food, food EVERYWHERE

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!

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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.

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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

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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

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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!