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.

I spent all day today in one of my favorite ways: shop­ping for, cook­ing, pho­tograph­ing and writ­ing about food.  Today’s efforts: peach crum­ble and roasted toma­toes, for my lat­est con­tri­bu­tion to Vin­tage Mag­a­zine, out of New York next month.

Peach Crum­ble

(makes 4 large or 6 small servings)

2/3 cup plain flour

1/4 cup gran­u­lated white sugar
1/3 cup cold but­ter
6 ripe peaches

gen­er­ous sprin­kle fresh-ground nutmeg

even more gen­er­ous sprin­kle fresh-ground cinnamon

This is a lovely, light crum­ble, made even bet­ter if you can find a cin­na­mon grinder.  I’ve also turned my back on ready-ground nut­meg. The aroma of fresh-ground just runs cir­cles around the powdered stuff.

Peel the peaches, leav­ing the peels as long as you can, just for fun.  Cut the peaches into wedge

Place the flour and sugar in your food proces­sor and turn it on. Then, a lit­tle chunk at a time, drop the but­ter into the lit­tle hole at the top and clamp your hand over the hole: flour will tend to shower out the top when the but­ter dis­turbs it, the first cou­ple of chunks. Use up all the but­ter and whizz until the mix­ture is nice and sandy.  If you do not have a food proces­sor, the same result can be achieved by sim­ply rub­bing the cold but­ter with the flour and sugar until well-mixed and sandy.

Cover the bot­tom of an oven­proof dish, around 8x6 inches, with the peach pieces.  Scat­ter the crum­ble top­ping over the fruit and grate a sprin­kle of nut­meg, and of cin­na­mon, over the whole thing.

Bake at 350F for about 25 min­utes, till the top is golden. Serve with whipped cream.

Then there were the roasted toma­toes, too sim­ple almost, to require a recipe, but here goes anyway.

Roasted Toma­toes with Fresh Herbs

(serve 4–6 as an appe­tizer with salad, cheese or cured meats)

1 lb cherry toma­toes, prefer­ably on the vine

½ cup extra vir­gin olive oil

3 stems rose­mary, only leaves, minced

3 leaves sage, minced

3 stems thyme, only leaves, minced

sea salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

Lay the toma­toes in a sin­gle layer in an oven­proof dish.  Sprin­kle with the oil, herbs and sea­son­ings.  Roast in a medium oven, around 350F, for 45 minutes.

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All this activ­ity was lovely, and I can’t wait for the piece to appear.

But it was all a ruse to dis­tract me from the fact that my gor­geous teenager has turned 14.  My daughter’s birth­day was yes­ter­day, and what a gor­geous, sen­si­ble, funny, intel­lec­tual, con­ver­sa­tion­ally addic­tive per­son she has grown into.

We spent yes­ter­day evening watch­ing her open her presents: a book of pho­tos of the cats she fos­tered over the sum­mer, a gor­geous sweater from my sis­ter, a catly locket (plus reck­less spend­ing money of course) from my par­ents, funny Doc­tor Who things from us, wit­ness the nutty cake dec­o­ra­tion, of course.

The Best Choco­late But­ter­cream Icing EVER

(makes more than enough for one cake, plus licking)

Melt the choco­late in a dou­ble boiler.  Mean­while, beat the but­ter with the salt and vanilla extract with an elec­tric mixer — bear with me, it’s very bor­ing from here on out, just KEEP BEAT­ING — till airy and light, seri­ously 4 min­utes or so.   Then add the icing sugar a bit at a time — it’s very dusty — and keep beat­ing another 5 min­utes as you incor­po­rate it.  Then add the egg and beat another bloody 5 min­utes, and THEN add the choco­late, slightly cooled.  And then, trust me, it’s really worth it.

Glossy, smooth, choco­lately.  And I don’t even LIKE that kind of thing.

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We cel­e­brated with mem­o­ries of the extrav­a­gant shop­ping trips with John’s mom in Flo­rence where she kept repeat­ing, “This is REALLY the last present, I promise!”…

We looked through the photo albums, as we always do, at preg­nant me, at tiny baby Avery, and tod­dler Avery with her Grandpa Jack who I am absolutely sure is, some­where, vastly proud of who she has become.  He must look at her with her sen­si­ble, dar­ling girl­friends, her beau­ti­ful table con­ver­sa­tion man­ners, her Russ­ian vocab­u­lary and her flap­per bob, and most impor­tant, her gen­tle love for her grand­mother, and think some­how, “Yes, I knew she would become just exactly THAT per­son.”  I know he will con­tinue to watch, because she’s worth watch­ing.  We won’t forget.

Happy Birth­day, Avery.

And so Day Three of our Flo­ren­tine adven­tures dawned, pour­ing with rain.  We decided to cross the street and visit the Pitti Palace, and dear read­ers, given the choice, I would def­i­nitely wait for a sunny day, skip the seem­ingly end­less room after room of paint­ing after paint­ing and go instead to the Boboli Gar­dens, adja­cent to the Palace.  The only truly mem­o­rable thing about the Pitti Col­lec­tion, for us that day, was the dis­cov­ery of what I now think of as “The Num­ber One Way I Don’t Want To Be Mar­tyred.”  Poor Saint Agatha.

But at least we did get the view, above, of the clear­ing sky around lunchtime, and we left our cul­tural advance­ment behind in order to feast on our mar­ket tak­ings, back at home.

I have been try­ing to find, in my lit­tle Ital­ian dic­tio­nary, what the word was that the baker was using when I bought this bread.  It sounded like “sketchy,” but I can­not find it, really.  It was like a very crusty, salty focac­cio.  Since we had lost the bat­tle of No White Food already with the flour in the spinach dumplings TWO nights in a row, it seemed the bet­ter part of valor to eat this lovely bread, with our cheese and salami.

And then the skies cleared, and since the apart­ment was to open as the Barret-Browning Museum that after­noon, we decided to get our­selves to Santa Croce, a la “A Room With A View,” one of my favorite all-time books and films.  And it was just lovely.

Dear Michelangelo’s tomb!  Designed by Vasari, which I had for­got­ten.  I really must encour­age Avery to read his Lives of the Artists, one of the best, most gos­sipy takes on Flo­rence in the Renais­sance that you could wish for.  He knew every­one, and believe me, what hap­pened in Flo­rence did NOT stay in Flo­rence.  He told all.

We wan­dered around in the patchy sun­light, look­ing at all the plaques and tombs to var­i­ous peo­ple of note: Mar­coni, who invented the radio, and Machi­avelli, there are a cou­ple of strange bed­fel­lows!  And Lorenzo Ghib­erti, he of the golden doors on the Bap­tis­tery, and Dante!  Sadly the Giotto fres­coes were in restauro, which is one of the haz­ards of vis­it­ing Flo­rence.  When I lived there for a sum­mer, 25 years ago, it seemed we were con­stantly walk­ing all the way across the city to see some chapel or other, only to find it chiuso when we got there.  Avery pointed out that, “Fair enough, it’s been 25 years, they prob­a­bly NEED restor­ing.”  I could use a lit­tle touch­ing up myself.

From Santa Croce, we escaped into bright sun­shine and mutu­ally decided that for the moment, we were both art-ed out and church-ed out.  Avery was aim­ing for some gelato, and I had some seri­ous food shop­ping to do.

This shop, in a tiny, wind­ing side street, the Via Dei Neri off the piazza Santa Croce, had every­thing!  Balls of home­made moz­zarella di bufala, creamy and almost falling apart, olives of every descrip­tion, the most expen­sive tuna in olive oil I have ever come across — 12 euros for a jar! — and an enor­mous, tow­er­ing rack of spices in glass tubes corked like wine bot­tles.  And a gor­geous pro­sciutto, not too salty.  And jars of fagi­oli, the white beans so much more deli­cious, sim­ply sauteed with olive oil and gar­lic, than any bean liv­ing in Eng­land.  Why?  Because every­thing in Italy tastes bet­ter than any­thing any­where else.  It’s in the air.

We came home laden with parcels — fresh arti­chokes and firm heads of finoc­chio, fen­nel, with which I pro­posed to make a salad.  And when I cut into the first arti­choke, look what I found… or rather, “who.”

What a lucky fel­low, that I didn’t cut him in half!  I shrieked!  Every­one came run­ning.  “You must put him out­side some­where, Mummy!” Avery wailed, so I went to show him to Elena, the lovely house­keeper who was act­ing as docent in the museum that after­noon.  “Where shall I put him?”  “There is a pot­ted lemon tree out­side your bath­room.  He can go there.  And don’t worry: you can still eat the arti­choke!” she assured me, 100% Ital­ian.  Well trimmed and washed, it made a lovely salad, and the cater­pil­lar earned his siesta in the lemon tree.

Mean­while, the wild boar stew bub­bled away.  Fol­low­ing the restaurateur’s instruc­tions of the night before, the chunks of gor­geously mar­bled meat had reposed, overnight, in a bath of red wine.  Now, it filled the apart­ment with its gar­licky aroma.

Stufato di Cinghiale

(serve 4)

1 kilo/2 lbs wild boar meat, cut into man­age­able chunks

1 bot­tle ade­quate red wine

left­over tops and leaves of 2 bulbs fennel

1 white onion, quartered

6 cloves gar­lic, crushed slightly

olive oil to cover bot­tom of cook­ing dish

1 lb chest­nut or white mush­rooms, quartered

2 cups beef or chicken stock

1/2 cup panna al tartufo, truf­fled cream, if you’re in Flo­rence: ordi­nary cream if not

dash truf­fle oil

Wash the meat and dry it with paper tow­els.  Place in a heavy-bottomed dish large enough to con­tain all the ingre­di­ents.  Pour over the wine, then throw in the fen­nel tops, onions and gar­lic.  Leave in fridge overnight, covered.

Six hours before you are ready to eat, drain away all but about 1/2 cup of the wine, leav­ing the veg­eta­bles in the dish with the meat, then add the mush­rooms and the stock, to cover the meat.

Cook at a very low tem­per­a­ture, per­haps 200F/100C, so that the meat bub­bles slightly, either on the stove­top or in the oven, for six hours.  Check to make sure the stew is bub­bling con­stantly, and stir occasionally.

When the meat is thor­oughly cooked and ten­der, add the truf­fle or reg­u­lar cream and the driz­zle of truf­fle oil.  Serve with noo­dles or bread.

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While this stew was very good, I do not think it bub­bled quite con­sis­tently enough in the oven while we were away, because I was so intent on hav­ing the oven low.  As a result, the meat was a bit tougher than I would like, not the melt­ing qual­ity of my shoul­der of beef cooked much the same way.  It’s also pos­si­ble that wild boar is sim­ply tougher.  I have one rather famous cook­ing friend who says he’s never cooked it to his com­plete sat­is­fac­tion.  But he keeps try­ing, because the fla­vor is so lovely.  Not a big gamey, but a big, meaty fla­vor that went per­fectly with the mush­rooms and cream

And to start, we had a truly Ital­ian appe­tizer: moz­zarella di bufala with shaved truf­fles, and a driz­zle of truf­fle oil.  So sim­ple, so perfect.

Sighs of delight all around, in the tall-ceilinged din­ing room, where we felt like vis­it­ing roy­alty.  Out for gelato in the Piazza de la Sig­nora, with all the other tourists, which can be fun if you just for­get how much you’d like to fit in, and live there… and home to fall exhausted to sleep, with the motor­bikes screech­ing out­side the win­dows, the sounds of far-off music, voices shout­ing in Ital­ian too fast to be under­stood.  Heaven, in short.