I have to tell you how silly we are, what silly things we buy when in a for­eign land, to haul home in over­stuffed suit­cases: not Ital­ian clothes, or Murano glass, oh no. We bring choco­lates, bis­cotti, dried mush­rooms, lit­tle red pep­pers stuffed with tuna, tiny crack­ers embed­ded with rose­mary, and… heart-shaped salamis. And as for the last, I do not mean some lame effort like a long salami shaped into a heart. No, I mean that an actual Ital­ian salami-maker has formed the salami mix­ture into the full-fledged shape of a heart: three-dimensional! I will take a photo when we eat it, but believe me, it’s an odd­ity. I imag­ine it will be a deli­cious one.

Today I am wish­ing we were back in Venice for many rea­sons, but first among them is that our home away from home in Venice had heat and hot water. Yes­ter­day we were sit­ting around shiv­er­ing, watch­ing the Olympics and fig­ur­ing it was the appear­ance of all that snow that was mak­ing us cold. No. The boiler has shot itself. Since yes­ter­day, not one drop of hot water or breath of heat. And it’s COLD here. We put Avery to bed with five hot water bot­tles (each one requir­ing an entire ket­tle of nearly-boiling water, took for­ever) and two feather duvets, but she was still freez­ing in the mid­dle of the night. British Gas sent a lovely man who spent all after­noon here only to tell us that there isn’t an avail­able “team” for two weeks. We’re gut­ted. Some­thing has to give.

So let’s go back to Venice, where noth­ing bad ever hap­pens. Wednes­day saw us in a lit­tle square, the Campo Erbe­ria (Square of Herbs, which is delight­ful to imag­ine!) out­side the Rialto mar­ket where it was too late to see the mar­ket stalls (that had to wait till Thurs­day), but there was an incred­i­ble shop called Casa del Parmi­giano, which as the name implies is a House of Cheese. Every Ital­ian cheese you can imag­ine, but also cured meats, fresh pasta, and in a lit­tle shop adja­cent, all sorts of deli items that made me pos­i­tively green with envy! This is where I acquired my porcini sec­chi and peper­on­cino alla tonno, and directly out­side was the most beau­ti­ful dog Avery had ever seen, so each of us was happy. We looked up “caress” in my dic­tio­nary and asked per­mis­sion of the owner to stroke him, as you see.

“I love this dog, I want this dog,” Avery muru­mured urgently. “How do you say ‘dog’?”

“Cane,” I said, “this is a cane tipi­ca­mente Veneziano. A typ­i­cal Venet­ian dog.”

Avery repeated it spot-on per­fectly, and there­after, in the way that chil­dren (or teenagers) do, every dog we saw was a “cane tipi­ca­mente Veneziano,” and then there were other things “tipi­ca­mente Veneziani,” like cheeses, or bridges, or squares.

Dog caressed, snacks bought, we hopped on the vaporetto and headed to the ceme­tery island of San Michele. Yes, there really is an island that is noth­ing but the final rest­ing place of many, many Vene­tians. Sim­ply miles, as far as the eye can see, of mar­ble walls, not deep enough to con­tain a cof­fin or even, in some cases, an urn of ashes, but all cov­ered with carved epi­taphs, the names and dates of the deceased, and mes­sages from loved ones, along the lines of “as much as we loved you on earth, the angels will love you now.” There was an entire Recinto dei Bam­bini, an area reserved for dead babies and chil­dren, which we had to turn away from, presently, because the Ital­ian tra­di­tion is to place a per­ma­nent pho­to­graph on the grave­stone, some­how fused with the mar­ble. The images of tiny faces in chris­ten­ing gowns, or even sad­der some­how, play­ing in a gar­den or sit­ting on a parent’s lap, were too much.

As light comic relief from these sad memo­ri­als was one par­tic­u­lar pho­to­graph, of a hus­band who died in the 1960s and his widow, buried with him in 2008. Clearly the pho­to­graph was fused, com­bin­ing the 1960s image of the man, with the 2008 image of his wife. We stared for a moment. Then Avery intoned, “Together in life, Pho­to­shopped in death.”

There were Ital­ian con­tes­sas who clearly, from their first names, were Eng­lish! We imag­ined them arriv­ing in Venice for a sum­mer abroad, as stu­dents, falling in love with a dis­si­pated but charm­ing noble­man, tipi­ca­mente Veneziano, and end­ing up liv­ing out their days here, eat­ing Parmi­giano and being interred on San Michele. Not a bad way to go.

At one point, another tourist approached us and asked in German,

“Have you seen the lady I was with?”

“No,” I answered, “and I don’t really speak much German.”

“Oh, I thought you were a Ger­man fam­ily, I’m sorry. Would you rather speak French or are you Ital­ian? I just do not want to leave her here, with­out me.”

I would think NOT! Of all the places to choose! And in fact later in the day, we saw her get off the vaporetto with­out him, so per­haps the ceme­tery was a bad place for that first date.

From the ceme­tery island we jour­neyed over to Murano to see the glass fac­to­ries, so famous, so sto­ried. Avery chose a pen­dant (and this was NOT the place for her to per­form her usual shopper’s tech­nique of touch­ing every­thing!), but we left empty-handed.

After a for­get­table but energy-restoring pizza back in Venice proper, we headed to the Piazza San Marco to see the Basil­ica in the right man­ner, not just as the back­ground to the masks of Carnevale. Oh, the Log­gia dei Cav­alli, those incred­i­ble cop­per horses, over­look­ing the Square. Much of the Square itself was scaf­folded for repairs, which made us feel as if we were back in Lon­don (my father used to say he was going to buy stock in a Lon­don scaf­fold­ing con­cern). The views were impec­ca­ble, but we had to descend because Avery is sadly quite afraid of heights!

From there to the Campo Santa Ste­fano to see the Opera House, La Fenice, which fig­ures so promi­nently in the first of the mar­vel­lous Donna Leon mys­ter­ies set in Venice, “Death At La Fenice.” I lis­tened to the book on tape before we left, and it was great fun to see the lovely white mar­ble facade in per­son, restored after a dev­as­tat­ing fire. We searched in vain for shoes for Avery, who as she gets on in years is show­ing a fear­ful propen­sity for… high heels. Do you know the word for “kit­ten heels” in Ital­ian? It’s kit­ten­heels, just as the French word for “week­end” is week­end. Seri­ously. But no one had any shoes of any type in a size small enough for her, so we’re spared for the time being.

For din­ner that night we fared bet­ter than ade­quate, though still not stel­lar. I was hap­pier with my choices than I had been the night before, partly because I was com­pletely charmed by the lovely, ener­getic, dra­matic mae­stro of Oste­ria da Bepi. On our cold, rainy evening, it was hard to imag­ine peo­ple eat­ing out­side on a sunny day, enjoy­ing the fresh air. Instead, we were trun­dled inside to an atmos­phere of chaotic con­trol, with the man in charge (I wish I knew his name, he was so patient with my Ital­ian and so lovely and happy) rush­ing to and fro doing all the jobs: tak­ing orders, clean­ing tables, bon­ing fish, serv­ing tiramisu.

I had a won­der­ful starter that I would like very much to make at home: tiny sliced car­ciofini (baby arti­chokes) with scampi (cray­fish tails) in a gar­licky olive oil dress­ing, sim­ply deli­cious and so unusual. Then fegato (tipi­ca­mente Veneziano, the menu said, which made Avery laugh), liver sauteed with onions. John had capa longa (razor clams) sauteed in gar­lic, and then sep­pie (cut­tle­fish), which I found… dis­gust­ing, sorry. Every­thing with polenta! Not my favorite side dish, it was appro­pri­ate to be served, so I could not com­plain. But when I make liver and onions at home, it will be with mashed pota­toes! Avery was happy with an ENTIRE plate of pro­sciutto and tortelli a patate. We were full, which was enough.

We went home to open the bal­cony shut­ters and look out at the foggy streets across the dar­ling lit­tle bridge, at one lone per­son (on what errand, so late at night?) pass­ing by, at the green water and float­ing boats. Quite, quite perfect.

Lan­guages, lan­guages. Is there any­thing more sat­is­fy­ing than arriv­ing in a for­eign land, hear­ing famil­iar but strange words flow­ing all around, and reach­ing into your brain, back to the past when you could speak those words your­self, and find­ing a way to express your­self? I sim­ply love it.

When I was 21 or so, I spent a sum­mer in Flo­rence try­ing to become an artist, learn­ing to appre­ci­ate real food for the first time in my life, and begin­ning a life­long love affair with the Ital­ian lan­guage. Sadly, I was told in no uncer­tain terms by my var­i­ous art teach­ers that I had absolutely no tal­ent what­so­ever at mak­ing any­thing. I tried sculp­ture, I tried print­mak­ing, I tried draw­ing. My print­ing teacher was no less a lumi­nary than Leonard Baskin, amaz­ingly, and while he was very, very nice to me, I will never for­get his dis­be­lief at my lack of abil­ity. “Until I met you, Kris­ten, I would have said that I could teach any­one to make a decent print.” Just awful. But I did turn out to have a tal­ent for appre­ci­at­ing what other peo­ple made, and explain­ing it. My ambi­tion to teach art his­tory raised its tiny head, and many happy years were spent doing just that.

Even more last­ing, though, were my new love of food — tortellini alla panna, mille­foglie con cioc­co­lato, you name it, I ate it — and my absorp­tion of the Ital­ian lan­guage. To be able to fit in, to pro­duce whole sen­tences in a proper accent, to slide under the sur­face of a for­eign cul­ture, to bridge the gap between the local and the vis­i­tor… it’s addic­tive for me. If I weren’t so inher­ently lazy, I’d be a seri­ous lin­guist and actu­ally accom­plish some­thing with my tiny tal­ent at pick­ing up lan­guages. As it is, I just get a kick out of arriv­ing in Venice, reach­ing into the shad­owy cor­ners of my brain where all those words are sleep­ing, and wak­ing them up, for three days.

We arrived on Tues­day after­noon at lunchtime, and jumped onto a vaporetto, a water­way bus, along with all the other vis­i­tors for the last day of Carnevale. We’d packed very lightly, so the short walk from the Ca’ d’Oro “bus stop” to our hotel was a total plea­sure, and we were the Com­pleat Tourists, our heads cocked at that unmis­tak­able tourist angle, look­ing up, up, and around. And the hotel! The Ca’ Ven­dramin, for­mer palazzo home of a 16th cen­tury art col­lec­tor, Gabriele Ven­dramin, whose art­works are now in the Accad­e­mia, the British Museum, all over the world.

We were com­pletely silenced by our arrival at the hotel, across a tiny stone bridge from the main street of the neigh­bor­hood, the Strada Nuove. The mag­nif­i­cence of the ornate door­way, the vast stone wind­ing stair­case to the first floor, the mar­ble ter­razzo floors! Our room had a soar­ing trompe l’oeil ceil­ing, enor­mous win­dows open­ing out onto small bal­conies over­look­ing the tiny canal “street” below, gor­geous tapes­try bed hang­ings. And not out­ra­geously expen­sive! In fact, the price dropped on the sec­ond and third nights because Carnevale had ended. A lovely, lovely place. Avery and I fell in love par­tic­u­larly withe the green glass door­knobs, and the tiny but beau­ti­ful bath­room, for­ever toasty with its heated towel rack.

We uncer­e­mo­ni­ously dumped our bags, grabbed my Ital­ian dic­tio­nary and the guide­book, and headed out. “Let’s buy some meat and cheese and bread and have a pic­nic lunch,” John sug­gested, which seemed bril­liant. Why wan­der around look­ing for a restau­rant when we could plop down by the Grand Canal with an assort­ment of mouth­wa­ter­ing Ital­ian delicacies?

We dropped into the local, totally ordi­nary and there­fore fas­ci­nat­ing super­mar­ket, and picked up salami alla erbe (salami with herbs), an amaz­ing cheese, Camoscio d’oro, and a packet of all the com­po­nents for a per­fect carpac­cio salad: slices of ten­der raw beef fil­let, shav­ings of Parmi­giano Reg­giano, and a scat­ter­ing of incom­pa­ra­ble Ital­ian rucola: you know me and my obses­sion with rocket! And the Ital­ian ver­sion, bought and eaten in Italy, puts to shame the imported bags we get in London.

With a lit­tle focac­cia, some senape clas­sico (just plain mus­tard, but it tasted bet­ter in Ital­ian) and a bot­tle of olives, we were in busi­ness. “Posso accettare una forchetta?” I some­how man­aged to ask, thrilled at pro­duc­ing a whole sen­tence! But no, I could not buy a fork, they had sold all their forks. We crouched down on a pier by the Grand Canal, sur­rounded by other per­fectly happy tourists (lots of teenagers in love), and had our picnic.

From there were wan­dered over to Piazza San Marco, to see all the Carnevale-goers, so many of them dressed up extrav­a­gantly! Full 18th cen­tury cos­tumes, one group of four ladies not only dressed, but with their faces AND hair painted gold, sit­ting at a cafe table, inclin­ing their gilded heads to all the gap­ing onlook­ers. “Com­pli­menti, com­pli­menti,” the Ital­ians would say to them, and the ladies would say, “Gra­zie, gra­zie,” com­pla­cently.

We were vir­tu­ally the only Amer­i­cans in Venice, it seemed: almost every­one was Ital­ian, although there was one Russ­ian man shout­ing into his mobile phone in a par­tic­u­larly serene campo. Where were all our fel­low coun­try­men? And very few Eng­lish peo­ple. Which made for a very for­eign atmos­phere, and moti­vated me to pro­duce my Ital­ian for Avery and John, who were grat­i­fy­ingly impressed. But as always hap­pens to me, I’m much bet­ter at speak­ing than at hear­ing, so I found myself ask­ing com­plex ques­tions very ade­quately, and then stand­ing there open-mouthed as a com­pletely incom­pre­hen­si­ble answer flowed toward me!

We wan­dered around San Marco, admir­ing the masks and finally buy­ing one for Avery, cov­ered with musi­cal notes. How pretty she looked! We bought a bag of con­fetti and pelted her with it, as the sun set.

Back to the hotel for a cock­tail and to put our feet up. The sound of boats, of waves splash­ing against the hotel, the shouts of Carnevale rev­ellers — “va bene, ciao, ciao,” and ter­ri­ble 1980s music from a nearby disco, “Y-M-C-A…” Lovely Fed­er­ica behind the wel­come desk had made a reser­va­tion for us at a local and per­fectly for­get­table restau­rant, Hos­te­ria Al Vecio Bragosso, where Avery had spaghetti car­bonara and French fries! I had a carpac­cio of tuna and rucola, John had a nice veal chop. It was our first expe­ri­ence with what seems to be a uni­ver­sal phe­nom­e­non in Venice: ade­quate, but not mem­o­rable restau­rant food. I hated to admit it: ade­quate. Now we’ve come home, every­one we know who’s been to Venice raves about all the things we loved too, and then we say, “The food? Not so much.” Cater­ing to tourists means just that, I sup­pose. Next time per­haps we could find the hid­den, local treasures.

A quite per­fect first day in what’s now become one of our favorite cities in the world. Day Two? Even bet­ter. Watch this space.

I’ll have LOADS to tell you about Venice tomor­row (Carnevale, our amaz­ing Palazzo of a hotel, the MAR­KETS, my new love affair with arti­chokes in every form, our nos­tal­gic trip to the Peggy Guggen­heim Col­lec­tion (guess who used to be an art historian?).

Right now I’m drop­ping. We got up early, went out in the rain, arrived at the vaporetto (water bus) stop in time to hit a STRIKE, walked half an hour in an evil down­pour UP and DOWN the steps of bridges, John lug­ging all the baggage…

Home to moun­tains of laun­dry as every­thing got soaked through the lug­gage, believe it or not! Four loads so far and I’ve been home only five hours. A gor­geous sup­per of grilled beef fil­lets, red pep­per soup with creme fraiche and a warm salad of can­nellini beans with Parme­san (brought back in the soaked suit­cases!) chilli oil, fresh bread­crumbs and rocket.

Tomor­row we drive Avery to the train sta­tion for her first jour­ney alone (one stop and change of plat­form!) to visit a friend in the coun­try. I’m get­ting per­ilously relaxed about this sort of thing. But I’ll have time to blog. And I’ll leave you with this image: Brangelina, hand­ing their kids one by one out of a water taxi, right before our very eyes. I hate to say it: I was a bit starstruck.

But even more impres­sive… those ARTICHOKES…

How do you like a com­pletely new veg­etable? Seri­ously. As the Daily Mail puts it, the newly-minted “flow­er­ing sprouts” give chil­dren all over the UK another veg­etable to hate. They’re a genetic mix of Brus­sels sprouts and kale. Well, I like sprouts, and I like kale. But when you mix the two together, give them to Marks and Spencer to sell exclu­sively, they take on a new cachet. The grower in Chip­ping Cam­den crowed, “Our other sprouts are green with envy.”

Here’s my best advice: Snip off their lit­tle bot­tom stems for fresh­ness, then let the loose leaves detach them­selves and cook them right along with the sprouts. Pour a lit­tle olive oil in a heavy skil­let, then sprin­kle with minced gar­lic and a bit of bal­samic vine­gar. Saute for a moment, turn over and saute again. Then add a bit of water, put a lid on the skil­let and turn off the heat. There you go.

They’re intensely fla­vored, with a chewy, lovely bite, and of course any­thing mixed with olive oil and gar­lic has its charms. We ate them for lunch whilst our own lit­tle sprout was in school, because Avery, sadly, will not go near a sprout. Don’t even men­tion kale. I’m lucky that she reg­u­larly begs for broc­coli, aspara­gus, and pep­pers. But sprouts? Not so much.

Sec­ond to this excite­ment is our depar­ture tomor­row for VENICE! John and I went once, in 1986, and we were so com­pletely besot­ted with each other that we had very litle time for oh, say, the sights of Venice. We could have been any­where. So this time, with Avery in tow, many restau­rant rec­om­men­da­tions and a firm plan to visit a ceme­tery island and glass-bowing fac­tory, not to men­tion a stay in a real palazzo, should be a slightly more appre­cia­tive expe­ri­ence. I have a pocket mini dic­tio­nary (for menus! I fig­ure the rest will fig­ure itself out, but I don’t want inad­ver­tently to order calf’s nos­trils), two nov­els by Donna Leon, set in the water par­adise, and a page of notes with all my friends’ exhor­ta­tions not to miss this, that, the other. Very excit­ing! We’ll be back Fri­day after­noon, full of sto­ries, no doubt.

Can the food be any bet­ter than our lunch last week at Biben­dum? Such a gor­geous spot, in the Ful­ham Road, above the famed Oys­ter Bar where, in our first turn in Lon­don twenty years ago, we bought a lob­ster every Sat­ur­day evening, to accom­pany our bot­tle of cham­pagne. Young love! This time around, we went to the big kids’ restau­rant, and sat con­tent­edly in the warm sun­shine, trav­el­ing through the stained-glass win­dows depict­ing the Miche­lin Man, cast­ing col­ored shards of light on all the diners.

I started with rab­bit ril­lettes, con­fit and rich with a mar­malade quenelle and a salad of flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped hazel­nuts and le Puy lentils, lightly dressed in olive oil and lemon zest. John rev­elled in chicken liv­ers with sauteed spinach in puff pas­try with a tomato mar­jo­ram sauce. Then we chat­ted, wait­ing for our main course, look­ing long­ingly at our neigh­bors’ fish and chips, the most gourmet imag­in­able! Then there was a loud crash far over John’s shoul­der and I said with absolute cer­tainty, “That was our main course.”

Sure enough, min­utes later the maitre d’ came by, smil­ing wryly, car­ry­ing two plates. “That brouhaha, you may have guessed, was your meal. So here is a lit­tle gift from us, as we pre­pare fresh plates for you.” And there was the starter I reluc­tantly passed up in favor of the rab­bit: escabeche of red mul­let with an AMAZ­ING and so sim­ple accom­pa­ni­ment of steamed car­rots, caramelized golden onions, blood orange seg­ments, basil and creme fraiche. Sim­ply delight­ful, so sur­pris­ing and fresh, and we nor­mally do not like “fruit and meat.” But the oranges with the fish were lovely. Intensely aro­matic, bit­ingly tart, oily and LOVELY.

I could scarcely, after all that, eat my main course which was guinea hen, roasted with a basil pesto under the skin, swim­ming on a light broth with fen­nel, pars­ley, car­rots and cel­ery. John had kid­neys with a panko-breadcrumb fried potato dauphi­noise: total decadence!

So that was the end of our FT spe­cial lunch out­ings: full price for one, the sec­ond per­son for a fiver! If you can stop your­self order­ing cham­pagne, it’s an amaz­ing deal. Lunch for two at a Michelin-starred restau­rant for under 40 quid.

As if all this weren’t enough… drum­roll please… I have made a big deci­sion about my dar­ling blog. I have come to terms with my admit­ted total intim­i­da­tion and trial by admi­ra­tion of a cer­tain other blog­ger run­ning a ranch with horses and cat­tle and four home-schooled chil­dren while cook­ing gourmet meals and pho­tograph­ing them all with a state of the art cam­era. John actu­ally sug­gested that she’s the blog­ger ver­sion of “Christ­mas in Con­necti­cut” and actu­ally writes from a fourth-floor stu­dio walkup in Harlem with a pars­ley plant dying on her win­dowsill: this made me howl with laugh­ter dur­ing our very posh lunch.

As a result, how­ever, I have made the acquain­tance of a lovely, soft-spoken Aus­trian web­site designer, and over a pot of pep­per­mint tea (and my gaz­ing upon his 20-something youth­ful, self-deprecating charm) came to a num­ber of con­clu­sions about Kris­ten in Lon­don. Some­day soon I will migrate to some­thing called Word­Press, and with a whole new look. Have no fear, how­ever, of my turn­ing the blog into an all-singing, all-dancing, advert-obsessed, slideshow-filled, dizzy­ing show of splen­dor. No, my new friend likes Kris­ten in Lon­don just as it is, but thinks it could be improved in terms of what the reader (you!) sees on the screen at the very begin­ning, and could have more depth in terms of choices of things to look at. Most excit­ingly, there will be a RECIPE INDEX! I am cau­tiously thrilled. Watch this space!

Right, off we go. But not before I tell you about why it will be a long time before I go out again for fish and chips. It’s because — aside from the chips — I can make it myself now! Bet­ter fish than I’ve ever had out. The chips are next. And don’t for­get the tartare sauce, adapted from a recipe in my new cook­book, given me by a friend at my birth­day! Need a present for a new­ly­wed? This cook­book is it. In the mean­time, fry up some had­dock and watch out for the new Kris­ten in Lon­don. You deserve them both.

Fried Had­dock with Tartare Sauce
(serves 4)

4 good fat fil­lets of skin­less haddock

1/2 cup fla­vor­less oil, like sun­flower, saf­flower, soybean

1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup corn­flour (corn­starch)
1/2 cup fresh home­made coarse bread­crumbs
2 tbsps Fox Point Sea­son­ing or other dried shallot-garlic seasoning

2 eggs
1 cup milk

Make sure the fish fil­lets are com­pletely dried. Heat the oil in a wide, shal­low saucepan till nearly smok­ing (I know that sounds silly, but you will be able to tell).

Mix dry ingre­di­ents in a wide, shal­low bowl. Mix eggs and milk in a bowl. Place all fish fil­lets in the egg mix­ture. Have a large plate nearby, ready to receive the fil­lets once battered.

When ready to fry, dip the fish fil­lets, one by one, into the flour-breadcrumb mix­ture, then dip quickly again into egg mix­ture and again into flour-breadcrumb. Place gen­tly into hot oil in ONE layer. Have a large plate nearby again, topped with sev­eral lay­ers of paper towel.

Fry the fish on one side for about 2 min­utes, then turn care­fully and fry on sec­ond side for about 2 min­utes or until fil­lets are stiff. Lift care­fully onto the paper towel.

Serve hot with:

Tartare Sauce
(serves 4)

4 tbsps may­on­naise
4 cor­ni­chons, drained and minced
1 tbsp capers, drained and minced
pinch chopped fresh tar­ragon
juice of 1/4 lemon or lime
fresh-ground black pep­per
salt to taste

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

Be sure to plump for the highest-quality had­dock for these. They should be bright white, firm, thick and odor­less. The result­ing fried fish is crisp, light, not oily in the slight­est, and per­fect with the tart (!) tartare sauce.

Now for the chips… next time.

I’ll admit it.

I was going to lie and say it had been a whole week since I blogged because I Had Been So Busy.

And while it’s true, I have been run­ning to and fro, watch­ing Avery cre­ate ever-cooler new out­fits as above, see­ing plays, cook­ing, turn­ing 45 (no need to expand on the num­ber of years, that’s for sure), the rea­son I have not been blog­ging is…

SHEER INTIM­I­DA­TION.

Out of the good­ness of her shar­ing heart, a dear friend of mine pointed me to a blog she enjoyed, say­ing, “Her tone is very dif­fer­ent from yours, but I think you might find her inspir­ing.” I’m almost afraid to point YOU to this blog, because it is my sin­cere fear that any­one who sees this supe­rior blog will have no time for me anymore.

Sob.

She’s Pio­neer Woman, and she is per­fect in every way. She lives on a ranch with four unbe­liev­ably pho­to­genic chil­dren, hordes of horses, acres of cows, and masses of sexy cow­boys as far as the eye can see, includ­ing her hus­band. She gar­dens, she cooks splen­didly (her COOK­BOOK has just been pub­lished, which put me over the edge), she even home-schools. And she’s gor­geous. And nice.

I could spit.

Well, as you can see, the most that this state of severe neg­a­tive self esteem has pro­duced is a photo behind the ban­ner of my blog, and a new descrip­tion, and a new “About Me.” What has not tran­spired is a recipe index. Or the uber-expensive Nikon cam­era with which she takes her glo­ri­ous pho­tos, or the Pho­to­shop soft­ware to alter them all to perfection.

Just a photo behind my ban­ner, that’s all. But it’s a start. And since it was my birth­day table after my sub­lime party, I’m post­ing it sep­a­rately on this post. In real­ity: it’s the typ­i­cal image of my life, my mother-in-law says, which makes me very happy.

Mostly I spent the seven days of my silence turn­ing 45. Plan­ning to turn 45, cook­ing for the lovely ladies who came to help me turn 45, clean­ing up after us all, and gen­er­ally doz­ing around ana­lyz­ing whether or not I felt any older. It was a glo­ri­ous birthday.

The first delight­ful thing that hap­pened in my obses­sive plan­ning lead­ing up to the party was a dis­cov­ery in my base­ment (which could yield almost any sur­prise, it has to be said). This par­tic­u­lar sur­prise was a Ziplock bag full of tar­nished sil­ver nap­kin rings. Back in the days when John and I spent a lot of time think­ing up presents to give each other, one of our fall­backs was a nap­kin ring, to be brought out at the end­less din­ner par­ties we gave, pre-Avery. We bought them at antique shops and flea mar­kets, peo­ple gave them to us for birth­days and anniver­saries, and most cel­e­bra­tory of all, we com­mis­sioned them from our friend the jew­eler, Linda Lee John­son, our neigh­bor in our SoHo loft build­ing and the maker of all the beau­ti­ful things we have ever owned.

And some­how, in the con­fu­sion of all our many mov­ings of house, those gor­geous things were stuffed into a plas­tic bag and for­got­ten on a cel­lar shelf. Awful.

It was but the work of a moment to bring them up, cover them in sil­ver pol­ish and shine them up. Two are engraved with the date, month and year of our first date! And one says “John + Kris­ten,” and another is a giant sil­ver flower shape, and one, a Vic­to­rian beauty, says “Ellen Ben­nett,” who one of my birth­day guests joked was actu­ally John’s first wife.

What a find.

I spent all of Sat­ur­day pol­ish­ing cham­pagne glasses, pol­ish­ing forks and knives and spoons, and soak­ing beans for the cas­soulet that would be my birth­day sup­per, Sun­day night. Because why buy an ordi­nary tin of hari­cot beans and pour off the water in about 26 sec­onds, when you can, instead, soak dry organic beans for 22 hours, chang­ing the water three times? Always go the extra mile.

Sat­ur­day night found us on our way (and on, and ON) to a little-known Oscar Wilde play, “Lord Savile’s Crime,” in Brom­ley, of all places. Fifty-two min­utes to drive there didn’t sound so unrea­son­able, on google maps. How they lied. It was at least an hour and a half, with impos­si­ble direc­tions and ter­ri­ble traf­fic. I could feel John fum­ing next to me, watch­ing the min­utes tick by, finally say­ing, “Of all the neigh­bor­hoods we’ve been through on the way to this b**dy play, there isn’t a sin­gle one I’m plan­ning to visit again.” Ouch. Rain, finally, to cap it all off.

But the play was lovely! A crazy Vic­to­rian farce, with Lee Mead of “Joseph and the Amaz­ing Tech­ni­color Dream­coat” fame, in the lead. He’s been told by a psy­chic that he’s going to com­mit a mur­der, and in order that he not mur­der his beloved fiance, he finds other rela­tions and friends he thinks he can bump off instead. Great cos­tumes, and a stage design and direc­tion that was almost like another char­ac­ter, it was so clever.

And some­how find­ing our way home was even more Dra­con­ian than get­ting there. But we made it.

Sun­day I… cooked. And cooked, and cooked some more. I shelled sweet­corn, chopped gar­lic, sim­mered duck, spun let­tuce, sauteed lamb, baked sausages, sliced car­rots and cel­ery, wept over onions.

I filled can­dle hold­ers with can­dles, folded old white vin­tage nap­kins into my pol­ished nap­kin rings, chose soup bowls and wine glasses, and John hoovered the house to be ready, and lit the fire in the liv­ing room upstairs.

And they came. My friend JoAnn all the way from Oxford! My neigh­bors and friends from school, ready for fun, gos­sip, and the exchange of wis­dom and emo­tion and silly anec­dotes that makes up the great good for­tune of hav­ing girl­friends. Heaven. Avery and John came in late from their own din­ner party (cooked by the hus­band of one of my guests!), had a piece of lovely choco­late cake made by my friend Annie and dec­o­rated with a “K” in rasp­ber­ries by her daugh­ter. Finally every­one departed into the rainy night and JoAnn and I made a desul­tory attempt to han­dle the mess in the kitchen, get­ting only about halfway through before we sim­ply had to stop, sit and chat a bit, and then fall into bed. A gor­geous, lovely night.

Many would find it silly, even incom­pre­hen­si­ble, that my idea of a birth­day party was to cook every­thing myself and then have to clean up. But it was heav­enly. Eight girl­friends, some of whom knew each other but some did not, dressed up, bear­ing cham­pagne and presents, with can­dle­light and the aroma of sweet­corn and rocket soup, cas­soulet, the gor­geous pur­ple hyacinths on the table and many dif­fer­ent sub­tle perfumes.

And on Mon­day morn­ing, per­haps the best gift of all: the win­dow cleaner came! I’m ashamed to say we’ve lived here for nearly two years and not… had the win­dows cleaned. Kenny came, hung his frame out­side and inside the win­dows, and after just a few hours our win­dows gleamed in unac­cus­tomed sparkle! I almost felt we’d fall out of them if we got too close. Per­fect birth­day present for me. Then to lunch at La Trompette in Chiswick: foie gras and chicken liver par­fait with fresh brioche, then I had cod with lit­tle gnoc­chi in a puree of cepes (how hard can THAT be to pro­duce, and be so mag­i­cal? just mush­rooms, after all), and John had sea bass fil­let with chick peas, aubergine and squid stuffed with diced red pep­per… a cheese board and gran­ite of grape­fruit, and out into the slushy, slow-falling snow, stag­ger­ing home in delight.

Home to be given my birth­day presents, which SO rep­re­sent who I am: a tiny spice grinder, a tart slicer, an olive oil decanter, and a gor­geous white shirt and black skirt from The­ory. Plus a pair of “duvets for the feet”: feath­ery slip­pers, per­fect for this cold, cold house.

And all over for another year. My feel­ing is this: if you have to get older, and come up against a mile­stone like 45 years, why not cel­e­brate it with those you love, get out of your com­fort zone a bit by invit­ing peo­ple who don’t know each other, cook some­thing you haven’t cooked before, light the can­dles, pour the cham­pagne, watch the snowflakes out­side the win­dows (clean!), and…enjoy with a crisp, salty bite.

Spicy Parme­san crisps
(serves 8)

1 cup grated Parme­san
1/4 cup flour
2 tsps black onion seeds
1 tsp cayenne

Mix every­thing thor­oughly. On a grease­proof paper or a nonstick-sprayed sur­face, place a table­spoon of the mix­ture spaced 1/2 inch apart and bake at 425F/220C for about 2 min­utes, watch­ing care­fully so they don’t burn. Trans­fer to a plate to cool, and the crisps can be stored in a closed tin for up to 3 days. Per­fect with champagne.

When I was 16, I spent a sum­mer in France. I know, it sounds like the begin­ning words to a very cheesy, or tragic, novel. No, it was sim­ply the begin­ning of the rest of my life. I dis­cov­ered per­fume, pain au choco­lat, advanced French gram­mar, the joys of a Deux Chevaux, and love. What more could any­one want from life?

And strangely, all these things have fig­ured strongly in my adult life, albeit in dif­fer­ent forms and at dif­fer­ent times. The per­fume I loved went defunct, but I found a new one (still French). Pain au choco­lat is still my daughter’s favorite break­fast treat. Lovely friends in Lon­don years ago drove a Cit­roen, and love? I will never for­get that par­tic­u­lar French­man, but my lovely hus­band now lis­tens to tales of him and my adven­tures with a raised eye­brow and total acceptance.

What France did not bring to me, until many years later, was a love of French food. Besides, that is, pain au choco­lat, which I con­sider not so much a food as sanc­tioned candy, mas­querad­ing as breakfast.

No, French food escaped me for years, under­stand­ably since I lived in Indi­ana, Penn­syl­va­nia and New Jer­sey, until I got mar­ried and moved to Lon­don, now 20 years ago. Then, because I was writ­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on French art, I had to (had to!) spend time in Paris. And there… I found… cas­soulet.

Now, make no mis­take, I was no foodie. There weren’t food­ies, as far as I know, besides Julia and James and Craig. There was just the world, who far from liv­ing to eat, ate to live (if they were lucky). But there were also French peo­ple, and French peo­ple have always under­stood the over­rid­ing impor­tance of food in life, which I now believe in implic­itly and explic­itly and every other way. Food is life.

I remem­ber very lit­tle of my months in Paris, mostly a fog of this or that bib­lio­theque, an indi­gestible mass of infor­ma­tion about late 19th cen­tury French sculp­ture, and com­ing home to yet another rent-by-the-week apart­ment to eat a tin of tunafish, which in France comes fla­vored with things like tomato sauce, capers and olive oil. I might have had a cracker with this con­coc­tion, then fallen straight to sleep.

But when John came to visit me, we ate. Because he was a man, and there­fore hun­gry. I stayed in many skeevy flats, in many hor­rid neigh­bor­hoods, but once I stayed in the guest room of a friend who lived opu­lently in the Sev­enth Arrondis­e­ment, and there we found Cafe Max. It was always only a sim­ple out of the way French bistro, like hun­dreds of oth­ers in Paris, and even now it has almost no inter­net pres­ence, no rep­u­ta­tion, no vis­i­bil­ity. I was treated kindly at Cafe Max because I spoke flu­ent French, one of my few skills in life. We sat down, out of the rain, I ate my first con­fit de canard, my first pate, my first EVERY­THING. And John ate his first cas­soulet. And we never for­got a sin­gle mouthful.

Can­dles sput­ter­ing, every­thing brought to the table family-style, you sim­ply helped your­self to what­ever amount you wanted, and I don’t remem­ber how it was billed. Red wine in non-labelled bot­tles, tap water in lovely blue-bottomed bot­tles, rain, always Parisian rain, spat­ter­ing out­side, the for­eign French sirens blar­ing in and out. Mus­tardy salad, some­times with soft-boiled egg on top, hard coun­try breads, unsalted and tough out­side, but fluffy and soft within, the room got darker and the smoke from everyone’s cig­a­rettes got thicker. I’m no smoker, but I can’t imag­ine Cafe Max is the same, if the ban has reached that far.

Mem­o­ries from another life, when I was young enough to find Paris fright­en­ing, yet deter­mined to knock on every door to do my research, to meet all the peo­ple I needed to meet. And at night, I was alone, alone, alone. In what­ever rented apart­ment I had man­aged to find for that three-week period of time, long­ing all the while for John, far away in Lon­don. Youth­ful adven­tures are wasted on the young! Silly me, not just to dive in and enjoy every­thing, even the scary solitude.

And yet I did dive in, as best I could. At least I went, and I was there, how­ever fright­ened on the inside. And while in those days I was an anti-bean lady, I could see and smell the point of John’s cas­soulet: pre­dom­i­nantly GAR­LIC, and FAT, and bread­crumbs, crunchy on top.

I have given almost no thought in the inter­ven­ing years to Paris (except when I went back) or to cas­soulet, until John said last week:

“I’ve been wish­ing for… a casse­role, only what on earth do I mean by that?”

“Campbell’s Cream of Mush­room?” I ask, refer­ring to our ENTIRE child­hood, which actu­ally can be encap­su­lated in a can of soup.

‘No, some­thing GOOD… I don’t know what I mean.”

But I did. Some­thing in me returned to France, to my 20-something self, to goose fat and sausage and duck and baguettes and rainy nights. I went off to the gro­cery store, bought roughly every­thing in it, rolled up my sleeves, can­celled every­thing else I had to do for the day, and produced:

Clas­sic Cas­soulet
(serves 8)

for the con­fit:
4 duck legs
coarse sea salt
4 fat gar­lic cloves, finely chopped
4 bay leaves, bro­ken in half
1 cup white wine

for the cas­soulet:
4 Toulouse sausages
350g/12oz belly pork, skinned and diced
350g/12oz lamb neck fil­let or rolled breast, diced
1 large onion, chopped roughly
2 large car­rots, chopped roughly
2 cel­ery sticks, chopped roughly
400g/14oz can chopped toma­toes
1 tbsp tomato purée
2 heaped tbsp fresh flat leaf pars­ley, chopped
1 heaped tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
sea salt and pep­per
290ml/½ pint dry white wine
2 cans hari­cot or can­nellini beans, drained and rinsed
850ml/1½pt chicken stock

for the top­ping:
1 large day-old baguette (or 1 cup fresh home­made bread­crumbs)
2 fat gar­lic cloves, halved
4 tbsp but­ter
2 heaped tbsp fresh flat leaf pars­ley, chopped
1 heaped tbsp fresh thyme, chopped

Place the duck legs skin side down in a skil­let with a lid, sprin­kle with the salt, gar­lic and bay leaves and pour the white wine around. Place the lid on top and cook at the tini­est sim­mer pos­si­ble, for two hours. Of course, for real con­fit you’d pour the winey fat over the duck and pre­serve it, but no need for that step here, as you’ll be using the duck straightaway.

Mean­while, place the sausages in a 220C/425F oven and bake for 20 min­utes. Set aside to cool.

In a large stove­top– and oven­proof dish that will hold all the ingre­di­ents, place the belly pork and heat gen­tly until fat begins to be released, then raise heat and cook, stir­ring occa­sion­ally, until all the fat has been released and the pork is crisp, but not dry. Lift the pork onto a plate with a slot­ted spoon, leav­ing all the fat behind.

Add the lamb to the pork fat and cook until col­ored on all sides, then lift out with slot­ted spoon and set aside with the pork.

Add the diced veg­eta­bles to the pork fat and cook till soft. Tip the ingre­di­ents from the plate back into the dish. Add the toma­toes, tomato purée and herbs, then sea­son with sea salt and pep­per to taste.

Add the wine, hari­cot beans and chicken stock to the dish and bring to the boil. Stir, then lower the heat so the liq­uid is just sim­mer­ing. Keep the mix­ture in the same dish to cook or trans­fer it to an earth­en­ware dish.

When the duck has cooked for two hours, remove it from the wine and fat and cool to han­dle. Remove the skin from the duck, then tuck the duck legs into the cas­soulet.

Peel off the sausage skins, slice the sausage­meat thickly on the diag­o­nal and add to the dish.

Cover the dish and bake for 1 hour, stir­ring once. Stir, then cook uncov­ered for a fur­ther 1–1½ hours, stir­ring halfway, until the meat is really ten­der and the sauce is thick­ened. Take the dish out of the oven and remove the duck legs. Strip the meat from the bones (it will fall off eas­ily) and return the meat to the dish. Stir and add a lit­tle water, if nec­es­sary. Sea­son if nec­es­sary, then return to the oven and bake for another 15 min­utes until all the meat and beans are very tender.

For the top­ping, cut the crusts off the baguette, tear the bread into pieces and put in a food proces­sor. Add the gar­lic and chop into coarse crumbs (you should have about a cup of gar­licky bread crumbs).

Heat the but­ter in a large fry­ing pan until siz­zling, then stir fry the bread­crumbs and gar­lic over a mod­er­ate to high heat for 7–8 min­utes until crisp and golden. Remove from the heat, toss in the herbs and stir to mix, then sea­son well with salt and pepper.

Ladle the cas­soulet in gen­er­ous serv­ings into warm bowls, sprin­kle on a bit of top­ping, and serve.

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

Be warned: this is a labor-intensive recipe, with many steps, lots of cook­ing time and atten­tion. It’s not dif­fi­cult, because each task is sim­ple in itself. But you must be in the mood to pot­ter about the kitchen for the bet­ter part of the day.

Here’s a tip that worked for my fam­ily: Avery does not like beans, and so I knew that the entire cas­soulet would not be to her lik­ing. So I sim­ply made an extra duck leg con­fit, and when the oth­ers went into the cas­soulet, hers waited until just 20 min­utes before din­ner and then roasted in a hot oven, skin side up. Perfect.

Once the cas­soulet is thor­oughly cooked, it can sit in the refrig­er­a­tor for up to a day, want­ing only to be reheated at a low tem­per­a­ture before serv­ing, so it’s per­fect for those days when you’re out until an hour or so before you want to eat.

Your reward for all that dic­ing and stir­ring and sim­mer­ing will be the rich­est aroma steal­ing through your house, your fam­ily ask­ing if we can eat early, and all you need besides the cas­soulet is a tra­di­tional green salad with a very mus­tardy dress­ing, and a warm baguette, torn into pieces that fit in the hand.

Pure France, in a soup bowl, topped with but­tery, gar­licky bread­crumbs. You really can’t ask for more than that on a shiv­ery Feb­ru­ary evening.