them [Keith says] in batches: ie, I would roll out 3 and bake them, and whilst they were bak­ing roll out the next 3, and when the first batch were ready I would remove them from the oven onto a wire rack and place the next 3 on the bak­ing sheet, brush with oil & salt etc etc.

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I must warn you that these lit­tle crea­tures are ADDIC­TIVE. If you are lucky enough to have any left when your guests leave, they are the most sub­lime car­ri­ers for hum­mous, a creamy goats cheese, a thin slice of pate. I imag­ined that one could sprin­kle on gar­lic gran­ules, or grated pecorino cheese, or more cayenne to make them really spicy. But Keith sprin­kled on black mus­tard seeds and they were lovely, as were the plain salty ones. Gor­geous. Thank you, my friend.

There is, I must digress, some­thing heroic and divine about a man who spends his work­ing week in the city, in this envi­ron­ment a quite back­break­ing and wor­ri­some task, and then comes home to spend his Sun­day teach­ing a friend to make pas­try treats. Equally his wife, reach­ing into her imag­i­na­tion for films for me, her Rolodex for a doc­tor for my hus­band, her love for her kids in her advice to Fred (between pizza bites) on his essay on Richard III… how lucky we are to have them up the street, to be fed by their gor­geous son, have Avery spend the after­noon with their delight­ful horsey first daugh­ter, and thence to school with sweet Emily, all week long. That fam­ily is a mir­a­cle. And yet quite down to earth! I’ll tell you, Annie’s plan­ning to give up “fight­ing with Emily” for Lent.

Let’s see, some­how this Sun­day lunch feast was not too much for us to be quite, quite hun­gry by din­ner time, and then it was but the work of a moment to con­coct, in that spon­ta­neous and inspired way that ALMOST NEVER vis­its me, the best potato salad ever.

Potato Salad with Fried Pancetta, Lemon Grass and Goat’s Cheese Dress­ing
(serves four as a side dish)

1 lb small waxy pota­toes, skin on (I like Baby Char­lotte)
3 stalks cel­ery, diced
1 large red onion, diced
4 oz pancetta, cut in cubes
1 stalk lemon grass, outer leaves removed, minced

dress­ing:
1/4 cup goat’s cheese
2 tbsps sin­gle cream
dash red chili flakes
juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp mayonnaise

Steam the pota­toes till just ten­der, per­haps 15 min­utes. Mean­while, fry the pancetta cubes in a lit­tle skil­let until crisp and brown. Drain on paper towel. Remove pota­toes from steamer, drain and quar­ter, place in a large bowl. Add the other salad ingre­di­ents and toss. Shake up dress­ing ingre­di­ents in a jar with a lid, then pour over and serve immediately.

I needed to pre­pare this ahead of time and come home to it, so I kept the pancetta in a lit­tle uncov­ered bowl (on a high shelf away from cats!) so it would stay crisp. Do not refrig­er­ate the pancetta if you need to do this, as it will become quite soggy and with a tex­ture like the clammy paper towel you drained it on.

When ready to serve, mix every­thing well. Lovely, fresh, unusual.

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Mon­day I was taken to a blowout lunch at a two-Michelin-starred restau­rant (a first for me!) by a an MI5 agent mas­querad­ing as a food writer… but more on that later. Just for now, make your­self a bowl of potato salad and order your tick­ets for “War Horse.” You’ll thank me.

How much gar­lic can one fam­ily of three eat on a Thurs­day evening shortly before the spring sol­stice? I’m sure there is a for­mula for work­ing this sort of thing out, but I’ll make it easy for you. A LOT. Suf­fice to say, the con­tents of this lovely dish you see before you? Gone, along with almost an entire baguette and a whole baked chicken. I’ll explain.

Some­times my meat-veg-starch plate arrange­ment at din­ner gets me down. How many dif­fer­ent ways can you present a potato, espe­cially when a baked one has been banned from your din­ner table because your poor child was forced to eat one every day of her life at school for a year? And rice isn’t very pop­u­lar in my house either, while cous­cous gets eaten but with a marked lack of enthu­si­asm. Then yes­ter­day, while idly leaf­ing through Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Sto­ries (another book I would marry if I were sin­gle), I came across this gem (I’ve adapted it slightly for quantities):

Baked Gar­lic With Creamed Goat’s Cheese
(how many it serves is entirely down to you and your fel­low din­ers: I counted on one head of gar­lic per per­son and it was about right)

4 heads gar­lic
4 tbsps olive oil
4 thyme sprigs
1 rose­mary sprig
4 bay leaves
1 lemon cut into 6 wedges
salt and pepper

For the creamed goat’s cheese

6 oz goat’s cheese (a nice sim­ple one with­out rind or ash)
3 oz dou­ble cream
1/2 tsp dried chili flakes
salt

Pre­heat oven to 400F, 200C. Slice the tops off the gar­lic heads about a quar­ter of the way down. Pack into an oven­proof dish in one layer. Driz­zle over the olive oil and tuck the herbs and lemon around the heads, giv­ing a squeeze of each of the lemon wedges as you do so. Sea­son with salt and pep­per. Place in oven and leave there for 10 min­utes, then turn heat down to 250F, 170C for another 50 min­utes. When the gar­lic comes out of the oven, tip the dish so you can spoon the now lus­ciously fla­vored oil over the heads. Set aside to cool slightly.

Mean­while, cream the goat’s cheese with the cream, add the chili flakes and salt and stir well till mixed thoroughly.

To eat, serve with nice chunks of baguette. Dig into the heads of gar­lic with a lit­tle fork or spoon and spread the gar­lic onto the baguette, top­ping with the goat’s cheese mixture.

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Now, two things stand out as being imper­a­tive truths about this dish: you and your guests have to be potty about gar­lic, and you ALL have to eat it. I couldn’t tell if we stunk to high heaven, just because of this last pre­cau­tion. The tex­ture of the gar­lic is soft and silky, the fla­vor is gen­tle and per­me­ated with the heady thyme and rose­mary, and the lemon adds a bit of bite. Some­how the com­bi­na­tion, along with the seri­ously self-indulgent creamy cheese, is heaven.

With this we had one of my favorite chicken dishes, invented by my dear mother in a rare dis­play of culi­nary interest:

Mama Nel’s Chicken
(serves 4)

1 whole chicken, cut into legs, breasts and wings
4 tbsps flour
1 tsp each: thyme, basil, gar­lic pow­der, paprika, lemon pep­per
1/3 cup veg­etable oil

I’ve become quite adept at what is called here “joint­ing” a chicken, sim­ply tak­ing a whole bird and cut­ting it up, partly because it is unbe­liev­ably inex­pen­sive to do this, and partly because unless you have a real butcher, you will not find chicken breasts on the bone with skin left on in this coun­try. Nor are your typ­i­cal super­mar­kets keen on whole legs, pre­fer­ring in gen­eral to sep­a­rate the thighs from the drum­sticks. I myself hate the look of a chicken drum­stick, feel­ing it has a Flint­stones look about it, a cave­man sort of desperation.

Now, in a recy­cled super­mar­ket plas­tic bag (I used to use Ziplock until I saw the ungreen error of my ways), mix the flour with the herbs, then shake the chicken pieces in this until nicely coated. I sup­pose you could get all Martha Stew­art and dip the pieces in egg or milk first, but my mother did not bother and so nor do I.

Line a 9x13 oven­proof dish with alu­minum foil (a great aid to cleanup) and pour in the veg­etable oil. Lay the chicken pieces skin side down and bake at 400F, 200C for half an hour, then turn the pieces over and bake for another half hour. Sim­plic­ity itself.

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If you’re being ter­ri­bly credit crunchy, you may toss the back and rib bones from your clever joint­ing into a stock­pot, throw in some car­rots, cel­ery and onion, sea­son it all well and cover with water, then sim­mer for a cou­ple of hours and voila: chicken soup.

I must dash: we are off to see War Horse, a play that has received almost unprece­dented fab­u­lous reviews, both before Christ­mas and in its cur­rent revival. Have some gar­lic, brush your teeth, and I’ll be back with a review…

Actu­ally I’m tak­ing con­tri­bu­tions under advise­ment: you have your mur­der of crows, your pom­pos­ity of pro­fes­sors, your cloud of bats and leap of leop­ards. But what do you call a very large gath­er­ing of rocket leaves?

These are, of course, known to Amer­i­cans as arugula, in which case I’m quite sure there’s an entirely dif­fer­ent col­lec­tive noun. An amal­ga­ma­tion of arugula? Not roman­tic enough.

In any case, imag­ine my cir­cum­stances. I invited 11 peo­ple for din­ner, fair enough, to con­clude with an enor­mous salad of rocket leaves, my absolute favorite green leaf and unprocur­able in Amer­ica, there­fore of great cachet dur­ing the 10 months of the year I live in Eng­land. It turned out only nine of my invited guests could come so already I had too much rocket, and THEN we turned out to be far too full after the dense and per­fect 72% dark choco­late tart brought by my guests… so no salad. Still the rocket lived in my fridge.

In these days of simul­ta­ne­ous credit crunch bud­getary con­sid­er­a­tions AND envi­ron­men­tal guilt over the tiny lit­tle draw­ings of air­planes on every pack­age of veg these days (“air freight!” the bags pro­claim), I sim­ply could not let the rocket lan­guish as I might have done in more care­less days. What was a girl to do?

Well, first I took a look in the other cor­ners of the fridge and found beet­root, goats cheese, and some lit­tle cubes of pancetta I bought in a mood of lazi­ness and hunger, and a lit­tle dish of home­made pesto. In the freezer were some lux­u­ri­ous whole tiger prawns. It was sim­plic­ity itself to buy some sup­ple­men­tary scal­lops and produce:

Warm Scal­lop and Prawn Salad with Beet­root and Rocket
(serves 4)

1 dozen frozen raw whole tiger prawns
1 bag rocket (about 2 cups loosely packed or about 70 grams)
1/2 cup pancetta, cubed
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp but­ter
2 dozen small scal­lops
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
3 medium beet­root, roasted and cubed
1 small log (about half a cup) goats cheese
1 tbsp pesto
1 tsp bal­samic vine­gar
juice of half a lemon

It’s an assem­bly job. Thaw the prawns in cold water and pat dry. Gird your loins and take the heads off the prawns, mak­ing sure to get the anten­nae as well. Scat­ter the rocket on a nice plat­ter. In a heavy skil­let, fry the pancetta till crisp, then set aside. Add the olive oil and but­ter to the skil­let and cook the prawns until thor­oughly pink, but not so long as to let them get tough. Remove from the skil­let and set aside. Turn up the heat under the skil­let and cook the scal­lops for about a minute on each side, till nicely browned, but again, not tough. Remove from skil­let and set aside. Now fry the gar­lic gen­tly, gen­tly, just till soft but not browned.

Throw the beet­root cubes onto the rocket, then crum­ble the goats cheese over. It’s all very pretty now, like the Ital­ian flag. Scat­ter over the scal­lops and prawns and pancetta, then whisk together the pesto, vine­gar and lemon juice and driz­zle it over all. Spoon up the gar­lic in its olive oil and but­ter bath and scat­ter it over top of all.

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

This salad was very sat­is­fy­ing and stim­u­lat­ing to eat. “There are too many ingre­di­ents, I can see that,” I said, wolf­ing down another mouth­ful, and John agreed. “But what would you leave out?” We couldn’t think of anything.

Well, that took care of one pack­age of the long-suffering green guys, but I had three more pack­ages to go. They spent another day in the fridge while I racked my brains for some­thing to do with them. Clearly I have too much time on my hands. “Don’t invent any­thing, Mummy!” Avery wailed. “Not just for the sake of invent­ing some­thing. Wait till you have a really GOOD idea.” And then it came to me.

Creamy Sweet­corn and Rocket Soup
(serves 4)

2 tbsps but­ter
4 cloves gar­lic, sliced
2 shal­lots, sliced
4 ears sweet­corn, ker­nels cut off
3 cups chicken stock
3 bags (about 6 cups loosely packed, or 200 grams total weight)
1/2 cup cream

Melt but­ter in heavy stock­pot and saute gar­lic and shal­lot just until soft, then add sweet­corn and cover with stock. Sim­mer high for about 10 min­utes, then add rocket and stir just to soften. You will be aston­ished at how it sim­ply dis­ap­pears. Blend with hand blender, stir in cream, and pass through a sieve to catch the corn ker­nelly bits (or not, if you like more of a potage than a smooth liq­uid). I find that the best way to get soup through a sieve is to put the stock­pot that is your des­ti­na­tion pot into the sink, pour the into it through the sieve, and then SHAKE the sieve gen­tly till the solids are left behind. It’s a bit messier than just stir­ring (hence the sink), but it’s much faster.

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

How to describe this soup? I am well known, I real­ize, for being inor­di­nately fond of any veg sim­mered with chicken stock and pureed with a hand blender. I could be made to eat almost any quan­tity of any veg­etable in this man­ner. But this soup… it boasts a very appeal­ing golden yel­low color flecked with the bright green rocket, and tastes much creamier than the scant amount of cream actu­ally in the soup would lead you to believe, and it’s unex­pect­edly SWEET. A sur­pris­ingly com­plex fla­vor, given the small num­ber of very ordi­nary ingre­di­ents. But there is some­thing in the strong bite of the rocket com­bined with the, dare I say it, unc­tu­ous smooth­ness of the sweet­corn that is extremely happy-making. And I’ve googled it and I think… I invented it. I know there’s no new recipe under the sun, but I haven’t seen this com­bi­na­tion and I think you should all try it, right now. Of course I am extremely lucky to live here in Eng­land where rocket can be found around any cor­ner and the Nor­mandy cream is mine for the tak­ing, but look at it this way: if you live in Iowa or Indi­ana, your corn will be bet­ter than mine. I bet canned corn would be just fine, too, and would make the soup even less expen­sive than it already is.

I am very proud of myself for this inven­tion, in no small part because it encour­ages me to try new things. Of course for every suc­cess­ful inven­tion (or even small depar­ture from the norm) there will inevitably be sev­eral culi­nary howlers, but how else do we rise above the relent­lessly quo­ti­dien in the kitchen?

Let’s see, in between these rock­etish dis­cov­er­ies, I went shop­ping. I know, I know, credit crunch. But two things hap­pened: a Boden cat­a­logue landed on my desk, and my par­ents sent me a check for my birth­day! Found money! Like what you find in your jacket pocket from last win­ter. Pure manna from heaven. So when my friend Annie saw me perus­ing said cat­a­logue on a recent trip to the charm­less West­field Shop­ping Cen­tre in my fair bor­ough, she said, “Save the postage: I’ll take you there.” Now that’s why one has friends who are real Lon­don­ers. They know where the bod­ies are buried. So off we went.

It was a sort of mile­stone: my first real grownup clothes shop­ping trip with my on-the-verge-of-teendom daugh­ter! Of course I’ve taken HER shop­ping count­less times: for rewards for an exam well-passed, or des­per­ate for shoes that don’t pinch. But to go to a shop where we could both find things? And with friends? It was a great after­noon. Spitty grey skies, we were perched high in Annie’s SUV-ish vehi­cle (as opposed to either of the orange Minis owned by our fam­i­lies), not notic­ing traf­fic because we had so many sto­ries to tell. Our girls are at an age where they are fas­ci­nated by any moth­erly rem­i­nis­cence about things famil­ial that hap­pened before they appeared on the scene. “How did Keith pro­pose to you, any­way?” I asked, and that was good for sev­eral miles. We seem to do noth­ing but laugh when we are together, and before we knew it we were at Boden, I with my metaphor­i­cal money burn­ing a hole in my pocket. Annie and the three girls were on a mis­sion to help me spend it. Shop­ping is actu­ally fun with the right staff, I found!

“No brown! And no grey,” Emily instructed me, and insisted on bring­ing over many selec­tions in fuch­sia and teal, all of which I vetoed. “And no orange!” Avery opined, which cramped my style. An entire shop, mind you, with no black gar­ments; it’s amaz­ing I found any­thing to buy. “Am I too old for a cropped cardi­gan?” I asked meekly and at least four ladies turned around and said in tan­dem, “No!” We have to help each other through these lit­tle shaky moments.

So today I am proudly wear­ing a new jumper with blue stripes. I feel I’ve dis­ap­peared and been replaced by an exact replica. Thank you, Hoosier family.

It’s an unusual half-term hol­i­day in that we have NO plans. None. A day with a skat­ing les­son to remem­ber feels quite crowded. John of course is still limp­ing around with his bum ankle, Avery nursed one of her mys­te­ri­ous one-day febrile adven­tures, and I have been feel­ing mon­u­men­tally unmo­ti­vated to do any­thing more last­ing or sig­nif­i­cant than cook. This after­noon is a pos­i­tive ode to grey­ness: the ground, the skies, the very air. So I have a pot of car­rot and corian­der soup on the stove (I know, veg in chicken stock again) and a new novel on my desk. Have you all dis­cov­ered Sophie Han­nah? My friend Kather­ine will be glad to see that I’m rec­om­mend­ing some fic­tion instead of the end­less lists of cook­ery books I’ve trot­ted out for your perusal. Sophie Han­nah is CREEPY. All her sto­ries involve dou­ble lives, lying, dead peo­ple who aren’t dead, faked iden­ti­ties. They are all plots that you can imag­ine some­one (Sophie Han­nah appar­ently) com­ing up with by watch­ing or expe­ri­enc­ing one odd thing and think­ing evilly, “What if the bizarre thing I imag­ined hap­pen­ing really did? What if the per­son involved went just that bit fur­ther down the road of bad behav­ior than I would ever dare? What’s the worst that could hap­pen?” I just fin­ished “The Point of Res­cue” and am now embarked on “Hurt­ing Dis­tance.” When did you last stay up till 2 a.m. to fin­ish a book? They’re just that good. I’ll be lucky if I remem­ber to take my car­rot soup off the stove…

I must aver that the salmon was FAB­U­LOUS and has con­tributed in no small way to my feel­ing on the road to recov­ery tonight. But I should add that I include about 1/2 cup chicken stock in the sauce, added at the same time you want to whisk in the creme fraiche and cream.

Here’s a ques­tion: you may find that in bak­ing, the sauce splits ever so slightly, at the edges of the serv­ing dish. By split, I should clar­ify that I mean a slight gran­u­la­tion of the tex­ture, not so severe that one would call it cur­dling, but a slight not-perfect tex­ture (does not affect the sub­lime fla­vor). I think we could bake the salmon on its own and pour the sauce over it from the skil­let, when serv­ing, but would that lessen the delight­ful moist-ness of the salmon itself? It would surely lessen the infu­sion of brandy and cream into the fish, which pro­duces a del­i­cate but per­va­sive fla­vor. Try it, do, and let me know.

I have risen from my metaphor­i­cal bed of mis­ery to post this dar­ling photo of Avery reunited with her beloved Anna and Ellie. It has been an absolute and utter joy to see Becky’s fam­ily again: the lazy fun of shared mem­o­ries and expe­ri­ences, “remem­ber when…”, “You’ll know what I mean when I say…”, “Of course you were there when…” The dark Scan­di­na­vian side of me bows its depres­sive head and says woe­fully, “But they go home on Sun­day,” but the slightly sun­nier John-influenced side shakes itself and says, “Enjoy the week.” I got in a short but sat­is­fy­ing lunch with Becky today, albeit cough­ing all the while, but the whole ill­ness thing is grad­u­ally get­ting bet­ter. Then we have another lunch with all her girls (alas, Avery is in school) at Becky’s old favorite steak place in Maryle­bone, and ice skat­ing and din­ner together on Fri­day, shop­ping and hang­ing out on Sat­ur­day. We are monop­o­liz­ing them as much as we dare.

Friend­ship is, I believe, the fifth basic food group. Although Avery assures me there are no more food groups, any­more. It’s a pyra­mid, or some such non­sense. What hap­pened to meat, dairy, fruit and veg and starch? Weren’t those the cat­e­gories? I still think of food in those groups, and my old-fashioned din­ner plates reflect it: a chop, a pile of beloved mashed pota­toes, and stack of some­thing green. Nine nights out of ten, I am ashamed to say. Now for lunch I can branch out into your legumes and pulses, your grains and oils, seeds and such. John will eat any­thing that doesn’t move. But Avery is quite the rabid lit­tle food conservative.

Any­way, we are rejoic­ing in our reunion. I have been unde­servedly lucky in my friend­ships: Alyssa to share all my loves and hates in Tribeca, Becky to step up and gos­sip and com­mis­er­ate on rais­ing daugh­ters here in Lon­don, and then when she departs, my dear Annie appears in the next street to talk cook­ing and Lost Prop­erty. Pep­pered in and out are Dalia, Gigi, JoAnn, all the girls who make the process of liv­ing a lit­tle less iso­lated and mys­te­ri­ous, a lit­tle fun­nier, more hope­ful. And what would I do with­out the friends who pop up in emails through­out the day? The spice of life.

It has been heart­warm­ing to see Ellie fall right back into her brother-sisterish rela­tion­ship with John: he throws her upside down, tick­les her relent­less, inspects what teeth are loose, pokes her in the side and chases her around the room. Avery and Anna are just the same: end­lessly sup­port­ive of each other, shar­ing obses­sions with ani­mals and fash­ion (although their ver­sion of fash­ion is to find innu­mer­able ways to arrange one t-shirt: there are no labels in our lives, YET). Mark is his usual imper­turbable, gen­er­ous self, a sort of liv­ing embod­i­ment of intel­li­gence and kind­ness. Only Becky could deserve him, although she never lacks a cer­tain twin­kle in her eye to let me know that some gos­sip would not go amiss. Ash­ley, the supreme teenager, has been com­pletely inac­ces­si­ble. “In eight days here,” Becky moaned to me today, “I will have seen her for two hours and forty-five minutes!”

We all nat­ter on about how much we love liv­ing in Lon­don: the the­atre, the food, the archi­tec­ture, the schools, the his­tory. But you know what is NOT nice about liv­ing here? There is an unspo­ken aware­ness that how­ever much you grow to love peo­ple, this is essen­tially a tem­po­rary town, filled with peri­patetic, rest­less peo­ple. We all live in the total under­stand­ing that any of us could pack up and leave at any moment, and most of us will, at some point. Com­ing here from New York, from Hong Kong, from Toyko, from Paris, from Moscow. About to go back to one of those places, or to Chicago or Green­wich or Hous­ton. On the one hand it makes you very flex­i­ble, but on the other hand, your heart breaks. I sup­pose if I were wise, I’d decline to get so very involved with every­one, but that never seems to be an option with me. So I pine.

Let’s see, what else it hap­pen­ing? John fell down the stairs, cream­ing his ankle in the process but of course sav­ing his beloved com­puter from dam­age. Some­how I’d rather he’d thrown the com­puter aside and saved his own body, but no, he had his pri­or­i­ties firmly in place. So he’s been limp­ing around with an ice pack and Ace ban­dage wrapped around the offend­ing limb, by and large tak­ing his infir­mity fairly well, but feel­ing bad that he can’t run errands for me while I’m puny, so he lashes out. “Lie down! Stop mov­ing around! We won’t die on a Tues­day at twelve if you don’t cook three things for din­ner!” We have ordered pizza. Twice. I waited for the sky to fall, but noth­ing hap­pened, so I am learn­ing I’m not as indis­pens­able as I thought. But tonight is an old favorite, because I just can’t help myself.

Avery’s Favorite Baked Salmon with Brandy and Creme Fraiche
(serves four)

1 pound salmon fil­let
3 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 shal­lots, minced
1/3 cup brandy
1/2 cup creme fraiche
1/3 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup light cream
squeeze of lemon juice
dried thyme (enough to fit in the hol­low of your palm if you cup your hand, is a good mea­sur­ing tool for a lit­tle girl)
sweet paprika, same amount
salt and pep­per to taste

In a heavy skil­let, melt the but­ter and saute gar­lic and shal­lots till soft. Now pour in the brandy, tak­ing time to explain “deglaz­ing” to your child. Cook down until reduced by half, then whisk in a lit­tle more but­ter till it’s glossy. Then whisk in the creme fraiche, cream, lemon juice and herbs. Taste and season.

Place your salmon in a glass nonstick-sprayed dish and pour the sauce over the fish. Bake at 425 for 25 min­utes. Glorious.

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And guess what will be on the plate with the salmon? A nice mound of mashed pota­toes and a stack of sauteed sugar snap peas.

Avery’s com­ing home late tonight after a rehearsal for the school play, which airs tomor­row evening. One hopes by then I will not be a chat­ter­ing, cough­ing pile of bones. I think the salmon will help.

And my lat­est food find? Yogurt from Sta­ple­ton Farm: I picked some up at Wait­rose just on a whim, pas­sion fruit and peaches, was it, or apri­cots? and was delighted to find that although very low in fat, it was beyond creamy, very fruity, and fla­vor­ful enough to pen­e­trate my congestion-fogged taste­buds. I love to find lit­tle tiny pur­vey­ors, and am even hap­pier when I find they’re being sup­ported by the big bad super­mar­kets. Get your­self a pot or two. Maybe the live bac­te­ria will save you from The Virus That Ate Lon­don. Then I can give you a hug and all bets will be off.

Are cough­ing, sneez­ing, wheez­ing. Ugh, it’s hit me again. This end­less res­pi­ra­tory non­sense is back, hav­ing left me for per­haps six hours, but I was appar­ently busy doing some­thing else and didn’t notice. I should just be grate­ful that I don’t have the awful fever and utter mis­ery that has plagued my poor mother across the pond. Would you believe we were reduced to arrang­ing for chicken soup to be col­lected from a Jew­ish deli in Indi­anapo­lis, for her? How awful not to be there to min­is­ter to her myself. Rest assured, there was a roast chicken on our table for din­ner this week and there­fore, as night fol­lows the day, chicken soup tonight. I have a cup of hot Lem­sip on my bed­side table.

Yes, I played and played in the snow even though my chest was already full of what­ever. It was worth it. The gath­er­ing of Wellies in my hall­way did make me laugh. Actu­ally this pho­to­graph is cheat­ing, because some of them have been out­grown by one of us (guess who) and we’re busy find­ing homes for them.

School finally reopened on Wednes­day after two long, full days of hol­i­day may­hem. Avery and Emily set up a stand out­side the estate agent’s in our nearby tiny high street and sold their home­made Valen­tines, to a rous­ing suc­cess. They returned, red-cheeked and mirth­ful, but unfor­tu­nately they sold every­thing so noth­ing was left for me to buy. I will have to suc­cumb to ask­ing for one, made just for me.

Yes­ter­day I self-medicated to every extent I could think of and dragged myself to South Kens­ing­ton to hang out with my friend Dalia. She can always be counted on to cheer me. I hate to be shal­low, but it’s partly… her extreme beauty. It’s very dif­fi­cult to stay dis­turbed about any­thing in one’s life, or indulge in a lack of energy, when across the table is a gor­geous vision, snap­ping black eyes, crowned with a wel­ter of black curls, always test­ing me to stay as cur­mud­geonly as I can be. “You are NOT bor­ing! If you were, I wouldn’t be here. You will not get bor­ing,” she says, and I almost believe her. We trade crushes, gos­sip, celebrity info, divinely wise advice on one’s emo­tional life. I had an entire plate of veg­eta­bles, labelled the restaurant’s “New Crunchy Salad.” Relent­lessly healthy: beet­root, car­rot, kid­ney beans, broc­coli, hari­cots verts, all bathed in a blame­less mus­tardy dress­ing. Believe me when I tell you that I was starv­ing an hour later. And an hour later I was in Whole Foods buy­ing all the spe­cials: lamb chops for half price! White crab for 30% off! Heaven. Shop­ping when hun­gry can be so much fun, so not credit-crunchy.

Today, how­ever, I paid the price of rush­ing around when not feel­ing well. I made my way to Put­ney for, can I just tell you… my debrief­ing meet­ing as the new… drum­roll please… Head of “Lost Prop­erty” at Avery’s school! Yes, only the coolest vol­un­teer oppor­tu­nity ever, and I get to run it, begin­ning in April. This, even after my crab tart refused to set prop­erly (per­haps the cur­rent chair under­stood about the occa­sional mis­take one can make with the chem­i­cal uncer­tainty of eggs). I must say I am THRILLED. It will be such an oppor­tu­nity to hang about school, find out what’s what, get a behind-the-scenes view of life on the Par­ents’ Group of such a cool school. Lucky, lucky me.

Home in a rush to med­icate myself yet again, rush rush to pick up Avery in the fizzing rain to get her to skat­ing, shiver through two hours in the freez­ing atmos­phere of the rink, then shiver toward home on the bus in the rain. Believe you me, the lamb chops, mashed pota­toes and sauteed aspara­gus John had ready for us when we arrived home made me ready to renew my mar­riage vows.

Well, I’m beat. The snow is gone, I have writ­ten a new chap­ter of my book, there is chicken soup on the stove. We’re cook­ing with gas… Tomor­row will be better.

Lon­don came to a stand­still today to wel­come the snow­storm. School closed, which meant my writ­ing class was can­celled. My mind upon awak­en­ing imme­di­ately turned to what food­stuffs I might have in my larder and fridge to keep us from starv­ing. Silly, really, because in this thriv­ing metrop­o­lis, the shops were all open! Some­thing in my Mid­west­ern snowy day men­tal­ity must have come to the fore­front, though, and I was taken back to all those child­hood days when snow fell and we got to cel­e­brate and play. We headed off to Emily’s house up the street to make our Snow Day plans, and ended up bor­row­ing cash­mere socks, water­proof gloves, hats and such from that ski-loving fam­ily and walk­ing to the nearby park. But you know what? Our own pris­tine gar­dens and streets were nicer to play in than the park that had attracted every fam­ily in the neigh­bor­hood to make snow­men and let loose their fran­tic dogs. Chil­dren rolling giant balls of snow, John beat­ing Fred mer­ci­lessly with snow­balls, Annie and me fol­low­ing him around, deter­mined to pro­tect the son and heir and pun­ish the dad. Swans flapped, ducks quacked and stood on first one leg, then the other. John threat­ened to make Fred test the pond ice for sturdiness!

Finally it was just too cold and we headed home through the still-thickly falling snow. Avery stopped at Emily’s house for hot choco­late and marsh­mal­lows, and I made for home and a pot of the MOST delicious:

Snow Day Tomato Soup
(serves 4)

2 tbsps but­ter
4 cloves gar­lic, chopped
1 white onion, chopped
1 stem rose­mary, leaves removed and chopped
3 soup-size cans plum toma­toes
1/2 cup sin­gle cream
sea salt and fresh ground pep­per to taste

Noth­ing could be more sim­ple than this soup, it costs next to noth­ing and cooks very quickly. You will never buy a can of soup again. Melt the but­ter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, then saute the gar­lic and onion until soft­ened. Add rose­mary and toma­toes, and sim­mer high for 15 min­utes. Whizz with a hand-held blender, then add cream and sea­son­ings to taste. Perfection.

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With this, we had sand­wiches made of last night’s:

Pork Loin Cooked in Milk
(serves 4 for din­ner, and again for lunch)

1 pork loin (approx­i­mately 1.25 kilos, or 2 pounds and some)
12 cloves gar­lic, 6 whole, 6 chopped coarsely
2 stems rose­mary
2 white onions, quar­tered
12 baby new pota­toes
1 liter whole milk

Cut 6 slits deep into the pork loin, three on each side. Insert whole gar­lic cloves. Place the rose­mary on the bot­tom of a 9x13 glass bak­ing dish, then place the pork on top of the rose­mary. Throw onions, chopped gar­lic and pota­toes in around the pork and pour milk over all. Sea­son well. Roast in a hot oven (200C, 400F) for about an hour and a half or until the pork is cooked through. Expect the milk to resem­ble the sur­face of pota­toes dauphi­noise: slightly crusted and brown, but still deep and creamy under­neath. Rest for 15 min­utes, then slice thin and serve with onions and pota­toes, driz­zling some milk onto the pork slices.

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Today’s sand­wiches made on whole wheat bread with slices of pork, slices of Wens­ley­dale cheese, red onion, hot Eng­lish mus­tard and rocket leaves, were LOVELY.

What a peer­less Lon­don day: Avery and Emily sloped back home to watch movies and make Valen­tines, I made a banana-free ver­sion of my favorite banana-apple cake, with pears instead of bananas, extra spices, and it was, if any­thing, even better.

Pear-Apple Cake
(serves 8)

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp bak­ing pow­der
1 tsp bak­ing soda
1/2 tsp each: ground cin­na­mon, ground cloves, ground nut­meg
pinch salt
1/2 cup but­ter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 apples, chopped
2 large pears, chopped
dust­ing confectioner’s sugar

Com­bine all dry ingre­di­ents. Beat but­ter, sugar, vanilla and eggs. Mix the dry and wet ingre­di­ents, then add chopped fruit. Bake for about 40 min­utes at 160C, 350F, or until firm in the mid­dle. Sprin­kle confectioner’s sugar over cooled cake. Serve warm.

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This cake appears to be fool (me) proof. You sim­ply must give it a try.

Tomor­row will, in all prob­a­bil­ity, bring a day of school and work. The respite is over. One of the most dis­taste­ful jobs ever beck­ons: clean­ing out the awful cel­lar from all the clob­ber we threw down there when we moved here in May, plus all the junk we’ve assem­bled down there since. Pots too big to store in the kitchen, the card­board box the portable AC unit arrived in dur­ing the hottest days of sum­mer, out-of-season coats (prob­a­bly moth­e­aten, some of them), pic­nic bas­kets, out­grown horse rid­ing equip­ment. Plus the req­ui­site num­ber of spi­ders, and the lit­ter­boxes. Not my favorite place on earth! But it’s that or try to get up to date on pho­tographs in the photo albums: end­less sticks of glue, piles of pic­tures from clear back to spring of last year. I just have not had my heart in it, and yet have kept up to date order­ing prints, so… the day will come.

We are in a tizzy of excite­ment because the week­end will bring a visit from my dear Becky and her fam­ily, all the way from Con­necti­cut! Avery will be in absolute heaven to have her dar­ling Anna around, and we plan to monop­o­lize the fam­ily shame­lessly dur­ing their visit. So much to catch up on: I’m think­ing a spaghetti bolog­nese din­ner to please every­one. In the mean­time, watch out for those snowballs!