Well, it’s a sadly typ­i­cal Lon­don day: gray, cold rain, windy and dis­con­so­late. Every­one back to frown­ing after a week of solid sun. The British have an end­less capac­ity to dis­cuss the cli­mac­tic con­di­tions of the day, and the sharp con­trast between yesterday’s glo­ri­ous blue skies and today’s down­pour gave the usual obser­va­tions an extra layer of poignancy. “What a chill wind,’ said the ladies in my hair­cut shop this morn­ing. “And after all that SUN!” Then fol­lowed the stiff upper lip brigade, say­ing that actu­ally this was proper weather for April, and they cer­tainly did NOT want to use up what­ever sum­mer weather might be com­ing to us in June, in April. As if it works that way.

In point of actual fact, it’s unde­ni­ably more cheer­ful to be sunned upon than to be made slightly wet over and over through­out the day. I spent the bet­ter part of the morn­ing becom­ing A More Beau­ti­ful Me, with the longest ses­sion under hairdryer and fancy brush min­is­tra­tions you can imag­ine. I didn’t have the heart to tell my beauty lady that it was all so much point­less devo­tion. Within ten min­utes of leav­ing the shop, I was all curly again, so annoying.

Much bet­ter to think about the week­end. Fri­day was the famed Lost Prop­erty lun­cheon at which I was to be offi­cially put in charge for the first time. I got up bright and early in the morn­ing to search through my closet for some­thing that would clev­erly com­bine a mild sort of author­ity with spring­like good cheer, as if such a gar­ment would have appeared there with­out my know­ing it. Not to men­tion that I don’t really DO spring­like and cheery, as far as cloth­ing goes. Much hap­pier in a black turtle­neck, 365 days of the year. But I was finally suit­ably if not inspir­ingly attired, and sit­ting at my com­puter to com­pose my remarks on tak­ing the reins of London’s coolest school vol­un­teer group (not that there are offi­cial rank­ings for these things… actu­ally prob­a­bly there are). I typed the words, “Thank you, Mary, for your years of ser­vice to Lost Prop­erty and to the school,” and as they stared at me from the screen I thought “Holy s**t, I don’t have a gift for her!” I shrieked this to John, across the part­ner desk from me, and he said, under­stand­ingly, “You’re screwed.” Precisely.

So I did what I always do when faced with my incom­pe­tence and panic. I called Annie. “Right, I’m com­ing straight over and we’re putting together a par­cel of joke presents from Lost Prop­erty.” I raced out to the local florist and found a gor­geous lit­tle plant in a gor­geous lit­tle bag, and when I got back Annie was there with a sheaf of aban­doned home­work (a sta­ple item in Lost Prop­erty), a bro­ken mobile phone and glory of glo­ries, a pair (clean) of her son Fred’s Y-fronts. I myself gath­ered up one lone sock (not hard to do in Avery’s room of unpar­al­leled mess), an empty sun­glasses case, and my crown­ing con­tri­bu­tion, Avery’s plas­tic lacrosse mouth­guard. We took pity on Mary and left the mouth­guard in its case, although I may say that the gross­est item ever appeared in LP last week: a mouth­guard with a post-it attached to it say­ing lacon­i­cally, “Found in W6.” “Oh, my God,” Annie said. “That’s just the post­code. That means some­one picked this thing up from a ran­dom pave­ment some­where in this post­code, and gave it to US.” Eeww.

So we wrapped every­thing in fes­tive paper, threw a bot­tle of bub­bly in the bag with the plant, and were on our way in Annie’s tiny lit­tle vin­tage orange Mini. The lun­cheon went off with­out a hitch at Mary’s gor­geous house, food all piled up in the incom­pa­ra­ble con­ser­va­tory, over­hung with real, fruit-bearing grape vines. There was Annie’s gor­geous chicken with water­cress, orange seg­ments and pump­kin seeds in soy, and my favorite buf­fet chicken dish, whose ingre­di­ents sound dis­gust­ing but it is actu­ally a win­ner with any group, or even just a fam­ily din­ner. For a large buf­fet, you can count on a breast fil­let per two peo­ple. Trust me, it’s deli­cious. And inex­pen­sive, and sim­ple, and you can travel with it uncooked and slip it into your friend’s hot Aga, should she have one.

Lil­lian Hellman’s Baked Chicken
(serves 12)

6 chicken breast fil­lets
1 cup Hellman’s may­on­naise (now, you get the name of the dish, which we serve with Dashiell Ham­mett spinach)
1 cup grated pecorino or parme­san cheese
juice of 1 lemon
zest of 1 lemon
2 tsps gar­lic pow­der or gran­ules (not gar­lic salt, the cheese is already salty enough)
plenty of fresh ground black pep­per
2 cups fresh home­made bread­crumbs (the com­mer­cial crumbs are too fine)

Mix all the ingre­di­ents but the chicken in a shal­low bowl. Place a plate filled with bread­crumbs next to the bowl, and have a large bak­ing dish next to the plate of crumbs.

Smear the chicken breasts lib­er­ally with the may­on­naise mix­ture, then roll in bread­crumbs until thor­oughly coated. Lay in the bak­ing dish (they can be quite crowded, don’t worry).

Bake in a very hot oven, around 220C, 450F, or the hottest part of your Aga, for 30 min­utes or until nice and crisp and golden brown. Remove to a cut­ting board and cut each fil­let into five slices. Arrange on a plat­ter and gar­nish with some nice water­cress that you’ve pinched from your friend’s salad (thank you Annie!).

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

This went down a treat, every morsel eaten up. And I man­aged to make my remarks with­out embar­rass­ing myself, and to present Mary with her gifts, which made every­one laugh. Trust Annie to have such an inspi­ra­tion: even bet­ter than a proper gift of an engraved paper­weight or spe­cial pen. It turns out that if you have a bril­liant friend, being incom­pe­tent and for­get­ful is actu­ally a good thing. Annie’s last-minute panic gift will kill some­thing I’d think of in advance, any time. My excel­lent part­ner in crime.

All the vol­un­teer rotas were duly filled in, all the ladies gos­siped and laughed in the amaz­ing sun­shine, and I got away in time to join John at the pub by school, where he was enter­tain­ing my dear, dar­ling Aunt Mary Wayne and Uncle Kenny from Ken­tucky! They are beloved fix­tures from my child­hood: my aunt with a bois­ter­ous, joy­ful laugh that car­ries across a pub gar­den and, along with her tight hug, makes me feel about 12 again: loved and cher­ished and still a child, not the head of Lost Prop­erty with a 12-year-old of my own. And my uncle: look­ing so like my mother, beau­ti­ful youth­ful skin, a total zest for life, new expe­ri­ences, always a twin­kle in his eye, a bit like a young Santa Claus, in the off season.

We sat and laughed and laughed and laughed. Over what, I don’t even remem­ber, but it’s what life is always like with those two. How lucky we were, when I was a lit­tle girl, to go to their house for Thanks­giv­ing every year (my par­ents always got lost, always at the same junc­tion get­ting off the high­way, bick­er­ing over “is it this one or the next one?” every sin­gle year). My aunt can never have enough dogs and cats (although they are cat­less now, they reported: not for long, I bet), she’s a dot­ing and doted-upon grand­mother to her five grand­chil­dren, and my uncle is one of the world’s author­i­ties on all things Civil War (on the OTHER side, mind you), and also Abra­ham Lin­coln. I don’t think I’m mak­ing up that there was a mus­ket hang­ing over their fire­place, when I was little.

It was won­der­ful, just for a day, to shake off the adult iden­tity that’s right­fully mine these days, and become again the pet­ted lit­tle “Kris­ten Bear” I was in their pres­ence for all those years. Some­times I feel that a cur­tain went down in sort of 1987, when I moved away from Indi­ana, never really to return, and there is a melan­choly dis­lo­ca­tion between that per­son and the Real Me. I sup­pose it’s the feel­ing we all have about the past reced­ing ever far­ther into the dis­tance, but the clar­ity of leav­ing, like cut­ting off a piece of string, seems more acute when I’m with some­one from the old days.

Bless their hearts (some­thing my aunt says all the time), they actu­ally wanted to go to the ice rink to see Avery skate. My God, that’s fam­ily love. So off we went in a taxi, to Avery’s delight (her par­ents being nor­mally too cheap to catch a cab), and they watched with every appear­ance of car­ing, which is remark­able. Then it was off in the Tube to our house. I looked at them stand­ing up, straphang­ing, chat­ting together as the train swayed on its way to Ham­mer­smith, and wished for a moment that I had never left home, that I could still see them, have them be part of Avery’s life. “Aren’t they delight­ful peo­ple?” Avery whis­pered to me, to my intense hap­pi­ness. They are, truly.

Home for another batch of Lil­lian Hellman’s chicken (easy peasy to make ahead of time and have my bril­liant hus­band put in the oven for me when we were on our way home), plus pota­toes dauphi­noise and sauteed pep­pers. They brought out presents from Ken­tucky: a real Churchill Downs horse­shoe, still dirty, and a pho­to­graph of the iconic mare and foal from the green, green fields near where they live, for Avery. A Ken­tucky Derby cook­book for me! And a box of Bour­bon Balls for John (he and Uncle Kenny shared a very mature laugh over that). A tour of the house, a quick phone call to my dear cousin Amy, their daugh­ter, and one of my best child­hood com­pan­ions. Then they were off again, to tour Lon­don the next day, Ams­ter­dam the next, Bel­gium, Switzer­land, Ger­many, you name it. After ten days they’ll go home via Paris, in, I’m sure, a state of com­plete exhaus­tion. Thank you for tak­ing the time to spend the day with us, you two. We miss you already.

We had din­ner in the gar­den! “I hope you know all your fel­low trav­ellers are hav­ing soggy fish and chips some­where, and you’re eat­ing in a real Eng­lish gar­den!” I pointed out, and it really is a pleas­ant place to be. The next night found us out there once again, with the pier­rade stone keep­ing us warm, enter­tain­ing Avery’s friend Jamie, who spent the time after din­ner indulging her new hobby: pho­tog­ra­phy! I think this is my favorite pho­to­graph EVER of Avery and me, and she took many more. It just looks the way we are, which is the great achieve­ment of a sen­si­tive pho­tog­ra­pher, I think. Of course it helps that Jamie loves us, and we her. This just IS Avery, when I look at it. Thanks, Jamie.

Yes­ter­day I did some­thing com­pletely silly, but to my credit, I was not alone. My friend Jo came in from Oxford to go with me to haunt the red car­pet at the Baf­tas! The British Acad­emy of Film and Tele­vi­sion Arts, to the unini­ti­ated, sort of the British Emmys, with some film thrown in. Across the river at the Royal Fes­ti­val Hall, under a flaw­less blue sky, with the Lon­don Marathon run­ners still strag­gling to the fin­ish line on the other side. We met up and vied for a good spot (not hav­ing bought a ticket, we were the hoi pol­loi and being shoved all over the place). Finally Jo spot­ted a tiny lit­tle space right next to the pho­tog­ra­phers’ pool (Jamie’s future haunt, per­haps?) and we squeezed in. And then the stars appeared. We were there osten­si­bly to see Richard Armitage, and there he was, tall and hand­some, in his tuxe­doed glory, but in fact it was great fun to see all the “Spooks” cast, Gregg Wal­lace, the judge of “Mas­terchef,” the dreaded Alan Sugar of “The Appren­tice” and count­less sort of day­time tele­vi­sion bad-fashion-sense princesses. Great fun. We got great pic­tures, but hon­estly I think John will divorce me if I post one of them here. Enough is enough. He already thought Jo and I were out of our tiny lit­tle minds even to go. We did look at each other at one point dur­ing the long, long wait for the red car­pet cer­e­mony to begin, and I said, “We really have crossed some kind of line.”

But it was an adven­ture! And some­thing we don’t ever really need to do again. And one of those things you’d feel a com­plete idiot doing alone, so thank you, Jo, for hang­ing out with me. Home together for din­ner and to watch the awards on the telly, while John dragged Avery away to watch “Top Gear” on their own.

Well, the rain has stopped, too late in the day for the clear sky to be of any use to any­one. I must go pro­duce my salmon din­ner, no eat­ing out in the gar­den tonight, I fear. After all, it IS April, and I should be stor­ing up my weather points for June…

To begin with, I know this pho­to­graph does not ade­quately rep­re­sent the sump­tious­ness (as long as you’re not veg­e­tar­ian) of the pier­rade plat­ter of meats ready to grill, but it’s not too bad. John diag­noses some­thing like “not enough depth of field.” I’ll try again some­day, but in the mean­time, the thin-sliced sir­loin, duck breast mar­i­nated in sea salt and cracked pep­per, and new sea­son aspara­gus, baguette slices to dip into the raclette cheese… the ele­ments are all there. It’s the most enter­tain­ing din­ner to eat, but don’t count on any mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion while you do it, because everyone’s con­cen­trat­ing on “Is that my duck bite?” and “When did you put on that salmon piece?” and try­ing to avoid the hot splat­ters. It was not the best way to cook aspara­gus, but it worked, so I’ve got to give some thought to how to make the veg­etable aspect of the expe­ri­ence bet­ter. Maybe more frag­ile veg are bet­ter: toma­toes, red pep­pers, Swiss chard? I don’t know. Mar­i­nate them all in sea­soned olive oil? Trust me to make some­thing that’s inher­ently fat-free, fatty.

The next night we had some ratty, some­what bat­tered but charm­ing old teak fur­ni­ture, pur­chased by my clever hus­band on eBay, deliv­ered and placed in the gar­den, so spatch­cock chicken hap­pened out there, in the sum­mery twi­light, to the accom­pa­ni­ment of (I’m not jok­ing) an ice cream truck behind the gar­den, and… live bag­pipes. I have no idea.

Spatch­cocked Grilled Chicken with Herbs
(serves four eas­ily with left­overs for lunch)

1 large organic chicken
2 tbsps olive oil
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
hand­ful chives, chopped
hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped
1 large stem rose­mary, leaves removed and chopped
1 stalk lemon­grass, outer leaf dis­carded, the stalk minced
sprin­kle hot chilliflakes

To spatch­cock the chicken, lay it on a cut­ting board breast down and feel in the cen­ter for the back­bone. Cut front to back along the back­bone on each side of the bone, and remove. Turn the chicken over and spread it out, cut­ting the parson’s nose off (the nob of fat where the head was!) and smash­ing the chicken flat, cut­ting through any fat you need to, in order to get it com­pletely flat.

Mix all the other ingre­di­ents and smear mix­ture all over the chicken, front and back. Mar­i­nate till at room tem­per­a­ture (per­haps an hour).

Heat grill to 400F degrees. Grill chicken back side down for 20 min­utes. When you check it at this point, if the back is get­ting too black­ened, turn the grill down and let the heat sta­bi­lize before you cook on the breast side. Grill breast side down for a fur­ther 20 min­utes, or until the dark meat reg­is­ters 170F with a meat thermometer.

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

The meat sim­ply fell off the bone and we fell upon it. What a lovely, quick, sum­mery way to get a whole chicken cooked. At least an hour shorter cook­ing time than I would ever ROAST a chicken. Lovely with whole red pep­pers grilled along­side till their skins black­ened (rub them with olive oil before putting them on the grill and grill for the last 20 min­utes of the chicken cook­ing). Plus we had warm chick­pea, feta and rocket salad, and a sliced avo­cado in lemon juice. Yum yum.

For our last day of free­dom before school started up again, we found our­selves at Richmond’s Ham House, sort of a yawn as far as stately homes go, but with a lovely, lovely gar­den and maze (and a dairy with very creep­ily believ­able cast iron cow feet, as you see) and a gor­geous cafe in the 17th cen­tury orangery, cov­ered, COV­ERED with wis­taria. Almost unbe­liev­able as a vista. I think what makes the house a yawn is that it was only one of many prop­er­ties owned by the fam­ily, and no one could be both­ered to take it on, so the National Trust got it. It felt emo­tion­ally aban­doned, and empty, yet cared for. Rather like a Vic­to­rian child with a mother in the attic and father dal­ly­ing with the nanny. If you know what I mean. Which is nothing.

And we were able to check in, after­ward, on the progress of the nearby Peter­sham Nurs­eries’ fight against clo­sure, against ridicu­lous accu­sa­tions of the traf­fic brought to the vil­lage by the restau­rant. In this eco­nomic cli­mate! The idea of clos­ing a suc­cess­ful restau­rant because it’s too suc­cess­ful and its suc­cess brings TOO many peo­ple call­ing? Sim­ply out­ra­geous. All luck to them. All they can do is wait for judgment.

Today was one of those days where I suf­fered ago­nies of night­mares in the wee hours, and thus woke to a feel­ing of rea­son­less anx­i­ety. The sub­ject of my bad dreams? A bizarre expe­ri­ence wherein I saw a word typed out, and yet could pro­nounce only a wrong, off ver­sion of it. The exam­ple I remem­ber clearly is see­ing the word “Flesh” and being able to utter only “Irish.” See what I mean? In my dream I could con­ceive of the rela­tion­ship between the real word and my mis­taken pro­nun­ci­a­tion, but I could not con­trol it. At times like that I should just get the hell out of bed, but such is my ingrained habit of appre­ci­at­ing a lie-in that I just couldn’t. Like wait­ing months for a movie date with your hus­band, and then in the first ten min­utes you can tell you HATE the film, but you don’t want to leave because you LOVE movies. And you were really look­ing for­ward to it. But that dream threw me. What on earth can it mean?

So I got up in a fog, and for some com­pletely irra­tional rea­son, had one of the most pro­duc­tive days I can remem­ber in months. I edited three chap­ters, wrote out a long list of the chap­ters to come, made name labels for all the guests expected at Friday’s Lost Prop­erty lun­cheon, wrote the copy for the school newslet­ter, emailed the sec­re­tary for a crime records check on a new vol­un­teer. And that was just the morn­ing and afternoon!

This evening I saun­tered through the breezy, blue early evening to my first Par­ents’ League meet­ing at Avery’s school. This is a post I now hold because of my new, exalted posi­tion as Head of Lost Prop­erty, and I may tell you now, that is one hell of an intim­i­dat­ing table of women. And one man (poor fel­low). Sev­en­teen of London’s best and bright­est (and then there was me), gath­ered around under the watch­ful oil-on-canvas gazes of many for­mer head mis­tresses, crowned over all with the most per­fect, elab­o­rate, silvery-white plas­ter ceil­ing­work, and sur­rounded on all four sides by floor to ceil­ing antique books, com­plete with teak and brass lad­ders to swing all round the room.

Good­ness. I am well known to have a sort of prob­lem with female author­ity fig­ures, and there I was with sev­en­teen of them! And one man. The agenda was dis­pensed with with alacrity and effi­ciency, I was duly elected and sec­onded (guess they never tracked down that GBH in 1979), my pre­de­ces­sor was praised and raised to her new post as Chair­man of the League. It’s a bit fright­en­ing: the past three Chair­men of the League have come from their most recent post as… Head of Lost Property.

Just lovely. I didn’t embar­rass myself, every­one was kind and friendly. Plans were made for cof­fees to plan fur­ther bits of bril­liance to come. I came away feel­ing exalted, respon­si­ble, a bit in denial at the intense cool­ness that is Avery’s school. The wit around that table was pal­pa­ble, every­one lis­ten­ing to every com­ment with a view to con­tribute a clever response, an intel­li­gent and funny sug­ges­tion. It’s the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of qual­i­ties in a cer­tain sort of woman (com­pletely rec­og­niz­able on either side of the Atlantic): hav­ing achieved some­thing glo­ri­ous on her own before becom­ing a mother, this type of woman brings all that energy, all that gen­eros­ity and bril­liance, to her child’s life and the school she goes to. A for­mi­da­ble group of ladies. At least I didn’t throw up or hic­cup, but my stom­ach did growl a bit as din­ner­time came and went. I got a ride home from the new Chair and sim­ply fell upon a plate of left­over spatch­cocked chicken with home­made pesto.

So the les­son is some­thing like this: you can start out a day feel­ing nau­se­at­ingly sunny and pos­i­tive, and accom­plish exactly noth­ing. Or you can take your black and blue mood, sit down at your desk and try to jus­tify your exis­tence. I said that to my friend Gigi today and we both sighed simul­ta­ne­ously and agreed that there are some days when just emp­ty­ing and refill­ing the dish­washer is about all that can be done. But when a day like today hap­pens, it gives me a bit of hope.

And did I hear you say you needed some­thing to read? I just fin­ished The United States of Arugula: How We Became A Gourmet Nation by the bril­liant writer David Kamp, and it’s a hoot. I’ll give you a hint: the chap­ter I fin­ished writ­ing this week is all about arugula/rocket, and this book was Way, Way Bet­ter than any­thing I could ever write. You’ll see your eat­ing and cook­ing life flash in front of you with Kamp’s tales of The Gal­lop­ing Gourmet, Julia Child, Alice Waters, Craig Clai­borne, Gael Greene. A roller-coaster tale but one writ­ten with a lot of humil­ity and just enough opti­mism. I feel quite opti­mistic when my child’s best friend asked from me for Christ­mas a bot­tle of aged bal­samic vine­gar. Either that, or we’re approach­ing Armaged­don. You decide.

I don’t know why I’m cel­e­brat­ing the blos­som­ing of ANY grow­ing things, given my sneez­ing activ­i­ties lately, but some­thing about this view in my liv­ing room was irre­sistible. Our land­lords said that if we pulled some of the climb­ing jas­mine plant indoors, it would bloom more quickly, and I can assure you that the scent of climb­ing jas­mine is worth almost any num­ber of sneezes. It’s just mag­i­cal, so I’m sac­ri­fic­ing. Around 3 in the after­noon, these days, the liv­ing room is suf­fused with a warm, cel­e­bra­tory light that shouts, “Spring is here. Enjoy.” We’ve been spend­ing a lot of time in there, and when it’s not sunny, we can light the fire!

I’ve often observed here before that in my life, plan­ning ahead to do any­thing but sit­ting and typ­ing, or read­ing or cook­ing, is absolutely cru­cial, because if I wait to be inspired at the moment, I’ll never leave the house. Never has this been truer than on Fri­day night, which had the temer­ity to fol­low Fri­day day. Let me explain. Fri­day, it rained in the way that it can rain only in Lon­don. All day, relent­lessly, some­times heav­ily so you raise your brolly, some­times in spits and spots that make you lower the brolly and say pathet­i­cally, “I’m sure it’s clear­ing up,” only to find that you’ve become a poo­dle for the six­teenth time that day, hair curl­ing in obnox­ious ringlets and stand­ing out all over your head. The brolly goes back up, you smack some­one in the face com­ing oppo­site you on the pave­ment. Crash­ing bore.

And invari­ably, on such a day, I find that my main goal for the day is to get Avery to the ice skat­ing rink, which is like ask­ing Dante to go get a root canal on his way to the Sev­enth Cir­cle of Hell. It’s just awful under any cir­cum­stances to spend two hours there: scream­ing teenagers, school trips for trou­bled boys, loved-up ado­les­cent cou­ples who think noth­ing of aim­ing their skate blades at my child’s gen­tle head. Above it all floats an inde­scrib­able smell of osten­si­ble food­stuffs: hor­ri­ble waf­fles with fake top­pings, pizza, hot dogs, panini filled with fake cheese… and strobe lights, and loud music. I feel such an old fogey hat­ing it so much, but truth must out.

So Fri­day I got Avery to the rink, suf­fered through the end­less requests for fake fruit slushies to drink, ice cream to eat, pound coins for the arcade (no, no and let me think about it, NO). Watched her go out on the rink and then spend the entire hour les­son glued to the pre­cise four-foot sec­tion of the rink that I couldn’t see, the space between me and it being occu­pied by sev­eral scream­ing French chil­dren whose par­ents had appar­ently left them there as if at a foundling hospital.

By the time we got home on the bus, in the rain, through sev­eral con­struc­tion block­ages, it was all I could do to inject a quick cock­tail into my veins and then head out again to drop Avery at her sleep­over date and try to race to din­ner and the­atre. Wet, wet, wet!

But once we sat down with my friend Jo at Kulu-kulu Sushi, my cur­rent mecca, and fed our­selves from the con­veyor belt with yel­low­tail sashimi, salmon sushi with plenty of wasabi, chilled steamed spinach with satay sauce and a soft shell crab roll, I didn’t care about the rain any­more. It was good to be with her, sit­ting between me and John, appre­ci­at­ing her spe­cial brand of irrev­er­ence, energy, roar­ing laugh and potty mouth. A total infu­sion of humor, even bet­ter than a shot of vodka. The three of us have such fun together: she described John later as “as good as a girl­friend, only mas­cu­line! You are a very lucky woman.” Couldn’t have put it bet­ter myself, my dear.

From there we headed to the Duke of York The­atre and A View from the Bridge, an Arthur Miller clas­sic I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read, or seen before. My God, Ken Stott is tal­ented. Dessi­cated, depraved, yet some­how heroic and ulti­mately true to him­self, this char­ac­ter walks the post­war Brook­lyn streets like a liv­ing cadaver, filled with for­bid­den love for his niece, raised as his daugh­ter, over­come with word­less hatred and jeal­ousy for the boy she’s fallen in love with, and then revenge­ful antag­o­nism for the ille­gal immi­grant sys­tem he’s inad­ver­tently become part of. He was bril­liant: hate­ful and yet pathetic. Go see it.

On a com­pletely dif­fer­ent note: con­grat­u­la­tions to Prince Philip on his slightly creepy mile­stone: the longest serv­ing Royal Con­sort! Imag­ine kneel­ing to one’s wife and swear­ing alle­giance. Actu­ally per­haps that would be a nice addi­tion to the cur­rent rather too lightly observed mar­riage cer­e­mony. I’ll write up a lit­tle speech and see if I can get John to recite it. You know you’re liv­ing in an old, old coun­try when some­one breaks a 191-year-old royal mar­riage record.

Well, we’re fac­ing the last day of this very long, very unevent­ful Easter hol­i­day. Avery has become quite addicted to her days of inac­tiv­ity: learn­ing all the lyrics to “Grease,” finger-knitting, cro­chet­ing, draw­ing fairies, skat­ing and the like. She dreads return­ing to school on Tues­day. I myself think it will be good to get back to a rather more reg­u­lar writ­ing sched­ule: I’ve accom­plished only one chap­ter over the whole three-week hol­i­day. But I did pro­duce tonight Avery’s absolute favorite pasta dish and it’s worth repro­duc­ing, since it’s been a very long time since I told you about it. I invented it many, many years ago as a detox din­ner: try it on your veg­e­tar­ian friends or just after too many evenings of flesh. It’s lovely.

Orrechi­ette With 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. Plunge them in cold iced water and drain.

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.

***********

Avery ate so much of this tonight, and so quickly, that she then retreated to the sofa and lay like a beached whale, recov­er­ing. John said, “Can you move, please?” and I had to point out that he was speak­ing, essen­tially, to a snake who had swal­lowed a rat, and that we had to give her time to digest the beast. Maybe it will rain tomor­row and we’ll be stuck doing… noth­ing, for one more day. How I will miss her when she’s back in her ele­ment. I told her this and she said sweetly, “Oh, I will miss you too,” and I said, “No, you’ll be too busy at school to mind,” and she put her arm around me and said, “Even when I’m busy dur­ing the day I often think about you and want a hug.” That makes every­thing, even rainy days, worthwhile.

It’s amaz­ing: some­thing good has come at last out of our nation’s cap­i­tal and it’s a remark­able tale: it costs almost noth­ing, requires no com­pro­mise, and openly con­tains pork: the ham hock kind!

United States Sen­ate Bean Soup is a relic of my husband’s child­hood, a dish I have heard glow­ing reports of all the 26 years I have known him, to the point that I was cer­tain no mere food­stuff could achieve all he claimed for it. And since until very recently, beans and I have not been on speak­ing terms, there was no way I was pro­duc­ing some­thing in my kitchen that not only con­tained beans, but had the temer­ity to include them in the TITLE of the dish. At least chilli sounded innocu­ous to me, although I knew most recipes con­tained the hated ingredient.

Well, in the last year I have flip-flopped so thor­oughly on the whole bean issue that I’m vir­tu­ally a spokesper­son for the United States Dry Bean Coun­cil (yes, there is one, and in case you were won­der­ing, there are 13 mem­bers and five staff: a bit top heavy, you may say, but who knows what the work­load is). I actu­ally think I deserve a seat on an inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion, not one devoted merely to jin­go­is­tic bean con­cerns. After all, my mus­ings are mid-Atlantic. But I digress.

United States Sen­ate Bean Soup has, it turns out, been on the menu in the Sen­ate din­ing room con­tin­u­ously, every sin­gle blessed day, for over a hun­dred years. Rumor has it (yes, in Wash­ing­ton even beans are vic­tims of the rumor mill) that two dif­fer­ent Sen­a­tors pro­posed recipes for this del­i­cacy, but my mother in law, when ques­tioned, plumped imme­di­ately for the ver­sion attrib­uted to Sen­a­tor Fred Dubois of Idaho, because it con­tains, guess what: POTA­TOES. Now for those of you who are my inter­na­tional read­ers, I must give you a very short his­tory of the state of Idaho. It pro­duces a LOT of potatoes.

My expe­ri­ence with this soup is a lit­tle unfair, trad­ing as it does on a superbly braised ham hock from my Easter din­ner, the ham itself a king among pork prod­ucts com­ing from Mr Stenton’s per­sonal store, down the road at my neigh­bor­hood butcher here in Ham­mer­smith. The solu­tions to this are two. One, you too can acquire a superb gam­mon joint from your Eng­lish butcher, braise it for Easter, and use the ham hock in your soup. Or you can fol­low the recipe below, and see how it goes. I have to con­fess as well (since I’m not really much of a DC insider, I like to con­fess things) that where the recipe calls for water to cover (about six cups of water), I had at my dis­posal two cups of golden brown elixir in the form of the liq­uid that gath­ered in my brais­ing dish: mostly ham juice, but mixed in was the orig­i­nal honey-mustard mari­nade. Unfair, I know! But this all means that you must sim­ply fol­low my Easter recipe and THEN make your soup. It’s not that hard to think ahead, after all.

This recipe makes me proud, as do so many things com­ing out of Wash­ing­ton these days, to be an Amer­i­can. So hand on the bible, flag wav­ing in the back­ground, I give you:

United States Sen­ate Bean Soup
(serves 8)

4 cups Navy beans (if you’re in Amer­ica; here in the UK I used hari­cots, or fla­geo­lets would be fine)
1 ham hock with meat still cling­ing to it
4 medium (Idaho) pota­toes
4 stalks cel­ery, chopped
2 white onions
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
large hand­ful pars­ley, chopped

Bring the ham hock and beans to a boil in a large stock­pot cov­ered with water (and the ham cook­ing liq­uid if you’re lucky). Mean­while, boil the pota­toes until soft, then drain and mash. Add to the ham liq­uid and mix thor­oughly. Bring to the boil again, then add the chopped veg­eta­bles, includ­ing the pars­ley. Bring to the boil one more time, then sim­mer for at least an hour (but indef­i­nitely will do). When nearly ready to serve, take the ham hock out and when cool enough to han­dle, take the usable meat from it and add in bite-sized pieces to the broth. Serve with crusty bread to soak up juices.

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

Be sure not to salt this soup and the ham itself will be salty enough. This soup will warm not only your insides, but your heart and that of your fam­ily, when they enter the house to smell the aroma. Pure lux­ury, on an afford­able scale.

Let’s see, tomor­row is sushi in Pic­cadilly with my friend Jo from Oxford, then off to “The View From the Bridge” with Ken Stott. Avery will have a sleep­over with a friend because some­thing tells me the play is NOT fam­ily friendly. But it’s one of those Lon­don priv­i­leges that we must take advan­tage of. Until I’m sum­moned to the Bean Coun­cil, that is. Next up: Crispy Lame Duck.

My good­ness, there is some­thing in the air that is caus­ing mas­sive sneeze dra­mas here in my house­hold. Our gar­den is coated with some lit­tle evil-looking yel­low flo­rets and all the pink and white blos­soms (again, my gar­den­ing exper­tise is show­ing now) that made the neigh­bor­hood trees so lovely to look at are now air­borne and as such… unpleas­ant. I know my rela­tions in Iowa who called recently to report a post-Easter bliz­zard will growl when they read of my dis­com­fort with osten­ta­tious spring. But there you have it.

We con­tinue with our credit-crunch hol­i­day, and I can heartily rec­om­mend Stonor Park, just a few min­utes from Henley-on-Thames and quite the most roman­tic coun­try set­ting you can imag­ine. The same fam­ily have lived in it con­tin­u­ously for 800 years. I am not mak­ing this up. John and I paid assid­u­ous atten­tion to the guide’s reportage on cur­rent avail­able males to marry off to Avery, but alas there’s only a tod­dler son (Avery put her foot down), and a baby expected this sum­mer (which could be a girl any­way, so what’s the point, she won’t inherit any­thing). A fal­low deer park, and just look at this house. The con­tents gave a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse of the life of a very active Catholic fam­ily in Eng­land (the pho­tos of the cur­rent Lord Camoy with var­i­ous popes was my first clue). While I found the end­less sort of 18th cen­tury por­traits a yawn, the gallery full of glass cases hous­ing ephemera were touch­ing and lovely: let­ters com­mand­ing the Camoys to attend a Thanks­giv­ing ser­vice to observe the Prince of Wales’s recov­ery from typhoid, a seat­ing plan for a din­ner party includ­ing Roth­schilds and Princesses from var­i­ous Euro­pean coun­tries, a hand let­tered thank-you note from Beat­rix Potter.

And duck­lings! The rest of the tour — archi­tec­ture, art, his­tory — was entirely eclipsed for Avery by the pres­ence in the for­mal gar­den of a fam­ily of ten duck­lings accom­pa­nied by a MOST atten­tive mother duck. She all but chased them through the plant­i­ngs of hydrangeas, mag­no­lias, fruit trees, top­i­ary and holly bushes, in utter hap­pi­ness. At one point she dis­cov­ered a baby duck had been left behind in an orna­men­tal pond, and she and two lit­tle French boys dashed around try­ing to coax it out of the water but suc­ceed­ing only in scar­ing the lit­tle thing out of its feath­ers. Finally it escaped and was reunited with its irre­spon­si­ble duck mother, and the drama was over.

At home in the evening Avery was per­form­ing her usual ver­sion of every child’s favorite occu­pa­tion — look­ing in the refrig­er­a­tor to see if any­thing more inter­est­ing has mate­ri­al­ized since the last time she looked — and there on a shelf at eye level was… a duck. A butchered one, mind you, not look­ing at all duck-like, await­ing its trans­for­ma­tion into pier­rade tonight. Silence. Later, at bed­time, she asked me what sort of duck it is that we eat. I was ready for her. “NOT, def­i­nitely NOT, a duck that has ever been a mother to ten lit­tle chicks. We eat two types of ducks, Gress­ing­ham and Ayles­bury, and I’m pretty sure both of them have white feath­ers, not the beau­ti­ful brown and gold feath­ers of the duck we saw today.” A sigh of relief. “Oh, thank good­ness,” she breathed. “I don’t really like ducks who have white feath­ers, any­way.” So din­ner is safe. These nego­ti­a­tions are inter­mit­tent and fraught with ten­sion, and some are unsuc­cess­ful, but it appears that pier­rade is on for this evening, at least.

John is off to a screen­ing of a film pro­duced by some intrigu­ing peo­ple who are inter­ested in intel­lec­tual prop­erty rights and, inci­den­tally, inter­ested in HIM. Could a job be in his future? I must say I would never have pre­dicted that my techy, mon­ey­ish, wheelin’ and dealin’ hus­band would ever have been offered a job by some touchy-feely arty types, but hey: we live in inter­est­ing times. The film is called “Team Qatar” and fol­lows the adven­tures of a group of Mid­dle East­ern high school debaters. Who knew? I mused to Avery, “I won­der what these peo­ple are like, these pro­duc­ers,” and she said loy­ally, “Very good peo­ple, if they are inter­ested in Daddy.” Watch this space. John actu­ally men­tioned my favorite nov­el­ist, Lau­rie Col­win, to them to ask what the pro­ce­dure would be in secur­ing the intel­lec­tual prop­erty rights to her nov­els, and they KNEW about her, unheard of! I like them already.

Avery and I, mean­while, shall mosey on over to the V&A for our sort of semi-annual pil­grim­age to the per­ma­nent fash­ion exhi­bi­tion. I always get a charge out of South Kens­ing­ton, and par­tic­u­larly the V&A in whose mam­moth and old-fashioned library I spent so many years study­ing, writ­ing my PhD all those years ago. Per­haps John’s new friends would like to make a film about my dis­ser­ta­tion? Hmmm…

Our Easter was like all East­ers: filled with choco­late, an egg hunt, and a baked ham. Actu­ally, this last is the under­state­ment of a cook­ing life­time, I’m not exag­ger­at­ing to say. On Thurs­day we acquired a pos­i­tive jewel of a gam­mon joint, the best end of a joint that Mr Sten­ton, my local butcher, assured me was his own Easter din­ner. “No, no, that’s all right, you go on and take it, I’ll have fish and chips, no mat­ter at all…” We car­ried the joint home like we car­ried new­born Avery home from her first pediatrician’s appoint­ment in the West Vil­lage of New York City. Thereupon:

Baked Easter Glouces­ter Old Spot Gam­mon
(serves EVERYONE!)

1 3 kg (6-pound) smoked gam­mon joint
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup Dijon mustard

Place the gam­moin joint in a stove– and oven-proof casse­role and add water to cover. Boil for 20 min­utes, skim­ming the bub­bling scum from the water. Drain, rinse and dry the joint with paper tow­els. Place a VERY large piece of heavy-duty alu­minum foil in the casse­role and place the joint on it, cut side up. Mix honey and mus­tard and pour over the entire joint. Wrap the joint in the foil as tightly as possible.

Bake at 160C, 325F for three hours. Then unwrap the joint, place cut side down in the con­sid­er­able cook­ing juices and bake at 200C, 400F for a fur­ther half hour. Remove from oven and cover with foil for 15 min­utes, then carve and serve.

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

You have, we have NEVER tasted any cut of meat so smoky, so suc­cu­lent, so evoca­tive of the hol­i­day, and believe you me, I have been cook­ing baked ham for Easter since you first wrote longhand.

We ate at about 3, and I can assure you that by 9 p.m. we were all quite peck­ish, and a sand­wich on multi­grain arti­sanal bread with a good smear of more Dijon and a thick slice of red onion hit the spot. Then the fol­low­ing evening it was onto the fol­low­ing clas­sic pasta dish, light­ened up by my dear sis­ter and changed just a bit by me:

Spaghetti Car­bonara
(serves 4)

8 oz dry spaghetti
1 1/2 cupes diced cooked ham (you know the one I mean!)
4 coves gar­lic, minced
1/2 cup grated Pecorino or Parme­san cheese
1/4 cup creme fraiche
3 tbsps light cream
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
fresh ground pepper

About 15 min­utes before you want to eat, boil pasta accord­ing to direc­tions, about 10 min­utes. Drain over a bowl so you can reserve 1/2 cup of the cook­ing water. Set aside. In a large heavy skil­let, warm the ham and add the gar­lic, stir­ring over the flame until the gar­lic is JUST cooked but not burned. Add the pasta, toss well and take off the heat.

In a large bowl, mix the cheese, creme fraiche, creme, salt and eggs. Then add the reserved past water and whisk well. Pour over the ham and spaghetti in the skil­let and turn the heat up high for just long enough to toss the whole mix­ture together with tongs. Serve immediately.

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

Quite the most home­made, creamy and yet lightly smoky car­bonara ever. You will thank me, and with a huge rocket salad on the side, or new-season aspara­gus, you have a meal. My sis­ter swears by adding peas to her car­bonara. I hate peas, but there you go. Up to you.

Now, it’s onto the home stretch as far as this heroic gam­mon joint goes. As soon as I make it, I will share with you my mother in law’s beloved recipe for “United States Sen­ate Bean Soup,” a child­hood favorite of my husband’s and with my new­found love of all things beans, doubt­less to be one of my favorites too. At this point, your solid-gold, heir­loom, Slow Food, posh ham has become quite the most eco­nom­i­cal raw ingre­di­ent you could ever have imag­ined. Even lords have to watch their pen­nies, after all.

Spring has, well, sprung in Ham­mer­smith. Has any­one any idea what this flower is? It struck both John and me as def­i­nitely Vic­to­rian: some­thing in the com­bi­na­tion of intensely sexy color and drop­ping shy­ness. So lovely. And just last week, this plaque to Henry Moore was ded­i­cated, in a stu­dio where he worked from 1924 to 1928. Right here in our neigh­bor­hood, very proud-making. The years I taught his work in my sculp­ture classes in New York, and here he had worked just steps from our house, all those years ago. I felt a bit silly walk­ing around in the misty rain yes­ter­day, my hair get­ting pood­lier by the minute, look­ing for the plaque. But there it is.

So we’ve been to “Grease,” sadly only the musi­cal and not the lovely white beaches sur­rounded by pud­dles of ouzo and mounds of mous­saka… and the musi­cal was a huge plea­sure! Firstly: a live band, sus­pended high above the stage: is there any­thing more thrilling than live music? I don’t think so, and it was com­pletely unex­pected. The drama, the liv­ing peo­ple behind the instru­ments, the thump­ing excite­ment. Glo­ri­ous! And why is the libretto so uncon­ven­tional (“we take the pres­sures and we throw away con­ven­tion­al­ity… belongs to yes­ter­day”) and the script so intensely 1950s con­ven­tional? Avery adores the film AND now the musi­cal but even she in her inno­cence had to ask, “Why does Sandy have to com­pletely change her per­son­al­ity to get the boy?” But it was nearly a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion: she under­stood before I did, Sandy changes only her out­ward appear­ance but stays res­olutely her­self on the inside… We had a won­der­ful time. Not a sin­gle Amer­i­can in the cast but you won’t know it.

But all this pales in com­par­i­son to the true adven­ture of our lit­tle lives lately: sous vide cook­ing. By which I mean: “under vac­uum,” which in these post-modernist, post decon­struc­tion­ist cook­ing times means “bathing for­ever in a barely steam­ing pot of water, in a vac­uum pack.” I am not mak­ing this up. Let me explain.

John has longed for a vac­uum packer for as long as I’ve longed for a lam­i­na­tor. Clearly the long­ings are related, but I hes­i­tate to query any fur­ther the com­mon denom­i­na­tors therein. Well, I still have no lam­i­na­tor and never plan to, but we are about to receive our vac­uum packer, via Ama­zon, and God help any meat prod­uct after that. In the mean­time, we acquired a vacuum-packed leg of Welsh lamb, and that was THAT. John res­ur­rected from the cel­lar a stock­pot that once had per­haps held a new­born baby, I don’t really remem­ber ever see­ing it before, but it is LARGE. It was but the work of a moment for him to locate a ther­mome­ter, hook it up to a slot­ted spoon sus­pended over the pot, and we spent an entire day get­ting the allot­ted amount of water up to 55–62 degrees Cel­sius. And KEEP­ING it there. “Let’s put it on before we go to ‘Grease,’” John said blithely. “Get it up to speed while we’re away. “Are you crazy?” I bleated. “With the cats in the house?” An insid­i­ous pause. “Don’t answer that,” I said hastily.

So it was. The water came up to and main­tained its tem­per­a­ture, and when we arrived back after our musi­cal and sushi, we plopped the leg of lamb into it and went blame­lessly to bed. The next morn­ing we checked the tem­per­a­ture, com­pletely steady and pre­dictable, so I went off to take Avery and her sleep­over date to the skat­ing rink… in short we did NOTH­ING in ser­vice of this piece of meat.

That evening at 6 or so, 20 hours since its immer­sion, the lamb came out of its vac­uum pack COM­PLETELY cooked, falling off the bone. So I smoth­ered it on a mari­nade of gar­lic, rose­mary, lemon juice and olive oil and left it for an hour, where­upon John grilled it for 10 min­utes a side and…

EUREKA!

Quite sim­ply the most sub­lime, silky, gen­tly ten­der, fla­vor­some piece of lamb we have ever tasted.

You must try it.

While this was all hap­pen­ing, we were vis­ited by Roy the Piano Tuner, who (since it is my life) is a man about to cel­e­brate his 50th birth­day at Moro where he’s well-known (as key­board spe­cial­ist to Radio­head he might well be). Roy, in between tak­ing apart my piano before my very eyes and speak­ing quite slight­ingly of the piece of wood at the back that appar­ently is the very heart and mind of a piano, asked me if I’d heard of arrope. Have you? I haven’t. It’s a dark, syrupy grape liqueur from, var­i­ously, Spain, Argentina and the Canary Islands and he’s con­vinced it’s the next big thing in food. In fact, he said, “I’ve been alive long enough to see the advent of bal­samic vine­gar, and now I’ve lived to see this, the NEW bal­samic vine­gar. How scary is that.” With which tru­ism he trot­ted out some lovely home­spun music, a few bars of Chopin, a bit of Bach, and then packed up his tools and went away. Avery was com­pletely happy to find the results of his labors. I myself went back to “Chopin Made Easy” which I’m reduced to in this state of many years sans piano lessons. But the joy I get from the easy ver­sions! As they say, price­less. When arrope makes the big­time, thank Roy, my Piano Tuner. He’s pub­lish­ing his diaries soon (“the num­ber of big stars who hire you under a pseu­do­nym and then turn out to be Annie Lennox…”).

As he packed up, he said mus­ingly, “Every­thing about this piano should be wrong. It should be shoddy, soul­less, empty. But I began to play it, and this piano spoke to me. It has a soul. It is alive. I hate to think what you’d get out of a really sub­lime piano in this space.” The room really is mag­i­cal: all sky­light and kitchen and glass win­dows out to gar­den beyond. Mostly it’s happy.

Today I braved the con­stant driz­zle and my family’s utter lack of inter­est — not even lack, dis­tinct NEG­A­TIVE inter­est would char­ac­ter­ize it bet­ter, clearly I need dif­fer­ent fam­ily mem­bers — and went across town and across the river to the South­bank Slow Food Fes­ti­val, a once-a-month farmer’s market-ish event in the spot in town most sin­gu­larly uncom­fort­able to reach from Ham­mer­smith even IF the entire trans­port sys­tem were not clogged with pro­tes­tors from Sri Lanka des­per­ate to reach the Embank­ment. Lest I seem unsup­port­ive of their cause, I must aver that I know noth­ing what­ever about it, BUT there were a lot of them at Embank­ment. An unre­lated Eng­lish guy brushed past me at the sta­tion stop, hold­ing his girlfriend’s hand. I heard him say plain­tively, “I mean, let’s be hon­est, no one LIKES geno­cide, fair enough.”

The Slow Food mar­ket was LOVELY. Gear your­self up for VERY spicy smoke from the chilli pep­per stand, and go hun­gry. The basic idea of Slow Food (although essen­tially quite polit­i­cal in its orig­i­nal Ital­ian incar­na­tion decades ago) is this: sup­port local, sup­port heir­loom vari­eties, happy ani­mal life, arti­san pro­duc­tion of lost skills, and SLOW DOWN to pro­duce, sell, cook and eat. Appre­ci­ate and know where your food comes from, how it’s raised, enjoy know­ing those bits, cook it with respect and eat it slowly. This last is a dead fail­ure with my fam­ily who seems intent on bridg­ing the gap between food pro­duc­tion time (at my house, an hour and a half or so every evening to pro­duce din­ner) and food con­sump­tion time (aver­age 13 minutes).

I patron­ized Richard Haward, seventh-generation oys­ter­man, pro­vid­ing both native and wild rock (much pre­ferred tiny native) Colch­ester oys­ters, and The Ara­bica Food and Spice Com­pany with their sub­tle spinach hum­mous. Then I brought home sauer­kraut from Sarah Moore Arti­san Cater­ers to serve with our Easter gam­mon joint (pur­chased in lieu of Avery’s uni­ver­sity edu­ca­tion at Mr Stenton’s butcher shop in our neigh­bor­hood this afternoon).

Then there is the lus­cious beef brisket from Wood­wards Farm in Hunt­ing­don, which I’m quite sure will end up get­ting the vac­uum treat­ment later in the week… and scrump­tious smoked mack­erel pate from The Patch­work Tra­di­tional Food Com­pany, started by a lady in Llan­gollen, north­east Wales, with 9 pounds extra in her house­keep­ing money one week in 1982!

I hap­pily bought but­ter from Moorhayes Farm, sold by Neal’s Yard, the first but­ter I’ve seen labelled with milk fat per­cent­ages (85%, as if I wanted to know! and salt, 1.5%). This but­ter and cheese is now being sold by Wait­rose and Sainsbury’s, as well as Neal’s Yard: a very encour­ag­ing sign for the future!

Finally I suc­cumbed to brie truf­fee, or “truf­fled brie,” quite the most aro­matic and lux­u­ri­ous cheese you can imag­ine, sold by the Fro­magerie in Maryle­bone. I can­not tell you how this aroma meets the nos­trils and even taste buds. Sud­denly I was vis­ited by an intense long­ing for my father-in-law, who not only loved to eat, but loved to graze, to sam­ple, to get away with some­thing, to inves­ti­gate. How I longed for him to be with me, suddenly.

Tonight we were hap­pily fed by friends nearby and all I brought was this cheese, plus a baguette whose end had been cal­lously plun­dered by Avery in her usual fit of 4 p.m. star­va­tion. Can I tell you what these dear friends fed us? Sixteen-year-old Lily pro­duced two sub­lime roast chick­ens with tar­ragon, a salad bowl of pea shoots in a mus­tardy vinai­grette, and a DEADLY deli­cious dauphi­noise of sweet pota­toes with fresh sage, gar­lic and whip­ping cream. As soon as I make it myself I’ll give you the recipe.

This teenage tri­umph was fol­lowed by pis­ta­chio short­bread and a flour­less choco­late cake. The child is SIX­TEEN! How we ate. If my friends get any bet­ter at feed­ing me, I’ll end up look­ing like the Easter bunny myself. Is it too obvi­ous? The beauty of a mis­er­ably wet day spent with a load of self-conscious food pro­duc­ers, fol­lowed by an evening cooked by a child, raised by the right par­ents, but not with a shovel over the head. Just fed the right food all her life, to lots of nice peo­ple, which makes it eas­ier to swal­low, one hopes. One would have to ask my daughter.

Now, Easter Eve, I must col­lapse. Happy Egg Hunt­ing, every­one… and get thee to the Fes­ti­val! It closes Mon­day so… buy a wedge of truf­fle brie and think of me.

Isn’t this the most evoca­tive paint­ing? A sort of un-ironic Andy Warhol, with­out the drugs. You can buy it here, as it turns out… I’m miss­ing my Jew­ish friends across the ponds last night, tonight… Alyssa always not only invited me for Passover, Han­nukah, Purim and every­thing else they cel­e­brated, she also answered all of the stu­pid goyim ques­tions I asked about food (usu­ally), reli­gion, the whole thing. I feel so home­sick for our evenings of mat­zoh, brisket, all the happy favorites. Our daugh­ters act­ing like cousins, her son like our nephew… feel­ing sentimental.

Added to miss­ing Alyssa (about whom I am cur­rently writ­ing a chap­ter for my cook­book, so many tear-making mem­o­ries of shared hol­i­days), I received a hilar­i­ous report from my old friend Renee from Hol­ly­wood about her Passover expe­ri­ences… I can­not improve upon her nar­ra­tive, so I have repro­duced it here with her per­mis­sion. I miss you, Renee. And Alyssa.

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

So here I am. In sunny LA. It really is sunny. We got here last Thurs­day and we’re stay­ing until Mon­day. Tonight I’m cook­ing a quasi-Passover meal at Ben’s. We’re in West Hol­ly­wood and I don’t know where peo­ple get their food here. I found a Whole Foods, but there is not a super­mar­ket any­where in sight. Or even a gro­cery store. There are no butch­ers, no delis, no green mar­kets, no noth­ing. Whole Foods — that’s it. With no mat­zoh. And, believe it or not, sad veg­eta­bles. 2 kinds of pota­toes and one type of onion. I find that strange since there’s nowhere else to shop, you’d think they would have every­thing you could ever want. But no. There’s plenty of vit­a­mins, wheat grass, and pre­pared foods, all of which I can live with­out hap­pily, espe­cially the wheat grass. After spend­ing a zil­lion dol­lars there, I’m mak­ing chicken with forty cloves of gar­lic, aspara­gus, roasted car­rots and pota­toes, fruit salad with lime and chili pep­per (had it some­where here and it was sur­pris­ingly good), and no mat­zoh. Isn’t Hol­ly­wood sup­posed to be run by Jews? Maybe so, but they obvi­ously don’t cel­e­brate Passover. And they go out to eat all the time. I’ve had Chi­nese, Ital­ian, Japan­ese, Mex­i­can, and Korean food so far. Oy! Thank good­ness there’s a lit­tle French cafe right near our hotel that I can have baguettes, crois­sants, French ham, cap­pu­ci­nos, and yummy sal­ads. I eat lunch there every day. And, oh yeah, no mat­zoh there either. There goes Passover.

I’m head­ing to Ben’s now. I’m sure there’s no mat­zoh there either.

Right, it’s a first. Walk­ing Avery’s friend Emily home last night, we encoun­tered a lady with some­thing on a lead, actu­ally har­nessed, and it was a giant white bunny. I asked the lady, “Is this…?” and she said proudly, “Yes, it’s the Easter bunny. I bring her out at night so she isn’t over­whelmed by atten­tion. But pet her, she’s very friendly.” I thought the girls would jump out of their skin. And Emily hap­pened to be car­ry­ing a wicker bas­ket (why? no idea) so she put it down on the pave­ment and right on cue, the bunny jumped into it and set­tled right down, nos­ing around, no doubt look­ing for the Cad­bury Creme Eggs that were the only props miss­ing from the scene. Long, white ears of impos­si­ble soft­ness, actual hop­ping, and then sit­ting on its heels and stroking its face with its lit­tle hands. Both girls (and I, to be hon­est) suf­fer now from seri­ous bunny envy. They imme­di­ately went into a cam­paign to con­vince John that we need a bunny. “The lady says she has two cats and they ALL GET ALONG!” Appar­ently bun­nies are eas­ily trained to a kit­tylitta tray, so the objec­tions are dwin­dling. John’s tak­ing a sim­ple line. “No.” Watch this space.

I have a new favorite book. It’s out of print, but rel­a­tively easy to find, as I stum­bled upon it out in Lin­colnshire last week. “A Slice of Life,” a title of which I am mas­sively envi­ous (why didn’t I think of that for my book?), it’s a com­pi­la­tion by Italian-American writer Bon­nie Mar­ranca of a huge num­ber of essays on food. Some are writ­ten by foodie peo­ple, but some by fic­tion writ­ers, anthro­pol­o­gists, his­to­ri­ans. There’s the irre­place­able Michael Pol­lan on food ethics and what con­sti­tutes “nat­ural”, and Adam Gop­nik (he of “Through the Children’s Gate”, a book about New York post-September 11 that never fails to make me cry) on the cri­sis of French cui­sine in the world of expand­ing fast food. There’s Fred­er­ick Kauf­man, amaz­ingly the dad of one of Avery’s old school chums, writ­ing about cul­ture of diet­ing (enough to send you straight to the gro­cery store to avoid these traps). And a sear­ingly painful essay about a con­cen­tra­tion camp book of “imag­ined recipes” by Cara de Silva, recip­i­ent of her ancestor’s writ­ings. I can­not imag­ine. Then Rachel Lau­dan writes about how silly it is to com­plain about “fast food,” when the mech­a­nisms of pro­duc­ing food fast feed the ENTIRE world.

I could go on and on. I won’t. But there are dozens of var­ied, pas­sion­ate, artic­u­late, move-you-to-tears essays about… food. It’s what I always say: ask peo­ple about pol­i­tics and they will stay silent as the grave. Ask about their fam­i­lies, and they say smil­ing, “We all love each other.” But ask them about food and… you get pol­i­tics, fam­ily, his­tory, tragedy, tra­di­tion. You get every­thing. Trust me.

I’m work­ing on an essay about rocket. Do you call it arugula, or roquette? No mat­ter, I have some­thing for every­one. And no doubt, for some­one, a tear­ful mem­ory of Grandma will result, or a recipe from one’s favorite restau­rant where one cel­e­brated one’s 19th wed­ding anniver­sary. And had a wicked fight. And… You see what I mean.

As far as sim­ple recipes go, and in the inter­est of slightly nar­row­ing our girths, this month, I offer:

Grilled Salmon with Pancetta and Pep­pers
(serves 4)

4 fil­lets (about half a side) salmon
1 tsp Fox Point sea­son­ing
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup diced pancetta
4 red, orange or yel­low pep­pers, sliced length­ways
4 hand­fuls rocket leaves or mixed leaf salad

dress­ing:
3 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp bal­samic vine­gar
juice of half lemon
1 tsp pre­pared horse­rad­ish
1/2 tsp mus­tard
salt and pepper

Rinse and pat dry the salmon and lay it on a large plat­ter. Mix the Fox Point with the olive oil and smear it over the fish. Leave to take the refrig­er­a­tor chill off.

Fry the pancetta in a heavy skil­let until crisp and brown and then lift out of the remain­ing fat onto a paper towel to drain. Fry the pep­per strips in the pancetta fat and then lift them out and set aside. Place a hand­ful of salad leaves on each person’s plate.

Grill the salmon skin side down for four min­utes, then turn and grill for a fur­ther four min­utes, then peel off skin and dis­card. Divide evenly among the four plates and scat­ter the pancetta and pep­pers around the fish. Driz­zle with dress­ing. Voila.

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

This is per­fect diet food in my opin­ion, because it has the sat­is­fy­ing salty fat of the pancetta, only you leave the fat behind, and the pep­pers take on that lovely fla­vor as well. The fish is robust and beau­ti­ful, the salad wilts nicely, and the dress­ing is light. You will love it.

Of course I ruined the diet by hav­ing cheesy spinach on the side, but in the Kris­ten vol­ume of diet­ing, the cheese is can­celled out by the love­li­ness of feed­ing peo­ple entire bags of spinach at one sitting.

Here’s some­thing that will make you laugh. I told John yes­ter­day, “I got tick­ets for us to ‘Grease,’ and Avery goes for free!” He stopped dead in his tracks. “We’re going to Greece? Hmmm.” As if I would make inter­na­tional travel plans with­out con­sult­ing him, not to men­tion that the Nasty Immi­gra­tion Dudes still have our pass­ports so we’re stuck here. Then our local lit­tle cafe owner asked if we had plans for the break, and I stu­pidly said again, “We’re going to see ‘Grease’ tomor­row night,” and sure enough, “Oh, lucky you, for how long?” So yes­ter­day evening we rented “Grease” and Avery and Emily watched and my God, I felt old. To have been her age when it first came out! Just awful. Stockard Chan­ning has not changed appre­cia­bly, but it was shock­ing to look her up after­ward and find that she was a mar­gin­ally believ­able 18-year-old at age 34. I can’t even get away with being 44 when I AM 44. Sigh. More salmon, please, hold the cheesy spinach.

Today I’m drag­ging Avery to the opti­cian (bet­ter than the ortho­don­tist, but that’s com­ing too), and then she’s spend­ing the night with Emily, so I’m cast­ing about for some­thing to cook that she doesn’t like. I’d like to say it’s aware­ness of credit crunch that keeps us from going OUT to din­ner when she’s away, but truth be told, I never want to go out to din­ner. Lunch yes, but din­ner belongs at home. What to make? I’m lean­ing toward shell-on king prawns mar­i­nated in lime zest and gar­lic, then grilled on a skewer, with their heads turned into a nice rich stock with a lit­tle white wine, reduced into a glaze to pour over the prawns. Cous­cous or can­nellini beans on the side, some ten­der­stem broc­col­ini. If the prawn dish turns out well, I’ll give you the recipe tomorrow.

In the mean­time, chew on this: we’re actu­ally reduced, or ele­vated depend­ing on your point of view, to inves­ti­gat­ing pos­si­ble Ital­ian cit­i­zen­ship to ensure we can stay here. You would be aston­ished, at least we have been, at how hard the British gov­ern­ment is mak­ing it for us to be legal immi­grants. With John’s job in dicey ter­ri­tory due to this awful econ­omy, our visas are hang­ing in the bal­ance and we are turn­ing over every stone in our vicin­ity to stay. I hate to whinge, but it would seem log­i­cal to let peo­ple stay who are buy­ing things, pay­ing rent and taxes, not using the NHS or the state school sys­tem. But no, they’d really rather we left.

So John’s deep into birth, immi­gra­tion, mar­riage, mil­i­tary, every record you can imag­ine on his mother’s side to make us Ital­ian. Wouldn’t it be odd to become Ital­ian in order to become British? Avery imme­di­ately averred that she would much rather learn Ital­ian than French, so there’s some­thing to cel­e­brate. John’s hav­ing so much fun find­ing his grand­par­ents’ cen­sus records from the 1920s (I know my father has greatly rel­ished find­ing sim­i­lar evi­dence from his side of the fam­ily, all online!). Get this: John’s grand­fa­ther actu­ally emi­grated to Amer­ica in order to fight in the First World War, on the Amer­i­can side. With­out even hav­ing cit­i­zen­ship. That’s patri­o­tism for you.

It’s a mark of how impor­tant Avery’s edu­ca­tion has become to all of us. I imag­ine that with­out her in her mag­i­cal school, so happy and blos­som­ing, it would be much eas­ier to jump ship (one hopes not lit­er­ally) and swim home. After all, there’s Red Gate Farm there for the enjoy­ing, and fam­ily and friends. But we do adore it here and we hate to be defeated. So prob­a­bly I should be scrap­ping my prawn menu and whip­ping up some can­nel­loni with a ragu sauce and a frit­tata. We’ll see.

We’re back from four days in the wilds of Lin­colnshire (at the his­toric House of Cor­rec­tion, hence the hand­cuffs lest you think we travel with them), liv­ing a quiet, sheepy, horsey life. We were fed by long walks, creamy mush­room soup, roast chicken, bell ring­ing (well, we didn’t, but we heard it done, and saw the bell tower of the church illu­mi­nated from the grounds of our his­toric house: the girls and John were per­haps less over­whelmed by this than I), tour­ing the glo­ries of the 11th cen­tury Lin­coln Cathe­dral, the girls spend­ing all their pocket money on choco­lates made by the local choco­latier in our lit­tle vil­lage, I spend­ing all my money on the few veg­eta­bles the local shop had to offer… end­less games of a game Emily taught us called “Cheat,” involv­ing sub­terfuge and lies (her favorite past­times), John’s log fires (tended by his own breath with­out the aid of a bel­lows, poor man, but luck­ily his lungs could take it). Walks across fields filled with new lambs and their moth­ers who were NOT keen on our inter­est in their off­spring! “The field of hos­tile sheep,” Emily and Avery chris­tened one par­tic­u­lar green space. How they loved the drama.

I left home under the slight cloud of a bizarre blog­ging phe­nom­e­non: there was a brief gap in the renewal of my domain name, specif­i­cally “Kris­ten in Lon­don,” and for about 12 hours on Sun­day some ran­dom travel/escort ser­vice (seri­ously!) took up res­i­dence on my site. Did any of you see it? Blog­ging squat­ters, John said, and kicked them off in no uncer­tain terms, although not eas­ily. What a weird feel­ing, typ­ing in my address and find­ing some grin­ning blonde in a back­pack offer­ing all SORTS of ser­vices for your visit to Lon­don! Sorry, mine’s only dull recipes.

Life since our return has been a hilar­i­ous, deli­cious and much appre­ci­ated round of din­ner par­ties result­ing in a flurry of thank you notes pushed through let­ter­boxes all around the neigh­bor­hood. Fri­day saw us at Emily’s house post-holiday being fed pier­rade, the most delec­table grilling expe­ri­ence of a life­time. Sadly it appears I can­not get myself a pier­rade imple­ment unless I go to France (nice induce­ment there)… it’s a plug-in grill affair involv­ing a VERY HOT stone, cen­tral to the table, on which one grills end­less bites of Annie’s plat­ters of sir­loin and duck breast slices, all dipped in mus­tard brought home from Paris by Keith, accom­pa­nied by the sim­plest potato salad with spring onion and olive oil, roasted aspara­gus, a broad bean and feta salad… DIVINE. If I get my own machine, I will let you know. There are lit­tle draw­ers beneath for raclette, that lus­cious cheesey fondue-ish thing I expe­ri­enced in France. But just the grilled meats were lovely.

Stag­ger­ing home VERY late at night, then, drag­ging Avery with us, only to arise the next day and begin prepar­ing our own party for an entirely dif­fer­ent set of neigh­bors (this is the par­tyingest neigh­bor­hood I ever lived in, any­where, even when all my friends lived in one build­ing in New York). I hit upon the per­fect din­ner party menu, because almost every­thing not only can, but MUST, be done ahead of time. Creamy veloute of sweet­corn and rocket, with sauteed scal­lops, fol­lowed by that deca­dent tart of crab, goats cheese, spring onion and dou­ble cream that I am now sadly addicted to. A huge green salad, a killingly rich cheese board and for dessert? An enor­mous mound of straw­ber­ries. Again the lat­est night, the best con­ver­sa­tion, but my God, I’m get­ting too old for this and all day today I felt about an hour and a half behind in my life. We all sat around like tired cats, doing noth­ing but rehash­ing the last week or so, and as a result we feel wasted and over-luxuried.

So… a rare period of aus­ter­ity will reign in my house­hold. Such as: no bread, no cheese, no mashed pota­toes. Instead of a sand­wich at lunch, sushi and bean salad. Rice, not mac­a­roni and cheese! Two veg and no starch at din­ner. Just until we feel less like slugs and more like springtime.

But what a way to be fat and lazy, sur­rounded by friends and lov­ing every artery-clogging minute. An ascetic recipe will fol­low. But right now, I’ll go to sleep think­ing of… crab­meat and dou­ble cream.