The best-laid plans…

I’m not meant to be blog­ging.  I’m meant to be just a few hours away from my Con­necti­cut farm­house, ready to pull the Christ­mas trees from the wait­ing barn, hang all the sil­ver balls and orna­ments, race to the shop for wrap­ping paper, jump over to the gro­cery for all the ingre­di­ents for our mam­moth Sat­ur­day din­ner, get John’s mom’s room ready, put the tra­di­tional Christ­mas Eve oys­ter stew on the stove, the dec­o­ra­tions just so…

Instead, I’m sit­ting in my Lon­don liv­ing room wait­ing for John and Avery to get home from “Harry Pot­ter,” her con­so­la­tion prize for being here.  Two words: flight cancelled.

As you all know, I am extremely fond of my adopted home and even find many things about it — sausages and the accent, for exam­ple — supe­rior to Amer­ica.  But there’s a can’t-do approach to snow removal here in Eng­land that bog­gles the Mid­west­ern Amer­i­can mind.  Here it is Wednes­day, and Heathrow is still reel­ing from the four inches that fell, let’s see, on Sun­day.  It’s sim­ply infuriating.

How on earth am I going to arrive on Christ­mas Night, with all my tra­di­tions turned upside down, and pro­duce a proper Christ­mas, all the shops being shut?  I can tell you that yes­ter­day was chal­leng­ing for me, who thrives on every­thing turn­ing out just as I want.  What was I to do?

I spent the after­noon on the phone break­ing the news to my brother in law that I won’t be there to make the gravy, to the girl who was to hous­esit for us, arrang­ing for her whole fam­ily to spend the hol­i­day here enjoy­ing our tree and dec­o­ra­tions.  A per­verse con­so­la­tion there: I’m not spoil­ing her hol­i­day, Heathrow is: her family’s flights were can­celled too.  John called his mom, who is bravely going to go ahead of us and open up the house the day before Christ­mas.  And our dear, dear neigh­bors across the road have kindly filled our refrig­er­a­tor to wel­come her.

But still.  A dis­ap­point­ment.  What is Christ­mas with­out all the prepa­ra­tions, the can­dles on the man­tel lit, the fire flick­er­ing over the sil­ver balls on the tree, all the right dishes cook­ing at the right time, the stock­ings ready for their bur­dens of chocolate?

We pushed it all aside to run off to the wretched, incom­pe­tent air­port to pick Avery up from her trip to St Peters­burg.  The var­i­ous par­ents gath­ered in the Inter­na­tional Arrivals area, trad­ing sto­ries of the texts we had received from our girls extolling the virtues of the Her­mitage and the shop­ping, the ici­cles and the snowdrifts.

And sud­denly there she was, red-cheeked with excite­ment, topped by an enor­mous fox fur hat, giv­ing and receiv­ing hugs from all her new best friends, shout­ing, “Merry Christmas!”

“It’s BOIL­ING in this coun­try!” she said, her down jacket falling off her shoul­ders.  “And you call this snow?!  As we were land­ing and we saw all the snow that had brought the coun­try to a screech­ing halt, we just had to laugh!”

We post­poned telling her to what a screech­ing halt her own plans had come to, and lis­tened to the sto­ries of room after room of lapis lazuli, mala­chite, carved plas­ter and gilded ceil­ings.  And presents!  Icons, scarves, a tiny matrushka doll set, the tini­est inside being the size of a pop­corn kernel!

Her mer­ri­ment was con­ta­gious!  The fur hat perched on her head, she leant for­ward in the car and talked a blue streak, story after story of the recur­ring jokes among her friends, the ter­ri­ble bed she had to sleep on, the awful food (“uncooked fish, but not fish that was meant to be eaten raw, just not COOKED!”), the end­less cups of tea with more and more sugar to make them palat­able, the fun of try­ing out her Russ­ian!  “I keep say­ing ‘pazhul­ste” and ‘spa­siba’ to every­one now!”

We got home and sat imme­di­ately down at the din­ing room table to upload all the won­der­ful pho­tos of her trip: “This is the chan­de­lier tour of St Peters­burg!” and to hear all the excit­ing sto­ries.  How thrilling to have her tell sto­ries of an exotic place we’ve never been.  “I want to take you there some­time and show you everything!”

We ate her favorite din­ner of broc­coli and toma­toey, cheesy pasta, and lis­tened end­lessly.  Then with the con­fes­sion that she had changed clothes not at ALL dur­ing the trip, merely adding lay­ers as the days went by, she went off for a long, hot, bub­bly bath and I started the wash­ing machine hum­ming in the background.

John and I sighed simul­ta­ne­ously and admit­ted that we were worn out!  The drama and dis­ap­point­ment of the can­celled flight had been com­pletely over­whelmed by the joy of hav­ing Avery safely home.  I hadn’t admit­ted to myself how far away she felt, how inse­cure I felt being sep­a­rated from her over such a dis­tance, both phys­i­cal and emo­tional.  I hadn’t admit­ted it until she returned, and I looked at her glow­ing, beau­ti­ful, famil­iar face and felt sud­denly, “This is all I need for Christmas.”

And it’s so true.  Who cares what day of the month it is when we finally walk in the door of Red Gate Farm and fold John’s mom in a hug?  What dif­fer­ence will it make whether or not the dec­o­ra­tions are up when my nieces Jane and Molly are run­ning around screech­ing and Avery is look­ing down at them from her great teenage height?  Once my stal­wart hus­band car­ries in the Christ­mas tree and lights the first of the hol­i­day fires, it won’t mat­ter a bit that I didn’t get to the gro­cery!  Thanks to my friends across the road, the house will be warm to receive us, and when my sis­ter and brother in law arrive for what­ever din­ner we’re able to man­age, we’ll all be together.

Maybe I needed a lit­tle snow, a lit­tle delay, a lit­tle dis­rup­tion, to shake me out of my silly wish to con­trol all the details.  Our Christ­mas will be right on time, when­ever it happens.

If you’d asked me yes­ter­day, I’d have said that our week­end break to West Sus­sex was just what the doc­tor ordered: all my energy back after the last chaotic weeks in Lon­don, ready to fly off to Amer­ica to host our Christ­mas celebration.

That was yes­ter­day.  In the snowy, gor­geous, peace­ful countryside.

Today, we awoke to news that at least two of Heathrow’s five run­ways are closed.  Snow.  And so our pre­car­i­ous calm has been shattered.

As a Mid­west­ern Amer­i­can whose win­ters meant snow that fell in Novem­ber and remained on the ground until March, I am com­pletely flum­moxed by the paral­y­sis that takes over Lon­don and par­tic­u­larly Heathrow when two inches of snow fall on the ground.  It’s as if every sin­gle win­ter, the occur­rence of snow takes every­one entirely by sur­prise.  “Wait, every­one, here it comes again, that white stuff!  For­get Keep Calm and Carry On, it’s time to Panic and Freak Out!”

So I am tak­ing a deep breath and try­ing to feel that it’s per­fectly all right for my teenage daugh­ter to be stranded in St Peters­burg — her flight was to be tomor­row — and our whole fam­ily was to travel to Amer­ica on Wednes­day.  Will any of this hap­pen?  Or will my poor mother in law arrive at my empty Con­necti­cut home to fend for herself?

Some­how this is all eerily rem­i­nis­cent of the last school trip, in April, to Pom­peii… stranded by the vol­cano!  It’s enough to make you just stay home.

Home, for the last sev­eral weeks, has been mad­ness.  There was the much-anticipated skat­ing show at Queensway, for which Avery and her skat­ing pal have been prac­tic­ing for nearly a year.  It’s one of those respon­si­bil­i­ties of par­ents: turn up at your child’s event no mat­ter what, even if it will take place on ICE with no heat and last three hours, only 92 sec­onds of which will fea­ture your child.

So off we went, I leav­ing a cast-iron dish of slow-braising shoul­der of beef and sausages and mush­rooms, repos­ing in a very low oven.  How nice it would be to return to a lovely, hot din­ner after all that ICE.  And of course there was drama.  Just after Avery’s piece was fin­ished — and she was lovely! — there was a bump­ing sound behind us and in the dark and con­fu­sion, it took some time for us to real­ize that an elderly lady had col­lapsed.  First with a faint­ing spell, then falling into the mir­rored wall at the edges of the rink.

Only John’s phone would work, so of course he was at the front­line of the res­cue attempts.  “Look at Daddy, how good he is to help out,” Avery whis­pered, shiv­er­ing with cold.  It was a bit dis­con­cert­ing to expe­ri­ence just how long it took for an ambu­lance to come: shouldn’t the rink have at least a para­medic on hand at all times?  I began to feel, as well, con­cern for my din­ner, and on a larger scale, for my house should my din­ner burn dry and catch the entire place on fire.

No wor­ries, all was well when we arrived home (plus the lady was revived and fine, I’m ashamed to say con­cern for her lagged a bit behind con­cern for my din­ner).  Do look up the recipe on the index and cook that dish.  It’s a total win­ner with every­one, and so flex­i­ble, as it turns out!

The fol­low­ing day Avery and I went with her friend Lille to a stun­ningly beau­ti­ful Christ­mas Carol con­cert last week­end at Holy Trin­ity Bromp­ton, a church adja­cent to the Bromp­ton Ora­tory in South Kens­ing­ton.  What a church!  The most var­ied group of parish­ioners I’ve ever seen in any church: young and old, black and white, from the obvi­ously very posh to the lowli­est stu­dent.  And the music… a pro­fes­sional cham­ber orches­tra, the church’s own choir.  How I love to sing, and hardly ever get the chance.

What a hol­i­day joy!

No report of our lives lately can be com­plete with­out a litany of the many, many veg­eta­bles it turns out can be suc­cess­fully roasted, and eaten by my hus­band.  He is a pos­i­tive pros­e­ly­tizer on the sub­ject.  All of them sim­ply cut in half or thirds, driz­zled with olive oil and sprin­kled with chili flakes, then roasted in a hot oven for 35 min­utes.  Roasted fen­nel and parsnips?  Check.

Pep­pers, turnips, swedes and car­rots?  Definitely.

Beet­roots and cau­li­flower?  Of course.

And since woman can­not live by veg along, there have been so many heart­warm­ing hol­i­day­ish moments in life lately… there was the day I bought my usual weekly “The Big Issue” mag­a­zine from my local guy, out­side the Tesco’s.  What a lovely project that mag­a­zine is: employ­ing home­less peo­ple right off the streets, giv­ing them some sup­port, some pride in pro­vid­ing a really nice read, and some respect from the neigh­bors walk­ing by.  “I almost bought one yes­ter­day, out­side Boots,” I assured him, “but I am loyal to you.”  He looked a bit shy of me, but then reached into his bag and brought out a large square enve­lope.  “Merry Christ­mas to you, love,” he said, “and thank you for your sup­port.” The card is signed “Dave,” so now I know.

And the snowy day when I walked to pick up Avery at school, for­get­ting my umbrella.  I stood out­side the gates get­ting wet­ter and wet­ter, when I felt a hand on my shoul­der.  “My dear,” said a very Greek voice, “you must not stand here.  You  must come wait for your daugh­ter in my car, while I wait for mine.  Come.”  I fol­lowed him cau­tiously, a big bear of a man.  We sat in the steamy inte­rior and he said suddenly,

“Is she your only child?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Mine too, and I have put every­thing I am, and every­thing I hope for, into my wishes for her future.”

“So have I,” I said, “and some­times I worry that it’s too much for her.”

“I also, worry this,” he said.

“But I don’t think any child ever died from too much love,” I said, and he pat­ted my hand and said, “I have con­cluded this as well.”

We intro­duced our­selves and exchanged sto­ries about school, then I saw Avery in the dark and jumped out, thank­ing him.  I looked back to wave at him and he pointed to a girl walk­ing toward the car.  “That’s my daugh­ter,” I could lipread.  I put my hand on Avery’s shoul­der and smiled, and he smiled back at me.

And the next time I was chat­ting with Dave over “The Big Issue,” I was clasped in an enor­mous down-coated hug.  “Kris­ten, my friend!” and it was Angelus, the dad from that wet day.  “This is a nice lady,” Dave said and Angelus said, “I have rea­son to know it.”  That is Christ­mas, to me.

And on these cold Christ­massy days, what we all need is a warm, sus­tain­ing din­ner to keep us going.  Do you fancy these?  My friend Karen can report that they are deli­cious, as she cooked them over the weekend!

Mozzarella-Stuffed Meat­balls
(serves 4)

1.5 pounds mixed beef, pork and lamb (or veal, or just one meat)
1 egg
1/4 cup bread­crumbs
1/4 cup milk
large tbsp Ital­ian sea­son­ing
large tsp gar­lic salt
8 leaves basil, chopped
1 large ball moz­zarella
3 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
1 large plus 1 small can whole toma­toes, squeezed
salt and pep­per to taste
grated parme­san to gar­nish
spaghetti

Get the meat to not-freezing-cold temp. Mix the egg, milk, bread­crumbs, sea­son­ings and basil in a large bowl. Add meat and mix thor­oughly. Form into hol­lows in the palm of your hand, adding a dol­lop of moz­zarella to each and form­ing meat around it. Tuck it in where nec­es­sary, rolling as best you can to keep moz­zarella inside, form­ing about 10 balls.

Heat olive oil in heavy skil­let. Fry meat­balls gen­tly on one side till brown, then using a com­bi­na­tion of spat­ula and tongs, turn them each over to cook on the other side till brown. Trans­fer to a plate and cover to keep warm.

Fry gar­lic and onion in remain­ing oil, scrap­ing up bits. Pour in toma­toes, squeez­ing as you go. Sea­son to taste, and cook for about half an hour, stir­ring. Then gen­tly add meat­balls to the sauce. Turn heat down LOW LOW LOW and sim­mer for an hour or so, longer if you can, stir­ring a few times.

Gar­nish with cheese and serve with spaghetti.

These were my reward for a long cou­ple of days prepar­ing for the Pre­view and the Sale of Lost Prop­erty at Avery’s beloved school… fran­tic pur­chas­ing of all aban­doned cloth­ing, jew­elry, train­ers, and the occa­sional bizarre item — a sleep­ing bag? a pair of bounc­ing bum­ble­bee antenna on a head­band? one year there were six large choco­late fish wrapped in foil — what fun.  Lots of girls wear­ing Christ­mas hats and burst­ing into spon­ta­neous car­ols as they stand in the lunch queue.

And an inno­va­tion for your next roast chicken: try stuff­ing a big flat mush­room under the breast skin, then push­ing in after the mush­room some but­ter into which you’ve mixed some chopped rose­mary… delicious!

With the “Nut­cracker” play­ing in the back­ground, the tree twin­kling in the win­dow, a warm­ing fire in the fire­place and a savoury pan­cake with my chicken, home is very cozy indeed.

Delia Smith’s pan­cakes, with fill­ings by me

(serves 4)

8 slices streaky bacon or ham, cut in small pieces

6 oz/165g plain flour

pinch salt

3 medium eggs

10 oz/300 ml milk, plus 5 oz/100 ml water

3 tbsps melted butter

a lit­tle extra but­ter for cook­ing pancakes

hand­ful chives, minced

4 oz parme­san cheese, coarsely grated

Saute the ham/bacon until crisp, and take out of the fry­ing pan.   Sift flour and salt into a medium bowl, then crack eggs into the flour and begin whisk­ing, scrap­ing the sides as you go.  Add the milk-water mix­ture grad­u­ally, whisk­ing con­stantly.  Scrape sides wtih a spat­ula and whisk one more time.  Just before you’re ready to cook, add the melted but­ter and whisk again.

Melt but­ter in the fry­ing pan you used for the bacon or ham, then when hot, add the bat­ter and ham and chives, and cook on one side until bub­bles appear, then turn over and sprin­kle the cheese.  Cook until done, then roll up and divide into 4 serv­ings.  So sim­ple, so savory.

I think I can avoid it no longer.  I’d bet­ter go on the British Air­ways web­site and try to find if Avery’s flight will in fact leave Rus­sia tomor­row.  That hur­dle crossed, I can turn my mind to whether we’ll get away the fol­low­ing day, and then to pack­ing up the Christ­mas presents, with all the faith in the hol­i­day that I can muster.  Wish me luck.

It’s to the point now, in my life, where I don’t feel I can say any­thing to any­one!  I am car­ry­ing around many, many secrets.  I’ll tell you why.

This Christ­mas I decided not to do ran­dom presents.  I really put my chin in my hands and thought about what made every­body tick and tried to think of a thing each per­son would REALLY like, would smile when open­ing.  A lot of my presents this year have no intrin­sic value at all, only value to the peo­ple who are about to receive them.  So if any pack­ages get mis­ad­dressed, I’m in trouble!

It’s been a lot of fun.  There have been secret emails with peo­ple I’ve never met, meet­ings with peo­ple I’d never met before and prob­a­bly will never meet again, who can do things, make things, trans­form things into just the right presents for the peo­ple I love.  As always with Christ­mas, it’s fun to have a cou­ple of presents that aren’t even THINGS at all, but expe­ri­ences, or sen­sa­tions.  One present might not come off, because I am count­ing on the kind­ness of one stranger, so my fin­gers are crossed that the hol­i­day spirit will move that per­son, just enough.

So between orga­niz­ing all my crazy gifts, and look­ing through last year’s Christ­mas cards to make sure I don’t leave any­one out this year, and clean­ing up after the drat­ted cat who seems to think the tree skirt is another lit­ter­box — grrrrr — I’m busy.  Not too busy, how­ever, to have two mag­nif­i­cent lunches out with girl­friends, which as you all know is just about my favorite thing.  Gos­sip, com­mis­er­a­tion, advice, laugh­ing a lit­tle too loud for the com­fort of the wait­staff… that’s glorious.

Tues­day saw me with my beau­ti­ful friend Dalia at Essenza, in Kens­ing­ton Park Road in Not­ting Hill.  I always love a lit­tle trip to Not­ting Hill, imag­in­ing its chic and expen­sive real estate in the depths of neglect, only 30–40 years ago.  Essenza is an unas­sum­ing lit­tle spot, you’d pass by it if you weren’t look­ing for it, tucked away on a quiet lit­tle street next door to a dar­ling nurs­ery school, so I got to see lots of cute lit­tle Eng­lish ankle-biters as I strolled by.  Overheard:

small boy, tug­ging at his mother’s hand: “Mummy, you know Daddy loves you, don’t you?  You know he does!”

Mummy: “Dar­ling, Mummy’s very, very cross with Daddy right now, we’re hav­ing a mas­sive row, so let’s just get you to school.”

Ouch!  I wanted to stay and hear the rest.  Some­how, spo­ken in such a beau­ti­ful accent, the words lost their men­ace.  How bad could a “mas­sive row” be, when she sounded like Princess Diana?  Like my plumber today, Irish Pete.  He sat back on his heels and told me how angry he was about the increase in uni­ver­sity fees, but all I could think was, “Did that rhyme?  I think that rhymed.”  All Irish sen­tences rhyme, I think.  I could have lis­tened to him read the phone book.

But back to Essenza.  Dalia had told me the food was to die for, com­pletely authen­tic, and since this obser­va­tion came on the heels of her week in Venice and mine in Flo­rence, we were ready to be impressed.  We decided to skip the main courses and share three starters, a very good idea.  And oh my, the creami­ness of the moz­zarella di bufala, the sort of tex­ture where you tear it gen­tly with your fork, creamy milk mix­ing with the olive oil on the plate.  With a real live tomato!  Not a hard, taste­less thing, but a juicy, red fruit.  “Where on earth did you find this tomato in Decem­ber?” I wailed to the waiter who smiled and said, “That I can­not tell you, it is my secret.”  Scat­tered with rocket, a salad to kill for, as my dar­ling father-in-law used to say.  Never to die for, oh no.  To kill for.

And then cala­mari and gam­beri fritti, fried squid and prawns, in a gor­geous bat­ter, with a sweet chilli sauce.  And king scal­lops with shaved cour­gette and roasted red pep­per, per­fectly cooked… heavenly!

Halfway through lunch Dalia said with clenched jaw, “Don’t look around, don’t pay any atten­tion, but Sienna Miller just walked in.”  With a dog, mind you.  And they let her.  And dear read­ers, she is stun­ning.  Dalia claims the dog was pret­tier, but I don’t believe her, we’re both cat peo­ple.  So it was fun to have a celebrity sighting!

And the very next day I was lucky enough to be with my friend Susan at Peter­sham Nurs­eries Cafe, in Rich­mond.  Ah, Peter­sham Nurs­eries, I’ve been once before, to the fancy room where every­thing is too expen­sive but you don’t care because it’s so exquis­ite.  This time, we repaired to what I can only call “the soup room,” because that’s what there was.  Actu­ally it was funny, and good that I am a good sport about odd ser­vice, because the chalk­board menu said, “potato and leek soup, or polenta with meat­balls, or ham and moz­zarella.”  So I said to Susan, “I don’t really like polenta, do you mind shar­ing the ham and moz­zarella instead?”  She didn’t mind, so we ordered, and when it came it was… polenta.  With ham.

“Excuse me, but we didn’t order the polenta, just the ham and mozzarella.”

Lovely wait lady: “Yes, the polenta with the ham.”

“No, we didn’t want the polenta, and any­way, doesn’t it come with meat­balls?” point­ing at the menu board.

“Ah… [long pause], I can see that that might be mis­lead­ing [def­i­nitely!].  Try the polenta any­way and if you do not like it, we will replace it.”

And it turns out that I just don’t like BAD polenta!  I def­i­nitely don’t like the runny kind, pre­tend­ing to be mashed pota­toes.  But this was the stiff kind, and quite but­tery and deli­cious.  I don’t think I’d order it again in my low-carb mode, but I was glad I tried it.  And so was the wait lady!  So pleased that I was pleased.

As usual, Susan and I talked over and over each other, about child-raising (“always take credit for the good stuff they do, and none of the blame for the bad stuff,” we agree was our motto), child psy­chol­ogy (did you know that aggres­sion and depres­sion stem often from the same set of feel­ings, in chil­dren?  I didn’t, but it makes sense), our girls’ lovely school and how much we love Lost Prop­erty.  In short, the com­pany of a girl­friend.  I don’t know what I would do with­out mine.

Tonight we are off to be cooked for by friends, an occa­sion that doesn’t come along ter­ri­bly often.  I am sorry to say that my obses­sion with cook­ing makes peo­ple afraid to cook for me.  I tell them all, but they don’t believe me: I like other people’s cook­ing at least as well as my own, and it’s such a delight to sit down and be given some­thing to eat that I didn’t slave over myself!  And tomor­row is the lun­cheon for school vol­un­teers, which is always lovely because it’s a great group of peo­ple.  Don’t you find that peo­ple who are will­ing to do thank­less tasks for noth­ing are nice to be around?

As for my own cook­ing, my only exper­i­ment this week was a chicken casse­role.  Now, I offer you this recipe with the pro­viso that you must cook it only if you like the con­cept of a casse­role.  I myself was raised on the con­cept: a meat, a starch, and some sort of lubri­cat­ing liq­uid (usu­ally out of a Campbell’s soup can), mixed in a dish and baked for half an hour.  Din­ner done.  For my mother, this basic con­cept kept us all alive for many years.  Campbell’s used to make a soup called, believe it or not, “Noo­dles and Ground Beef.”  They really called it a “soup,” even though it came rush­ing in a solid lump from the can just like cran­berry jelly.  I can’t imag­ine they make it any­more.  But my mother bought it by the gross, and I mean GROSS.  She then mixed it with more ground beef and noo­dles, I guess, and bob’s your uncle, din­ner was on the table.

Since I am mar­ried to a fel­low Mid­west­ern child of the 1970s, we under­stand casseroles.  There’s some­thing beau­ti­ful about every­thing being mushed up together.  My daugh­ter, raised in the 21st cen­tury on all home­made, all the time?  Not so much on the casseroles, I can tell you.  She favors dis­crete items of food, eas­ily dis­tin­guished from each other.  Fair enough.

But if you fancy a casse­role, I can tell you this one ticks all the boxes: creamy, savoury, inex­pen­sive AND I added a veg­etable to it, so you don’t even need a side dish.  Go on, you know you want to.

Chicken Casse­role with But­ter­nut Squash and Fried Sage

(serves 4)

four chicken breast fillets

Fox Point Seasoning

1 tbsp olive oil

2 cups bas­mati rice

1 but­ter­nut squash

smear of butter

3 cups home­made cream of mush­room soup (Campbell’s if you must!)

1 tbsp butter

8 sage leaves

It’s an assem­bly job.  Sprin­kle the chicken fil­lets with the Fox Point Sea­son­ing (or just salt and pep­per if you can’t get it) and the oil.  Set aside.

Steam the bas­mati rice, and mean­while, cut the but­ter­nut squash in half length­wise, scoop out the seeds and smear each half with but­ter.  Bake at 425F/220C while the rice steams, and a bit longer, about 35 min­utes total.

Turn off the heat under the rice and let it steam on its own for five min­utes or so: this will lessen the amount that sticks to the pan.  Mean­while, heat a fry­ing pan and place the chicken breasts in it, oil side down.  Cook until browned, then turn and brown on the other side.  The chicken will still be uncooked inside, and that’s fine.  Set aside.

Place the steamed rice into — you guessed it — a casse­role dish!  Lay the chicken breasts on top, pour the soup over.  Cut the but­ter­nut squash into bite-size pieces and drop them into the casserole.

Bake in the same hot oven, 425F/220C, for about 35 min­utes, turn­ing the chicken over once and stir­ring the rice-soup mix­ture.  Just before you take it out of the oven, melt the remain­ing but­ter in the fry­ing pan from the chicken and fry the sage leaves gen­tly, just till crisp.  Crum­ble them on top of the casse­role and serve.

This is a lovely, com­fort­ing, old-fashioned dish.  Any­one can afford it, no one will be intim­i­dated by the process, every­one will like it.  Even Avery ate it per­fectly hap­pily, allow­ing that she could see, “it’s the kind of thing you’ll like if you like that kind of thing.”

I can­not offer you a photo of this dish because there is no way to make a casse­role look pretty.  It’s why all those old-fashioned cook­books from the 1970s make food look so awful.  Because they were ALL casseroles.

Time for me to make sure no one’s been look­ing at my email or open­ing pack­ages addressed to me, or nos­ing around in parcels in my shoe closet.  Don’t any­one try to rat­tle me: I can keep all these secrets, at least for another cou­ple of weeks…

It’s one of the most per­plex­ing ques­tions to char­ac­ter­ize my hol­i­day sea­son so far.  When is a goose not a goose?  Why, when it’s a calf, of course.

I was con­fused too, believe me.

Cooks — at least those who cook every day — can get in ruts.  At least I can.  Well, John would say they’re not so much ruts as they are flights of obses­sion, which means I cook the same thing over and over, try­ing to get it just right, or try­ing vari­a­tions on the same theme.  Many dishes have fol­lowed this same route: slow-braised chicken with root veg­eta­bles, home­made pizza, things deep-fried, bean salad.  When I look through my beloved recipe index here, I see with embar­rass­ment that there are MANY ver­sions of ideas, as I exper­i­ment.  Cheesy spinach, the per­fect red pep­per soup, the per­fect brandy and sour cream sauce for chicken or salmon.  All of these ideas have set up camp in my kitchen, for my long-suffering fam­ily to eat their way through, night after night.

So when last week I came upon an ingre­di­ent I’d never heard of, I knew it was time to try some­thing new.  “Goose skirt!” I said to the butcher boy behind the meat counter in Wait­rose.  I turned to John, who said, “I’ve never heard of it either,” and since it wasn’t expen­sive, I said I’d take two of the vacuum-packed meat and roast it at home, so much sim­pler than a whole goose.

“I don’t think I’ve ever cooked goose of any kind,” I made con­ver­sa­tion with the butcher boy as he wrapped and weighed.  And very casu­ally he said, “This isn’t goose, you know.  It’s veal.”  VEAL?  “You’re telling me that some­thing called “goose skirt” is cow meat.”  “That’s right.”

Well, you’ll find if you google it that there are very few men­tions of goose skirt, and those there are only tell you to grill it, to treat it in fact like what in Amer­ica is called “skirt steak” or a very sim­i­lar cut, “flank steak.”  All the recipes I could find to use this cheap and tough cut indi­cated mar­i­nat­ing and grilling.  Not very blog­wor­thy, and not afford­ing many chances to get obsessed with pos­si­ble vari­a­tions.  So I decided to take a risk.

Slow-braising is the per­fect win­try way to treat meat.  We’re all feel­ing a bit poor, so it’s nice to honor the cheap cuts of meat that can be tough if treated the wrong way.

Slow-braising cooks itself, fills the house with savory and wel­com­ing aro­mas, and the left­over sauce is per­fect with pasta the next day.  I’ve been slow-braising shoul­der of beef - a bit obses­sively per­haps — and thought, let’s try it with a goose skirt.  And the result was spec­tac­u­lar.  Unfor­tu­nately it wasn’t pretty, so there is no photo.  But rich, deeply fla­vored and satisfying.

Slow-Braised Goose Skirt With Stout and Mushrooms

(serves four with leftovers)

1 kilo (about 2.2 pounds) goose skirt

juice of 1 lemon

2 tbsps olive oil

sea salt and pepper

1 pound chest­nut mush­rooms, sliced thick

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

1 white onion, cut in eighths

1 cup stout

enough beef stock just to cover the meat

2 tbsps flour

1 cup sour cream

chives to garnish

At least 12 hours before you want to eat, put the meat in a shal­low dish and rub all over with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pep­per.  Cover with cling film and refrig­er­ate, up to three days.

About 4 hours before you want to eat, take the meat from the refrig­er­a­tor and cut into large pieces, about 2 inches across.  Pour the mar­i­nat­ing juices and oil into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat till very hot, then throw in the mush­rooms, gar­lic, thyme and onion.  Add more oil if nec­es­sary and brown the veg­eta­bles.  Remove from pan and replace with the meat.  Brown the meat all over, then throw the veg­eta­bles back in, and cover with stout and stock.  Cover tightly and turn heat down VERY low, then cook for about 4 hours, stir­ring occasionally.

Just before you want to eat, pour a lit­tle of the cook­ing sauce into a bowl and add the flour, whisk­ing it till smooth.  Add this mix­ture to the cook­ing pan and whisk nicely.  Then add the sour cream, stir well, and heat up again.  Serve with the chives as garnish.

This dish was GOR­GEOUS!  Very much like my slow-braised shoul­der, and just as inexpensive.

What I have not been able to dis­cover is why on earth VEAL should be called GOOSE.  No one seems to know!  And I love things like that: small food mys­ter­ies lurk­ing from the mists of time.

For­ti­fied by this protein-laden, darkly deli­cious dish, I was able to throw myself into fes­tive preparations.

Avery has been long­ing, for sev­eral years, to have a proper Christ­mas party.  With Christ­mas crack­ers, and fes­tive foods, and the dec­o­ra­tions up around the house, and her guests all dressed to the nines.  And this year was the year.  She invited just the right group, we went shop­ping for table dec­o­ra­tions, and I asked if she’d like to order piz­zas as she had for her “mock­tails” party last spring.  “No, I have a menu in mind,” she said.  “If it’s not too expen­sive, let’s have steaks, and Orlando pota­toes, and green beans.  And then for dessert, hot chocolate.”

And so it was.  I enjoyed myself so much, put­ter­ing around for her, while she strug­gled with Russ­ian, maths, Reli­gious Stud­ies and Latin, threw her­self into prac­tice for her Singing Tea.  I dec­o­rated the table with things that cost almost noth­ing: pinecones, red can­dles at £1 apiece, nap­kins with rein­deer on them, and a packet of lit­tle glit­tery glass pieces to scat­ter across the table.  How lucky our daily din­ner plates are green Firek­ing, per­fect with all the red.

The girls arrived, dressed to the nines in every out­landish gar­ment you can imag­ine and heels?  Tot­ter­ing, my dears!  Fur hats, trail­ing scarves, lots of beau­ti­ful makeup, all exam­ined by each girl in the minut­est detail.  There were shrieks of excite­ment, bursts of song, and the most grat­i­fy­ing hugs from her friends.  And pulling of Christ­mas crackers!

We went into action, John grilling the steaks and me fry­ing the match­stick potato pan­cakes in goose fat, sim­ply heav­enly.  Thank you, Orlando, for this best of all potato recipes.

Orlando Pota­toes in Goose Fat

(serves 6 hun­gry teenagers)

1 medium-ish potato per girl

3 small shallots

sea salt and fresh pepper

3 tbsps goose fat

Slice each potato very thin length­wise, then turn the other way and slice very thin across, to make tiny match­sticks.  Lay the pota­toes on a thick tea towel and squeeze and roll in the towel until you’ve wrung as much water from the pota­toes as pos­si­ble.  Place in a large bowl.

Mince the shal­lots very small and mix with the pota­toes.  Salt and pep­per the mix­ture.  Form into six cakes.

Heat the goose fat in a very large fry­ing pan.  When a tiny bit of potato dropped in the fat siz­zles right away, it’s ready.  Put the cakes in as quickly as you can and fry on one side for 2–3 min­utes, then turn.  If they fall apart slightly when turn­ing, just push the ragged bits back toward each cake and press a bit.  Cook for another 2–3 min­utes on the other side, until golden brown.  Turn again if you’re not sat­is­fied.  Serve HOT.

I wish I had a photo of these pota­toes but hon­estly, the girls were prac­ti­cally chew­ing each other’s arms off, so we put a steak and a potato cake on each plate and every­one sat down to choose whether they wanted Bear­naise Sauce or Sauce Diane, and helped them­selves to gor­geous green beans, sim­ply steamed and tossed in melted but­ter and Fox Point Sea­son­ing.

It was so sat­is­fy­ing!  They ate like lit­tle wolves, not a scrap remain­ing on the plates, and gos­sip­ing, singing and light­ing the tiny sparklers.  They were… happy.  And, so were we.  In this world where we can con­trol so lit­tle of our children’s hap­pi­ness, to give an evening like that to them, safe and fun, was an enor­mous gift.

As soon as they were set­tled down, John and I pro­duced our own din­ner!  Have to take the oppor­tu­nity to eat some­thing Avery doesn’t like.  Roasted fen­nel, hot pep­pers and beets, tossed in chilli oil.  And our all-time favorite scal­lop dish.  You can’t have too much gar­lic, after all.

Scal­lops with Gar­lic, Pars­ley and Linguini

(serves 2)

lin­guini for 2

16 large scallops

2/3 cup olive oil

6 cloves garlic

1 whole bunch flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped fine

2/3 cup bread­crumbs, toasted

sea salt and pep­per to taste

Put the lin­guini on to cook.  Mean­while, heat the olive oil in a wok until really hot, then throw in the scal­lops, gar­lic and pars­ley.  Cook for about 2 min­utes until scal­lops are done, but not tough.  Turn the heat off.

Drain the pasta and throw it in the olive oil and scal­lops and turn the heat up high till bub­bling.  QUICKLY add the bread­crumbs and take off heat, toss­ing thor­oughly.  Salt and pep­per to taste.  Sprin­kle over hot dried chilli flakes if you like.

After cups of hot choco­late with every top­ping known to man — marsh­mal­lows, crushed candy canes, crushed bis­cuits and choco­late sauce — the girls repaired to the liv­ing room where the Christ­mas tree glit­tered, and watched a movie.  John had blown up air mat­tresses for them and they set­tled right down.  A happy evening.

We spent Sat­ur­day chauf­feur­ing Avery and her friend to Samba, then Avery to act­ing, then we rushed home and got ready for a truly side-splitting play, “A Flea in Her Ear” at the Old Vic.  I’ve never seen a French farce before!  It had every­thing: maids in white ruf­fled aprons, mis­taken iden­tity, a char­ac­ter with a speech imped­i­ment, a love affair gone wrong, a mis­un­der­stood let­ter!  You MUST see it.

Avery was agog with amaze­ment at the sheer over-the-top nut­ti­ness!  Some gems of lines: “You’re as bad as Oth­ello with that old hand­ker­chief!” delighted her because they’re study­ing Oth­ello in Eng­lish!  The char­ac­ter with the speech imped­i­ment loses his sil­ver palate expander behind, and it’s returned to him.

“How did you know where to find me?” he asks in astonishment.

“Your name and address are engraved inside.  Why bother with call­ing cards when you can just leave the roof of your mouth behind?”

We haven’t laughed so hard in an age.  A stel­lar cast of peo­ple we’ve seen on Spooks, onstage in sev­eral pro­duc­tions, in films.  Go, do!  It was the per­fect play to see on a night when, post-party, we were all too tired to pay atten­tion to any­thing serious.

Well, din­ner prep beck­ons.  I can’t cook some­thing new every night, it wouldn’t be very com­fort­ing.  So it’s fried had­dock and stuffed red pep­pers, two old stand­bys.  We can use a lit­tle standby and a lit­tle exper­i­ment, with a great party tossed in, now and then.

It’s that time of year, as I note every year, when the pages start to fly off the cal­en­dar and the hours on a clock spin around, just like in a car­toon.  In the three weeks before we head “home” for Christ­mas in Con­necti­cut, we have two plays to see, a carol con­cert to attend, two din­ner par­ties to go to and at least as many to host, a visit to the ortho­don­tist, a trip for us grownups to a land­mark house in West Sus­sex and a school trip to St Peters­burg for Avery.  It makes me tired just to write it all down, but the way I get around that is by remind­ing myself that all these things will be great fun indi­vid­u­ally; it’s just look­ing at the cal­en­dar that’s daunting.

Thanks­giv­ing has come and gone.  I think every sin­gle flat sur­face in my kitchen, that evening, was cov­ered with some­thing to eat.  And eat we did, with lots of blaz­ing can­dles and lit­tle fairy lights I’ve obses­sively ordered from a really cheap light­ing com­pany, Lights4Fun.  Our gar­den is full of them, our kitchen is draped all over.  Of course, John reminds me that all the money I save buy­ing them dis­counted, I will more than make up for in bat­ter­ies.  But it’s worth it, look and see.

The best part of the whole Thanks­giv­ing din­ner was, every­one agreed — even lit­tle chil­dren who took sec­ond and third help­ings! — the cheesy spinach.  After many years of offer­ing you seem­ingly end­less vari­eties of recipes for this dish, I have hit upon the per­fect ver­sion.  It’s sim­ply to die for: creamy, salty, bright green, gar­licky, cheesy.  You will be shocked at how much every­one can eat.

The Ulti­mate Cheesy Spinach

(serves 4 easily)

500 grams (about 8 loosely packed cups, or 2 large pack­ages in the UK) fresh baby spinach

3 tbsps butter

2 tsps flour

5 cloves gar­lic, minced

1/3 cup light cream

1 1/2 cups sharp Ched­dar cheese, grated

cel­ery salt to taste, per­haps 2–3 tsps

sprin­kle grated Parme­san cheese

Sim­ply chop the spinach in your food proces­sor, a large hand­ful at a time, puls­ing so the leaves are incor­po­rated from the top and the bot­tom leaves don’t turn to mush.  You want the con­sis­tency of chopped onions.  As you go through the hand­fuls, place the chopped spinach in a large bowl.

Now melt the but­ter in a large, heavy-bottomed fry­ing pan or saucepan.  Stir in the flour and cook, bub­bling, for about a minute, not let­ting the mix­ture brown.  Add the gar­lic and stir for a moment.

Add all the other ingre­di­ents but the Parme­san, and stir patiently over a low heat.  At first it may seem that the ingre­di­ents will never come together, but they do, after 4–5 min­utes.  Taste for cel­ery salt: don’t add too much at first because it is quite salty.  When the cheese is melted and the spinach creamy, pour the whole lot into a bak­ing dish, about 9x9 inches, and sprin­kle the grated Parme­san on top.  Bake at 350F/180C for about 25 min­utes or until nicely golden and bubbly.

Let’s hope that all the good­ness of this dish: the iron, the cal­cium, and let’s face it, the GAR­LIC, will give us all the strength to get through our Christ­mas prep, and maybe even enjoy it at the same time.

It’s the calm before the storm.  I’m sit­ting here peace­fully in my study watch­ing my ever-patient hus­band tin­ker with one of the thou­sands of lit­tle fairy lights I bought to dec­o­rate the din­ing room (which is also the kitchen, and the library, of course), send­ing my par­ents flow­ers for tomor­row, mak­ing timeta­bles about when things need to get done tomor­row, when 19 peo­ple will be seated around my table.

Of course, here in Eng­land the vast major­ity of the pop­u­lace are not excited, they’re at school and work, plan­ning noth­ing more sus­tain­ing to eat than a nice packet of fish and chips or a plate of shepherd’s pie, so it’s not the all-hands-on-deck Cookathon that it is in Amer­ica.  I really do miss that Thanks­giv­ing feel­ing: of a gray day (always, it seemed!), the last leaves waft­ing down, every­one home and under­foot, an old movie or foot­ball game on in the back­ground, and all sorts of unac­cus­tomed peo­ple in the kitchen.  In my child­hood, this unlikely cast of char­ac­ters included my poor mother, who was never happy in the kitchen, and my father, who appeared on spe­cial occa­sions like Christ­mas morn­ing to make the pan­cakes and Lil’ Smok­ies sausages.  And of course, being a man, he carved any turkey that made its way into our kitchen, in that unspo­ken divi­sion of labor that holds sway in every Amer­i­can house­hold I know.

On Thanks­giv­ing Day, how­ever, every­one put a hand in.  In the olden, olden days, my mother’s mother taught me to make per­fect turkey gravy in her kitchen in South­ern Indi­ana, her matronly curves gir­dled and a lace-trimmed half apron around her waist.  Then in later years, we gath­ered at my aunt and uncle’s house in Ken­tucky (get­ting lost at the same high­way junc­tion every year, lis­ten­ing to our par­ents ami­ca­bly bick­er­ing over whose fault it was) and my grand­fa­ther com­man­deered the enor­mous turkey to get every morsel of meat from its bones.  As the elder male states­man of the fam­ily, he accepted this as his right and respon­si­bil­ity.  Leave no wing intact!

The stuff­ings: one plain for nor­mal peo­ple and one stud­ded with oys­ters for my mother’s fam­ily who claimed to like such fishy sur­prises.  The canned green beans, smoth­ered in canned cream of mush­room soup with crunchy fried Dur­kee onions.  The hot rolls and but­ter (no mar­garine on Thanks­giv­ing!), the mashed sweet pota­toes with marsh­mal­lows on top!  Jello with fruit cock­tail swim­ming in it and cran­berry sauce, fra­grant with orange zest, freshly made — which was a sur­prise in a fam­ily oth­er­wise addicted to things in cans.  The pump­kin pies and a pecu­liar Indi­ana con­coc­tion called “sugar cream pie,” and pecan pie, golden with Karo syrup.  All served with my aunt’s gleam­ing sil­ver, sparkling crys­tal and lace table­cloth which was brought out, I would bet, on Christ­mas Day also and that was it, for the year.

It was a lovely lit­tle dozen years or so, those Thanks­giv­ings, between being just old enough to remem­ber, and mov­ing away to set up house­keep­ing on my own.  What nice years, all the fam­ily intact and healthy, plenty of grand­par­ents to go around, the feel­ing of tra­di­tion and being looked after, good smells ema­nat­ing from a kitchen that was some­body else’s, and all the more deli­cious for not hav­ing pro­duced them myself.

Thanks­giv­ing holds a spe­cial place in my heart because it was on just such a gray, savoury-smelling Ken­tucky after­noon 27 years ago that I real­ized I was in love!  For the first time, and the last time, as it turned out.  My boyfriend had swanned off to some exotic place like Florida or St Barths with his fam­ily, and I had decamped home with my fam­ily, only to dis­cover that I… missed him!  What an unex­pected sen­sa­tion, paradix­i­cally pleas­ant because it meant some­thing won­der­ful had hap­pened to me.  Thanks­giv­ing… just the right word.

A friend of mine said today that the hol­i­days depressed her, and she won­dered why.  While I don’t myself get depressed at this time of year, quite the oppo­site, I could under­stand why she felt as she did.  I think there is a lit­tle child­hood left in each of us, a yearn­ing for days when some­one else was in charge, all the deci­sions had been made by grownups, who would stand or fall on their wis­dom.  No respon­si­bil­ity!  Even if I even­tu­ally took over the gravy-making from my grand­mother, as she no longer could stand com­fort­ably at the stove, it was still some­one else’s kitchen, stove, oven, whisk.  A good feel­ing, and one I think we have to achieve a cer­tain age to remem­ber, and to value.

So I will say this year that there is one thing I am newly thank­ful for, and that is the deep mem­ory of little-girl Thanks­giv­ings, and young-woman Thanks­giv­ings, happy and sur­rounded by fam­ily.  Thank­ful that I now have my own lit­tle fam­ily, my own child to cook for.  And as always, thank­ful that my long-ago boyfriend has spent the last 20 Thanks­giv­ings in my grownup kitchen, carv­ing the turkey as a good man should.  Happy Thanks­giv­ing, everyone.

Pump­kin Pie

(serves 8, if there are other pies around as well)

1 soup-size can pump­kin puree (not pie filling)

1 soup-size can evap­o­rated milk

1 cup light brown sugar

2 large eggs

splash vanilla extract

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp ground cloves

pinch salt

1 large deep pie crust (9-inches)

Sim­ply mix every­thing but the crust (!) together in a large bowl with a hand mixer till thor­oughly mixed, then pour into pie crust.  Bake at 425F/210C for 15 min­utes, then turn heat down to 325F/160C and bake a fur­ther 40 min­utes or until pie is set in the mid­dle.  Cool and serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

The cala­mari come into my tale in just a bit… I couldn’t resist the photo as it makes me hun­gry every time I see it!

This week­end saw quite the per­fect launch of the weeks of fes­tiv­ity to come: the school Christ­mas Fair!  This gar­gan­tuan fes­ti­val hap­pens only once every two years, as we would all die from the strain of its hap­pen­ing more fre­quently!  The tombola in the Hall where unac­count­ably Avery won a bot­tle of wine — “is Pinot Gri­gio good?” she asks, a ques­tion that doesn’t come up for 14-year-olds at Amer­i­can school fairs! — the buskers play­ing “God Rest Ye, Merry Gen­tle­men” on uncer­tain but enthu­si­as­tic vio­lins, the smell of green­ery and poin­set­tias, mulled wine and mince­meat pies.

I was far too busy to take any pho­tographs, but Avery snapped this one of a hand­made wreath, along the “recy­cling” theme of all the decorations.

There came a fran­tic email the night before, “Can you all please eat some­thing for sup­per that comes in a 400-gram tin, then bring them in?  We need them for flower vases!”  Hari­cot beans in home­made chicken stock it was, and two tins from our house­hold to contribute.

Because I was deemed a vol­un­teer with no par­tic­u­lar skills but a great deal of good will, I was given the fran­tic task of man­ag­ing the entrance desk, say­ing over the course of four hours “Three pounds for adults!” at least 700 times.  The par­ents who tried to sneak by, “I’m just pick­ing up my daugh­ter!” as if it weren’t all for char­ity!  But equally my lovely vol­un­teer team (I self­ishly chose all my favorite moth­ers to stand with me all after­noon, so there was some good ban­ter and gos­sip in slow moments).  The apple-cheeked tiny sib­lings of blase teenagers, the excite­ment of the “Vin­tage Cool” stall of second-hand clothes, where Avery snapped up a floor-length black vel­vet coat with a crim­son lin­ing, now quite her favorite possession.

John pitched in and we spent the whole day tak­ing money, run­ning out of this or that sort of change, rac­ing into the school office to drop off £40 in notes to exchange for pound coins, fran­ti­cally rac­ing back to drop money into impa­tient hands, impa­tient to buy raf­fle tick­ets for impos­si­bly posh prizes: week­ends at houses in the South of France, iPads, a bas­ket full of a dozen new cook­books, and my own con­tri­bu­tion: a pizza cook­ery les­son for two!  I heard at the end of the day that a school­girl won it, so we’ll see if she takes me up on it: I thought it would be a lot of fun to make dough, and while it rises, teach them to make pesto, a home­made tomato sauce, basic chop­ping skills, how to pre­pare an arti­choke, what moz­zarella to choose… we’ll see!

The chilly Novem­ber air swirled around our ankles, ruf­fling the white linen table­cloth I had brought from home to save the rental fee!  Nor­mally it lives on top of the fridge, await­ing the termly Lost Prop­erty lun­cheons, so it was happy to get an airing.

There were a cou­ple of hilar­i­ous moments, as always hap­pen when I’m with my friend Elis­a­beth.  Once, a wife stag­gered past laden with raf­fle prizes, her coat over one arm, chil­dren tug­ging at her hands, and by her side, her hus­band stood, empty-handed but for her hand­bag which he stolidly held out to her, wait­ing till she shifted every­thing to have one fin­ger free.  Elis­a­beth and I burst into simul­ta­ne­ous gig­gles.  “He couldn’t be seen, car­ry­ing his wife’s hand­bag, even for a minute!”  At one point, I related to her the Sat­ur­day Night Live sketch called “The Change Bank”, where earnest tellers explain, “It’s sim­ple.  You give us a dol­lar bill, we’ll give you four quar­ters.  Or, if you pre­fer, ten dimes, or even five dimes and ten nick­els.  And how do we make our money?  VOLUME.”

Later, when the pun­ters were being par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult — six £20 notes in a row, for exam­ple! — Elis­a­beth hissed to me, “I’m sure that if we told them, ‘Give us three pound coins exactly, and you get in free,’ they’d go for it.”

Sim­ply a glo­ri­ous, hec­tic, crowded, loud, fes­tive day, sur­rounded by smil­ing par­ents, fran­tic vol­un­teers, healthy, happy chil­dren… a day when I felt a surge of grat­i­tude for that won­der­ful school, where the nor­mally serene head­mistress played The Empress in the panto, and some­how ended up throw­ing a pair of under­wear at my unsus­pect­ing hus­band!  Amer­i­cans never fully under­stand panto!

Flog­ging dec­o­ra­tions at the bit­ter end, fold­ing up a very dirty table­cloth, turn­ing in all the money, walk­ing very slowly home with ears ring­ing and feet sore, back tired and hands filthy, feel­ing rather exhausted and keyed up at the same time.  I stopped at my glo­ri­ous fishmonger’s for advice on how to deep-fry scal­lops, and received the sim­ple answer, “Don’t.”  Too watery.  Mikey and Tony agreed that the best thing to do with any scal­lop is to saute it, and cer­tainly, there was noth­ing but glory piled up on our dinner.

Sauteed Scal­lops With Gin­ger, Lemon Grass and Sesame

(serves 2)

good splash toasted sesame oil

knob of butter

1/2 inch knob gin­ger, grated

2 cloves gar­lic, minced

2-inch stalk lemon grass, minced

juice of 1/2 lemon

Heat the oil and but­ter in a heavy fry­ing pan till very hot.  Stir in the gin­ger, gar­lic and lemon grass and siz­zle just a tiny bit, then place scal­lops in the pan and cook for about 1 1/2 min­utes on each side, till golden, but still com­pletely ten­der inside.

Remove to a warm plate, then squeeze lime juice into the pan and siz­zle up the but­tery spicy juices.  Pour over the scal­lops and eat straightaway.

This dish!  So sim­ple, so per­fect.  And along with that we had our gor­geous cala­mari, for which recipe there can be no finer advice than “Get per­fect squid.”  Per­fect squid are nearly white under their reddish-gray skins, com­pletely odor­less, firm and shiny.  You can either have your fish­mon­ger clean them for you, or you can bring them home and have a lit­tle dis­sect­ing job of your own.  My best advice is to watch your fish­mon­ger do it first, or watch a video on YouTube, try it for your­self after­ward, and if you’re grossed out by it, have the pro­fes­sion­als take care of it.  But at least once, it’s very inter­est­ing to pull out the car­ti­lege, to squeeze the ink sacs, to get that squid com­pletely pristine.

Then cut it into rings and cut the fins into sliv­ers, and clean the ten­ta­cles per­fectly.  Now you’re ready to cook.

Cala­mari

(one large squid will feed four peo­ple as a starter)

1 squid

1/ cup home­made breadcrumbs

1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs

1/2 cup cornflour/cornstarch

1 tbsp Fox Point seasoning

enough rape­seed oil to come up 1 inch in your cook­ing pan

1 egg

2 tbsps sin­gle cream

Pat the squid dry with a paper towel.  Then on one large plate, com­bine the crumbs and corn­flour and Fox Point thor­oughly.  On another large plate, com­bine the egg and cream.

Assembly-line fash­ion, line up the egg plate and crumb plate next to each other with an empty large plate at the end.  Heat the oil till a bread­crumb dropped in siz­zles instantly.  Now, dip your squid into the egg mix­ture and mix with your fin­gers till all pieces are wet.  Next, dip the squid in hand­fuls into the crumbs and toss them until com­pletely coated.  Place on empty plate.

Depend­ing on the size of your fry­ing pan, fry the squid very briefly in batches, lift­ing them out with a slot­ted or wire spoon onto a heavy pile of paper tow­els.  The squid will cook in a VERY short time, per­haps 45 sec­onds depend­ing on the heat of the oil.  As soon as they are browned, take them out.  Eat IMME­DI­ATELY with a tartare sauce, a chill-tomato-horseradish sauce, or a light, clean sauce of fish sauce, rice wine vine­gar, lime juice and sugar.  Or all three!  It’s the holidays.

There is noth­ing like home­made cala­mari!  Serve them on a kitchen island, with every­one stand­ing around watch­ing you lift them fran­ti­cally out of the oil, grab­bing at the hot, crunchy squid, anx­ious to get the crispi­est morsels.

It was a lovely end to a lovely day.  Avery was safely in the hands of a friend, watch­ing the new “Harry Pot­ter” movie, so we were free to cook things she doesn’t like.  There are small com­pen­sa­tions to her occa­sional absences.

I feel utterly unready for Thanks­giv­ing, and yet, that is sort of the point.  It’s meant to be a cook-all-day, run out for for­got­ten ingre­di­ents, never take the apron off expe­ri­ence, after all.  We shall be 17 around the table, actu­ally two tables as John and I strug­gled down­stairs with the lit­tle table in Avery’s room at the top of the house.  The two turkeys are thaw­ing in their salty, herby water, I hav­ing long ago decided that in mat­ters of hol­i­day poul­try, I want a cheap, frozen, big-breasted bird, not a pur­ple heir­loom beauty with feath­ers still stuck in at strate­gic points.  So frozen it is.

I’m tempted to make an addi­tion to the usual Thanks­giv­ing treats and add my new Favorite Soup of All Time.  Have I been bor­ing you with our tales of but­ter­nut squash?  In our new very-low-carb lifestyle, it’s been a very good sub­sti­tute for pota­toes: steamed, mashed and baked, there are no com­plaints.  John will eat ANY amount of the stuff roasted with sage.  So today, on yet another gray Novem­ber morn­ing just about to see sun­set even though I’d only been awake a cou­ple of hours, I decided that soup was the way to go.  And boy, did I get that one right.

Roasted But­ter­nut Squash Soup with Cal­va­dos and Sage

(serves at least 4)

1 large but­ter­nut squash, cut in half lengthwise

but­ter to smear on each half

6 sage leaves

sea salt and pepper

1 shal­lot, roughly chopped

4 cloves gar­lic, roughly chopped

chicken stock to cover all veg­eta­bles, at least 6 cups

good splash Calvados

sin­gle cream to drizzle

Lay the but­ter­nut squash halves, but­tered and with sage leaves on them, in a roast­ing tin and roast at 200C/400F for 45 min­utes.  Drip the melted but­ter from them into a fry­ing pan and fry the shal­lots and gar­lic till soft.  Scrape the cooked squash and sage leaves into a large stock­pot and add the shal­lots and gar­lic and melted but­ter.  Pour in chicken stock to cover, then the Cal­va­dos.  Sim­mer for 10 min­utes then whizz with a hand blender till per­fectly smooth.  Driz­zle cream and serve hot.

This soup!  Gor­geous.  Rich, multi-layered, homey, com­fort­ing, warm and deli­cious.  Just like the hol­i­days, in fact.  Let the games begin!

One of the most sat­is­fy­ing things in the world, to me, is to eat some­thing truly inspir­ing out there in the world, think on it for a day or two ( or between lunch and din­ner), and then recre­ate it in the cozy warmth of my kitchen, these Novem­ber days.  The fact is, if the sun is going to set at 4 p.m., I think the only recourse we have is to pre­tend that it’s din­ner­time, and cook some­thing elab­o­rate to keep us going.

It always helps in these moods to have a friend to inspire me, and on Fri­day, it was my pal Char­lie.  We met two years ago on a five-day inten­sive (as in no phone, no news­pa­pers, no cars, no escape) food writ­ing course in deep­est, dark­est Devon.  We became instant friends, engag­ing in what Char­lie calls “ban­ter,” in which we seem to do noth­ing but laugh at each other’s wit.  Don’t you find that witty peo­ple make you wit­tier?  I have to try that much harder, when I’m with Char­lie, to think on my feet and find things to laugh about.  It’s an addiction.

We always meet up and do foodie things together, so we can expe­ri­ence that most deli­cious of tri­umvi­rate plea­sures: laugh­ing, and eat­ing, while talk­ing about food.  So Fri­day was “Mas­terchef Live” at the annual food fair in Olympia, the giant exhi­bi­tion space near us.  We met up in the spit­ting rain, folded our umbrel­las and plunged into the melee.  First up: the live Mas­terchef cook-off between Celebrity Mas­terchef win­ner Lisa Faulkner, she of the famed deep-fryer “Spooks” episode — I’m sure there were plenty of deep-frying jokes when she first began the com­pe­ti­tion! — and last year’s win­ner, Dhruv Baker, a truly inspi­ra­tional Indian-English fusion cook.  Crispy-skinned sea bream ver­sus puff pas­try fish pie… such fun to see them cook LIVE!  A cou­ple of ter­ri­ble jokes led Char­lie to quip, “Bring in the Luft­waffe, there’s been a bomb!”

And later in the morn­ing we saw Dhruv cook­ing chicken bal­lo­tine, which sent me straight home to repli­cate it, as you see above.  After Avery’s and  my after­noon yes­ter­day shop­ping for the first of the year’s Christ­mas orna­ments, it was very pleas­ant to come home and mess up a clean, tidy kitchen with a complicated-ish recipe. The word “bal­lo­tine” is French for “bun­dle” and that’s your goal, to make a lovely chick­eny bundle.

Chicken Bal­lo­tine With Marsala and Goat Cheese Sauce

(serves 4)

4 chicken breasts, ten­der­loin removed and set aside

12 mush­rooms, chopped

3 stems fresh thyme, leaves only

1/2 shal­lot, minced

2 tbsps olive oil

1 tbsp butter

sauce:

1 tbsp butter

2 cloves gar­lic, minced

1/2 shal­lot, minced

1/4 cup Marsala wine

1 cup chicken or beef stock

3 oz goat cheese

2 tbsps dou­ble cream

Lay each chicken breast on a cut­ting board and pound with a mal­let until flat­tened.  Put the chicken ten­der­loins in a food proces­sor and whizz until grainy.  Remove and set aside in a bowl with the fresh thyme leaves, then give the same food proces­sor treat­ment to the mush­rooms and shal­lots.  Mix all together with the chicken.

Lay each chicken breast flat, and place 1/4 of the mush­room mix­ture on the breast.  Roll up and then roll up in a long piece of plas­tic wrap, like a sausage, or log.  Do this for all four breasts.  Twist each end of each log and tie in a knot.  Place in boil­ing water for 15 minutes.

While the chicken poaches, melt the but­ter for the sauce in a small fry­ing pan and fry the gar­lic and shal­lots till a bit browned.  Pour in the Marsala and cook until reduced to about 3 tbsps, just a lit­tle bit of liq­uid with the gar­lic and shal­lots sort of shiv­er­ing in the sim­mer­ing bit of liq­uid.  Add the stock and boil till reduced just slightly, then whisk in the goat cheese and cream.  Sim­mer low while the chicken fin­ishes cooking.

When the poach­ing 15 min­utes are over, heat the olive oil and but­ter for the chicken in a large fry­ing pan.  Cut open the plastic-wrapped chicken over the sink and drain well.  Place the unwrapped bal­lotines in the fry­ing pan and fry on each side, on medium heat, until brown all over, per­haps 3 min­utes total cook­ing.  Don’t over­cook or the chicken will become dry.

When ready to serve, slice the bal­lotines into four slices per “bun­dle”, then driz­zle the sauce over.

GOR­GEOUS.

This dish is warm, savory, com­plex in fla­vor, reward­ing and quite professional-looking!  If you’re not cut­ting down on carbs, by all means serve with a large bowl of but­tery mashed pota­toes, but if you’re cut­ting down, try my new favorite side dish…

The new It Veg­etable.  Have you ever roasted but­ter­nut squash?  Or made it into a sleek, vel­vety creamy soup?  Or sim­ply steamed it, mashed it up with a table­spoon of but­ter, poured it into a dish and baked it?  Heaven!

We have been eat­ing it every way I can think of.  John would hap­pily eat it every night, although we both agreed that lasagne with mashed but­ter­nut squash was a lit­tle… odd.  Good, and of course we ate it all, mind you, but… odd.  I think it was the unex­pected sweet­ness, mixed in with savory fla­vors.  Part of my attempt to cut down on carbs, but not cut OUT.  So I sub­sti­tuted squash, for one layer of noo­dles.  Ah well, you won’t know until you try.

My week last week, crowned by fun with Char­lie, was full of friends.

There was my lunch with Elis­a­beth, an extremely busy mother of two who nev­er­the­less made time to sit with me, over roasted salmon and rocket at a local cafe, and talk… per­son­al­i­ties.  To what extent can we change ours?  Jung, she explained to me, felt that we could shift along our spec­trum of nat­ural incli­na­tions, and become, for exam­ple, more out­go­ing than we were nat­u­rally.  How true I believe that is!  How John, who is rather shy nat­u­rally, has expanded his inter­est in being social, to accom­mo­date me, and my love of hav­ing peo­ple around.  How Avery, who is nat­u­rally a bit scat­tered with her belong­ings, has adjusted to the demands of a very asky school, and become organized.

Elisabeth’s just brought me a book called “Nur­ture Shock,” an Amer­i­can par­ent­ing book that asks a lot of ques­tions about rais­ing teenagers — to let them lie or not? to praise them for their achieve­ments, or only for their efforts? to make them SLEEP or let them suf­fer the con­se­quences of fatigue? — I was left exhausted.  What was I doing wrong?  Then I looked at this face, and real­ized that the task of teach­ing me NOT to tell her how won­der­ful I think she is was beyond any book I had ever read.  She is, and that’s that.

But tremen­dously thought-provoking!  It seems that there is an acknowl­edged parental wish to praise, to com­fort, to make up for the pres­sures we know WE have put our child through.  Sort of an anti­dote to the sit­u­a­tions we sign them up for.  But also, there is a seri­ous the­ory that we don’t do our chil­dren any favors by unques­tioned praise.  Can there be unques­tioned sup­port, but with a bit of crit­i­cism?  I’m sure there can be.  I have to learn that.

How wise of Elis­a­beth to know I wanted to think about these things, how lucky I am in my friends.  I only hope I make as much of a suc­cess with being a par­ent as I made with a chicken bal­lo­tine… some­thing tells me it’s a bit more of a daunt­ing task.

When nor­mal peo­ple get home from Flo­rence, it’s with beau­ti­ful mem­o­ries of shop­ping for lovely soaps, mar­bled papers, tiny repli­cas of the David in plas­ter… and their suit­cases smell of all those pairs of new leather gloves.  My suit­case, on the other hand, smelled of two salamis, a vacuum-packed half-kilo of bre­saola and a giant chunk of prosciutto.

Cured meats, in short.

And now I’m mak­ing my own.  Cured meat, that is.  Let me explain.

Have you ever eaten at a restau­rant here in Lon­don called St John?  When I call it the “brain­child” of Fer­gus Hen­der­son, I’m actu­ally being very clever, because the restau­rant is famous for its credo of “Nose To Tail Eat­ing,” mean­ing that if we’re to kill ani­mals and eat them, we should eat ALL of the crea­ture, leav­ing no bit unap­pre­ci­ated: nose, ears, brains, every­thing.  I’ve never been to St John, but John has and he sim­ply raved.  Luck­ily, I have a won­der­ful cook­ing friend who gave me the cook­book writ­ten by the lovely Fer­gus, as a gift for com­ing to dinner.

And the man can write!  He talks about dishes “eat­ing hap­pily,” and the impor­tance of hav­ing bread around for “sup­ping up the juices.”  Any cook­book that includes the phrase “saute your brains in but­ter” is a win­ner for me.

So, as I leafed through the cook­book with mem­o­ries of Flo­ren­tine cured meats danc­ing in my head, I alighted on a recipe for “Cured Beef and Cele­riac Salad,” and I was off to the butcher, my dear neigh­bor­hood butcher Stenton’s, and chose a gor­geous fil­let of beef, about a pound and a half.  I must digress and tell you a very pecu­liar story of my adopted home­land.  The con­ver­sa­tion at the butcher went like this.

Butcher: “What can I get for you, love?”

Me: “I’d love that very nice look­ing fil­let of beef, please,” point­ing in the win­dow at the piece I want.

Posh British Lady Stand­ing Next to Me: “Did you hear about that beau­ti­ful stag, the one who was shot on Exmoor over the weekend?”

Me: “Yes, I did, what an awful story.”

PBLSNTM: “No doubt it will turn out to have been a fat, stu­pid Amer­i­can who shot him.  As they do.  And now they’ll hush it all up.  The Amer­i­cans do that, you know.”

Me: Stunned Silence.

Butcher: “This beef is about two third of a kilo, is that all right?”

PBLSNTM: “Oh, you’ll want that whole lot, will you?  I was going to ask for a lit­tle taste, but I know Amer­i­cans and their appetites.  You have it, the whole lot.”

It was a bit chill­ing, to tell you the truth.  I often go about my daily life here, nearly six years into our British adven­ture, and for­get that I am a stranger, an incomer, a for­eigner — and specif­i­cally, an Amer­i­can.  Of course this is more the sub­ject for a psy­chol­o­gist than for a food blog­ger, but I do think about it, how we are seen.  Avery’s had these encoun­ters too, occa­sion­ally, and always finds them quite jar­ring and shock­ing, really.  I remem­ber once a prospec­tive head­mistress at a school we were vis­it­ing asked her, “Do you think that some of the neg­a­tive things peo­ple think about Amer­i­cans are true?”  What a thing to ask an 11 –year-old child.  I walked away from the butcher shop feel­ing just that lit­tle bit less wel­come here than I nor­mally do.  It’s prob­a­bly healthy, a quick dose of self-doubt.  Makes me a bit more aware of what I might be say­ing to peo­ple, maybe not that potty, but still insensitive.

Any­way, onto the recipe.  Here’s what the meat will look like when you bring it home.

Very pinky-red, juicy, heavy and sort of floppy, if you know what I mean.  And then here’s what you do.  Keep in mind that you need three days for the beef to cure, so don’t get started right now, hop­ing to have it for dinner.

Cured Fil­let of Beef

(serves 6–8, with other ingre­di­ents, as a salad)

good chunk — maybe 700 grams/ 1 1/2 lb -  fil­let of beef, PER­FECTLY trimmed of all fat and sinew and membrane

60% salt to 40% sugar, enough to cover and sur­round the fil­let — per­haps 2 cups total mixture

8 sprigs rosemary

plenty of fresh ground pepper

Place 4 of the rose­mary sprigs on the bot­tom of a plas­tic con­tainer that will eas­ily hold your fil­let.  Gen­er­ously cover the bot­tom of the con­tainer with the salt/sugar mix­ture, then place the fil­let on top and pour in the rest of the salt/sugar mix­ture to cover and sur­round the fil­let.  Place the last 4 leaves of rose­mary into the top of the salt/sugar mix­ture, and cover the container.

Leave in the fridge for 3 days.  You will be amazed!  The salt/sugar has MELTED, the fil­let has shrunk dra­mat­i­cally and dark­ened, and stiff­ened.  Have a look.

Take the fil­let out of the cur­ing liq­uid and wash it well with cold water, then dry with a clean cloth.  Rub more fresh black pep­per all over the fillet.

Now for the salad ingredients.

Cured Beef and Cele­riac Salad

(serves 6–8 eas­ily, as a starter)

fil­let of cured beef

1/2 head cele­riac (cel­ery root), peeled

juice of 1 lemon

1 1/2 tbsp Dijon mustard

4 tbsps creme fraiche or sour cream

sea salt and pepper

good hand­ful rocket leaves (my addi­tion, you know me and rocket)

Sim­ply slice the cele­riac VERY thinly, into pieces like match­sticks.  Fer­gus reminds us to driz­zle lemon juice over the cele­riac all the time you are chop­ping it, so it doesn’t go dark.  Fold the mus­tard and creme fraiche together and sea­son to taste.

Slice the beef very thinly across.  Lay it on a pretty plat­ter on a large cir­cle, then scat­ter the cele­riac match­sticks over, and the rocket leaves.  Driz­zle with the mustard-creme fraiche dress­ing and serve.

I know, the photo’s at the top of the post, but I thought it was so pretty, it bore post­ing again.  Are you inspired?  Thank you, Fer­gus Hen­der­son.  We’ll be mak­ing this one again.  I also thought that a mus­tardy vinai­grette with rose­mary in it might be nice, instead of the creme fraiche.

I’ve now been think­ing of other things to do with cured beef.  Always, always thinly sliced, but how about with steamed new pota­toes and a pesto dress­ing?  Or on a really good baguette with some sharp ched­dar cheese and horseradish?

GOR­GEOUS.

What a sim­ple, yet impres­sive thing to pro­duce for your fam­ily and friends.  Because John and I ate this salad ALL by our­selves, there was enough left­over for Avery to have for her break­fast, and what a suc­cess!  She adored it, as it plays into the meaty-salty phe­nom­e­non she loves to kick­start the day.

But of course it’s always nice to fall back, later in the day, on some cured meat that some­one else has pro­duced.  And I can promise you, this is one of the best piz­zas you will ever taste: totally light and such com­plex fla­vors.  It’s one of those recipes I came up with by look­ing in the fridge and see­ing a num­ber of things that needed to be used up, and guess what?  That’s often the best recipe.

Finoc­chiona Pizza

(serves 2 for lunch)

good home­made pizza crust

12 slices finoc­chiona (fen­nel salami, brought back from Florence)

1/2 cup goats cheese

1/2 head radic­chio, leaves shredded

driz­zle fen­nel oil

On a very, very hot pizza stone, place your pizza crust, then put it in a VERY very hot oven for about 5 min­utes, just till puffed up and slightly cooked.  Bring it out, lay the slices of salami on the crust, crum­ble the goats cheese over it, sprin­kle with the radic­chio and driz­zle the truf­fle oil over all.  Bake in your VERY hot oven for per­haps 8 min­utes, just till the crust is baked and slightly golden.

Insanely good.  So when you’re next feel­ing inspired to cook, think of… the cure.