I think that mag­i­cal phrase can be uttered: Sum­mer Has Arrived! Of course our stan­dards in Eng­land are slightly dif­fer­ent from those in Amer­ica, some bet­ter, some worse. We can’t count on the bright blue skies of Con­necti­cut, but there are the Eng­lish wild­flow­ers that make the heart sing. To see a lit­tle girl roam through the coun­try­side on a white pony through fields of tiny yel­low but­ter­cups is a lovely experience.

But prob­a­bly the best of Eng­lish sum­mer, early sum­mer, are the soft fruits, and the rhubarb. Avery had a lovely crum­ble last night before the the­atre (more on that in a moment), and so I came home and created:

Sum­mer Fruit Crum­ble
(serves 8 as a fine dessert or break­fast)

1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup light brown or Demarara sugar
1 tsp cin­na­mon (less if you’re sen­si­tive)
1/2 tsp nut­meg
dash ground cloves
1/2 cup cold but­ter, cut in small cubes

1 cup each:
chopped apple
sliced peeled rhubarb
rasp­ber­ries
straw­ber­ries, quar­tered
1/4 cup light brown of Demarara sugar

Put the flour, sugar and spices in a food proces­sor and turn it on. Through the hole in the top, drop the but­ter cubes one at a time, let­ting them process for sev­eral sec­onds after each drop.

Mix all the fruits and the sugar in a large bowl and stir well. Toss into a but­tered 9-inch square glass dish and top with the flour mix­ture, cov­er­ing all the fruit. Bake in a 350F, 280C oven for about half an hour or until fruit is bub­bling up along the sides and the crum­ble top­ping is nicely browned.

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

This was mag­i­cal, even for me, a per­son who does not like sweet things. The rhubarb is intensely sum­mery, and the bet­ter straw­ber­ries and rasp­ber­ries you can get, the bet­ter, because the sim­ple fla­vors really sing. A but­tery, slightly crunchy crum­ble top­ping, plus you know ALL the ingre­di­ents and so have a clear con­science. A per­fect break­fast for a school­girl, trust me.

Yes, the the­atre last evening was “All’s Well That Ends Well” at the National The­atre, a des­ti­na­tion we seem to head to more than any other. I adore the lit­tle inti­mate Olivier The­atre within, with its seats around three-quarters of the stage. And what a mag­i­cal, whim­si­cal pro­duc­tion it was. Still in pre­views, so there was a feel­ing of “what now?” about many of the moments: two par­tic­u­lar bits of totally unex­pected slow-motion at times of supreme drama: the action all slowed down almost imper­cep­ti­bly while fil­i­greed leaves fil­tered down from the ceil­ing… some bril­liant touches of play­ing around with the orig­i­nal lines: dur­ing a par­tic­u­larly long list-sort of speech by a char­ac­ter, she turned to the audi­ence in the mid­dle and said wearily, “Etcetera…” Brilliant!

Look out for the sin­gle scene-stealing instant of the entire play: the third, or even fourth girl is offered up for the Count as wife, and as she looks at him through comic-book spec­ta­cles, clutch­ing her knit­ting, she sim­ply squeaks, “Minna minna minna!…” And as Avery pointed out, “for that moment, she had the whole the­atre.” Oliver Ford Davies and Clare Hig­gins were proper main­stays for the play, but the younger set (includ­ing the Count who, when he bared his chest to change his shirt, an audi­ble gasp rip­pled through the audi­ence!) were more than enough to hold up the energy. It is such fun to see a play early on in its run: the grins of sheer unabashed delight from the play­ers at the bow was a joy!

We were home so very, very late. It’s half-term break for Avery, but only in a way, because she and her other first-year com­pa­tri­ots in senior school are given fairly seri­ous amounts of what’s called “revi­sion” to do, what I sup­pose we Amer­i­cans call “study­ing.” Piles of papers of geog­ra­phy, Eng­lish, maths, Latin, sci­ence, art, French, every­thing, to dig through and try to remem­ber every­thing the teach­ers have said since Sep­tem­ber. So I felt some­what guilty throw­ing her into bed quite close to mid­night, but thought self-righteously, “It’s bl**dy Shake­speare!” She slept late, and stuck close to the kitchen today as I con­cocted my fruit crum­ble, pesto, water­cress and sweet­corn soup for lunch, and for din­ner, a quite mag­i­cal new ingre­di­ent, not for the faint of heart: black gar­lic. It’s not as evil as it sounds; rather, it’s sweet, sticky, coal black and nearly weight­less in its papery outer skin. Sim­ply peel away the skin to reveal the shriv­elly cloves, then squish the cloves into sub­mis­sion for the mari­nade of your life.

Pork Fil­let in a Black Gar­lic Mari­nade, Served in Let­tuce
(serves 4 eas­ily)

2 medium pork ten­der­loins, com­pletely trimmed of mem­branes and fat
1 whole head black gar­lic
2 tbsps soy sauce
juice of 1 lime
1 tbsp sesame oil

1 red pep­per, diced
1 large Por­to­bello mush­room, diced
1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsps pinenuts, chopped
hand­ful cilantro/coriander leaves
1/4 cup plum sauce

1 head Boston or ice­berg let­tuce, pulled into large leaves

Place the trimmed ten­der­loins in a Ziplock bag. In a small bowl, com­bine the gar­lic, soy sauce, lime juice and sesame oil and mash them together, then leave for 5 min­utes or so to let the acid in the lime juice break down the gar­lic. Mash some more until nice and smooth, then pour all the mari­nade into the bag with the pork and seal well. Squish around until the ten­der­loins are com­pletely coated with the mari­nade. Leave in the fridge for as long as you can, within rea­son: an hour to a day.

Jut before you’re ready to eat, assem­ble the rest of the ingre­di­ents, and saute the pep­pers and mush­rooms in the olive oil. Set aside. Cut the ten­der­loins into 1-inch slices and place in a food proces­sor, then blitz until chopped but not pureed. Heat a heavy fry­ing pan to very hot, then add the pork and saute, break­ing up with a wooden spoon as you go. When cooked, remove to a bowl.

Serve all ingre­di­ents with let­tuce leaves, and pile on as you like! Have plenty of nap­kins, as it’s a messy dish.

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Light, diety, but sat­is­fy­ing. If your chil­dren don’t like let­tuce leaves, pro­vide Chi­nese pan­cakes for them. It’s all lovely and you can assem­ble each one as you like it.

Good­ness, it’s been a whirl­wind since Mon­day. In fact, it all began Sun­day evening when we picked up Avery’s friend Lille and brought her home for pier­rade and Eton Mess, then pack­ing up for their lovely week­end away. It was that heart­warm­ing com­bi­na­tion of the famil­iar and the utterly lux­u­ri­ous. For many years our fam­ily, includ­ing John’s mother and much-missed father, have trav­elled from Lon­don to the cradling beauty of the Cotswolds, for that occa­sional break from crazy daily life. Given our druthers, our des­ti­na­tion has to be Lords of the Manor, sim­ply my favorite lit­tle hotel in the world, tucked away in Upper Slaugh­ter, a place where you can actu­ally bor­row Welling­tons if you need them, or order the finest single-malt Scotch in the world, and watch a heli­copter land on the back gar­den, and sam­ple the finest fried bread in an Eng­lish break­fast you ever tasted.

When we first began to retreat there, and I truly can’t remem­ber why we ever first did, it was the ulti­mate in coun­try shabby 17th cen­tury chic: worn Ori­en­tal rugs, fam­ily por­traits in fire-stained oils, half-empty bot­tles of Cal­va­dos on the well-worn bar, leather fend­ers before the fire­places. How we loved it. How many pre­cious evenings we got dressed up, in our rooms above the din­ing rooms, dawdling in old-fashioned ceramic baths with feet, lis­ten­ing to “Wogan” drift­ing in from the telly in the bed­room, to meet up in the sit­ting room where a smil­ing wait­ress brought heavy menus of what was to me, then, very remark­able and unat­tain­able food. We chose, over much laugh­ter and Scotches, and then repaired to the din­ing room.

Well, all things must change, for bet­ter or worse, or prob­a­bly in this case from won­der­ful to worse to bet­ter, but always chang­ing. Two years ago we took a lit­tle friend of Avery’s there to stay for a week­end while her mother had a baby, and it was lovely, but the food? I’m ashamed to say I’d out­grown it. It was nice hotel food. But I could do more than I could do in the old days, and I was loath to spend pre­cious food money on some­thing sort of tepid.

So this year I thought, “Right, we’ll have a fab­u­lous time in the coun­try, but have din­ner in a nice pub some­where, save some money.” In the end, after the girls had been put through their paces at Jill Carenza’s, rid­ing school (more on that in a moment!), all they and we wanted for the evening was to col­lapse and order room ser­vice. I noticed with a mix­ture of delight and alarm and nos­tal­gia that the shabby chic had all gone, in favor of a muted ele­gance: all col­ors like mush­room, sage, brick red, stripes instead of flow­ers, lovely damask in the place of the old chintz and vel­vet. No more flocked wall­pa­pers, no more shabby old mis­matched books in the shelves, and the oil paint­ings had gone in favor of lovely Cotswolds land­scapes in pas­tels. Gor­geous, but not quite the old days. John’s father, I felt, would have felt it too posh. And yet…

Girls ensconced in their room of our suite, clutch­ing the excit­ing gra­tu­itous sham­poos and lotions from a fancy French maker instead of the lovely Molton Brown the hotel used to stock, we all col­lapsed. “Room ser­vice!” the girls crowed, and scrubbed the horses from their hands. Tagli­atelle all round, with ham and mush­rooms, we decided. I opted for an addi­tional “mixed salad.”

WELL.

When the food arrived, John and I looked at each other. This was no sort of for­get­table pasta with a dull sauce of but­ton mush­rooms and ham. Home­made noo­dles, mixed wild mush­rooms in a sub­tle, slightly but lightly creamy sauce, with smoky chunks of some arti­sanal ham. What was going on here? Then I pulled toward me the salad. And my dear read­ers, you have never tasted such a salad. So lightly and yet skil­fully dressed that it appeared naked at first, but the mus­tardy, olivey, slightly gar­licky fla­vor clung to every leaf. And the leaves! Baby every­thing: minus­cule leaves of baby cilantro, baby radic­chio, baby endive, baby dan­de­lion, baby beet­root. GOR­GEOUS. “What has hap­pened here?” we asked silently. And then, the girls’ desserts arrived. A sin­gle per­fect hol­low ball of spun sugar sit­ting on a bed of poached rhubarb and ice cream, a cof­fee pra­line souf­fle for Lille… and the most gor­geous petits fours you can imag­ine: a pas­sion­fruit jelly, a creamy caramely square the size of a postage stamp, a Turk­ish delight of the most per­fect pis­ta­chios. Perfection.

I high­tailed it straight to the front desk, and you know what? Since we there last, there is a new chef, a cer­tain Matt Wee­don, poached (as it were) from a Scot­tish cas­tle restau­rant who must have been dev­as­tated to lose him. With his arrival and hard work, the hotel restau­rant has gained its first cov­eted Miche­lin star! How I wish we had sucked it up for the money and had the whole nine yards in the din­ing room! I had no idea. Next time. Per­fec­tion. Go!

In the morn­ing we ended up repeat­ing the girls’ incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence at rid­ing the day before: cross-country event­ing! Quite sim­ply, all the scary things that moth­ers the world round dread that their girls will want to do, when they begin rid­ing. But I was fine! Jump­ing, in the coun­try­side, far­ther than I could see, across unmov­able jumps in the grass, on ponies they’d never rid­den before. The skies were ulti­mately change­able: blue, grey, scud­ding white clouds, grey threat­en­ing drops, all smil­ing down on fields full of but­ter­cups. I felt John’s father all around us, he who had smiled his Irish eyes so many times on Avery jump­ing in just this place. How his pride in her shone from his smile: lean­ing against the fence, rev­el­ling in the jumps get­ting higher, never fear­ing for her safety, always con­fi­dent that his grand­daugh­ter would be equal to the chal­lenge. He was there, with us. And always will be. How he would have loved to see her red cheeks and grin­ning eyes, shout­ing, “That’s the most fun I’ve EVER had!” as she brought her pony in from the far­away fields, where metaphor­i­cally and really, she had left me far behind.

And yet even there, things change: Avery and Lille were taught not by the famous Jill, who pre­sides over the barn, but her up and com­ing daugh­ter Emily. At first we harumphed silently a bit, “What about Jill!” but quickly saw that the new gen­er­a­tion had taken over, and she gave as good as she got, shout for ear-piercing shout the image of her mother. And the girls were in heaven, hot, sweaty, scared to the point of exhil­a­ra­tion but never for a MOMENT want­ing to say no, to do any­thing less than what they were offered. “More ring, you lot, or the field?” Emily asked at one point, and Lille shouted, “Field field field!” “Tell us what you REALLY think,” John teased. What a com­plete joy to give this expe­ri­ence to them.

Back to the hotel, putting the top up in the poor tiny lit­tle con­vert­ible at one point for a brief rain­storm! Then to get food for the ducks in Lower Slaugh­ter, another beloved tra­di­tion, end­ing once in a giant white duck tak­ing a giant bite out of John’s ancient Bar­bour coat! We always get duck food at the same place, where Avery always gets her favorite ice cream, and looks in the mir­rored front of the “AVERY” scale set out in front of the shop. And we were off with duck food. But again: changes. Where were the ducks? There were just two, or three, and they weren’t hun­gry, not sur­pris­ingly, since prob­a­bly every tourist all morn­ing had insisted on feed­ing them! “No ducks,” Avery said mourn­fully, and just as I was plan­ning to go buy some so she could con­tinue her tra­di­tion, up popped a mother and at least seven tiny duck­lings! “What we lack in quan­tity, we make up for in qual­ity,” John said, and all was well.

High tea at the hotel, the tra­di­tional search­ing through “Horse and Pony” Mag­a­zine for the ONE pony in the clas­si­fieds that they could agree on… and home. It’s actu­ally fun to go on a long drive with two highly aca­d­e­mic near-teenagers: they spend the time singing their Latin noun declen­sions! And imi­tat­ing their Latin teacher in her high-pitched cheery tones, and singing “The Grand Old Duke of York” while skip­ping var­i­ous words… very entertaining.

As for me, the high­light was our visit to Stow, on the way home. Lam­bournes Butch­ers in Dig­beth Street pro­vided not only the divine pork fil­let for our black gar­lic din­ner tonight, but also the most fla­vor­ful and oppor­tunis­tic toma­toes on the vine: why don’t more butch­ers offer fresh veg­eta­bles? It’s my favorite way to shop: “Hey, this would be good with that…” Then next door to the butcher was Hamp­tons Fine Foods, spe­cial­iz­ing in the sorts of lux­ury ham­pers we can only DREAM about (my birth­day, any­one?) where I picked up local rape­seed oil and the BEST CHEESE EVER: Stow Soft, a sort of mildly smelly, intensely but­tery and fla­vor­ful creamy cheese, the kind you slice the top off and then spoon out, like an Epoisse or a Vacherin, not to be too foodie all over you. But I wish so much I had bought more than two (I gave one to Lille’s mother when we dropped her daugh­ter off, dirty and nearly as smelly as the cheese, oh, ponies!).

Home in a stu­por of fatigue, appre­ci­a­tion, extreme close­ness from 48 hours in each oth­ers’ com­pany, dirty laun­dry, the small­est car ever, and so many mem­o­ries. It’s all we can do, in the end. Pull our chil­dren and our hus­bands through the tough­est moments, give them a kick when they need it (and take our kicks when they come!) and then sit back and LOVE the blinky after­noons when you’re watch­ing a not-so-little girl on a white pony, in a flow­ery field, hav­ing the time of her life.

Then come home to a fruit crumble…

Noth­ing spe­cial to report: just that the Food Fes­ti­val at Hamp­ton Court was very nice, with a cou­ple of reser­va­tions: one, it was called the “Food­ies Fes­ti­val,” which does bug me, hor­ri­ble word, and two, it was jolly, jolly hot. Not even! By any Mid­west­ern Amer­i­can stan­dards it was cool to say the least, but for Lon­don, com­ing about all of a sud­den, the 26C heat was a sur­prise, and Avery for one was unpre­pared: woollen Burberry skirt, fuschia tights, high leather boots, long-sleeved sweater: there was only so much she could shed and not break any laws of decency.

We had a great time, though: sam­pling cheeses here, olives there, actu­ally paid for two dishes at Bus­aba Thai from Soho, which I remem­bered from Taste of Lon­don last year. Deep-fried prawns, super crisp and crunchy, with a mango chilli dip­ping sauce, and grilled duck slices with Chi­nese broc­coli… sim­ply lus­cious. The best of the day? Yummy Lol­lies, quite sim­ply the BEST, FRESH­EST, cold­est and most refresh­ing frozen treats you’ve ever had, and 100% fruit. “Lick your way to five a day,” is their motto, and the two very yummy mum­mies who run the con­cern are just addic­tive on their own. So enthu­si­as­tic, heart­felt, young and lovely, and the fla­vors of the lol­lies are irre­sistible too: I had apple and mango, John had black­cur­rant, and Avery orange. Pure, pure frozen fun. They alone made the day worthwhile.

No, I lie. What made the day worth­while was being with my two lovelies, as you see, hav­ing the time of their lives teas­ing each other as they do.

Home to fetch Avery’s friend Lille, for pier­rade for din­ner, Eton Mess for pud­ding, and tomor­row: the Cotswolds for a rid­ing les­son, an after­noon and evening of non-credit-crunchy lux­ury, then another day of walk­ing and feed­ing ducks, then the best high tea in Great Britain at our hotel… a com­plete treat for these girls in advance of their first senior school exams at the begin­ning of June. But I’m totally disin­gen­u­ous: it’s a treat for ME, to see every­one so happy. Long may it last. Life can be (has been, will be) dif­fi­cult, but for now, all the lit­tle pieces are in place for every­one to be happy, to feel lucky, and to say thank you.

We’re headed off tomor­row to the Hamp­ton Court Palace Food Fes­ti­val which promises to be HUGE fun: we get to see the win­ner of last year’s Mas­terchef telly com­pe­ti­tion cook live! Since all three of us fol­lowed Mas­terchef really obses­sively, we’ll have a great adven­ture see­ing him there. The tast­ings, the spe­cial pro­duce, maybe a celebrity glimpse or two, the pos­si­bil­ity of an inspi­ra­tional dish to set me on a new course… and good weather, we think!

Of course, inspi­ra­tion can be a beau­ti­ful thing and it can be a bur­den. Why on earth would I try to make some­thing that I can buy in hun­dreds of places around the city, beau­ti­fully cooked by peo­ple to whom the recipe comes native? Because I could, that’s why, and now I’m stuck know­ing how to make them. Falafel, I mean. Are you a fan of these crunchy, savoury lit­tle balls of spiced chick­peas? Well, I’m a mas­sive fan, and now I’ve pro­duced them in my very own kitchen. Not deep-fried, as they are in falafel huts around the world, but baked in just a lit­tle oil. So you can even have a clear conscience.

This recipe comes almost whole-cloth from Hello! mag­a­zine, except that the whole focus of the arti­cle was water­cress and I didn’t have any! So I sub­sti­tuted rocket, which was lovely and a total suc­cess. Needs must.

Falafel
(serves 4)

1 soup-size can chick­peas, drained
2 tbsp tahini (sesame paste)
1 tsp salt
2 tsps bak­ing pow­der
2 tsps cumin seeds
2 tsps ground corian­der
1 tsp cayenne pep­per
2 cloves gar­lic, crushed
2 cups loosely packed rocket leaves
juice of 1 lemon
3 tbsps veg­etable oil for cooking

This could not be any eas­ier. Put all ingre­di­ents except oil in a food proces­sor and whizz until fully processed, but not pureed. Pre­heat oven to 200C, 400F and place a large roast­ing pan in the oven to heat.

Roll the chick­pea mix­ture into balls, about 16, then flat­ten them into pat­ties. Add the oil to the roast­ing tin, then roll the pat­ties about a bit to coat them. Bake for 20 min­utes, turn­ing once, till crisp and golden.

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These are LOVELY. They have that mys­te­ri­ous, smoky, exotic, cel­e­bra­tory sort of fla­vor that you asso­ciate with for­eign mar­kets. It’s hard to believe they can really come out of a homely lit­tle oven in my kitchen.

Nice accom­pa­ni­ments might be hot sauce, yoghurt, chopped corian­der, and:

Cucum­ber, Onion and Tomato Salad
(serves 4)

1 long hydro­ponic cucum­ber, sliced thin
1 sweet white onion, cut in half and sliced thin
1 cup cherry toma­toes, quar­tered
sprin­kle fresh dill or dried dill

dress­ing:
2 tbsps fro­mage frais
2 tbsps sour cream
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 clove gar­lic, minced tiny
fresh ground pep­per
pinch sea salt

Toss all veg­eta­bles and dill in a bowl, then place all dress­ing ingre­di­ents in a jar with a tight fit­ting lid and shake well. Toss with vegetables.

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

This salad is per­fect with the falafel, and for the best lunch you ever had, add a cou­ple of well-griddled Gig­gly Pig sausages. Perfect.

So now you know how to make one more thing it used to be heav­enly sim­ple just to BUY out at a mar­ket. But I had an inspi­ra­tion: the cou­ple of left­over falafels were a com­pletely dif­fer­ent tex­ture the next day, very crumbly, almost pow­dery. I thought how nice they would be crum­bled up and… what? John sug­gested sub­sti­tut­ing them for bread­crumbs in some dish. How about mac­a­roni and cheese fla­vored with Moroc­can spices instead of nut­meg, and sprin­kled with falafel crumbs? If I ever make it, I’ll let you know.

I’m feel­ing very full of myself this week because I’ve sub­mit­ted a chap­ter, an intro­duc­tory let­ter, a let­ter to an agent and a list of ALL my pro­posed chap­ters, to a lit­er­ary con­sul­tancy here in Lon­don! Late in June I’m sched­uled for an all-day sem­i­nar on prepar­ing my man­u­script for sub­mis­sion to an agent, and then to a pub­lisher, so the require­ment was get­ting all these bits and pieces together. It was sur­pris­ingly dif­fi­cult, tir­ing, and even painful to whit­tle down my so-far 25,000 word man­u­script into a 250-word intro­duc­tion! And to try to explain ME, as in the require­ments was “explain WHY YOU,” was very dif­fi­cult indeed. “Maybe you’ve had an extra­or­di­nary life,” the con­sul­tant said over the phone, and I had to admit to myself, “No, that isn’t why I want to write down all these mem­o­ries and recipes.” So I tried to describe, and thereby sell, I sup­pose, the pas­sion I feel about the very ordi­nary cook­ing life I have had, and how strongly I feel about writ­ing it down. Very tiring.

We’ve been mad tennis-obsessed lately and I’m not mak­ing it up, I can feel the dif­fer­ence after three weeks, in my arms and legs. I’m not tak­ing approach­ing 45 lying down! I refuse to give up and turn into mush. And now John’s ankle is feel­ing fairly well, he’s more than anx­ious to get us in shape as well. Our mod­er­ate diet has been really suc­cess­ful: no bread, no pota­toes, fro­mage frais instead of may­on­naise, tuna in water instead of olive oil, no cheese except for buf­falo moz­zarella which I feel is one of the basic food groups, with toma­toes and basil… I mean, the diet’s suc­cess­ful except for when we don’t do these things, like tonight’s truf­fle brie with lovely lit­tle wheat bis­cuits. Hey, it’s no fun to have things on a not-this list unless you some­times bust it wide open. And with truffles!

So Avery’s on the last half-term of her first year of her new school, and we’re doing the food fes­ti­val tomor­row, then the Cotswolds on Mon­day evening with one of her school friends, just for an evening of fun in the coun­try. The poor things are fac­ing their first exams when they return to school, so the watch­word for the hol­i­day week is “revi­sion,” which is some awful British word for rehash­ing every­thing they’ve been told all year, in prepa­ra­tion for spit­ting it back out. I sup­pose the exact same thing would have faced Avery in Amer­ica if we’ve stayed there. But the pressure’s on. So a lit­tle fun will be wel­come this week.

I’ll report back from Hamp­ton Court and if I’ve found a way to make my own water, I’ll def­i­nitely post the recipe…

Well, such is my life, sur­rounded by the best pos­si­ble friends, that the gor­geous meat­balls shown here were shoved uncer­e­mo­ni­ously into the back of the fridge this evening, never eaten. Let me explain.

Drum­roll, please… we are legal! Our visas finally came through today, after over three months’ limbo while the British powers-that-be delib­er­ated over whether or not we were wor­thy to stay in the coun­try. So demo­bil­is­ing, so demor­al­is­ing, so depress­ing, so dis­cour­ag­ing! To feel as if our adopted land did not want us here.

But after so much wait­ing, the noti­fi­ca­tion came, and with almost undeco­rous haste, a motor­cy­cle mes­sen­ger showed up on our doorstep with our pass­ports, full of excit­ing visas, pho­tographs, much stamp­ing and offi­cial­dom. It’s offi­cial! We’re staying.

Nat­u­rally I turned imme­di­ately to my phone and rang up Annie to tell her the good news, although equally nat­u­rally I had to tell it like it is. “I hope you can get the deposit from the caterer back, because… the dou­ble wedding’s off.” A sigh of relief: Annie’s lovely son Fred and daugh­ter Geor­gia can live in peace, not hav­ing to marry me and John to give us legal means to stay. Hon­estly, the legal rela­tion­ships would have been too, too nau­se­at­ing. Avery’s best friend also her step-aunt? Let’s not go there.

Annie imme­di­ately said, “Can you come for a bit of fizz?” But they declined din­ner together as the older chil­dren had to revise for exams. I should have known, know­ing Annie, but no, I slaved through the after­noon con­coct­ing meat­balls with ricotta and pars­ley, and a tomato sauce with fresh basil and red wine, and left it on the stove, ready for us to return for din­ner, after the “bit of fizz.” HA!

We were greeted with many kisses, exhor­ta­tions to learn all the verses of “God Save the Queen,” cham­pagne (and for me, Zubrowka, my absolute favorite bison grass vodka, dear Keith never for­gets), and… deep breath… smoked salmon and creme fraiche on bli­nis, lit­tle skew­ers of buf­falo moz­zarella, fresh cherry toma­toes and pesto, chilled prawns with a remoulade, a plat­ter of salami, parma ham and chorizo, roasted aspara­gus spears, red pep­per hum­mous, a gor­geous chunky puree of edamame, a plat­ter of cru­dites! And just when we thought it was safe to take a breath, plates of lit­tle hot bites arrived: tiny falafels, puff pas­try filled with chorizo paste, another with feta cheese…

Oh, Annie! Thank you, my friend.

We sim­ply lin­gered FOR­EVER. Their gar­den is sur­rounded by roses, just flow­er­ing, and presided over by their two cats, Gra­cie and Cae­sar, and chil­dren wan­dered in and out, telling sto­ries, swip­ing good­ies (I won’t con­fess how many lit­tle skew­ers Emily had from the moz­zarella plat­ter, nor how many bli­nis Avery wolfed down). Bird­song, bub­bly, talk­ing over each other as usual, rejoic­ing that there are so many such occa­sions yet to come: we’re here to stay!

So the meat­balls are shelved. Tomor­row night, per­haps. We’re all in a sort of stu­por of relief, a sort of light-heartedness that’s the lift­ing of a guil­lo­tine. Avery can stay at her beloved school, we can stay in our beloved house. Just this after­noon my phone rang and it was my next-door neigh­bor, the ever-elegant solic­i­tor Sara. “You know, there is a lit­tle furry face press­ing itself against my study win­dow just now, and her tag pro­claims her to be ‘Tacey.’ She is a lovely cat, and I don’t mind a bit…” We traded sto­ries about the appar­ent ran­dom wan­der­ings of the cats up and down our street, within our houses. Yes­ter­day after­noon we came up the steps to the recep­tion room to find Char­lie, next door tabby but one, calmly ensconced on the land­ing! And reg­u­larly Mid­night and Smoky from next door roam through our kitchen, look­ing for food or trou­ble or both. Clearly they’ve taken on the neigh­bor­li­ness of their humans.

Sigh. A bit of fizz. Relief. And if you don’t have Annie…

Meat­balls with Ricotta and Pars­ley and Tomato Sauce
(serves four, twice)

meat­balls:
2 tbsps sun­flower or other veg­etable oil
1 kilo (about two pounds) pork mince
125 grams (about half a cup) ricotta cheese
gen­er­ous tbsp Ital­ian sea­son­ing
large hand­ful flatleaf pars­ley, finely chopped
large pinch sea salt

sauce:
gen­er­ous splash red wine
5 clove gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
3 soup-size cans toma­toes
large hand­ful basil leaves, rolled and chopped into ribbons

Pour oil in a large, wide, heavy-bottomed fry­ing pan. Mix all meat­ball ingre­di­ents and form into balls of about an inch in diam­e­ter. You’ll end up with about 24 meat­balls. Set aside and heat oil till nearly smok­ing. Turn on extrac­tor fan and open gar­den doors! Fry meat­balls in a sin­gle layer, in more than one batch, if nec­es­sary, for a cou­ple of min­utes on each side, just to brown. Don’t worry about cook­ing them through; they’ll poach in the sauce. You just want a crust.

Set meat­balls on a plate cov­ered with paper towel, and pour wine into pan. Scrape up all lovely bits from bot­tom, and then add gar­lic and onion, cook just till soft, then add toma­toes and basil and cook down on a medium heat till slightly thick­ened, about 10 min­utes. Add meat­balls care­fully and turn heat down to just a sim­mer. Let cook for about 20 min­utes. Done.

And I will tell all, about my encounter with Her Majesty, but first I will keep you in Ghastly Sus­pense while I extol the virtues of… Chiswick.

First of all, for my com­pa­tri­ots across the Pond, it’s pro­nounced “Chizzick.” So you don’t arrive and embar­rass your­selves by pro­nounc­ing it as it looks, any more than you would look at “South­wark” Cathe­dral and say any­thing but “Suthuck.” But I can top both those by telling you about a girl I know whose last name is “Feath­er­stone­haugh” pro­nounced… “Fan­shaw.” I am not mak­ing this up.

My point upon salient point is, I have been hear­ing from my friend Annie for donkey’s years, or how­ever long it is I’ve known her, about the untold joys of… Chizzick. We had one adven­ture there dur­ing a late evening when I had a white crab­meat emer­gency (don’t ask) and I was charmed, the lit­tle I could see of it in the Jan­u­ary dark­ness. “Some­day you and I will go and mooch around there and shop…” Annie would say, and I put it aside as you do com­ments like that, like “Some­day we’ve got to go through the entire medieval sec­tion of the V&A,” not think­ing it will ever actu­ally hap­pen. BUt it did.

On Fri­day I was scooped up, in her own words, by Annie after my stint at Lost Prop­erty (an actual Links of Lon­don sil­ver charm bracelet with TWO claimants, high drama) and swiftly trans­ported to the love­li­ness that is Chiswick, or Turn­ham Green, depend­ing on your post code or sense of neigh­bor­hood, or tax code, I know not. Trust me, it’s the foodie’s par­adise in West Lon­don. We erupted from Annie’s car to be enveloped in a com­pletely unex­pected rain­storm. “What the hell?” we both snapped. “This wasn’t in the brief! Lunch then, first, and shop­ping after?” Where­upon the rain stopped with the sen­sa­tion of an old lady purs­ing her mouth, and we decided to shop any­way, and have lunch after.

We started out at Whisk, which was a dan­ger­ous thing to do because there is absolutely noth­ing I really, really need from a kitchen shop. But it’s like a candy store is to Avery: I sim­ply can­not walk in and walk with­out buy­ing some­thing, and actu­ally it wasn’t even for me, strictly speak­ing, but for John and Avery: a big heavy non­stick fry­ing pan for her break­fast eggs. And, I admit it, a tiny lit­tle orange candle-lighter, because it was orange and I love can­dles. But I’ll have you know I did NOT buy the lit­tle terra-cotta egg-box shaped con­tainer to hold eggs on my counter. I’ll ask for it for my birth­day. Whisk was fun.

Then we were onto Mor­timer and Ben­nett, the famous delicatessen-cheese shop (and gen­eral Aladdin’s Cave of unnec­es­sary things to eat), and again I met with temp­ta­tion. Annie was plan­ning a cheese board for din­ner, and I suc­cumbed to a tiny lit­tle St Mar­cellin in a cun­ning pot­tery dish, plus an enor­mous num­ber of gar­licky olives, and a box of organic straw­berry bis­cuits in the shapes of mice and lions, for Avery and Jamie’s pre-ice skat­ing snack. I could have bought every­thing in the shop! Untold types of smoked fish and meat, bis­cuits and crack­ers, yogurts and creams and but­ters. “You know, I read about this shop when search­ing for a sort of obscure juice called… oh, shoot, now I can’t remem­ber, but it started with a ‘v’…” I bur­bled, and the pro­pri­etor said calmly, “Yes, ‘Ver­jus,’ only our pur­veyor moved back to New Zealand, tak­ing all of it with her.”

Then we popped into the sub­lime Covent Gar­den Fish­mon­ger Turn­ham Green and I picked up a kilo of mas­sive frozen scal­lops with­out roe, which made me very happy because I sim­ply hate pay­ing for the weight of some­thing I’ll come home and detach and throw away. I do not like roe. But these scal­lops were sub­lime, and led me to cre­ate a per­fect, sim­ple salad for din­ner, which I’ll tell you about in a moment.

Finally we were tempted into Zecca, a gor­geous shop filled with pot­tery, nap­kins, place­mats, can­dle hold­ers, so many things cry­ing out to be brought home by me. I ended up with a mod­est lit­tle fluted blue dish to put steamed aspara­gus on, as we’re now eat­ing the lovely green things as many times per week as we can stand, to enjoy the season!

From there to the secret (shh) of Chiswick, the The Roe­buck, the best pub lunch you will ever have for a fiver. Grilled salmon fil­let on a bed of chick­peas doused with lovely fresh pesto and tossed with rocket. For a fiver! Annie had cheese and chut­ney sand­wich with hand­cut chips… for a fiver. Go, do, and make the pow­ers that be at the Roe­buck know they have an audience.

Since then, I thawed my bril­liant Chiswick scal­lops and made a new, mod­ern and quite British ver­sion of the old Amer­i­can 1937 clas­sic, Cobb Salad.

Scal­lop Cobb Salad
(serves 2 as main dish, 4 as light starter)

1 tbsp sun­flower oil (or other rather taste­less oil)
1 kilo scal­lops, cleaned of mus­cle and dried
8 ounces pancetta cubes
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1/2 lb new pota­toes, steamed in their skins and quar­tered
hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped
hand­ful chives, chopped
3 beet­root, roasted, peeled and diced
1/2 cup goat cheese, crum­bled
2 cups rocket
sea salt and fresh ground pep­per
olive oil to driz­zle
1 lemon, quartered

So just like the old Cobb Salad, only not with any of the same ingre­di­ents. Heat the oil in a heavy fry­ing pan and sear the scal­lops for two min­utes on the first side, get­ting a good color, then turn over and do the same to the other side for per­haps a minute. Do NOT over­cook. Turn out onto paper towel to drain.

In same fry­ing pan, where there will still be oil, fry the pancetta gen­tly till well browned. Set aside. Fry gar­lic gen­tly in the pancetta fat, then add steamed pota­toes and pars­ley and chives. Toss well for a moment, then take off heat.

Now: assem­bly job. On a long, wide plat­ter, place the scal­lops, the pancetta, the pota­toes, the beet­root, the goat cheese and the rocket in rows.

Let your guests assem­ble their own arrange­ments of all the ingre­di­ents and pro­vide the salt, pep­per and oil to dress, along with the lemon wedges. Enjoy!

***********

This is a divine, and gor­geous, dish. A nice devel­op­ment from the chicken, hard-boiled egg, bacon, blue cheese ver­sion of years past. Go for it. Scal­lops are the new chicken, just like 44 is the new 37. I hope not.

Well, Sun­day then we ended up at the Royal Wind­sor Horse Show, where the favorite activ­ity was the Pony Club Mounted Games. Just hilar­i­ous! All the bits of Great Britain com­pet­ing against each other, and sadly, Wales as usual was at the bot­tom. But their red jumpers were so charm­ing! And there was the Queen to award the plate for “Best Turned-out” sol­dier, or what­ever: the shini­est coats, the best-combed manes, the plushi­est feath­ered caps… We had a mar­vel­lous time, albeit suf­fer­ing as usual from a hor­ri­ble burger lunch. How to solve the food prob­lem? Awful insti­tu­tional fare, or we bring our own pic­nic and drag it around. None of the sce­nar­ios has so far worked for me. Next year, per­haps, I’ll fig­ure it out.

This week has been full of drama. Today was my writ­ing class, hosted by my dear friend Vale­ria, and our spe­cial guest was Jane Mul­vagh, she of the recent pub­li­ca­tion fame of Madres­field: The Real Brideshead. Her brief was to help us strate­gize find­ing agents and pub­lish­ers, but hon­estly what she accom­plished, for me at least, was just a mas­sive intim­i­da­tion of how cool and effort­less her rise to fame has been, ver­sus our fledg­ling and fright­ened efforts. I’m strug­gling this month with writer’s block, I must con­fess. None of my ideas feels worth writ­ing down. I need a boost of some kind, an inter­ven­tion. Should I write next about child­hood mem­o­ries with my dad, or Irish coun­try houses with cook­ery on an Aga? Or lemons? Or arti­choke dip? I’m stymied. But all the writ­ers I know assure me that such peri­ods are nor­mal. All I can do is go swim­ming, let John drag me out for a ten­nis game, and cook a lovely din­ner of grilled salmon, warm chick­pea salad with feta, curry and rocket, and steamed broc­col­ini. That’s all I can do right now. Not being royal, that is…

My God, I’ve been home from Here­ford for a week and some­how the days have gone by with­out prop­erly describ­ing the bril­liance of our days. I promise to do it all jus­tice. But what on earth has been hap­pen­ing here that has dis­tracted me?

Let’s see, there was a long-awaited ten­nis game with John, oh joy! His ankle is truly on the mend, but I’m not push­ing it, so we played it safe, so to speak, and just enjoyed the gor­geous but slightly shabby envi­rons of Raven­scourt Park. And then after school one day last week came the adven­ture of the explod­ing Avery school back­pack on Thurs­day: truly the thing exploded, send­ing show­ers of her belong­ings all over school, so we piled into the car with Emily and headed to Cath Kid­ston, an Eng­lish insti­tu­tion if you have a young girl and any inci­den­tal inter­est in roses, polka dots, charm­ing sum­mer prints, you name it for per­fect girly gifts, and, as it turns out, school­bags. Rid­ing there in the Mini with the top down, we all tried to pre­tend the air was not sim­ply swirling with pollen: itch­ing eyes, scratchy throat, crazed sneez­ing. But you can’t NOT put the top down! Suc­cess­ful pur­chases includ­ing sev­eral birth­day party needs, a lovely errand to Chiswick.

From there we all repaired to the school swim­ming pool to work off the spring’s lethargy (and maybe a cou­ple of pounds along the way) enforced by the weather and by John’s puny ankle. But my good­ness, the chlo­rine. I raced John in the crawl, Emily (“I need two sec­onds head start!” she screams, where­upon she wins by… two sec­onds), then we adults cal­lously leave the girls on their own (twelve years old, the magic num­ber!) and head home to get ready for pier­rade, our diner de choix these days, espe­cially when one’s in need of a pro­tein fix. What a joy to sit out in the gar­den (albeit joined by Avery bun­dled in a down jacket, pash­mina wound round her hair, leg warm­ers: she only later con­fessed that she ate din­ner in her wet bathing suit, under all these lay­ers, yuck). I just adore our new (well, not really) gar­den fur­ni­ture, the funky lit­tle plant that dec­o­rates the table, the wild bird­song, the can­dles and clink­ing of sil­ver on china.

Next morn­ing I suc­cumbed to a long-overdue cof­fee with Emily’s mother. Will there ever be a cof­fee where we don’t talk over each other, say­ing, “I had one more thing I absolutely HAD to say, so don’t inter­rupt!”, never get­ting through every­thing no mat­ter how long we spend catch­ing up. There is a never-ending list of issues to get through: our daugh­ters, my week­end away, her plans for attend­ing a bit­ter­sweet chris­ten­ing on the week­end, Fred’s GCSE prepa­ra­tions, cook­ing, eat­ing, read­ing… and of course, Lost Prop­erty. I had to beg a ride from her, in fact, to get to my duties at said LP on time. That chilled base­ment room, the lan­guid and care­less gor­geous school­girls hav­ing lost every­thing under the SUN, get­ting to meet the din­ing room genius, Mr. V., who was most pleased to hear that Avery enjoys the food. “I con­ducted a sur­vey,” he said, “and the lit­tle ones just ask for more pizza and more pasta. The older they get, the more their palates enjoy, say, the fish, the pesto, the risotto…” I left school after giv­ing the sec­re­tary one HUGE bag, left in LP, full of the entire aca­d­e­mic career of one par­tic­u­lar girl. The sec­re­tary said, “I think she’s out sick today,” and all I could think was, “I bet she is, hav­ing left all this SOMEWHERE.”

Fri­day we worked, worked, worked, try­ing to reduce the pile of paper­work on our desks: hor­rid taxes, play tick­ets, school forms, birth­day cards to send, that chicken-in-lettuce recipe I thought I’d make that I now real­ize Avery would NEVER eat… and then a din­ner out, for heaven’s sake. When was the last time? We suc­cumbed to that crazy Lon­don phe­nom­e­non, Yo! Sushi, in the West­field mas­sive shop­ping cen­tre, and do you know what (low­ers voice to a whis­per)? It was fab­u­lous. Go for the most expen­sive thing, a five-pound plate of six slices of sashimi: two salmon in dill, two salmon in black mus­tard seed and poppy, and two yel­low­tail tuna in corian­der. Superb! We had to be rolled home, we ate so much sushi. A delight, espe­cially in a world whose out-of-home din­ner offer­ings seem to get less and less 1) desir­able and 2) afford­able. I just don’t want, any­more, to pay any­one to feed me some­thing I could con­ceiv­ably make at home. But sushi? Bring it on.

On Sat­ur­day Avery returned from her sleep­over with Emily and sim­ply col­lapsed in exhaus­tion until it was time for her friend’s Lillie’s birth­day party, a trip to see “The 39 Steps,” which sounded by all accounts to be bril­liant. We adults spent the after­noon at “State of Play,” a film ver­sion of the incom­pa­ra­ble BBC minis­eries of sev­eral years ago. I know, I know, a two-hour film can never approach the com­plex­ity of the series, but it’s a crack­ing story, well-acted and just scary enough for me: loads of issues to think about after­ward like the death of print media, the con­flict between the old-fashioned reporter and the whip­per­snap­per blog world, the cor­rup­tion of the good old Military-Industrial Com­plex (always good for a laugh). Go see it, it’s worth the effort.

Then, we come to the FOOD. Sun­day I had tick­ets to the over­whelm­ing Real Food Fes­ti­val at Earl’s Court. So many times I have gone all on my own to food shows and fes­ti­vals, and sure, it’s fun enough: how could it not be? A chance to stroll from stand to stand, pur­veyor and spe­cial­ist mak­ers every­where you look, end­less vari­ety. But how much more fun to go with some­one? John was kind and suc­cumbed, and I do think he had a good time. How many sausage sam­ples can any one man eat? Then you step up to a cheese maker and think you’ll get one lit­tle sliver, but NO, the man wants you to taste the entire range, from young and creamy to aged and smelly. Bring it on!

And then there’s the healthy hibis­cus bev­er­age, guar­an­teed to pre­vent all bad things and enhance all good, and the vegan apple crum­ble, and the all-fruit sugar sub­sti­tute Sweet Free­dom (an apple and banana cake tomor­row will be the proof or death of THAT impulse pur­chase). There was the stall with many fishy ril­lettes, La Paim­po­laise (we suc­cumbed to sea bass, razor clam and red mul­let, glo­ri­ously fishy and exotic), the chorizo at Suf­folk Salami , the plump and suc­cu­lent Dorset oys­ters at Ross­more Oys­ters, the piri-piri oil at Chilli Pep­per Pete that forms the back­bone of ALL my salad dress­ings… Lastly, I may tell you, we sam­pled EVERY sausage that popped up in front of us (a tough job, but someone’s got to… well, you know). And hands-down, best in show, Sim­ply Sausages, offer­ing a juicy but not fatty pork sausage stud­ded with fresh rose­mary and fen­nel seed. Quite per­fect for:

Sausage, Rocket, Porcini Pizza with Piri-Piri Oil and Moz­zarella
(serves at least four gen­er­ously, with three large pizzas)

800 grams strong bread flour
1/2 tbsp each dried thyme, dried basil
pinch salt
2 pack­ets dried yeast
500 ml tepid water
1 tbsp milk
1 tbsp olive oil
1 extra tbsp olive oil

tomato sauce:
2 tbsps olive oil
1 large can whole Ital­ian plum peeled toma­toes
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 tsps Ital­ian sea­son­ing
hand­ful whole basil leaves

top­pings:
1 packet Sim­ply Sausages
1 70-gram bag rocket leaves
1 red onion, sliced thin
500 grams pizza moz­zarella (less liq­uid than ordi­nary), shred­ded
1 cup dried porcini mush­rooms
fresh cherry toma­toes, halved
Piri-piri oil to driz­zle
1/2 cup fresh grated parme­san to scat­ter over top

This is some­thing to make when you have a fair amount of time, to allow for the dough to rise, and a fair amount of energy, to make the sauce and pre­pare the top­pings. The results will make you throw away your order-out-pizza menus and will leave you want­ing to make it all over again, the next night.

For the dough, mix all the dry ingre­di­ents well with a fork, in a large bowl. Mix all the wet ingre­di­ents in a mea­sur­ing cup and pour slowly over the flour mix­ture, stir­ring with a fork just to absorb, then get your (clean) hands in there and knead the dough until nice and soft, slightly sticky. Add more flour if the dough is too sticky. When it’s nice and soft and not stick­ing to the bowl, take the dough out, oil the inside of the bowl with olive oil, roll the dough around to coat it too, and leave in a warm place till dou­bled in bulk, about 2 hours. Punch down, knead a bit, then leave to rise one more time. This is a very flex­i­ble process: the dough can rise to any amount over almost any period of time and still be punched down.

Sep­a­rate the dough into three chunks and roll out with a rolling pin and plenty of flour shaken about to keep it from stick­ing to the rolling sur­faces. Roll each chunk out to the size of your pizza stone, tin or cookie sheet, stretch it out to cover the sur­face and cover with cling­film until ready to bake.

Place the porcini mush­rooms in a dish and cover with boil­ing water, stir­ring a bit and let­ting them sit for at least 20 min­utes, to rehy­drate. Save the water when you’re fin­ished because it makes a crack­ing addi­tion to cous­cous, risotto, stock, pasta sauce, you name it.

To make the sauce, heat the olive oil and saute the gar­lic gen­tly, but don’t brown. Whizz the toma­toes in a food proces­sor till smooth, then add to the gar­lic. Sprin­kle with the Ital­ian sea­son­ing and sim­mer for about 1/2 hour or until nicely reduced and slightly thick­ened. Add basil leaves and sim­mer until wilted.

For the top­pings, use your imag­i­na­tion! You can either saute the sausages till cooked through and slice, or lib­er­ate them from their skins and saute as sausage­meat. Spoon sauce over the crust, scat­ter with top­pings as you like, and bake in a VERY hot oven (450 F, 225 C) for per­haps 10 min­utes or until the crust is nicely browned and crisp.

DELI­CIOUS!

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

You know what else is amaz­ing, that I made last night to go with a huge and cheesy dish of lasagna: just the dough itself brushed with olive oil, sprin­kled with gar­lic pow­der and dried pars­ley, and baked. I sliced it like pizza, and the plat­ter never even made it to the table: we and our friends at it ALL stand­ing up around the stove, as I pulled the lasagna from the oven. Quite per­fect, and prac­ti­cally free. Very credit– and otherwise-crunchy!

Well, let’s see, this week began with parent-teacher con­fer­ences last night (the occa­sion call­ing for Avery’s best friend and her fam­ily to come over after­ward for the afore­men­tioned lasagna feast). May I kvell? Avery is just blos­som­ing. Every teacher described her as imag­i­na­tive and a plea­sure to teach, and “a left-field thinker,” which sounds strangely sporty for a girl who is as ball-challenged as our daugh­ter is. No wor­ries at all. We are sim­ply burst­ing with pride for her. And she’s HAPPY. Doesn’t get any bet­ter than that.

We all sat around slightly punchy with relief at the con­fer­ences being over, devour­ing lasagna (a left­over por­tion of cheesy spinach casse­role makes a very nice addi­tion, between the pasta lay­ers), every­one talk­ing over every­one as we always do. Poor Fred’s exams are com­ing up this week, Geor­gia and Avery dis­cussed their Sun­day ride at the sta­ble (alone in the park on two can­ters, very cool), we adults wran­gled over films we have seen, liked, not liked, want to see. All too soon it was bed­time for children…

Well, in light of all these real-life adven­tures, it’s hard even to remem­ber the wild, glut­to­nous, hilar­i­ous, bril­liant week­end in Here­ford with my foodie friends. But it hap­pened. I must tell you that there is noth­ing more fun, for me, than being sur­rounded by peo­ple who just want to talk food, shop for food, cook together, talk about cook­ing. As the late, great food writer Lau­rie Col­win said, “There is noth­ing nicer than eat­ing, unless it’s talk­ing about eat­ing. The best pos­si­ble thing is talk­ing about eat­ing, while eat­ing with friends.” And that is pre­cisely what we did.

Sat­ur­day we trun­dled off in two cars to nearby Lud­low, truly the food cap­i­tal of what­ever part of Eng­land we were in (not dri­ving, I paid NO atten­tion what­ever to direc­tions, a bless­ing really). No fewer than six inde­pen­dent butch­ers in the tiny lit­tle place! We dis­patched Susan to AH Grif­fiths to hag­gle for lamb mince and a beef roast, and then Katie and I fell in love (I know, scary) with a pork roast of unbe­liev­able suc­cu­lence… how much meat could any 10 food writ­ers con­sume? Plenty, it turned out.

Not being a sweet eater, I didn’t pay atten­tion to the many bak­ers, but Caro patron­ized De Grey’s for an incom­pa­ra­bly tasty apple cin­na­mon cake), Deli on the Square for sev­eral del­i­ca­cies: Adam’s Patch­work Pate, Welsh Dragon-style with veni­son and chilli, I bought some superb Moroc­can black oil-cured olives. I picked up a quan­tity of new sea­son aspara­gus at The Fruit Bas­ket (not know­ing at the time how much our own aspara­gus patch would yield), then we repaired to the Charl­ton Arms for a spot of lunch over­look­ing the river and ancient build­ings. We ate and ate! Whole trout, pol­lock with a chilli sauce went down best. I knew we had crossed some crazy-foodie line when Adam let, nay encour­aged, all of us at the table to dip a fin­ger into the salad dress­ing on his plate to try to iden­tify one last ingre­di­ent! We are a breed apart.

Finally home to begin the evening meal: Katie and I picked pur­ple sage for our dear pork roast and he went into the slow oven with a good sprin­kling of Mal­don salt and a good twist of black pep­per. The crack­ling was quite finely scored and it proved INSANELY good. Jenny picked wild gar­lic by the road out­side the house and that started out mashed pota­toes down a road that was never intended for them but was quite bril­liant, and so inventive:

Col­can­non with Fresh Spring Onions, Spring Greens and Wild Gar­lic
(serves 10)

5 lbs pota­toes, peeled and cut into chunks
hot cream and but­ter to the con­sis­tency you like: around 2 cups
2 large hand­fuls spring greens, wilted in boil­ing water
hand­ful wild gar­lic, both leaves and flow­ers chopped

Boil the pota­toes till soft but not mushy. Drain pota­toes, and mash with milk and but­ter mix­ture, then add greens and wild gar­lic and stir till well mixed.

Heav­enly.

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

That’s what the week­end was all about: spon­tane­ity, all-hands-on-deck, inven­tive­ness. No ego! Just good fun. And even a spot of work: I had a great time over cock­tails sit­ting with Jenny out­side the kitchen, hav­ing her go over my chap­ter, giv­ing me her wise and gen­er­ous sug­ges­tions. Radio? Tape my read­ing in MP3 for­mat and send it out? How did Gar­ri­son Keil­lor get started anyway?

Din­ner was uproar­i­ous, very LATE, sin­fully rich and deli­cious. And at the end of it, we pre­sented Rosie, our beau­ti­ful and tire­less leader, with a turquoise neck­lace, and one of Pauline’s side-splitting gems:

Bad­ger Stew, by Pauline Beaumont

She had always hated waste
So made a ver­dant, pun­gent paste
from tons of for­aged wild gar­lic
(which sadly made the fam­ily sick)

She moved to dead things squashed quite flat
rab­bit, stoat or grouse
The col­lec­tion expanded with rats and a cat
(There started a ter­ri­ble smell in the house)

Alas, she pro­gressed from road kill
not sat­is­fied with hedge­hogs now.
She started to pick off lambs from the hill
and last night she came home with a cow.

Dri­ving along a coun­try lane
her shovel always ready
some thought she looked a touch insane
kalash­nikov held steady

She gave her vis­i­tors bad­ger stew
with lamb kid­neys a la Hun­gar­ian
the lot of them spent the whole night in the loo
and have now all turned full vegetarian

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

Sun­day we all weighed in again with var­i­ous con­coc­tions: Sam’s and my lamb burg­ers with spring onions he har­vested from the gar­den (Rosie: “You’re going on about that spring onion as if you gave BIRTH to it!”), mint from the gar­den and the ras el hanout sea­son­ing I brought from Lon­don. Divine, on the bar­be­cue, along­side an aubergine mar­i­nated in olive oil. Sam made caramelized red onions with bal­samic vine­gar and sugar, I roasted whole heads of gar­lic with olive oil and rose­mary from the gar­den, and Pauline casu­ally whipped up the most deli­cious and sim­ple tatziki: cucum­ber, mint and yogurt, per­fect with the lamb burgers.

We car­ried all this out to the pic­nic table behind the lit­tle house and feasted in the blink­ing, windy blue sun­shine, end­ing finally with Sam’s:

The Ulti­mate Choco­late Cake

This recipe is made from a com­bi­na­tion of two choco­late cake recipes. The sponge is adapted from Angela Nilsen’s ‘Ulti­mate Choco­late Cake’ recipe and the ganache from Orlando Murrin’s ‘Cel­e­bra­tion Choco­late Cake’ recipe.

For The Sponge
200g good qual­ity dark choco­late, about 70% cocoa solids
200g unsalted but­ter, cut in pieces
1 tbsp instant cof­fee gran­ules
85g self-raising flour
85g plain flour
1⁄4 tsp bicar­bon­ate of soda
200g light mus­co­v­ado sugar
200g golden caster sugar (I used 180g Golden Caster Sugar and 20g White Caster Sugar)
25g cocoa pow­der
3 medium eggs
5 tbsp/75ml buttermilk

N.B. If you wish to make a lighter sponge only use 100g of the choco­late. How­ever, it is sweeter.

For The Ganache
220g dark choco­late, about 70% solids, chopped
240 ml dou­ble cream
2 tbsp golden syrup
2 tbsp unsalted but­ter, at room temp

To Dec­o­rate
3 tbsp crys­tallised vio­let petals

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

I can assure you that this is indeed the Ulti­mate Choco­late Cake. I don’t even LIKE choco­late. But it is dense, yet not heavy, intense yet not cloy­ing. The idea that a young man like Sam could turn this out, while teach­ing young boys to cook by day and being a strong blond ladykiller by… well, late after­noon, as I don’t know how he spends his nights… gives one hope for the younger gen­er­a­tion. But even bet­ter than the cake was his forg­ing of a rela­tion­ship between me and the freezer, whose door sim­ply would NOT open for me, but would for him. “Now, freezer,” he would say, bend­ing his tall frame down to the han­dle, “I know Kris­ten doesn’t under­stand that she needs to ask nicely, but she’s really a good per­son under­neath…” but no, it took his magic touch to open the door.

Thank you, every­one in the “Gath­er­ing of Nuts in May,” for an unfor­get­table time, life­long friend­ships strength­ened, the laugh­ter there to shore us up, if life gets heavy. Here’s to the NEXT reunion!

Poor things, pigs are get­ting it from every­where these days. Of course swine flu is noth­ing to joke about, except that one must. Avery brought home this gem from school this week: “What’s the best treat­ment for swine flu? Oink­ment.” And my per­sonal favorite, sweep­ing my lit­tle cir­cle of friends, goes like this: “I called up the NHS Help Line for infor­ma­tion about Swine Flu, but all I got was crack­ling.” Which is a par­tic­u­larly British jokelet because you have to under­stand both “NHS” and “crack­ling,” a phe­nom­e­non pecu­liar to the cook­ing of pork in my adopted land. In Amer­ica, of course, we insist on call­ing pork “The Other White Meat,” which means it’s com­pet­ing in every way with chicken: bland, cheap and skin­less. No aver­age Amer­i­can is going to taint such a com­pelling list of qual­i­ties with any­thing resem­bling what makes pork in Britain so pop­u­lar: the thick layer of gor­geous fat and skin run­ning the length of our roasts. Cooks here score the skin and fat in any num­ber of attrac­tive pat­terns (I favor the criss­cross), sprin­kle it gen­er­ously with sea salt and fresh black pep­per, and if you’re me, cover it all with fresh pur­ple sage leaves from your handy kitchen gar­den (as you see above), and roast it till the meat is soft and ten­der and the fat is, well, crack­ling. Lovely.

But even if it weren’t for the rather hys­ter­i­cal world reac­tion to swine flu (sev­eral Lon­don schools have closed for the week with just one or two cases), pork has other wor­ries on its mind. In my con­tin­u­ing quest to sup­port my beloved Gig­gly Pig sausage and bacon pro­duc­ers, I took a goodly num­ber of a fla­vor called “Welsh Dragon” with me on my cook­ery week­end away, and they went down a treat. I don’t really know for cer­tain what the term “Welsh Dragon” denotes, since sev­eral sausage mak­ers use the title and the recipes all seem slightly dif­fer­ent, but I would guess the com­mon denom­i­na­tor is hot chill­ies. I say, I would guess that, but you’d be sur­prised at the num­ber of food pol­icy admin­is­tra­tors who seemed fear­ful that the Gen­eral Pub­lic thought the main ingre­di­ent was… dragon meat.

I am not mak­ing this up.

Seri­ously, some gov­ern­men­tal body actu­ally has stip­u­lated that any sausage called “Welsh Dragon” must spec­ify that the main ingre­di­ent is PORK. When chal­lenged, said gov­ern­men­tal offi­cials had to back­track and say that they did not actu­ally rate the Gen­eral Pub­lic as so mas­sively stu­pid (or wish­ful) as to believe they were buy­ing ground dragon… just to “clar­ify” for veg­e­tar­i­ans! So I guess dragon meat, being myth­i­cal, would be accept­able to veg­e­tar­i­ans, but pork… WHOA!

All I can say in sup­port of these con­cerns is that Rosie says the best dish of our whole Here­ford week­end was this:

New Aspara­gus with Quail’s Eggs and Lemon May­on­naise
(serves 4)

about 20 fresh aspara­gus spears, bro­ken off where they are ten­der at the stem
1 dozen quail’s eggs, hard-cooked (put in boil­ing water for 3 min­utes, then plunged in cold), peeled and cut in half lengthways

dress­ing:
2 tbsps may­on­naise
1 tsp Dijon mus­tard
zest and juice of 1 lemon
sea salt and pep­per to taste

Steam the aspara­gus JUST until it begins to smell like aspara­gus — per­haps 2 min­utes, no longer. Sim­ply lift the lid of the saucepan/steamer and smell. The aspara­gus will con­tinue to cook for a moment when you take it out, so be con­ser­v­a­tive and DO NOT overcook.

Lay the aspara­gus on a plat­ter and scat­ter over with quail’s eggs, then driz­zle with dress­ing and serve right away.

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

Light, fresh, green, yel­low and white. The absolute per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of spring. I don’t want to gloat, but aspara­gus one’s picked on one’s own, min­utes before cook­ing, is pretty much the apogee of sat­is­fac­tion on a plate.

Then, too, for lunch today I made a com­pletely sim­ple and fresh salad and I’d serve it to any­body, per­haps along­side the aspara­gus dish, for a truly ele­gant spring luncheon.

Cray­fish Tails Salad With Avo­cado, Rocket and Lemon
(serves 4)

360 grams cray­fish tails
1 avo­cado, diced
two hand­fuls rocket
2 tbsps may­on­naise
zest and juice of 1 lemon
hand­ful chives, chopped
pinch sea salt and pepper

Drain the cray­fish tails and dry with paper tow­els (so dress­ing doesn’t get runny). Place in a large shal­low bowl. Toss in avo­cado and rocket.

Mix may­on­naise with lemon zest and juice and shake very well till mixed. Pour dress­ing over cray­fish, then sprin­kle over chives and salt and pepper.

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

Again, this dish is wel­com­ing of spring in its bright col­ors and lively fla­vors. Tangy, creamy, sharp from the rocket and firmly fleshly from the fish. You’ll love it.

More tomor­row on our adven­tures in Here­ford, which included a mas­sive bar­be­cue of lamb burg­ers, aubergine (egg­plant), toma­toes with har­vested rose­mary, you name it. When I give you these recipes, you will not frankly believe that we cooked (and ATE!) it all in three days… but my swim­ming cos­tume on our trip to the pool this evening will assure you that we DID!

Good­ness.

Really, the mile­stone leaves me slightly breath­less. Five hun­dred posts! The aver­age about 2000 words per post? You do the math. Pretty stag­ger­ing. I reckon about 1/2% of my death­less prose is actu­ally death­less, but even on those odds there are a fair num­ber of words here that I care an awful lot about, and I want to thank each and every one of you for the appre­cia­tive and so often respon­sive read­ing you’ve given them all.

Mem­o­rable among them are my early record­ings of bewil­dered times in our adopted home­land, glo­ri­ous mem­o­ries of long-ago trips to for­eign lands, deep delv­ings into my culi­nary past, lovely moments from Avery’s child­hood here. There have been moments of unbear­able sad­ness, although you learn to bear them, moments of great pas­sion that lurk under the sur­face but do not, any­more than the great tragedy, make it to the blog­ging page. There have been great reunions and small coun­try adven­tures, sum­mer adven­tures with friends and fam­ily back in America.

Most of all, the blog has pro­vided me with a way to appre­ci­ate life three times: once in the liv­ing, once in the telling (all right, all right, I some­times embell­ish!) and once more in the read­ing of the telling. This last is, I admit, a totally guilty plea­sure: what did my life look like in the telling? Not always the way it looked like in the liv­ing. Hap­pier, fun­nier, more intense. But always entertaining.

Another guilty con­fes­sion. I just downed a tiny slice of Avery’s break­fast lemon driz­zle cake and… it did not suck. The child is lucky. At least some days.

Just look at the archi­tec­tural and hor­ti­cul­tural glory of our adven­ture, the last few days. The house itself, hid­den in deep­est Here­ford, has a name, but unlike our maiden food writ­ing voy­age at the Devon house called Totleigh, the name this time never planted a seed with me. I don’t know what I will end up call­ing it in my secret heart, but I think it’s some­thing dull like “the reunion house.” Which will work, as far as nomen­cla­ture, until we have our next reunion, which we hope will be very, very soon. The magic of the set­ting was in part due to the house’s art­less, unself­con­scious charm, set as it was in a gar­den of truly artis­tic achieve­ment. We all feared that with the rein­car­na­tion of the house as a hol­i­day des­ti­na­tion, the gar­den would return to its old wild­ness, and fair enough. Not being a gar­dener myself, I always feel a con­cil­ia­tory pull towards the wilder­ness: let her have her plants and her acres back to her­self. But frankly, let me har­vest the aspara­gus FIRST.

Fri­day after­noon found me rac­ing toward Padding­ton with John because I told him we were leav­ing from King’s Cross. MAJOR panic. Halfway there, I res­ur­rect the train sheet from my bag. “Oh, never mind, it’s Padding­ton,” I said air­ily, tak­ing a full ten min­utes off his life, poor man. He was not sorry to let me down, and I found my train and my book and promptly spent the next hour and some reliv­ing our old Octo­ber adven­tures and fully plan­ning to top them, full stop, in the next four days. This was eas­ily achieved by the first glo­ri­ous encounter of the week­end: Rosie at the Bath train sta­tion to col­lect me for the jour­ney. Her impos­si­bly snap­ping blue eyes, root of all fun and mis­chief, her bound­less hug, and most impor­tant, her huge Land Rover, although, dear read­ers, I may tell you that I am glad I did not bring a kit­ten with me because there was NO ROOM. Exotic lemons, chilli pep­pers, bison grass vodka, liv­ing basil plants and gar­dens of let­tuce, cheeses and breads, whisky and wine, I can­not list it all.

To this I added my beloved Richard Cor­ri­gan Crab Tart (although dis­ap­point­ingly, I was not able to con­vert one sin­gle of my com­pany all week­end to Richard’s charms, other than as a cook: my crush went unshared), my cool bag of Gig­gly Pig bacons and sausages, my can­nellini bean salad, my Smirnoff and Arma­gnac. We set off and found, after some impos­si­bly com­plex traf­fic nego­ti­a­tions and much fran­tic con­ver­sa­tion, Sam. Dear, dear Sam, such a unique com­bi­na­tion of youth and wis­dom. I say unique, and yet he shared his moment of glory over the week­end with a very dif­fer­ent and yet equally charm­ing young man, Adam. How are very young men these days so WISE? Pos­i­tively dis­pens­ing wis­dom, which we older ladies were only too glad to absorb. Of course it could be their undoubted phys­i­cal glo­ries as well! But I digress.

Our jour­ney was punc­tu­ated by ridicu­lous laugh­ter, mem­o­ries of our orig­i­nal adven­tures in Octo­ber, Sam’s sto­ries of his teach­ing jobs, Rosie’s of her film for­ays, mine of, sadly, Lost Prop­erty, and such mun­dane occu­pa­tions. Then we arrived in a gath­er­ing misty twi­light to find our com­pa­tri­ots, wine glasses in hand, grin­ning absurdly, we pil­ing out of the car in aban­don, many kisses and hugs. These friends who I remem­ber with vary­ing degrees of famil­iar­ity and affec­tion, made so much more real over the inter­ven­ing months by the magic of email, set before me again like peo­ple in a doll­house, yet unde­ni­ably fleshly and real.

That first night was a com­bi­na­tion of stim­u­la­tion, cozi­ness, the promise of excite­ment to come and the relax­ation of friends. Rosie’s car­rot, pinenut (why does that word make me laugh so now, I can­not say) tart with turmeric and ground almonds, along­side my crab and goats cheese offer­ing, glo­ri­ous sal­ads and cheeses, fine wines and loads of laugh­ter… We stayed up far too late, which was the watch­word for the hol­i­day. And Sat­ur­day offered more delights…

Gen­eros­ity, over­whelm­ing laugh­ter, an obses­sive devo­tion to every aspect of food that met and even pos­si­bly (pos­si­bly!) sur­passes my own… what an unfor­get­table week­end. Three days and nights of end­less chat, end­less stints in the kitchen wrapped in aprons, exchang­ing tast­ing spoons with pre­cisely NO atten­tion to swine or any other flu. Seven women and two boys who did not want for fawn­ing atten­tion, a for­mal gar­den full of plun­der­able delights like a gar­gan­tuan flow­er­ing rose­mary bush, a patch of mint to rival Kew Gar­dens’ patch of mint, thyme, mar­jo­ram, the firmest spring onions any of us had ever seen, much less eaten, and most mag­i­cally, a vast bed of aspara­gus just com­ing on. I can only tell you that you have not prop­erly eaten Eng­lish aspara­gus until you’ve steamed it min­utes after cut­ting it, and raced it to a dish of mus­tardy, but­tery, lemony sauce.

Foxi Rosie, Sam, Adam, Katie, Pauline, Susan, Jenny and Caro: thank you from the bot­tom of my heart for the sheer joy of shared FUN: much more on this tomor­row when the recov­ery process has begun in earnest. For now, a sim­ple thank you with lin­ger­ing mem­o­ries of a laden, can­dlelit table, bursts of gig­gling over bad­gers and “come and smell my cork,” the best pork crack­ling known to man or woman, lis­ten­ing ears for a new chap­ter read aloud, a sun-dappled Sun­day walk with stom­achs full of minty lamb burg­ers and home­made tatziki, a walk through the damply touch­ing tiny vil­lage church, my first York­shire pud­ding, and con­ver­sa­tions with a room­mate kept on even though there was plenty of room for us to move to a sin­gle. Starry skies, chill breezes, raids on local butch­ers and delis.

Raised glasses to Rosie, our beloved leader who, if there was an ingre­di­ent or lux­ury she did not bring along, it’s only because it was illegal.

Three loud cheers to the “Gath­er­ing of Nuts in May”, the first of many reunions!