This trip to Flo­rence was a mile­stone for me: in a moment of epiphany, I real­ized that the word “Bronzino” con­jures up fishy recipes, these days, rather than an Ital­ian Renais­sance painter.  I think the art his­to­rian in me has finally, fully given way to the cook.

In a way I felt a bit sad to real­ize this!  To know that it has been a long time since my dusty old PhD in art his­tory meant much to me.  The years when Michelan­gelo — his poetry, his sculp­ture, his birth and death dates — were as famil­iar to me as a nurs­ery rhyme, are now a long time ago.  I had to look things up in the guide­books just as often as did my fam­ily, who used to rely on me for all the infor­ma­tion they could want, wan­der­ing through a museum.  Now, Avery and I raced as quickly as we could through the Pitti Palace and the Uffizi, me intent only on get­ting to the Cen­tral Mar­ket and she long­ing for a go at the crowded shelves in the soap and cos­met­ics shops!  Times do change, and you can’t waste too much time pre­tend­ing they don’t.

And so I approached Flo­rence and the art world there as just another tourist, much as I did the Peggy Guggen­heim Museum in Venice... a lit­tle nos­tal­gic for the old intel­lec­tual me, but awfully happy all the same to pack my suit­case with salamis, porcini mush­rooms and truf­fle oil, leav­ing the post­cards of art to other peo­ple.  And being a tourist, with my lovely teenager see­ing every­thing for the first time, was very nice indeed.

We arrived on Mon­day after­noon to the Casa Guidi, an elab­o­rate apart­ment above Piazza di Felice, one of the Land­mark Trust’s truly unfor­get­table places to stay.  It was lived in by Eliz­a­beth Bar­rett and Robert Browning.

The house remains a museum to them even now, open two after­noons a week to what­ever poetry-obsessed tourists there might be, want­ing to see their pho­tographs and sil­ver pieces under glass.  High ceil­ings, ornately painted with putti and harps and carved with plas­ter roses, gor­geous 19th cen­tury fur­ni­ture, row upon row of leather-bound books.

Com­pletely lux­u­ri­ous and styl­ish, such a treat to set­tle our belong­ings, and then go out to explore.  We walked around the neigh­bor­hood, which is on the “other side” of the Arno (the one with­out the Duomo!), and dis­cov­ered, in a street called “Borgo San Jacopo”  a gor­geous trat­to­ria called La Dis­pensa, pur­vey­ors of the most gor­geous salamis, cheeses and breads you can imagine.

I sam­pled some­thing called “finoc­chiona,” a soft, gar­licky, fennel-seed-flavored meaty con­coc­tion.  HEAVEN.  And because my spo­ken Ital­ian is decep­tively good — a good accent, but unre­li­able lis­ten­ing skills! — the pro­pri­etress imme­di­ately went into very detailed ecstasies with me, only some of which I caught.

“What you are eat­ing there, is the tra­di­tional finoc­chiona which is pro­duced only in Chi­anti, Flo­rence and Siena.  It is the finoc­ciona sbri­ci­o­lata, which means…”

“Not the hard sort,” I ven­ture, “but…”

She made a ges­ture with her hands, a sort of “falling apart” gesture.

“Sbri­ci­o­lata… to crum­ble,” she fin­ishes triumphantly.

And it did.  A softly crum­bling slice of HEAVEN.  Sheer heaven.

The finoc­chiona, along with some salame Toscano (a dense, soft, lean salame that Avery adores), moz­zarella di bufala, fresh rocket and tiny red pep­pers stuffed with anchovies and capers: quite the per­fect lunch!

Well, that could have been the whole hol­i­day for me!  Just trip after trip to the deli, every time sam­pling more and more things.  For exam­ple, there was a limon­cello SPRAY!  In a spray can!  I really wanted to try that, but wasn’t sure what cus­toms would think.  And my dears, the CHEESES!  Have you ever heard of, much less eaten, FRESH pecorino?  Nei­ther had I!  Not strictly speak­ing fresh, because it had been aged 21 days, but per­fectly white, soft, melt-in-the-mouth divinity.

So happy.

But because I was not in Flo­rence alone, I had to go along with my fam­ily and do — sigh– other things.  But first, we had to have din­ner, and we had decided to go out the first night in case we hadn’t come upon any­thing to eat (as if!) on that first evening.  And fate, plus our lovely house­keeper Elena, sent us to quite the most charm­ing restau­rant I’ve ever been to.  Across the street from the dar­ling del­i­catessen, at 43 Borgo San Jacopo, it’s called Il Cinghiale Bianco, or “The White Wild Boar,” that par­tic­u­lar meat being a tra­di­tional Flo­ren­tine del­i­cacy.  From the moment we walked in every­thing was per­fect.  Warm, invit­ing, high-ceilinged, smelling of a com­bi­na­tion of all good things on earth: gar­lic, but­ter, roasted meats, fresh breads.

The maitre d’, or what­ever the equiv­a­lent is in Italy, could not have been sweeter.  Because I really wanted to under­stand the answers to my ques­tions, I asked per­mis­sion to speak Eng­lish, and of course he was fluent.

“I’d really like to cook some wild boar while I am in Flo­rence,” I explained.  “Can you tell me about a tra­di­tional way to cook it?”

“My dear, you could make it as we make it here at the restau­rant.  Let me tell you… Soak it in red wine overnight, with the nec­es­sary veg­eta­bles.  Then cook very slowly the next day, with some tomato puree added at the end.  Allora!”

With these scant instruc­tions I had to be con­tent.  And con­tent I was, with a plate­ful of eggs fried and topped with shaved truf­fle, fol­lowed by roasted baby pig, the suc­cu­lent, salty meat falling off the bones, slathered with crispy fat.  John’s mom went for moz­zarella di bufala with shaved truf­fle, and a pump­kin ravi­oli, and since we all relent­lessly demanded to share bites, I can report that every­thing was sub­lime, beyond deli­cious.  How­ever, the unques­tioned tri­umph of the night was Avery’s stroz­za­preti con spinaci, a sort of rar­efied, lighter-than-air bright green dumpling, swim­ming in a del­i­cate but­tery sauce, sprin­kled with Pecorino.  In short, the sort of unearthly essence of spinach, a quite, quite per­fect food.

The more I cook, and the harder I try, the fewer things there are that I can­not make myself if I really want to (although some­times it’s nice to be cooked for).  The foie gras creme brulee at Angelus, the deep-fried soft­shell crabs at Man­darin Kitchen.  And now, the stroz­za­preti at Cinghiale Bianco joins the list.  I won’t even bother to try.  They were just that ridicu­lously good.

I told the lovely host that we might well be back again the fol­low­ing night!  “Just remem­ber we are closed on Wednes­days,” he cau­tioned, tak­ing me quite seri­ously, as well he should.  Because we did go back!

Our first evening in the apart­ment was an expe­ri­ence of stag­ger­ing grace, sur­rounded by all the Brown­ings’ pos­ses­sions, lis­ten­ing to the street noise from below, over­laid with the beauty of Avery’s play­ing the grand piano!  I’m afraid she’s spoilt for­ever now, that our hum­ble upright in the kitchen here in Lon­don will never quite suf­fice again.  The sound soared into the painted ceil­ing and came back at us, ele­gant and touch­ing.  She was won­der­ful.  And that was Day One in Florence…

How quiet the house sud­denly seems.  John’s mom went home yes­ter­day, depart­ing in a dull, sprin­kling rain com­pletely dif­fer­ent from the bril­liant blue skies of Flo­rence.  Quite sym­bolic of our time together.  She hugged, waved good­bye, we said, “Until Christ­mas!” and she was gone, tak­ing so much of the cel­e­bra­tion and fun with ther.  She radi­ates such an inter­est in every­thing we do that dur­ing her visit, we seem ter­ri­bly inter­est­ing!  And then she goes, and we are back to our every­day selves.

Since we returned from Flo­rence it’s been a rush: a hasty “every­thing on a pan­cake” sup­per Fri­day evening, try­ing valiantly to adhere to our no-carbs vow, John and I replac­ing pan­cakes with let­tuce leaves.  But Sat­ur­day John had to suc­cumb to the lit­tle bug that has been tick­ling around, and so I res­ur­rected some chicken broth from the freezer, set­tled him with a mug and a hot water bot­tle, and we girls retreated to the mall for a lovely lunch at Kitchen Italia: giant king prawns in a salad of romaine and rocket, and then MAD­NESS as every­one in the world seemed to decide to go shop­ping.  Surely if there were any san­ity in the world, even West­field could not allow so many peo­ple in its doors, and my dears, the RACKET.

Finally we three turned hunted eyes on one another: get us out of here!  And home to bril­liant fried had­dock and roasted cau­li­flower, and Avery’s favorite hari­cots verts with loads of gar­lic and lemon zest.

Sun­day of course meant Avery spent the day in Hyde Park on Archie, hav­ing lovely can­ters amid the tourists and the falling autumn leaves.

And so we adults repaired to the Star of India, pos­si­bly the best Indian restau­rant in Lon­don, and now the proud pur­veyor of a cook­book to help us all pro­duce chicken with cashews and mush­rooms, and spinach with paneer cheese.  I haven’t yet dared to try the lentil dumplings in a sauce of yoghurt and aso­faetida, but I will!

From there we drove to Shored­itch on one of John’s many, many quests to find an empty lot on which to build his dream house.  So far the chase has been a cruel dis­ap­point­ment.  He finds such a lot, or a seem­ingly aban­doned build­ing, and writes to the owner, where­upon the owner reveals he’s just sold the lot the pre­vi­ous after­noon, or that John’s enquiry has moved him to build his own dream house, start­ing tomor­row.  So far no luck.  But the lovely neigh­bor­hood of Arnold Cir­cus with the per­fect cafe Albion for cheeses, organic let­tuces, sea­sonal pears and a crois­sant for Avery, made the after­noon a nice adven­ture anyway.

Mon­day we braved the Tate to see the Turner Prize can­di­dates, and I will say no more, except that I have never seen such silly art in all my years as an art his­to­rian.  Go, and tell me why I should change my mind.  But the visit was made worth­while by one sim­ple piece: Michael Craig-Martin’s An Oak Tree.  How have I missed this artist and this piece all my life?  A glass of water, high upon a shelf, and a tex­tual “con­ver­sa­tion” with the artist on a sheet of paper beside it, explain­ing that the artist has changed this glass of water into an oak tree.  Absurd, call­ing up Mar­cel Duchamp, the whole his­tory of con­cep­tual art…

The inter­viewer asks, “Isn’t this a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes?” but Craig-Martin replies, “No, in that case the audi­ence actu­ally claimed to see the clothes.  I would be very sur­prised indeed if any­one claimed to see an oak tree here.  But it is one, nonetheless.”

Avery and I found it com­pletely hys­ter­i­cal, and then were some­what chas­tened upon doing some research, to find that the artist intended the piece to be a reflec­tion on Catholic transsub­stan­ti­a­tion!  Well, it was still funny, and the more we are allowed to think so, since the artist’s entire point is that art trans­fig­ures the object sim­ply by mak­ing it “art.”

It’s the kind of thing you like, if you like that kind of thing.  And I do.

Off to a nos­tal­gic lunch at Bibendum’s Oys­ter Bar, in our old neigh­bor­hood from 20 years ago, and a happy walk in the sun­shine around far too much expen­sive real estate and cloth­ing!  All we could do that evening was to con­sume an enor­mous pile of lamb chops from my beloved butcher at Green Val­ley, and rem­i­nisce about all we had done dur­ing our hol­i­day, over the past two packed-full weeks..

No!  Flo­rence must wait!  As tempt­ing as it is to tell you all our adven­tures there, I must remem­ber the joys of our time in Lon­don.  The din­ner party with Annie’s fam­ily and my new friend Nell and her baby… Oh!  The cala­mari.  I have it down to a sci­ence: half home­made bread­crumbs, half Japan­ese Panko bread­crumbs, then a quan­tity of corn­starch (corn­flour to my British friends), and a good sprin­kle of Fox Point Sea­son­ing… the squid per­fectly cleaned, but into rings, dipped into eggy creamy milk, then the bread­crumb mix­ture.  Then quickly fried in very hot rape­seed oil.

Per­fec­tion.  A slight devi­a­tion from no carbs, I admit!  But it was a won­der­ful party.  The choco­late mousse?  Annie says I can no longer claim not to cook pud­dings, because it was a tri­umph.  I have to agree.  Thank you, Delia Smith.

Delia’s Choco­late Mousse

(quan­ti­ties for 1 per­son, sim­ply mul­ti­ply for your party)

1 egg, 2 ounces high-quality chocolate

Sep­a­rate eggs.  Melt choco­late in a double-boiler and beat egg yolks into it.  Whip egg whites until they hold peaks, then fold into choco­late mix­ture.  Chill for at least two hours.  Serve with whipped cream and fruit.

And the Sebas­t­ian Faulks lec­ture at Avery’s school.  Have you read “Bird­song”?  A young friend of mine years ago told me that it was his favorite book, and it had some­how slipped past me.  I picked it up and was entranced: for­bid­den pas­sion, tragic war, the essence of love, aban­don­ment, friend­ship.  A beau­ti­ful novel, and how on earth was it going to be made into a play this autumn?  Faulks’ lec­ture at school was fas­ci­nat­ing.  “The stu­pid­est piece of advice any­one can give a per­son try­ing to write a novel is, ‘Write what you know.’  NO!  Write pre­cisely what you DON’T know.  Put your­self in the shoes of a young girl, in France dur­ing World War One, in love with a young Eng­lish­man.  What would she say, do, feel?  Write about that.”

John’s mom and I lis­tened, look­ing around at all the rapt 17-year-old faces, sit­ting in that mag­nif­i­cent Hall, plan­ning what they would do with the rest of their lives, being inspired by this man who described his daily life as “quite mad, really.  I go all day with­out talk­ing to any­one, unless I am pro­mot­ing a book and then I talk all day long.”

And the play itself: some cast­ing prob­lems, we all agreed.  When the cen­tral focus of a drama is a pas­sion­ate love affair, the two actors sim­ply MUST have mas­sive chem­istry, and these two did not, we felt.  We spent a great deal of time after­ward try­ing to recast the two main char­ac­ters… Ben Barnes played the war scenes with the other men beau­ti­fully, express­ing dis­il­lu­sion­ment, cold cal­cu­la­tion, a sort of sense­less brav­ery.  But in the scenes with Genevieve O’Reilly, his obses­sive love inter­est, we didn’t believe it.  Who could have played those parts more con­vinc­ingly?  But the play is worth see­ing.  The scenes with Jack Fair­brace, the con­science and soul of the war nar­ra­tive, are very mov­ing, and Lee Ross does a fine job as Jack.  See it, do.  But read it, even more so.

And “Social Net­work”!  What a film.  I know Face­book is one of those black-white things: you either love it or  you don’t.  I love it.  How else could I find out what all friends around the world are cook­ing for din­ner?  And see pic­tures of their kids’ Hal­loween cos­tumes, and see their vaca­tion pic­tures?  Sure, it can be sin­is­ter, and gos­sipy and cruel, but not in my world.  The film is clever, clever, and I believe Andrew Garfield is the next huge star.  Charis­matic, dark, brood­ing, vul­ner­a­ble.  More Andrew, please.

And those were our Lon­don adven­tures, an absolute whirl­wind.  On Mon­day, we were off to Flo­rence.  And I’ll tell you all about it soon… but to whet your appetite, two words: Wild Boar.

It’s been too long!  Life has been mag­i­cal lately, with a whirl­wind visit to Flo­rence at the cen­ter of all the excite­ment.  I’ll be back in a jiffy with lots of lus­cious pho­tos and a fab­u­lous recipe or two, but in the mean­time, I wanted to show you a lit­tle friend we made in Italy… this lit­tle fel­low fol­lowed Avery into one of the many cos­met­ics shops she dis­cov­ered, and after we suc­cess­fully shooed him out into the street, he ended up on my hand.  That’s what our whole adven­ture was like: felic­ity, luck, and gen­tle beauty.  I’ll be back!

It turns out to be sim­pler than you think, not to eat white food.  But why?

I don’t ever want to become a per­son who counts calo­ries or carbs or any­thing else, when decid­ing what to eat.  But on the other hand, there can be no deny­ing that one’s metab­o­lism (all right, MINE) slows down after a cer­tain age.  At that point, even play­ing ten­nis four times a week can­not can­cel out all the effect of the lovely food that comes from my kitchen.  A deci­sion must be made.  Do I want to get ever stouter, like a car­toon French chef, my white apron stretched across my enor­mous girth?  Once I phrased it like that to myself, I real­ized the time for com­pro­mise had come.

Coin­ci­den­tal with this thought came the visit, over the week­end, of our beloved friend the bril­liant archi­tect Joel, who designed our New York apart­ment, quite the most per­fect place we had ever lived, and prob­a­bly ever will live.  And while it was won­der­ful to see him, it was also clear that there was a lot less of him to see than the last time we were together!  He looks sim­ply gor­geous, all slim and bearded and sexy.  A dev­as­tat­ing man.

Under gen­tle ques­tion­ing, the mys­tery was solved.  “I stopped eat­ing bread and pota­toes and pasta,” he said sim­ply, scoop­ing up scram­bled eggs and roasted toma­toes at my table, leav­ing the toasted cia­batta quite untouched.  And there our plan was born.

Num­ber one, John stopped shav­ing!  Avery points out that right now he looks like he for­got to shave, but I’m sure that another week or two will take care of that.  Num­ber two, I made a lit­tle trip to my friend Annie’s house with a bag of unopened flour, boxes of crack­ers and bis­cuits, bags of rice.  And we haven’t looked back.

Now I know this is a very unsci­en­tific way to Not-Diet.  Look­ing into the notion of car­bo­hy­drates online, I found all sorts of inter­est­ing things, like that peo­ple who are seri­ous about this stuff won’t eat things like beets, or car­rots, and won’t drink alco­hol.  Now, to me, a life with­out beets or Abso­lut Cit­ron is not worth liv­ing, or at least not enough for me to con­sider it.  I also feel that a world phi­los­o­phy that tells you ANY veg­etable is bad for you is rub­bish.  Beets are good for you, PERIOD.

So we have decided we can eat all foods that are not white.  My excep­tions to this rule are two of the basic food groups in our house­hold: gar­lic, and haddock.

The scary thing about the way we’ve been eat­ing is that we were ALREADY eat­ing all the foods every­one has sug­gested to replace white food.  Plus we’ve been eat­ing white food!  No won­der we were expand­ing hor­i­zon­tally.  If you were raised in the Mid­west of Amer­ica, as both my beloved and I were, you will rec­og­nize the Triad of the Din­ner Plate: meat, veg­etable and… starch.  Of course in my child­hood, this method was put in place in part to save money, because pota­toes filled us up and we required fewer pork chops, minute steaks and baked chicken, the sta­ples of my mother’s unen­thu­si­as­tic kitchen.  Minute Rice?  Check.  Bread and mar­garine?  Check.  Pota­toes out of a Betty Crocker box?  Def­i­nitely.  And once a month or so, spaghetti, with cheese from a green can.

So it’s a bit of a strain to teach myself to approach the din­ner plate with a dif­fer­ent atti­tude.  Two veg­eta­bles, how about that?  Lentils, chick­peas for that pota­toey feel­ing in the mouth.  Pap­padum, made from lentils, when you want the feel­ing of a bread thing.  It’s working.

Dal (lentil stew)

(serves 4)

1 1/2 cups dried lentils

enough chicken stock to cover the lentils, plus 1/2 cup extra

2 tbsps olive oil

4 cloves garlic

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp pow­dered cumin

2 tsps turmeric

1 tsp crushed chillis, or one small chilli minced

1 tsp sea salt

large hand­ful corian­der (cilantro), chopped roughly

1 tsp garam masala

Soak the lentils in cold water for 30 min­utes.  Rinse thor­oughly and place in a saucepan, and cover with chicken stock.  Sim­mer for 30–40 min­utes until lentils are fully soft.  With a stick blender or food proces­sor, puree the lentils and chicken stock.

Heat the olive oil in a large fry­ing pan.  When oil is hot, add cumin seeds and turmeric and siz­zle for 30 sec­onds, then add gar­lic and cook until soft, but not browned.  Add the pureed lentils, chillis, and salt to taste.  Cook gen­tly for a few min­utes, then stir in the corian­der and garam masala.  Taste again for salt, and serve warm, in a lit­tle bowl, with pap­padum to scoop it up and per­haps a dol­lop of yogurt on the side.

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I’ve roasted a lot of veg­eta­bles, and made a lot of soups: creamy red pep­per, mush­room with Marsala, cele­riac with Cham­pagne.  At some point I will have to break down and make pasta for Avery, but we’ll think of something.

Lunch one day was this glo­ri­ous salad: so sim­ple, such a won­der­ful com­bi­na­tion of flavors.

Avo­cado and Beet­root Salad with Lemongrass

(serves 4)

2 ripe avocados

6 small beets

1 stalk lemon­grass, outer leaves dis­carded, minced

driz­zle olive oil

juice of 1/2 lemon

fresh black pepper

Roast the beets in alu­minum foil for 1 hour at 400F/200C.  Peel and slice thinly.  Arrange on a plate with the avo­ca­dos, sliced as you like.  Sprin­kle over the lemon­grass, olive oil, lemon juice and pep­per.  Voila.

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

The day we had roast chicken in Chi­nese pan­cakes, John and I wrapped ours in let­tuce instead.  It’s working!

I am not, how­ever, notice­ably slen­derer.  It’s Day Six.

While we’ve been adjust­ing to our new life, we’ve had lots to dis­tract us.  The won­der­ful 501st Birth­day Party for Avery’s peer­less school in a cathe­dral which shall remain name­less because it gives away the name of her school.  The soar­ing nave, the mag­nif­i­cent dome, the sound of many lit­tle boys singing, a very intel­li­gent, inspi­ra­tional ser­mon.  “Use these days of safety in your won­der­ful school,” the bishop said, “to ask your­self what you want to do in this life, per­haps some­thing no one else can do.  What would you like to contribute?”

The girls, instead of lis­ten­ing, gig­gled behind their hands at the real focus of their day: the Boys, from the boys’ school attached to their girls’ school.  These for­eign crea­tures felt the power of the fem­i­nine gazes and tossed their hair accord­ingly.  Every­one sim­pered, then sang the final hymn and filed out under the watch­ful gaze of the High Mis­tress and Head Mas­ter.  We all felt chastened.

And my friend JoAnn came to din­ner, which event always makes Avery shake her head in dis­be­lief.  “The way you guys LAUGH when you are together!  It’s incred­i­ble.”  And it’s true.  Jo has a true, unquench­able love of life that just makes you want to be with her.  But even Jo, even with her adven­tur­ous spirit, could not be moved to try the very odd food that we added to our tra­di­tional pier­rade of grilled meats.  Ostrich!  And ante­lope!  We’ve been to the South African super­mar­ket, of course.

This amaz­ing place, St Mar­cus in Put­ney, is dif­fi­cult to find, so per­se­vere.  We were moved to go because my gor­geous friend Sue and her South African hus­band had given us din­ner the night before, and the lit­tle starter with drinks was a bowl of extremely supe­rior beef jerky, called “bil­tong.”  Slightly spicy, com­plexly fla­vored, salty and deli­cious, it pro­pelled us to the shop for more.  And while there, of course, we could not resist the strange exotic meats on dis­play.  “It’s a kind of ante­lope, with HUGE antlers,” the butcher said of the “kudu” fil­let we bought.  He pro­duced his iPhone and brought up a photo of the crea­ture.  Goodness.

As well, we bought deli­cious chicken kebabs, already strung on skew­ers, mar­i­nated in peri-peri sauce and a creamy gar­lic mix­ture.  John grilled these last night and they were gor­geous.  No photo: we were too hun­gry to wait!

And I’ve been cook­ing for four these days, because my beloved mother in law has arrived for her autum­nal visit.  What joy to have her under my roof where I can do things for her, have her invalu­able help while I cook, wear the new lovely short skirt she brought for me (some­one tell me when I’m too old, please).  Her vis­its always are bit­ter­sweet because we get a chance to see what life would be like if we were always together, and it’s a bit awful know­ing this will prob­a­bly never hap­pen.  We must enjoy the vis­its.  She is a per­son who is defined to an enor­mous degree by her gen­tle curios­ity about the world around her.  She asks ques­tions!  She lis­tens.  She wants to know what you’re read­ing and why, what you’re cook­ing and why, who’s com­ing over tonight and what they’re like.  It’s inter­est­ing to see one­self through her eyes: so much more fas­ci­nat­ing than I know I really am!

And, drum roll please… Avery has had her the­atri­cal tri­umph of the year: as Cecily in “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest” at school.  She was noth­ing short of mag­nif­i­cent!  Dressed as to the manor born in a floor length dress of pink roses, twin­klingly clever and saucy and bright-eyed, all her lines down pat.  Sim­ply won­der­ful, we were burst­ing with pride.

She and two of her cast­mates’ fam­i­lies came back home for a cel­e­bra­tion din­ner, and much post-theatre manic laugh­ter, quo­ta­tions from Doc­tor Who, imi­ta­tions of teach­ers, devour­ing meat­balls and green beans and fruit salad between hic­cups of hys­te­ria.  How won­der­ful they all are: so self-possessed, so funny, so hard­work­ing to put on their play.  A won­der­ful evening.

Right.  I must dash to fin­ish the last-minute jobs that occur when eight peo­ple are expected at your house for sup­per.  Cala­mari to start — oh, another white food! — fol­lowed by slow-braised shoul­der of beef, more green beans with lemon zest and gar­lic, and a choco­late mousse.  If it’s good, I’ll post the recipe.  Oh, another white food — whipped dou­ble cream!  Never mind, I never was a stick­ler for details…

Life is greatly enhanced when you have a decent fishmonger.

Of course, you can just trot into your local super­mar­ket and look along the shelves con­tain­ing fish prod­ucts, and pick out a salmon fil­let or two.  But when you have a beau­ti­ful, clean blue-painted store­front to walk by sev­eral times a day, with smartly-aproned, smil­ing fishy guys wav­ing to you over their gleam­ing steel coun­ter­tops filled with manna from the sea… well.  You get motivated.

Our “Fishmonger’s Kitchen” in Shep­herds Bush Road is just such a mecca for me.  Tony, a hard-working career fish man from Aus­tralia, greets me with enthu­si­asm.  “Kris­ten!  I’ve got a lovely fresh had­dock for you,” and out comes a bright-eyed spec­i­men caught that morn­ing in Corn­wall, to be fil­leted, skinned and wrapped up for me.  Where­upon I dip it in cream and eggs, dredge it in my spe­cial blend of home­made bread­crumbs, panko bread­crumbs and Fox Point Sea­son­ing.  And fry it up deliciously.

Or if you fancy some­thing new for your lunch, get a lit­tle sushi spirit going on.  Take your courage in your hands and pick up a nice piece of yel­low­tail tuna, to make the best salad in the world.

Fresh Yel­low­tail Tuna Salad

(serves 4)

2 tuna steaks, about 1 inch thick

2 tsps olive oil

1 stalk lemon grass, minced

1 soup-size can chick­peas, drained

2 stalks cel­ery, chopped

zest and juice of 1 lemon

hand­ful rocket leaves

sea salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

3 tbsps mayonnaise

Heat the oil in a non­stick fry­ing pan until very hot.  Care­fully place the tuna steaks in the oil and cook for 30 sec­onds on one side, then turn and cook for another 30 sec­onds on the other side.  Remove to a cut­ting board.  Cool slightly so that you can han­dle the fish, then cut into bite-size pieces.  The tuna should be opaque and rather gray­ish on the out­side, but still red and cool to the touch on the inside.

Place tuna in a large bowl and add all the other ingre­di­ents, then mix gen­tly.  Serve immediately.

Sim­ply divine.  I love any tuna, even the sort of cat­food tuna I was raised eat­ing, the one with the danc­ing fish in sun­glasses on the label.  I have grad­u­ated to pre­ten­tious jars of yel­low­tail in olive oil, which is won­der­fully robust and fla­vor­ful.  But this tuna is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence: soft, del­i­cate, com­pletely unfishy.  I could even skip all the other ingre­di­ents and just eat it straight from the fry­ing pan, dusted with some mixed pep­per, per­haps with a tiny bit of wasabi-laced mayo on the side.

But my adven­tures at the fish­mon­ger do not end with a sim­ple slab of tuna.  Oh, no.  Take what hap­pened on Sat­ur­day, for example.

I walked, inno­cently enough, into Tony’s lovely shop with John, our bag of vir­tu­ous ten­nis rack­ets slung over his shoul­der, feel­ing like we deserved a treat.  “I have some lovely tiger prawns for you today,” Tony assured me, and we suc­cumbed.  I wish I had a lovely photo of what became of them, but I’ll have to make it again because the photo turned out wretched.  But here is the recipe, a splen­didly com­plex and spicy array of Thai flavors.

Thai Prawns with Coconut Milk

(serves 4)

2 tbsps sun­flower or other mild oil
5 cloves gar­lic
1 small hot red chili
1 large (1–2 inch?) knob gin­ger, peeled
2 tsps turmeric
1 tsp cumin
juices of 1/2 lemon, 1/2 lime
large hand­ful corian­der leaves
large hand­ful pars­ley leaves
1 red onion, quar­tered
sea salt
fresh ground black pepper

1 kg king tiger prawns, heads removed, shells slit up the back for easy peeling

1 soup-size can coconut milk
red pep­per flakes to taste

bas­mati rice for four (put to steam)
ten­der­stem broc­col­ini to saute in olive oil

4 kaf­fir lime leaves
12 basil leaves, chiffonade

Prob­a­bly your prawns will arrive to you frozen. Mine did. If so, place them in a bowl and let them thaw. Save the thaw­ing liq­uid. If they come with heads, remove them and rinse.

So. Put all the ingre­di­ents up to and includ­ing the black pep­per in a Cuisi­nart and whizz till a nice paste. You will have to take the lid off and scrape down the sides sev­eral times. Next, heat the oil in a heavy skil­let or wok and throw all the paste in. Stir round till siz­zling, then throw in the prawns. Stir and toss and turn until the prawns are pink all over instead of their orig­i­nal grey, then smack each prawn against the side of the wok and remove to the even­tual serving bowl.

Now pour into the wok the prawn thaw­ing liq­uid, and the coconut milk. Stir over medium heat until bub­bling and taste. Add the lime leaves and as many pep­per flakes as you need. Leave off the heat while you steam some bas­mati rice and saute some ten­der­stem broccolini.

When the rice and broc­col­ini are ready, remove the lime leaves from the sauce and add the prawns. Chif­fon­ade the basil and add to the sauce. Heat over high heat until bub­bling, then pour every­thing over the rice.  Serve with an empty bowl for the prawn shells, and lots of napkins.

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This dish will make you sit up and beg like a dog.  So creamy, so beau­ti­fully golden with turmeric (your fin­gers will be golden too, from peel­ing the shells!), so exotic and com­pellingly velvety.

I must digress and tell you that before I had even inves­ti­gated the bags I brought home from the fishmonger’s, the phone rang and it was Tony.  “Um, Kris­ten, you know those prawns you bought?  Don’t open them.  I acci­den­tally gave you some­one else’s her­rings.  I’m bring­ing more prawns to you now.”

I tried, dear read­ers, to give back the her­rings.  He was hav­ing none of it, just smil­ingly shoved a pack­age at me, pointed to the wait­ing ille­gally parked van, and left, wav­ing over his shoulder.

I opened the her­rings.  Ugh.  Very fishy smelling, bones every­where (“You’re meant just to eat the bones,” well-meaning Eng­lish friends have said since.  Indeed.)  I went next door.  “Sara, do you and Selva want six but­ter­flied her­rings?”  I explained my sit­u­a­tion.  Sara repu­di­ated them in no uncer­tain terms.  “Give them to the cats!”  I rang up Annie.  “Annie, do you and Keith want six but­ter­flied her­rings?”  “Ugh, no!  Bin them!”

So, an hour and sev­eral attempts to bone them later, I gave up.  In the dark of night, feel­ing hideously waste­ful but sin­gu­larly unin­spired, I binned them.  Heaven save me.

But I didn’t stop there.  Some demon took hold of me, some com­pletely not-Indiana part of my cook­ing self, and I brought home… a squid.  Have you ever cleaned a squid?  It is not for the faint of heart, although I know to some peo­ple it’s child’s play, the same peo­ple who always clean their own scal­lops.  I cleaned scal­lops once, and while I com­pletely agree that the fresh­ness sim­ply can’t com­pare to ready-prepared scal­lops, I found it off-puttingly grubby.  It’s very hard to rec­on­cile the pris­tine white babies you buy at the super­mar­ket with the con­tents of a real scal­lop shell brought home from Tony’s.  They’re bottom-dweller bivalves, after all, their homes reflect their diet.

But a squid!  My good­ness, I couldn’t believe all that was con­tained within that one crea­ture.  Some brave twists of the head-ish-seeming bit, with long trail­ing ten­ta­cles, to sep­a­rate it from the thick body com­plete with fins… and voila.  It comes apart.  A long piece of car­ti­lage so per­fect as to seem like a piece of syn­thetic plas­tic.  And two lit­tle silverfish-like sacs of ink.  Ink that was pro­fuse, blacker than mid­night, and most impres­sively stain­ing of the bowl, my fin­gers, the sink.  Amaz­ing!  Lots of time spent peel­ing the skin away, clean­ing the inside  OCD heaven.

But once that lit­tle guy was prop­erly clean, and sliced into per­fect rings, dipped into my peer­less bread­crumb mix­ture and fried… JOY.

And friends, that brings me to the end of my cur­rent Fishy Tales.  And since, begin­ning tomor­row, John and I are going to try a spell of eschew­ing carbs, there will be a spell of no fried fish for us.  You may look for­ward to a new spate of side dishes con­tain­ing no pota­toes, rice, cous­cous, pasta or bread… we’ll see how long that lasts.  I’m not big on self-deprivation.  Unless it involves… herrings.