Well, believe me when I say it is very tricky to limit myself to just these pho­tographs for my first Devon hol­i­day post. Every moment seemed wor­thy of an image. Can you imag­ine see­ing this lit­tle otter fel­low, and all his merry mates, in per­son? And the view from our cot­tage door, onto the epony­mous Pond of Pond Cot­tage… a tiny view into our evening sit­ting room, the Dairy perched high… but I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

My mother in law asks me to clar­ify from my last post that our cot­tage did indeed have elec­tric­ity! It was only my over­dra­matic sense of occa­sion that made me insist on one din­ner at the pic­nic table, and you would have laughed to see us hold­ing can­dles over our plates and try­ing to iden­tify bites of our sup­pers. “Hang on one minute, is this pork, or rice? This is DEF­I­NITELY a green bean…” My fam­ily was admirably tol­er­ant of me! But there was also a quar­ter moon to light our way, with proper nearly-Halloween clouds skid­ding across it, and enor­mous rustling red-leafed trees to block its light.

Pork Medal­lions with Sage, Mush­rooms and Creme Fraiche
(serves 4)

1 1/2 lbs pork fil­let, trimmed of all mem­branes and fat, sliced into 12 medal­lions
2 tbsps but­ter
16 sage leaves
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 shal­lot or 1/2 white onion, minced
12 medium mush­rooms of your choos­ing, sliced thick
2 tbsps Marsala wine, or Cal­va­dos or brandy
1 cup creme fraiche (half-fat works fine)
sea salt and black pep­per to taste

Melt but­ter in large skil­let until brown and drop in sage leaves in a sin­gle layer. Cook until crisp and set aside. Bring up heat to high and place pork in skil­let, again in a sin­gle layer. Brown on first side, then turn and brown on sec­ond side. The meat should still be quite raw on the inside. Remove to a plat­ter and keep warm.

Add gar­lic, shal­lot or onion and mush­rooms to skil­let and saute until mush­rooms give off juice. Pour in wine or Cal­va­dos or brandy and sim­mer high for a minute or so. Whisk in creme fraiche and lower heat to a very low light. Stir until beau­ti­fully creamy, then lower pork medal­lions into sauce in a sin­gle layer. Cook for about five min­utes, spoon­ing sauce over pork quite con­tin­u­ously. When the pork feels firm to the touch, it’s done. Sea­son and you’re ready.

Serve over steamed rice and crush the sage leaves over top. Sim­ply LUSCIOUS.

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

I can­not con­vey in writ­ing the intensely cel­e­bra­tory aroma of this dish. It’s quite defin­i­tively autum­nal, with the faintly alco­holic sug­ges­tions and woodsy sage and lux­u­ri­ous cream. You will make this often, I’m quite sure, and I’ve had great suc­cess sub­sti­tut­ing veal escalopes and chicken breasts for the pork.

Pork is one of the sub­jects on which I am unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally evan­gel­i­cal. It is emphat­i­cally NOT meant to be “the other white meat” as our Amer­i­can lead­ers of indus­try would have you believe. A pig should not give white meat, any more than a baby cow should. Pork and veal should be rosy pink, reflect­ing the ani­mals’ happy, lively life in the out of doors, not a sad, crowded exis­tence in a ster­ile pen. So when you see pork in Amer­ica that’s pale and devoid of any char­ac­ter, don’t buy it. Buy chicken fil­lets if you want some­thing white and fat-free, but save your pork calo­ries for the real thing, pink and juicy.

With this I served my new favorite side dish, about which I’m thrilled because now I like green beans, and it is totally sim­ple! It is a sad fact of my taste buds that I can be fed almost any­thing as long as it’s tossed in but­ter and garlic.

Gar­licky Green Beans
(serves 4)

1/2 pound fine green beans, ends trimmed
2 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
sea salt and black pep­per to taste

Bring water in a saucepan to the boil and plunge green beans into it. Boil high for about five min­utes or until a bean is cooked to your lik­ing. I like them still with a bite, but not hard. A good guide­line for that level of cooked­ness is that the water smells like green beans! Drain the beans and set aside in a bowl, cov­ered with another bowl, to keep the beans warmish.

Melt the but­ter in the same saucepan to save wash­ing up, and add the gar­lic. Cook very low until gar­lic is soft and then add the olive oil and salt and pep­per to taste. Keep the but­ter mix­ture warm until you’re ready to serve, then driz­zle over the beans and toss well. When serv­ing, be sure to bring up the lovely melted gar­licky but­ter with a spoon.

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

So this is what fed us one gor­geous evening at our house, which had the ambi­ence of a dolls house, every­thing just barely large enough for John to fit (although he had to duck in the door­ways). The front step seemed to be cry­ing out for our Wellies to rest upon its stones, although Avery was com­pletely grossed out by a lit­tle pal who had made his way into her boot, lying on its side overnight: a giant slug!

The pond held a fam­ily of mal­lard ducks who appeared each morn­ing and evening but flew off squawk­ing furi­ously if we tried to feed them bread crusts. High above the prop­erty perched a sim­ple per­fect, tiny cylin­dri­cal build­ing called The Dairy, which came with a key so we could explore. Under its pre­cise thatched roof we ducked inside, to find a room fur­nished with local Devon mar­ble in huge vats and trays lin­ing the walls, com­plete with a sys­tem of drainage into lead pans below. In the cen­ter was a mas­sive sort of font of more mar­ble, and we tried hard to imag­ine what the pur­pose was, exactly, of all these imple­ments. The win­dows above the work sur­faces were stained-glass and the walls made of tiles dec­o­rate with tiny green ivy leaves. I can’t describe the time­less seren­ity of this room, which in fact held sway over the entire property.

Above the dairy (very high into the land­scape by now, as you can imag­ine!) was a series of planned walks, through a ver­dant coun­try­side made up of an enchant­ing com­bi­na­tion of uncon­trolled foliage and metic­u­lous prun­ing. We had read in the his­tory of the prop­erty that since its incep­tion in 1810 (as a coun­try retreat for the Duchess of Bed­ford!) it had fallen into the hands of a fish­ing syn­di­cate (brown trout), and even later than that, been aban­doned entirely to be dis­cov­ered by the Land­mark Trust in 1985. Com­pletely under foliage! The LT crew dis­cov­ered, if you can imag­ine, entire BUILD­INGS under ivy and other climb­ing plants. Beyond the mas­sive actual struc­tures, they uncov­ered miles of pre­cise stone paths, benches and bridges, and even two caves, com­plete with sta­lac­tites. Magical.

Just off the gar­den path is the mag­nif­i­cent Hotel End­sleigh, orig­i­nally the manor house that presided over our lit­tle cot­tage for the Duchess. Tea there is not to be missed: sand­wiches of local ham and grainy mus­tard, rich egg may­on­naise, a Vic­to­ria Sponge cake that Avery rolled her eyes over in delight, dense brown­ies, fresh scones and clot­ted cream. The hotel was packed, as far as we could see, with the car park full of fancy cars (our lit­tle Min­now was quite eclipsed in size and stature!). But it was sep­a­rated from our prop­erty quite com­pletely, adding only a cozy atmos­phere of lux­ury, smok­ing chim­neys and ele­gant burn­ing tapers in the evening, when we passed by from our walks on the way home, along the rush­ing River Tamar, which sep­a­rates Devon from Corn­wall. So funny: on one of our dri­ves, we came to a sign, “Wel­come to Corn­wall.” “Oh, goody, now I can start read­ing ‘Rebecca,’” Avery rejoiced, pick­ing it up from the car seat. “We’re back in Devon,” we said a few min­utes later. “Good­bye, ‘Rebecca,’” she said.

Evenings of aro­matic log fires, chats with my two favorite peo­ple, card games, hilar­i­ous attempts at a Sher­lock Holmes game acquired at a local flea mar­ket! All with a back­ground of soup sim­mer­ing (not a bone or scrap escapes my indus­try, and we wal­lowed in creamy red pep­per soup, mush­room soup with fresh thyme, and the clear­est, sim­plest chicken broth with plenty of car­rots and cel­ery). And hours of time to read. Avery plowed through all her books, all my books, all the books that came with the house, reach­ing a grand total of over thirty by mid­week. “There has to be a book­shop nearby!” she wailed, and this we found in dar­ling nearby Tavi­s­tock (don’t tell Avery, but there’s a statue of… Sir Fran­cis Drake there).

The Book­stop has some­thing for every­one includ­ing a mas­sive children’s sec­tion and a cafe. Tavi­s­tock is graced as well by a per­fect Dick­en­sian del­i­catessen and all-round good­ies shop called N.H Cre­ber, Qual­ity Gro­cer. I loved it any­way, but some­one with a sweet tooth would go quite mad among the bis­cuits, cakes, choco­lates and jams. And Scotches, don’t even get me started! Many I had never heard of and cer­tainly could not afford. But I could afford some of their duck liver pate, and Avery suc­cumbed to chocolate-studded short­bread. A glo­ri­ous place, as you see! I also made a foray into Palmer’s butcher shop where I acquired sim­ply the most fla­vor­some smoked streaky bacon I have EVER eaten. One slice will sat­isfy any­one, with a fried egg on the side. On a sand­wich with Fred­er­ick­son toma­toes, I can only imag­ine. And here I pro­cured a lovely cheese called Cor­nish Yarg, now Avery’s hands-down favorite. “Describe it for me, what you like about it,” I inquired, and after some thought, she said, “It’s an unas­sum­ing lit­tle cheese, it’s just there to be enjoyed.” Creamy and simple.

And to give you a brief idea of the wildlife to be enjoyed, let me point you to the Tamar Otter and Wildlife Cen­tre (in Corn­wall!). I have rarely seen Avery so happy. “I want Anna, I want Anna!” she kept cry­ing, miss­ing her best friend who is obsessed with all things ani­mal. These endan­gered lit­tle crea­tures were every­where at the Sanc­tu­ary, and we arrived at feed­ing time, to see them leap for bits of fish thrown to them by the impas­sioned and delight­ful owner. “I know they look cute, and furry,” he warned, “but these lit­tle guys will take off a thumb from you before you can turn around. I’ve seen them take down a heron in 15 min­utes.” Lovely thought. He assured us we could see this fas­ci­nat­ing spec­ta­cle of the food chain in a Youtube video, but so far I have resisted the call.

I must love you and leave you with this mas­sive post, a paean to Devon and Corn­wall. Soon I shall tell you about the wild ponies we encoun­tered in Dart­moor and regale you with some sto­ries of cas­tles and stately homes nearby. Prob­a­bly the peo­ple you travel with will not be as full-up with Sir Fran­cis Drake as our child is (the musi­cal is only three weeks away), and so your visit to his home will be more peace­ful than ours, which included a run­ning com­men­tary on every­thing the dis­plays got wrong. Till then, if you sim­ply can’t live with­out more pho­tographs, try this. And make that pork dish: you won’t be sorry!

Hello, Lon­don, and good­bye misty, foggy, sweet­est Devon. A week of total iso­la­tion in a cot­tage of stone, sur­rounded by the wildest and most cul­ti­vated of ancient plants, per­me­ated with dusky smoke from a cozy fire­place, fed with roast chicken, mozzarella-stuffed meat­balls, pork medal­lions in a creamy sage and mush­room sauce (even if we couldn’t see a bite of THAT din­ner because the moon did not rise quite high enough!). Avery read twenty-five books, John took naps, I… did the dishes! A sus­tain­ing, chatty, sleepy week was had by all, punc­tu­ated by otters and wild ponies, a high tea worth remem­ber­ing, cas­tle tours and more than we ever wanted to know about a cer­tain Admi­ral Drake! “He’s stalk­ing me…” Avery moaned.

More on all this very soon, but tonight cel­e­brat­ing a reunion with my dar­ling friend Sam, who upon retir­ing has dis­cov­ered what it means to share his bath­room with the wash­ing machine. Moun­tains, my dears, moun­tains of dirty laun­dry. I’ve col­lapsed with an Arma­gnac and a good book and shall be back in the sad­dle tomor­row. I’ll be ready to tell you all you need to know about a cer­tain lit­tle pocket of Devon, Dart­moor, and a fam­ily hol­i­day. Nighty-night.

Ah, the last din­ner party before half-term hol­i­day begins tomor­row… the green beans steamed and then bathed in a gar­licky, lemony but­ter, the pota­toes, quar­tered, steamed and tossed in a very large saucepan con­tain­ing melted but­ter and hot olive oil, and loads of paprika. Yes, it’s more “Lick the Bowl Pota­toes” for Avery. All this accom­pa­nied by the Main Chance: chicken breasts with a pocket cut in, stuffed with moz­zarella wrapped in pro­sciutto and spinach, grilled expertly by John. Then, as you can see, a silly cheese­board to round out the night. A rocket salad with a fab­u­lous dress­ing of the oil from a jar of arti­choke hearts (renew, reuse, recy­cle!), mixed with mus­tard, bal­samic vine­gar, Fox Point Sea­son­ing and fro­mage frais… and some store­bought cookies.

How we all laughed: Keith and Annie, Emily and Geor­gia and Jonathan… dis­cussing hol­i­days upcom­ing and past shared, Keith advis­ing John in the grilling of the chicken, all the chil­dren troop­ing out into the dark, barely illu­mi­nated gar­den to “help” the tim­ing, as Annie and I tossed beans, stirred pota­toes, dressed the salad, watched the cats mean­der­ing in and about look­ing for fallen scraps. “There aren’t enough beans!” I wailed. “Just because I don’t like green beans, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t pro­vide enough for other peo­ple…” “Why did you make them, then?” John asks in all fair rea­son. “Because every­one else likes them.”

Annie and Keith jumped in. “I’d say ‘FHB,’ but we’re all fam­ily here so that won’t work,” said Annie. “FHB?” I asked. “Fam­ily Hold Back,” Keith elab­o­rates. Such is our “fam­ily” that then NO ONE took enough beans and there were enough for seconds!

We sat on in the can­dle­light, drink­ing wine and lis­ten­ing to dis­cus­sions of exams, Avery’s wild dreams of piglets in school wear­ing brown and blue woollen coats (don’t ask), and finally, “Gross Things My Chil­dren Have Eaten.” The win­ner? Jonathan’s foray as a tod­dler into what he glee­fully described to his mother as “mov­ing raisins.” WOODLICE. There’s child­hood in a Con­necti­cut farm­house for you! Mov­ing raisins.

We’ve had the last of our early autumn school rit­u­als: the last drop of the girls at “Drake”, watch­ing them run hell bent with their satchels fly­ing, kick­ing aside the fallen leaves, paus­ing at the zebra cross­ing to watch the oncom­ing boys, then dis­ap­pear­ing out of sight into the grounds of the boys’ school. I’m sure I looked like a stalker, sus­pended on the pave­ment, gaz­ing after them, watch­ing lit­tle girl­hood run away from me and around a cor­ner. Hard not to see it as a metaphor.

Then I’ve seen Avery and Jamie to their last reg­u­lar Fri­day skat­ing out­ing till after the “Drake” fes­tiv­i­ties… “please take my glasses, Mommy, and here’s my skate bag, and could I have ice cream?”, plus the scream­ing ban­ter of count­less teenage cou­ples, and birth­day par­ties filled with shout­ing chil­dren descend­ing on the adja­cent bowl­ing alley… but look­ing through the muddy glass at Avery mak­ing spec­ta­cles shapes around her eyes: “watch us!” So I did watch, a new jump, a new spin.

And yes­ter­day drop­ping her at act­ing class, watch­ing her do the “flick,” as her high mis­tress has named the ges­ture of hair over shoul­der. How many more days will we be wel­come, drop­ping her off any­where? That prospect should shut up my whinge­ing about the skat­ing rink, but of course I enjoy the whinge­ing as much as I do the drop­ping off.

At least I enjoy SOME­THING. How many hours of the past two days have I devoted to the follow-up novel to Julie/Julia? Too many. And as far as I can tell, the author enjoyed pre­cisely NOTH­ING of what she describes. The book tells the tale of the dis­so­lu­tion of her mar­riage due to her infi­delity, and con­cur­rently her train­ing as a butcher. Actu­ally she did pos­si­bly enjoy her fel­low butch­ers, but in describ­ing her work, she cured me of any desire what­so­ever to become a butcher, and I had had a bit of a desire, I admit. Right now I’m suf­fer­ing from two burns on my hands from touch­ing the oven ele­ments in a care­less moment, but I can tell you that that’s NOTH­ING com­pared to the cuts, blood– and fat-filled scrapes that attend butcher­dom. And the COLD.

In any case, I did get all the way through Cleav­ing, and I can report, as a very old per­son, that it reads much like a revis­ited novel by… Erica Jong! Isn’t that a name from the past! Do you sup­pose Julie Pow­ell has ever even heard of Erica Jong, much less read “Fear of Fly­ing,” pretty much the inven­tion of bor­der­line over-personal pornog­ra­phy? And Erica accom­plished this in 1973, when women’s lib­er­a­tion in every way, espe­cially sex­ual, was a brand-new topic, and as such sort of a high to read about, at the time.

I think there’s room in per­haps every three gen­er­a­tions or so for a novel full of self-indulgent for­ays into a given person’s sex­ual adven­tures, merely for the sake of telling the reader about them. And between D.H Lawrence and Erica Jong, we’re cov­ered for the time being. I wanted to care about Julie Powell’s exploits, but I didn’t. I felt that both in how she lived and how she wrote about liv­ing, she was giv­ing me self-indulgence for its own sake, and some­thing in my Mid­west­ern good-girl upbring­ing led me to say to myself, “If she spent just one minute think­ing about any­one but her­self, she’d be in a bet­ter place.”

If I thought she’d enjoyed any­thing very much: her mar­riage, her blog, her affair, her COOK­ING, if she’d rev­elled in the excess and the out­law­ness, I’d have enjoyed the book. But I don’t think she did. Don’t mis­un­der­stand me: I can get my mind around tales of unhap­pi­ness, infi­delity, soul-searching, tor­ment. But I want to think the teller cared even more than I did about grow­ing from her expe­ri­ences, and I don’t think she did. I wish I did under­stand her moti­va­tion in telling the story. And I feel sorry for both her hus­band and her lover.

And I STILL can’t under­stand how to bone a duck.

Off we go, then, tomor­row after­noon, for our autumn break in the Eng­lish coun­try­side. We’ll have our tiny car packed to the gills with the usual: Welling­ton boots, books on tape, soup blender, tealight can­dles, books galore, Scotch, hot water bot­tles. I’ll see you next Monday!

Spinach, Moz­zarella and Prosciutto-Stuffed Chicken Fil­lets
(serves

8 bone­less chicken fil­lets, well-trimmed
about 10 spinach leaves per fil­let
3 pro­sciutto slices per fil­let
1 thick slice buf­falo moz­zarella per fil­let (3 whole balls of cheese)
24 tooth­picks (called “cock­tail sticks” in Eng­land if you’re shopping)

With the fil­let lying on its side on a cut­ting board, care­fully cut a pocket length­wise along, tak­ing care not to cut all the way through to the back (but it’s not a dis­as­ter if you do).

Lay two pro­sciutto slices on the cut­ting board and pile on spinach leaves, then lay on the moz­zarella slice and roll it up tightly. Wrap the third slice of pro­sciutto around the lit­tle pack­age to cover the ends. Tuck the whole pack­age inside the chicken fil­let and close up the gap as tightly as you can, with the toothpicks.

Grill over a medium heat for about 8 min­utes per side, or until the chicken is cooked through.

Every­one who knows me right now knows me as a wife, mother, cook and writer. Which is fine (our favorite catch-all phrase of deri­sion this sum­mer!). And nor­mally I feel entirely encom­passed, described and encap­su­lated by these terms.

And then every once in awhile I go to an art event that knocks me upside the head and says, “You, there with the PhD! Remem­ber us, the art world? We used to occupy most of what’s known as your mind. Wake up.”

Sun­day was one of those days. To par­tic­i­pate in the Lon­don Restau­rant Fes­ti­val (and yet not spend £50 per per­son, for exam­ple for the Roast Lunch that sounded incred­i­bly tempt­ing), I ordered tick­ets for the three of us to see the “Turner and the Mas­ters” show at the Tate Britain (the “real Tate” as I think of it, as opposed to the Mod­ern), and we’d have lunch included, at the Rex Whistler Restau­rant as part of the after­noon. Fair enough.

Do you ever have the feel­ing, when you’ve planned an out­ing that no one else feels par­tic­u­larly enthused about, that the suc­cess or fail­ure of the ENTIRE EVENT is on your shoul­ders? For­get the chefs at the restau­rant, or even dead and buried Turner and his cohorts. The food and the paint­ings were on MY shoul­ders! It strikes me as emi­ni­nently ridicu­lous that after 20 years of mar­riage and nearly 13 years of moth­er­hood, I should be shak­ing in my boots hop­ing John and Avery had a good time. But that’s me.

So the lunch was… ade­quate. Parsnip soup (too much of it and it needed a gar­nish), John had mixed steamed mus­sels and clams, per­fectly… ade­quate. Then I had a tasty piece of salmon atop a giant quenelle of so-so mash, and a nice lan­gous­tine sauce. John had a truly vile-looking steamed mut­ton pud­ding — what was he think­ing? On a bed of lentils. So wet brown stuff on a pile of wet brown stuff. But he ate it all and reported it to be per­fectly edi­ble. Avery had a dish of pasta with a mas­car­pone and sage sauce, and about four pieces of but­ter­nut squash, which was FINE because she doesn’t like squash. But if she did, she’d be a tad disappointed.

The room itself is such a throw­back: murals of ancient peo­ple hunt­ing for, the cap­tion in the menu informed me, “rare meats.” Meats like gazelle, leop­ard and moun­tain lion. And we chat­ted, in that way peo­ple do who spend a lot of time together, but always at home. Out of cap­tiv­ity, as it were, we broached unfa­mil­iar top­ics like archi­tec­ture, fash­ion and GCSEs, and I breathed a sigh of relief for at least the first part of the after­noon. Lunch had been nice. Adequate.

The Turner show itself was the ulti­mate in aca­d­e­mic cura­to­r­ial splen­dor: quite lit­er­ally one paint­ing next to another, one a Turner and one by some­one Turner either idol­ized or resented or some Freudian com­bi­na­tion of both. We stood solemnly in front of these end­less pairs (Poussin, Canaletto, Con­sta­ble, etc., etc.) and looked from one to the other like fans at a ten­nis match. Then we each said, “I like the Turner bet­ter.” The late Turn­ers were, of course, quite inspir­ing, edg­ing as they were away from Roman­tic sort of sick­li­ness and toward a hint of Impressionism’s glo­ri­ously misty palette and sug­ges­tive atmos­phere. We felt edu­cated. And tired.

Then we thought, “We’re here: why not visit the rooms con­tain­ing the final­ists for the Turner Prize?” The actual win­ner will be announced in Decem­ber, but the final­ists for this prize (thought­fully named for Turner him­self, who must have felt quite full of him­self by this point in the after­noon) were dis­played in a series of enor­mous gal­leries off the Sack­ler rooms. And, dear read­ers… I fell into quite a deep hole of what I can call only “gallery envy.”

Some of my long­time read­ers may remem­ber my visit nearly three years ago to a most inspir­ing gallery in Not­ting Hill. Friends who have known me even longer will def­i­nitely remem­ber my past iden­tity as Gal­lerista Extra­or­di­naire, or at least Gal­lerista Enthu­si­astista. I did. I owned an art gallery in Tribeca. How I adored it. The total auton­omy, the ulti­mate respon­si­bil­ity for every­thing that appeared on the walls and in the cat­a­logue essays, the sense that the buck stopped with me, no doubt.

In fact, only too lit­er­ally. The buck, I mean. Because the flip side of all that auton­omy and respon­si­bil­ity was just that. It was all on me. And although I was one hell of a cura­tor, and edu­ca­tor, and sales per­son, I was a Rot­ten Busi­ness­woman. And I lost money. Or rather, I made a great deal of money, but I spent even more to do it.

Most of the time I bury these mem­o­ries under a thick, deli­cious layer of gar­lic and olive oil, sprin­kled with a lit­tle Lost Prop­erty and a side of happy mar­riage. But then, I go to the Tate and see the Turner Prize final­ists, and all I can think is, “I want to buy every­thing I see, or else I want to show it in a gallery and get other peo­ple to buy it.” The pieces were all (or nearly all) so very ME. By which I mean, crazy mate­ri­als (pul­ver­ized jet engine? dessi­cated bovine brain mat­ter mixed with plas­tic? coal dust, resin and whale skele­ton? sure!), insanely com­plex and labor-intensive process, repet­i­tive, obsessive-compulsive instal­la­tions. All laid over with a seren­ity and beauty that lives quite hap­pily with the mind-boggling truth behind the objects. Bovine brains, truly.

I will not spoil the sur­prise of the show for you. I will say that there was one artist among the four that I felt did not belong AT ALL. Avery, John and I chose dif­fer­ent objects in our eter­nal “what would you buy?” dia­logue. If we still called an enor­mous Tribeca loft home, I know what I would have bought: 26 upright sort of skit­tles (one for every let­ter of the alpha­bet) with five mys­te­ri­ously taken out of the arrange­ment and laid to one side. Why, what might they spell? Sub­lime mytery.

So I floated home in a miasma of mem­o­ries of my own beloved gallery, filled month after month with shows that ful­filled my aes­thet­ics, my desire to write about silent objects, the fun of find­ing homes for lovely works of art with lovely peo­ple. How I loved it all.

And then this morn­ing, John said, “Did you notice that the florist who went out of busi­ness has a “To Let” sign in the win­dow?” OH DEAR.

Some­one stop me. John isn’t even say­ing no. I’ve peered in the dark­ened win­dows, imag­ined the shelves and cub­by­holes taken away and the wall­pa­per painted over in stark, per­fect white. I’ve men­tally rung up all my old art-world acquain­tances: the crit­ics, the cura­tors, clients, writ­ers and installers, and set up shop.

Some­one b***dy stop me.

For the moment, I’m merely dream­ing. And any­way, if I did open a new gallery, when would I have time to cook? And if I didn’t have time to cook, when would I make:

Lick the Bowl Pota­toes
(serves 4)

6 medium pota­toes, any kind at all, peeled
4 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp but­ter
Mal­don salt and fresh-ground pep­per
heap­ing tea­spoon sweet Paprika

Cut peeled pota­toes into bite-size wedges and place in a saucepan with cold water to cover. Add enough salt to fit in your cupped palm. Bring to boil and sim­mer high for about 15 min­utes or until pota­toes are eas­ily pierced by a fork. Drain into a colan­der. Place colan­der on hot burner (heat turned off) and leave for a half hour or so, while you do other things. The idea is to dry them out completely.

When you’re about 8 min­utes away from want­ing to eat, heat olive oil and but­ter in a very large skil­let. Add salt and pep­per. Heat until the oil and but­ter “stop talk­ing to you,” as Julia Child would say. That is, the bub­bling set­tles down to silence. Add pota­toes. Stir con­tin­u­ally, turn­ing the pota­toes over and they brown. Sprin­kle on most of the paprika (retain­ing a dust­ing for the end).

Amaz­ingly, the pota­toes will not retain the oil and but­ter. At the end of cook­ing, when the pota­toes are lightly browned and lightly crisped, sim­ply tilt the skil­let and pull the pota­toes out with a slot­ted spoon, leav­ing the oil behind. Magic.

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

Avery exer­cised mirac­u­lous, most unteenager-like restraint when these were brought to the table (all right, I’ll con­fess, brought to the floor: we were eat­ing in front of the tele­vi­sion, sue me). “You guys help your­selves, because if I go first, I’ll be too piggy.” We took sort of aver­age por­tions. She ate her beets, she ate her sub­lime cheese­burger with Devon ched­dar. She eyed the pota­toes. She took a help­ing. Another few snaked their way onto her plate. They were gone.

“May I lick the bowl, Mommy?” What mother, what cook, would say no?

Time will tell if any­thing comes of my ambi­tions, froth­ing up right now like yeast in a bowl wait­ing for flour. It was all such fun, wasn’t it? Every day there were mag­nif­i­cent, heart-stopping dra­mas, every per­son who came in the doors was a poten­tial gold mine of sales, reviews, new art­work to see. I’m cer­tainly in a glass-half-full mood, because in real­ity, every per­son who came through the door was very likely a com­plete nut­case, as hap­pens when one deals with the Gen­eral Pub­lic. But it was ALIVE.

Some­one stop me.

Finally it has stopped rain­ing! It was three solid days (no top down on a cer­tain Cinque­cento con­vert­ible, no ten­nis games, umbrel­las lost all over the city, hair smelling like wet dog, soak­ing ankles) and every­one was get­ting cranky. Then sud­denly today was the quin­tes­sen­tial gor­geous autumn day, air­plane trails through the sky, chang­ing leaves falling onto the ten­nis court. It is very much the same land­scape as per­vaded those mag­i­cal days our writ­ing crew spent a year ago in Devon: the same quar­ter moon, glow­ing yellow-white, is sus­pended in the sky tonight and it brings back mar­vel­lous, intense mem­o­ries of cre­ativ­ity, friend­ship, and ter­ri­ble food!

The sun is more than due. Two days ago, a third of the way to tak­ing Avery to her “Drake” rehearsal, the traf­fic sim­ply stopped mov­ing. “Might as well walk, you two,” John said, and he was right. So out into the slight sprin­kle we climbed, walk­ing across the glo­ri­ous Ham­mer­smith Bridge to the tune of Avery’s enthu­si­as­tic descrip­tion of “Fash­ions I Have Worn Since Birth,” which was enter­tain­ing enough to get us through the jour­ney. Sure, she’s had some doozies, like spats in kinder­garten? Odd, true. But yesterday’s black double-breasted jacket and pur­ple hat were mem­o­rable in a good way.

Today, we picked her up at school with her friend Nel­lie to take them both to Drake, got them safely deliv­ered, were run­ning errands hap­pily when Nellie’s mother rang me in what I can describe only as Grim Panic. “Did you get the girls to Drake? All of them? How about the Ger­man exchange stu­dent?” Holy Moses, no. There’s mater­nal panic for you. “It was merely a case of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion,” Avery assured us at din­ner sev­eral hours later. “The girl knew she was meant to stay at school, and so did Nel­lie, but her mother didn’t, so it was a bit of a worry.” A bit? You think?

“Drake” with all its atten­dant dra­mas, dis­ap­point­ments and access to the gor­geous grounds of Avery’s brother school has been a lot of fun, even from the out­side look­ing in. I find that’s more and more of life in this par­tic­u­lar stage: look­ing in on the Avery Show, fer­ry­ing her to events and prac­tices, lis­ten­ing to her accounts of what is hap­pen­ing behind the scenes. Mean­while, I’m busy at least in my mind, plan­ning what’s next.

For one thing, I think I am putting aside my “book” for the time being. I enjoy writ­ing this blog so much, and I live each day for what­ever cook­ing odyssey awaits at din­ner time (or even lunch!). But I’ve been dis­sat­is­fied with my efforts on the “book” since last spring, and I’ve had advice from sev­eral sources either to 1) go at it non-stop with all my energy, or to 2) put it aside, if not per­ma­nently, at least for the fore­see­able future. It’s too soul-destroying to look at its dor­mant pages on my desk (the desk in my head) every day and not to do any­thing pos­i­tive with it.

So… there are options. Mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers. A cook­ery course to teach here, out of my kitchen? That’s loom­ing espe­cially attrac­tively, I have to admit. My mind swirls at night with course ideas: five things to do with chicken? How to turn any veg­etable into the per­fect soup? Piz­zas? Side dishes, food for dif­fer­ent moods (light, com­fort­ing, exotic, veg­e­tar­ian). My work is cut out: come up with work­able ideas and bud­gets, find clients, adver­tise, make up sched­ules. I’m not 100% sure I am ready to do this, or qual­i­fied, but I’m ready to think about it. It would cer­tainly give me some­thing to blog about, and maybe an idea behind a col­umn? I’ve got to dig in.

And for the course on side dishes, I offer:

Home­made Chana Masala (chick­peas with tomato)
(serves at least 6 as a gen­er­ous side dish)

4 tbsps olive oil
1 medium red onion, finely diced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 heap­ing tsp each: Baharat, ground cumin, turmeric, madras curry pow­der
scant 1/2 tsp cayenne
2 cans chick­peas, drained
1 soup-can chopped toma­toes
juice 1 lime/lemon
fresh ground pep­per
salt to taste
2 cups spinach, chopped roughly
1 tbsp but­ter
1/3 cup fro­mage frais, or plain fat-free yoghurt
hand­ful corian­der leaves, chopped

Saute the onions, gar­lic and spices in the oil till onions are soft. Turn off heat and add chick­peas, stir thor­oughly till mixed, then cook over medium heat for a cou­ple of min­utes, then add toma­toes, lime juice and sea­son­ing. Cook over very low heat, stir­ring occa­sion­ally, for at least half an hour. Shortly before serv­ing, fold in chopped spinach and stir thor­oughly, then add but­ter and fro­mage frais and stir well, bub­bling the mix­ture for a bit. Sprin­kle with chopped corian­der leaves at serving.

**********

This dish fills the house with exotic, warm, gar­licky aro­mas that will bring your fam­ily into the kitchen ask­ing, “Can we have din­ner early?” It’s the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to fish (we ate piles of it with grilled salmon the other night) and also, believe it or not, burg­ers. Last night was an exper­i­ment with a mix­ture of minced organic buf­falo (bison, it goes by in Amer­ica, not the same thing but close enough when you’re eat­ing it) and organic veni­son. I promise you, you will never buy beef again once you’ve had this mixture.

Gourmet Mag­a­zine is dead! Was my blog post the death knell? My Octo­ber issue arrived today, the Novem­ber issue to be the LAST PRINT ISSUE EVER. This mag­a­zine has been going strong since 1941, but it took more than the Nazis, or the Cold War, fake but­ter or Al-Qaeda to kill it. It took the internet.

I am very sad. Com­ing so close on the heels of the last episode of “Guid­ing Light”, one of my Christ­mas and sum­mer­time Amer­i­can treats (even older than Gourmet, going on radio for 75 years!), it seems the land­scape of pop­u­lar cul­ture is chang­ing. I hate to think it’s all what I see out in the real world today: peo­ple with mobile phones in one hand, while they adjust their iPods with the other! You could hon­estly run these peo­ple down, even with a tiny Cinque­cento, and they’d be crushed with­out even notic­ing, I hate to say. Unless you inter­rupted their playlist or cut off their voice­mail while they were in the mid­dle of some­one telling them what they should be Tweet­ing about. Hon­estly, I get more cur­mud­geonly by the day. Only blog­ging should be sal­vaged from the mod­ern tech­no­log­i­cal world. Oh, well, and email.

This week­end, how­ever, will bring the Lon­don Restau­rant Fes­ti­val, and I think we’ll take advan­tage of the Sun­day com­bi­na­tion of the Tate exhi­bi­tion of Turner, and a two-course lunch in the museum’s fancy restau­rant. To think that until this week, a bud­ding cook­ery writer could look for­ward to sub­mit­ting a story about the Fes­ti­val to Gourmet. We’ve got to think of a sub­sti­tute: a won­der­ful source of inspi­ra­tion, encour­age­ment, research, life-enhancing sto­ries, all about food. If I find one, I’ll let you know.

Brrr! There’s a def­i­nite chill in the Lon­don air this morn­ing. Tis the sea­son of spi­ders, at least where I live, and last week John had to be brought to the res­cue when I dis­cov­ered a web the size of Birm­ing­ham directly in my path from the gar­den door to the din­ner table out­side. My shrieks brought Emily and Avery in from their desul­tory attempts at home­work. “OMG,” Emily cow­ered, “It’s the biggest spi­der I’ve ever seen.” “Maybe it’s dead, it’s not mov­ing,” Avery whim­pered, and so John got a big stick and touched the web. Imme­di­ately the ginor­mous thing began fran­ti­cally to work its way upward and away from him, so he car­ried the web over to a nearby pot­ted plant amid more hys­ter­i­cal wails from the girls. “Look, she’s car­ry­ing up all the extra silk to make a new web,” John pointed out, try­ing to achieve some zoo­log­i­cal edu­ca­tion from what was so far a scream-fest.

The only thing worse than see­ing a HUGE spi­der web com­plete with Char­lotte in the cen­tre, how­ever, is see­ing… HALF a huge spi­der web with no spi­der to be seen, and then I begin shak­ing my head in panic, inspect­ing my sweater sleeves for unwel­come guests.

I have my work cut out today. Do you, my faith­ful Amer­i­can read­ers, sub­scribe to Saveur Mag­a­zine? You must. It was begun, I think, in 1992, just as I was return­ing to New York from our first stint in Lon­don. At that time the food mag­a­zine world was very, very sparsely pop­u­lated, with Gourmet and Food and Wine and… I want to say that’s it. I’m exag­ger­at­ing, or what­ever the oppo­site is, but my point is, the food world was small, quiet and rather sim­ply expressive.

Unrec­og­niz­able from today! Now Saveur is one of dozens of food mag­a­zines (some of them awful things dom­i­nated by tele­vi­sion chefs, I won’t name names) but it is still, with Gourmet, one of my favorites. Thank you, Mom and Dad, and Jill and Joel, for get­ting these mag­a­zines to me all the way across the ocean every month! They are the grandes dames of the cooking/publishing indus­try, bravely tak­ing their old-fashioned, ingre­di­ent– and process– faith­ful approach into the mod­ern world of amaz­ingly trans-global shop­ping, eat­ing and cook­ing. The recipes in these mag­a­zines work! And Saveur in par­tic­u­lar is devoted to the STO­RIES around food: the fam­ily his­to­ries of great cooks, the mem­o­ries of dishes cooked for Hal­loween in the Mid­west, for birth­day cel­e­bra­tions in tiny vil­lages in Italy, for reli­gious meals in the streets of Lebanon. Sto­ries abound.

Because I get Saveur a bit late, I’m late to the announce­ment of a… food-writing con­test. What are the 100 Best Food Things of the year? Saveur wants to know what we think. So I am play­ing with sev­eral ideas as I type here at my din­ing room table (look­ing res­olutely into that drat­ted rebuilt spi­der web in the gar­den! and upward through the sky­light at a neigh­bor kitty walk­ing from one side of the roof to the other!). The idea of the con­test is to describe your sug­gested Best Food Thing, then write no more than 1000 words on why you’ve cho­sen this Thing. It’s as if some­one stuck a pen­cil through her hair at Saveur and asked her edi­tor, “What sort of a con­test could we run so Kris­ten could get her idea pub­lished in a major magazine?”

Well, I’m get­ting ahead of myself. But I’m hard at work.

I’m also think­ing (STILL!) about “Julie and Julia.” There has been a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion in many places about var­i­ous aspects of the story, and I’m fas­ci­nat­ing by all the lay­ers of con­tro­versy spin­ning around. What is the nature of a blog, and what is avail­able to blog­gers to talk about? Was Julia Child’s book morally Julie Powell’s to “appro­pri­ate”, and is there any dif­fer­ence between Julie’s cook­ing her way through it and talk­ing to her friends about it, and blog­ging it? Was Julie’s cook­ing in order to save her­self from a depress­ing post-September 11th New York life any less inter­est­ing than Julia’s cook­ing to give her­self some­thing to do in post-WWII Paris while her hus­band took pho­tographs and was a minor diplomat?

It seems slightly cruel, to me, for peo­ple to go to the film and come away say­ing how won­der­ful Julia Child was, and how for­get­table Julie Pow­ell was. No one until now has made a film of Julia Child’s life. It took Julie Powell’s project (how­ever much I find her writ­ing to be depress­ingly neg­a­tive) to call enough atten­tion to what Julia Child had achieved to war­rant Nora Ephron to write a screen­play! Julia was and is won­der­ful, but the public’s aware­ness of her had waned, per­haps, in the wake of all the hype and shrill non­sense of the mod­ern food world. If Julie Powell’s deter­mi­na­tion to cook her way through the book, to save her own san­ity, resulted in a whole new generation’s (or two! or three!) desire to GO HOME AND COOK, and go on Ama­zon and buy Julia’s book, all to the good!

It’s been said that Julia was upset at hav­ing her work taken over as a stunt, by Julie. Inter­est­ing ques­tion, that: once one pub­lishes a book, isn’t it out there to be treated (as long as it’s legal) how­ever the pub­lic wishes to treat it? I pub­lished a book myself once, about art his­tory, and every once in awhile I see that some­one has read it (amaz­ing!) and used bits of it in an arti­cle, not always in a way I like, but legally cred­ited, which means… I have to put up with it.

Here’s a larger ques­tion, and one that is as rel­e­vant for an old-fashioned real BOOK like Julia Child’s posthu­mous mem­oir My Life in France, as it is for my blog. How much of one’s life expe­ri­ences, con­ver­sa­tions, love affairs, belong to one? The whole thing? Did Julia have the right to recount con­ver­sa­tions with real peo­ple that took place 50 years ago, in her mem­oir? Do I have the right to recount con­ver­sa­tions with real peo­ple that took place yes­ter­day, on my blog? Did Julie have the right to go step by step through Julia’s recipes, on her blog and in her book? How much of one’s daily expe­ri­ences belong to one, and how much to the other half of the rela­tion­ship that makes it all possible?

I got in mas­sive trou­ble awhile ago for recount­ing things that hap­pened to me, here on the blog, because one per­son reck­oned that they weren’t my prop­erty to recount. If I had a lovely con­ver­sa­tion with a lit­tle girl at Avery’s school, and lov­ingly recounted it, I had stolen some­thing from that lit­tle girl, my neme­sis believed. But is that true? Was Julie’s expe­ri­ence in her kitchen not entirely hers to tell about, because she was depen­dent on Julia’s cook­book in order to tell it?

I had one very testy con­ver­sa­tion with… let’s call her a “fren­emy”… about the blog. “If you’d told us all you were a writer to begin with…” Pause. “Yes?” I said. “What then?” “Well, then we’d have KNOWN…” “Known what?”

Now that I’ve had per­mis­sion from Avery’s school to have my blog (did I need per­mis­sion? no idea), I tend to tell peo­ple I write one, just to put them on notice, I sup­pose. “Oooh, are you going to write about ME, then?” some peo­ple gush self-consciously, laugh­ing a bit. Maybe! And I tend to change names. But Julia Child didn’t. The Ambas­sador to France is the real Ambas­sador to France, the head of the Cor­don Bleu cook­ing school is the real per­son. Was that her prop­erty to use, because she inter­acted with them?

Thorny ques­tions these. I would cer­tainly wel­come anyone’s views on the mine­field that is one’s own­er­ship over all the laugh­able, touch­ing, embar­rass­ing, feisty or deli­cious things that hap­pen in this life.

Good­ness, this sub­ject has cer­tainly brought out all my latent pro­fes­so­r­ial instincts! Back to real life. Last night saw us at the Trafal­gar Stu­dios for a rau­cous, uneven but enjoy­able per­for­mance of “Oth­ello,” star­ring Lenny Henry, who I may say as a mat­ter of pub­lic record, once lived in my house! With his wife, the come­dian Dawn French.

How to describe this pro­duc­tion? Well, not being superbly well versed in Shake­speare (nearly every time I see a play onstage it’s for the first time, in my 40s, which is a bit embar­rass­ing, but at least I’m going!), I had to read up on the play. It’s the story of a rather mis­matched mar­riage between a black Moor with a sad past, and his high-born white wife Des­de­mona, who are sur­rounded by a lot of con­niv­ing, inter­fer­ing col­leagues and “friends.” Othello’s trusted col­league Iago con­vinces him that his beloved wife is cheat­ing on him with a mil­i­tary col­league, and Iago gets his own wife Emilia to par­tic­i­pate unknow­ingly in “prov­ing” Desdemona’s infi­delity, so, spoiler alert, Oth­ello kills her. Then he finds he was wrong and he kills him­self. End of story.

What this play needs, for one kind of suc­cess, is absolute pas­sion, quiet con­vic­tion of devoted love, a slow burn toward from dis­be­lief to belief in betrayal, an epic strug­gle within one per­son to do a dreaded deed, and then mind-blowing remorse. This ver­sion… did not have these things. I was not con­vinced that there was enough chem­istry between Oth­ello and Des­de­mona to war­rant belief in their over­whelm­ing love. They seemed cheer­fully fond of one another, but there was no chem­istry. Henry tow­ered over Jes­sica Har­ris, his tiny Des­de­mona, which is FINE, but there was only a brotherly-sisterly hap­pi­ness in being together, not a soul-destroying, obses­sive love between two peo­ple for whom the path to hap­pi­ness is strewn with other people’s hatred.

Con­rad Nel­son was amaz­ingly evil as Iago (and he com­posed the music for the pro­duc­tion, how impres­sive). He con­veyed hatred well enough, but I never could fig­ure out WHY he hated Oth­ello enough to engi­neer the mas­sive decep­tion that brought about his down­fall. There is racism in the lan­guage of the play, but I couldn’t hear or see it clearly enough to feel I under­stood Iago’s position.

All this being said, it was a very stim­u­lat­ing evening! Why? In an odd way because one could never quite sus­pend dis­be­lief that Lenny Henry was onstage play­ing Oth­ello. He’s a giant comic tal­ent! Our neigh­bors report that when Dawn French and he lived in our house, the walls sim­ply shook with laugh­ter. He is a larger-than-life GOOD man, who brought to Oth­ello a sort of sim­ple sweet­ness, and then about face: a rather unbe­liev­able belief in hav­ing been betrayed. But we cared. More about him and his unhap­pi­ness than poor Desdemona’s fate.

The sec­ond half is much stronger than the first. He stops rush­ing his lines, Desdemona’s bewil­der­ment is believ­able, Iago gets meaner and nas­tier, and by the end, how­ever wav­ery the moti­va­tion seemed for Othello’s mur­der of his wife, we believe his utter mis­ery and self-loathing.

Go, do! It’s play­ing through Decem­ber. John said just what I was think­ing at the end, “I like the bows as much as the entire play!” Lenny Henry was pos­i­tively bounc­ing with the thrill of the play, since he had avowed his dis­com­fort with Shake­speare until he took on this project. The bows were full of pride, joy and accom­plish­ment, and he shook hands with audi­ence mem­bers and slapped his fel­low actors on the back, clown­ing and laugh­ing. It was really a very enjoy­able night. But not, strictly speak­ing, “Oth­ello,” if that makes sense. I’d like to see a truly tragic pro­duc­tion some­day. And now I know what the play is about, I can have a bet­ter atten­tion span!

Before the play we ate an early din­ner here (I know, I know, nor­mal peo­ple take the oppor­tu­nity to go OUT to din­ner, but you know me). We had had sim­ply superb meat­balls stuffed with moz­zarella ear­lier in the week, and I’d reserved a good por­tion of the meat­ball mix for what pur­pose, I do not know. But my bril­liant hus­band, ever attuned to grilling oppor­tu­ni­ties, said, “Let’s make burg­ers of it.” And may I say? The best burg­ers EVER.

Meat­ball Burg­ers
(serves 4 eas­ily)

about 1 1/2 pounds mixed ground meats: pork, beef and lamb
2 eggs
1/2 cup home­made bread­crumbs
salt and pep­per (to taste if you don’t mind raw meat and eggs, as I don’t!)

4 hard rolls
sliced red onion
sliced tomato
sliced avo­cado
may­on­naise with some wasabi mixed in (if you like a kick)
ketchup
rocket leaves

The secret to this mix­ture is in the KNEAD­ING. You have to knead it like dough. So take off your rings and get in there. Make sure the bowl is big­ger than the dough by a lot, so you can really move around. At the begin­ning the mix­ture will be three sep­a­rate meats and some slip­pery egg, with the bread­crumbs float­ing around. But the more you mix, knead­ing and turn­ing the bowl around, it mys­te­ri­ously mar­ries together. The slip­per­i­ness merges with the bread­crumbs and the meats all make friends. After just five or six min­utes of knead­ing, the mix­ture will be com­pletely smooth and rel­a­tively air­less and lumpless.

Form into burg­ers, tall or flat as you like. I like tall, although they’re ulti­mately a com­plete mess to eat. On a very hot grill, grill the burg­ers three or four min­utes per side, depend­ing on your atti­tude toward rareness.

To assem­ble, slice the rolls in half and tear out the insides of each, putting them aside to make bread­crumbs. Every­one adds condi­ments and veg, and bob’s your uncle.

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

A cou­ple of caveats: give every­one at least two nap­kins! And if you’re cook­ing for a first date, you’ll learn a lot about him or her from the way that burger gets eaten!

Well, I must get to my con­test. Dead­line is Wednes­day! Wish me luck.