John’s mother is here for her annual spring­time visit, which means we are dash­ing about to restau­rants, plays, shop­ping and the like.  And even before she arrived, life was full of adven­tures, the last week or so.

Upper­most in my mind, of course, is bell-ringing.  I have had my fourth les­son, since Arnold has decided that once a week isn’t enough to get me up to speed.  So for the fore­see­able future, I will be tied to Bell Num­ber Four on Thurs­day after­noons and Sat­ur­day morn­ings, pulling away at my rope.

In fact, truth be told, I am not “bell ring­ing” at all.  I am merely “rope-pulling,” since my bell has been silenced, to pro­tect the neigh­bor­hood from the inces­sant and mean­ing­less clang­ing that would result from my early efforts.

I arrived and parked my beloved bike out­side the bell­ring­ing cham­ber, stowed away my hel­met in my new cool nylon bas­ket, clipped to the front of my bike.  Arnold was sweep­ing the inevitable pollen and leaves from the cham­ber floor and said, “We’ll have to be quiet today, Kris­ten, as there’s a prac­tice for a wed­ding tak­ing place.”  The Rec­tor came up in his robes, rub­bing his hands together.

“Ah, I see another prac­tice is under­way.  These things can­not be rushed.  Bell­ring­ing takes a great deal of ded­i­ca­tion, does it not, Arnold, a patient and kindly dedication.”

“Oh, are you a ringer, Rec­tor?” I asked in inter­est (ringers seem to be everywhere).

“No.”  Laugh­ter.  “I am merely tal­ented at utter­ing commonplaces.”

So the les­son began, prac­tic­ing what is called the “back­stroke,”  which is just the tail of the rope.  Bell­ring­ing involves two strokes, one pulling the tail to make the bell swing, and one pulling the mid­dle, “the sally,” to stop the bell in its swing.  Each pull achieves a “ding.”  But you’d be amazed at the dif­fi­culty — the sheer com­pli­ca­tion! — of align­ing these two strokes, get­ting them to work in suc­ces­sion.  And so the two strokes are sep­a­rated in lessons.  I pull the back­stroke dozens and dozens of times, while Arnold takes care of the sally.

“Feet apart, hands point­ing down, eyes straight ahead, don’t for­get the lit­tle ‘flick’ at the end, arms up by your ears, STRETCH, don’t pull too hard, keep the tension…”

It’s mad­den­ing!  You would not believe how dif­fi­cult it is to remem­ber all these elements.

The future bride and groom, accom­pa­nied by the Rec­tor and the best man, arrived in the dim and cool nave, mov­ing about as they rehearsed their big day.  They all spoke very softly, as you do in a church, so I could not hear what they were say­ing.  But as I took a break from my back­stroke, sip­ping a bit of water, I looked at them and said to Arnold, “I think I’d rather be learn­ing to ring bells, today, than start­ing over learn­ing to be mar­ried.”  He laughed and shook his head, as he does at most of what I say.

I thought of all the stages one goes through in learn­ing to be mar­ried, if one does it in a tra­di­tional way: get­ting to know one another, decid­ing that this part­ner­ship will work, plan­ning a wed­ding, set­ting up home, think­ing about careers, think­ing about hav­ing a baby.

“Now don’t pull too hard, just let the rope fol­low its own course, but guide it to the ground, hands down, don’t for­get that ‘flick’ at the floor, just as if there were a twopence at your feet…”

As a grown adult, I think we all for­get that EVERY­THING has to be learned in sequence, one step at a time.  Noth­ing impor­tant is ever achieved by doing it all at once straight­away.  Learn­ing is slow.

“You need to achieve ‘mus­cle mem­ory,” Arnold advises, “so that when it comes time for you to pull the sally as well, the back­stroke will be mem­o­rized.  And then, you’ll mem­o­rize the two strokes together, so that when it’s time to learn pat­terns of ring­ing, the move­ments will be auto­matic.”  He smiled.  “Just like rid­ing your cycle.  You do not have to think about ped­alling any­more, your feet sim­ply remem­ber how to do it, so that you can use your mind to think of where you are going on your cycle, and then what method you are being asked to ring on your bell.”

Yes, there will be meth­ods.  I will begin with what is called “rounds,” where the bells are rung in order of their weight, small­est to largest, the small­est being the “Tre­ble” bell, and the largest the “Tenor” bell.  Prob­a­bly it makes sense to all of you: the small­est bell makes the high­est sound, and largest the low­est.  The small­est bell weighs about 400 pounds, and the largest nearly 1000.

My bell, num­ber 4, is right in the mid­dle of the ring: she weighs 600 pounds.  The sig­nif­i­cance of this weight should not be taken lightly, because if I had the rope wrapped around my hand and could not let go, and lost con­trol of the bell, the pulling pres­sure of the up-swinging bell would take all my fin­gers off at the knuckle.  It has been known to hap­pen.  By the same token, one must never EVER let a rope hang free onto the ground, because if a foot was to get caught, and the bell become down-swinging, at the very least the per­son would be car­ried upside down into the ceil­ing of the ring­ing cham­ber, and at the worst, an ankle bro­ken or foot pulled off.

Learn­ing to han­dle a bell reminds me of the way Avery has always described learn­ing to ride a horse.  For many, many hours, weeks, and months, one does the same bor­ing thing over and over, being shouted at inces­santly to remem­ber the hun­dred minute details nec­es­sary to mem­o­rize these move­ments.  And one must remem­ber the power of the bell and the horse: each really does have a mind of its own, whether it is grav­ity, or momen­tum, or a horsely desire to go left instead of right.  And although you can be told how to do what you want to learn, there will always be unpre­dictable aspects to the job that keep it from being entirely predictable.

Bells, like horses, are affected by weather, believe it or not!  The rope can become longer or shorter depend­ing on humid­ity or wind, so try­ing to mem­o­rize where to put my hands at any given moment is foolhardy.

“Treble’s going, treble’s gone…” the mag­i­cal phrase when every­one girds loins, brings the bells to be ready to ring, and waits for the lit­tle Tre­ble bell to begin the round.  Here is how that sounds, with a tower of eight bells, on handbells.

I have a feel­ing that I will be able to learn to ring rounds, but pos­si­bly not any of the com­plex “meth­ods” where the order of the bells is changed, hence the term “Change-ringing.”  I think it’s sort of like being able to walk, trot and can­ter, but not nec­es­sar­ily jump, or mem­o­rize a course of jumps.  I can accept that lim­i­ta­tion, I think.  We shall see.  This prob­a­bly more than ANY of you wanted to know about bell-ringing, but I didn’t want you to feel left out.

To try to thank Arnold for his patience and gen­er­ous spirit, I took an apple and banana cake last week.

The cake was, Arnold reported, “shared out to all the wed­ding band,” that is, the ringers who were ring­ing a peal to cel­e­brate Saturday’s wedding.

Tomor­row I will appear with a lemon-blueberry cake in hand.

I must expand my reper­toire in cakes, since I feel it is the least I can do to show my appre­ci­a­tion.  “I’m sorry that I don’t seem to be a nat­ural bell-ringer, Arnold,” I apol­o­gised yes­ter­day.  “No, you aren’t, but you are deter­mined, which is more impor­tant, in the end.”

Yes­ter­day my bell-ringing les­son was capped by a walk home in which I was pelted and pounded by first cold COLD rain, and then hail­stones, grow­ing ever larger as the min­utes passed by!  Dread­ful, and with thun­der and light­ning too.  Of course the storm began just after I had left all the com­mer­cial build­ings behind and there was nowhere to shel­ter.  Awful!

For some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent, if you have a chance to get to South­bank this week­end, go, do, to see the one-man play about WWI, “Pri­vate Peace­ful.”  For 90 min­utes, one young man — actor Mark Quar­t­ley — on the front­lines of the war, takes us into the past, through his Devon child­hood, his trag­i­cally killed father, his unre­quited love affair, and finally his expe­ri­ences in the war.  You will be tremen­dously impressed, sad­dened, given food for thought.  It’s only through Sunday.

In the wake of this mag­nif­i­cent play, I was off to South Kens­ing­ton with my friend Nelly to gather with other Seven Sis­ters col­lege grad­u­ates to hear a talk by the great detec­tive nov­el­ist, P.D. James.

How inspir­ing!  She is 90 years old.  “I woke up one day, in the 1960s, and real­ized that there would never be a ‘con­ve­nient’ time to write my first novel.  I also real­ized that I did not want to be an old woman — 90 now! — look­ing back and say­ing to myself, ‘Why did you never write that novel, see if you could do it?’  So I did.”

And just like that, the long and ven­er­a­ble series of 14 Adam Dal­gliesh nov­els was born.

How unut­ter­ably mar­vel­lous it would be, wouldn’t it, to stand before a room full of well-educated women hang­ing on one’s every word, at age 90, hav­ing achieved every­thing she ever felt she should.  “I feel so grate­ful that I was given this gift, to write intel­li­gent words that make up a detec­tive story, and I feel grate­ful that I have been able to exer­cise that gift, and give plea­sure to you.”

The read­ing was held at the gor­geously ele­gant and sedate Pol­ish Hearth Club.  Lovely, lovely poached salmon with hol­landaise, and a crunchy apple cake.  We ate, sur­rounded by that inef­fa­ble sound of many well-educated Amer­i­can women’s voices, raised to chat­ter­ing vol­ume by sheer numbers!

If you get a chance, do go to the Club for sup­per!  Go alone, and take the lat­est P.D. James with you.

And then I was off on my bicy­cle one evening this week, leav­ing John and Avery to fend for them­selves to serve the din­ner I had left, to turn up at Marylebone’s Daunt Book­shop to hear the incom­pa­ra­ble Donna Leon speak!  How I love her Inspec­tor Brunetti mys­ter­ies, set in Venice.  I queued up at the till, chat­ting with my old friend Adam who works there, buy­ing two copies of the lat­est Brunetti.  A hand clapped my shoulder.

“Now THAT’S what I like to see!  Mul­ti­ple pur­chases, mul­ti­ple purchases…”

It was SHE!

Yet another inspir­ing talk by an inspi­ra­tional woman.  These authors make it sound so easy.

“I am the least ambi­tious per­son you will ever meet,” Leon said.  “I was merely at the opera in Venice one evening, at La Fenice with a friend, and we were both in agree­ment that we didn’t like the con­duc­tor.  ‘How hard would it be to kill him off?’ we won­dered, and I decided not that hard, so I went home and wrote a detec­tive story about it. Then I put it in a drawer, where it stayed for a year until a friend con­vinced me to enter it into a con­test.  And it won.  And it was pub­lished, and that was that.”

THAT WAS THAT.  Twelve books later, she is just mag­nif­i­cent.  And funny.  And tiny!

I walked, Tubed and cycled home in the twi­light, arriv­ing home to find Avery and John in dis­mal dark­ness, hav­ing eaten their din­ner, but look­ing a bit lonely.  “We missed you!” Avery said at once, which from a very cool teenager is awfully nice to hear.  It seems to require the lady of the house to flip on the right com­fort­ing lights, to make things cozy.

But woman can­not live by detec­tive sto­ries alone, and so I bought a whole mess of king prawns and created:

Roasted Spicy King Prawns

(serves 4)

16 king prawns, raw, heads and shells on

1/4 cup each: soy sauce, hoisin (plum) sauce, sesame oil

juice of 1 lemon

a few shak­ings of Tabasco

Mix all these together, pour over king prawns which have been laid out in a sin­gle layer in a roast­ing dish, then place in the hot (220C/450F) oven of your Aga and roast for 8 min­utes, turn­ing once.  Cool slightly then serve with a bowl for the shells.

And of course, being May, all England-dwellers’ thoughts turn to aspara­gus, and straw­ber­ries.  Given this truth, I have been spend­ing an awful lot of time at my local fruit and veg, the incom­pa­ra­ble Two Peas in a Pod of Barnes Church Road.

There is sim­ply noth­ing like a plate of new Eng­lish aspara­gus, sauteed in but­ter and olive oil.

Ah, spring activ­i­ties in Lon­don… it’s been lovely.

Tonight we are off to see “Lord of the Flies” in Regent’s Park Open Air The­atre, and I think the oper­a­tive words will be “Open Air.”  It’s really chilly today!  We’ll be well wrapped in blan­kets and rugs if need be.  That’s May in Eng­land!  We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Just pho­tos for you this time, to inspire you to get in there cook­ing… I bet you can tell what every­thing is!  Thank you to my dar­ling pho­tog­ra­pher daugh­ter for the arti­choke pho­to­graph… oops, gave it away.

It’s true, what they say about rid­ing a bike!  I finally bit the bul­let last week and jumped on my new bike for my first for­ays into Lon­don traffic.

We’re liv­ing JUST that too far away from the places we want to be to rely on walk­ing every­where, so it was but the work of a moment to pop into a Chiswick cycle shop and get… a cycle.  That’s what they call it in Eng­land, “cycling,” and one “cycles” rather than “rides one’s bike.”  And I’ve dis­cov­ered a flaw in my per­son­al­ity that I never focused on until now.  I DAYDREAM.

Day­dream­ing is a nec­es­sary skill when one lives in an urban envi­ron­ment and spends a lot of time on pub­lic trans­port, or in the pas­sen­ger seat of a car.  I can’t read in the car because I get car­sick, and some­times even the clos­est of hus­bands and wives sim­ply can’t chat ANOTHER MINUTE.  So my mind wan­ders to pos­si­ble blog post top­ics, gro­cery lists, a new way to crisp chicken skin.

When on a bicy­cle, how­ever, there can be no such lapses!  I find myself sev­eral hun­dred yards from the last place I remem­ber pay­ing atten­tion, and I’ve no idea what’s hap­pened in the interim.  And since, as Avery points out to me, the bicy­cle is not a horse and there­fore can’t make judg­ments about safety, I could eas­ily cause myself griev­ous bod­ily harm, not to men­tion to inno­cent pedes­tri­ans.  No more gro­cery lists while cycling.

Last week I had a lunch date with my chum Antonella on the other side of the river, to deliver our ver­dict on the new posh fish and chip joint — we’re the first of all our friends to go! — in Shep­herds Bush, Ker­bisher and Malt.   So I hopped on my bike, strapped on my hel­met, firmly ban­ished ALL non-transport-related thoughts from my mind, and ped­aled off.   Think­ing of noth­ing, I promise you, but pedaling.

The ver­dict?  Very fresh high-quality had­dock, a choice of bat­tered, grilled or with Mat­zoh crumbs.  Ter­ri­ble limp chips, but it was only their sec­ond day in busi­ness so one hopes that will improve.  Nice light lemon may­on­naise and really shock­ingly deli­cious, unrub­bery baby cala­mari.  Not “crispy” as adver­tised, but again, that could improve.  The fish was nicely crunchy, so obvi­ously they know how.

Now, Antonella is Ital­ian and not at all shy about express­ing her­self, which makes her the ideal com­pan­ion for any sort of lark, includ­ing com­plain­ing about our per­fect fam­i­lies.  “Last night I made a chilli con carne for my chil­dren, when I could have sim­ply given them some­thing ready-made.  But no, we cook fresh food for our chil­dren.  And all they do was to com­plain that I had used the wrong sort of beans, and had prob­a­bly not made enough rice!  Aggh!”  This last with a per­fect Ital­ian deri­sive snort.  I had to counter with a tale of my own, from last week when I spent the evening receiv­ing swim­mers at Avery’s school pool. (One must do this once a term in order to have the priv­i­lege of using the pool.)

Now, a less vig­i­lant, not to say obses­sive food-providing par­ent might just tell her fam­ily to order a pizza.  But no.  I set a bone­less chicken mar­i­nat­ing in lemon, gar­lic, rose­mary and olive oil for John to pop in the oven.  I made aspara­gus soup with home­made chicken stock.  I steamed tiny arti­chokes and made a dress­ing for them.  And, piece de resis­tance, I set out some Marks & Spencer potato rosti to be baked.

“Ugh, there is a vein in my chicken,” Avery said imme­di­ately, “look.  Right there.”  “Well, it WAS a liv­ing thing, so some evi­dence of that is only to be expected,” I returned, where­upon John jumped onto the band­wagon say­ing he thought the soup was a lit­tle “stocky,” as in tast­ing too strongly of stock, and that while he was at it, he’d like me to know the arti­chokes were slightly… tired.

In short, the only accept­able part of the meal was the M&S pota­toes.  From a plas­tic bag.  In the freezer sec­tion.  “You said you want feed­back!” they moan in self-pity.  “Not that much,” I growl.

Antonella under­stood per­fectly.  “This after we have slaved to pro­vide them with home-cooked food.  I tell them some­time I will sim­ply slap them up the side of their heads, Italian-style.  They will not be expect­ing it.”

(The arti­chokes WERE a lit­tle tired, to be honest.)

From lunch we repaired to her gor­geous, serene house — she has an Aga! — for me to try on the jumpers she is knit­ting for me!  Another first: I have never had a piece of cloth­ing made for me, just me.  We actu­ally went together to choose the wool, and looked through pat­tern books and Antonella’s own col­lec­tion of jumpers, for me to choose what style, what sleeve length, how wide the cables would be, whether the waist should nip in a bit.  To me, being able to knit a jumper from scratch is akin to being able to fly a plane or per­form an appen­dec­tomy.  I just can’t imag­ine.  It will be magical.

On Fri­day night I felt I owed it to us to pro­duce decent arti­chokes, and since then I have heard from sev­eral foodie friends that they have never pre­pared one.  So I shall tell you how, because they are so good, and so good for you: anti-toxins, so you can have a Scotch with them and it can­cels every­thing out.

With a ser­rated knife (it’s faster), cut off the top of each arti­choke about an inch down.  Cut off the stem to leave about an inch.  Pull off the low­est dry leaves and dis­card, stop­ping when you get to nice, fresh, tight leaves.  With scis­sors, snip off the top 1/2 inch or so of every sin­gle leaf.  Place arti­chokes stem-down in a saucepan in which they will fit tightly so they don’t roll around, and for which you have a lid.  Pour water into the bot­tom of the saucepan and steam the arti­chokes for about 35 min­utes or until leaves pull out eas­ily.  Check the pan fre­quently as I don’t think I have EVER steamed arti­chokes with­out burn­ing the pan dry at least once.  It can be hard to clean.

When the arti­chokes are cooked and can be han­dled, serve them with a bowl for the dis­carded leaves, and with either melted but­ter or a mus­tardy vinai­grette.  To eat them, pull off each leaf, dip into what­ever, and scrape the meat off with your teeth, just at the end where the leaf was attached.  When you run out of leaves, you’ll be down to the “choke,” a thistly nasty thing at the cen­ter of the arti­choke.  Cut this off with a knife and you’re left with the meaty heart. which is heav­enly dipped into the but­ter or dress­ing and eaten luxuriously.

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

And on Sat­ur­day, another first!  My maiden voy­age into bell-ringing, which is not to say “cam­panol­ogy” yet because what I actu­ally did was too basic to implied I was study­ing anything.

I arrived at our local church.  My heart pound­ing a bit, I walked in at the hour appointed for “learn­ers,” to find my teacher Arnold ready for me.  A ret­i­cent, dig­ni­fied gen­tle­man about 6’4″, he took me on a tour of the clock room (where the clock reposes, not sur­pris­ingly) and the bell-chamber, and showed me how to “mute my clap­per,” a skill I’m sure John wishes HE had for me, at times.  All it requires is a bit of inner tube, tied around the bell’s tongue to hold it in place.

The rea­son you mute a bell clap­per for learn­ers is to pro­tect the neigh­bors from the clang­ing, repet­i­tive, annoy­ing sounds a bell would make as I pulled end­lessly over and over!  Just think: these bells are over 500 years old.  Parts of the church are that old as well, but other parts were burned by an arson­ist in the 1990s and have been restored.  There are still black streaks in the ancient wind­ing stone stair­case, where the flames licked.  “This stair­well was like a chim­ney,” Arnold explained.

I will have to learn in such tiny, tiny incre­ments.  The rope, for exam­ple, has two impor­tant parts: the lower bit, the tail, which you pull to bring the bell from where it’s rest­ing to the up posi­tion, and then the mid­dle bit, the sally, which you pull to bring the bell back down.  Or some­thing like that.  And for the whole of my first les­son, I never even got to touch the sally.  Arnold pulled the sally, since the begin­ning can han­dle only the tail to start with.  A whole hour of just pulling the tail!  That’s called the “back stroke” and it is much harder than it looks, with about a hun­dred instruc­tions to remem­ber for each go at pulling.

It may be sev­eral weeks before I’m allowed to touch the sally.

It’s a bit daunt­ing, and a bit dis­cour­ag­ing to be hon­est.  But as Lord Peter Wim­sey would say, “Faint heart never won so much as a bowl of cab­bages,” so I shall per­se­vere.  Look at my book.

And some­day, just think: these pages will make sense to me.

After my hour’s prac­tice, dur­ing which Arnold told me sev­eral times to stop frown­ing, to relax and not to pull so hard, the real ringers turned up and could not have been more friendly.  There are two 12-year-old girls!  One was assigned to stand with me for a bit and “explain any­thing that needs explain­ing,” which she did with impos­si­ble poise.  There is a spe­cial brand of sup­port­ive­ness among bell­ringers, I find, dif­fer­ent from the atti­tude of any other peo­ple I’ve ever met.  John puts it down to the nat­ural incli­na­tion of peo­ple with crazy, weirdo enthu­si­asms to stick together.

Then it was home to pre­pare for another first: our first din­ner party in the new house!  Oh, we’ve had the odd sleep­over girl to be fed, but this was a real party with sev­eral courses and new friends, our lovely next-door neigh­bors James and Susan.  He is a mas­sively enthu­si­as­tic gar­dener, which I could tell by hear­ing his rake and clip­pers over the fence as the weeks have gone by, but then, too, these appeared last week over the fence.

And when they arrived, they were bear­ing not only the usual gifts of cham­pagne and a bou­quet of flow­ers, but the best gift of all: a con­tainer of James’s “just-picked at half past six” ROCKET!

Well!  You know how I am about rocket.  How on earth did James guess?  He couldn’t stop smil­ing with gen­er­ous hap­pi­ness at my glee.  So pep­pery, so crunchy, sim­ply puts super­mar­ket rocket to shame.  Gorgeous.

John grilled an enor­mous pile of lamb chops, mar­i­nated in rose­mary and gar­lic, and I gave them Avery’s specially-requested risotto with spring beans, inspired by her long-ago cook­ery course at Jamie Oliver’s.  Just look how pretty the greens were.

We had a lovely time.  James and Susan are the eas­i­est pos­si­ble con­ver­sa­tion­al­ists, full of anec­dotes about their six grown chil­dren and sev­eral grand­chil­dren, and advice about liv­ing “on the right side of the river,” with some neigh­bor­hood gos­sip thrown in, and a flat­ter­ing, if bemused inter­est in my bellringing.

Avery and her two friends deigned to appear in time to eat, and the risotto did go down a treat.

Risotto with Broad Beans, Peas and Mint

(serves 8 with leftovers)

3 tbsps butter

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

2 small shal­lots, minced

600 grams/20 ounces arbo­rio rice

950ml/4 cups chicken stock (approximately)

2 cups broad beans, shucked

1 cup lit­tle green peas

1 bunch spring onions

hand­ful fresh mint

hand­ful fresh grated Parmesan

fresh black pep­per and sea salt to taste

dash cream, if desired

Melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan which has a lid.  Saute the gar­lic and shal­lots briefly, then add the rice and stir to make sure all the grains are coated with but­ter.  Add stock to cover the rice and stir, watch­ing the liq­uid become absorbed by the rice.  Con­tinue to add stock, stir­ring all the while, until the rice is al dente, that is until it yield gen­tly to the teeth but is not yet too soft.  Add the beans, peas, spring onions and mint and stir thor­oughly, heat­ing the veg­eta­bles through.  Add the cheese and sea­son to taste.  Add the cream if you like, and serve hot.

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

Very pop­u­lar!  While every­thing cooked, James took John on a hor­ti­cul­tural tour of our lovely gar­den, show­ing off its delights we would never have noticed on our own.  “This is pos­si­bly the largest bay tree in Great Britain,” he explained, “and while it’s not in your gar­den, its leaves are, so help yourself!”

And a black cherry tree!  “I hope you’ll get some before the mourn­ing doves do…”

And fresh thyme!  Sev­eral sprigs of it have gone into our chicken casse­role this evening.

A lovely evening.  It felt so good to be sit­ting around the can­dlelit table, wel­com­ing new friends.  I knew it would hap­pen, but I didn’t know how happy it would make me.  I sat up late into the night after the sleep­over girls had finally suc­cumbed, and thought about friend­ship and the funny, lovely forms it takes.  Hand­fuls of fresh rocket.

And finally, my first exper­i­ments with what I think will be an absolute sta­ple in our house: arancini!  Fried balls of left­over risotto, if you please.

Arancini

(1 ball per person)

Take your left­over risotto from the fridge about an hour before you want to eat, and spread it in a layer on a cookie sheet or bak­ing dish.  The idea is to take the chill off so that the fried ball will not be cold on the inside, nor will you have to burn the crumbs in order to get the inner bites warm.

Place Japan­ese panko bread­crumbs in a shal­low dish.

Heat what­ever quan­tity of taste­less oil you feel com­fort­able with in a uten­sil you like.  Since I wasn’t sure how my Aga would like get­ting oil to fry­ing tem­per­a­ture, I took John’s advice and used a small saucepan so as not to tax the heat­ing capa­bil­i­ties of my pre­cious stove.  My saucepan could accom­mo­date one aran­cino at a time, which is fine because then each one can rest on paper towel until they are all fried.

Now with clean hands, roll a good por­tion of risotto into a ball about the size of lime, or if you’re feel­ing as if you’d like them more fork than fin­ger food, a lemon.  Roll in bread­crumbs till com­pletely coated.  When a pinch of bread­crumbs in the oil fries instantly, the oil is ready.  Care­fully place each ball in the hot oil and let cook until brown, turn­ing fre­quently.  The idea is to get the inside warmed through — of course you can’t tell, but you can imag­ine — with­out over-browning the out­side.  When you are happy with the col­oration of your aran­cino, take it out and place it gen­tly on a few folded paper towels.

Repeat this process with all your risotto.  Then TUCK IN.

These lit­tle babies are heav­enly!  Creamy and savoury inside, with lovely crisp peas and broad beans, and crunchy on the out­side so that bit­ing into them is a taste and tex­ture sensation.

Since telling some friends about these con­tra­dic­tory delights — so rich and yet they’re just left­overs! — I have heard some inter­est­ing things.  Arancini are the South­ern Ital­ian word for them, where in Rome they are called sup­pli.  And my friends Mary and Rebecca tell me what when you tuck a piece of moz­zarella or fontina inside them, they are called sup­pli al tele­fono, because the melted cheese stretches like a tele­phone wire!  And then you can serve them in a pool of gar­licky, tomato sauce and you have basi­cally re-invented the wheel.

Now I’m going to rest on my lau­rels.  For the fore­see­able future, I’m not going to do any new things.  I’m just going to empty my mind, take a deep breath, and pedal off some of that rice.

For so long — really since Jan­u­ary — life has been a bub­bling caul­dron of house-moving con­fu­sion.  To move or not to move, what house would be best, where every­thing could go, when it would have to hap­pen, then the actual insan­ity of mak­ing it all happen.

And now… peace.

I had for­got­ten that peace­ful life meant I could sit qui­etly and mend a pile of bro­ken cloth­ing, make long-neglected doc­tors’ and den­tists’ appoint­ments, get up to date on my photo albums in advance of John’s mom’s visit — how she loves those albums! — exper­i­ment with recipes that had looked too chal­leng­ing when all I wanted was a roast chicken.  I had for­got­ten that all the mun­dane, repet­i­tive chores that make up daily life could be quite won­der­ful and ful­fill­ing, when they weren’t being accom­plished against the back­drop of upheaval, change and chaos.

I could reward myself for fin­ish­ing alpha­bet­iz­ing ALL the books by watch­ing every sec­ond of the Royal Wed­ding!  You can’t go wrong with Emma Bridge­wa­ter. We gave one of these bowls each to our moth­ers for Mother’s Day, just enjoy­ing the plea­sure of shop­ping and find­ing the per­fect gift.

The most heart­warm­ing devel­op­ment since tak­ing our famil­ial deep breath has been the redis­cov­ery of my friends!  They have emerged in all their glory, each one of them, to do just the thing I didn’t know I needed.  Sally with her hand-planted pot of spring flow­ers to grace my new doorstep, Dalia giv­ing me her after­noon for a spot of sushi glut­tony, con­fid­ing all our life woes and joys to each other.  Lille com­ing up with an extra ticket to “Phan­tom of the Opera” and thereby pro­vid­ing Avery with one of the great the­atre expe­ri­ences we all should have!  I’ll never for­get the fun of tak­ing the late-night bus into Pic­cadilly to wait out­side the glit­ter­ing the­atre for Avery and her friend, lis­ten­ing to them croon­ing, “The Phaaaaaa –ntom of the Opera is here… inside my mind,” in the crowded Tube all the way home!

And I’ve made a new friend!  There is noth­ing like a great butcher, and in Tony Swat­land of our local vil­lage of Sheen I have found a meaty gem.

I saun­tered into his lovely, old-fashioned shop devoted to his father’s sausage recipe, intent on procur­ing the best pork shoul­der, sausages and bacon I could, in advance of the Royal Wed­ding, since noth­ing says romance like pork, I always say.  And Tony helped me choose all the best morsels, point­ing to the MANY cer­tifi­cates on his walls pro­claim­ing his “Old Henry’s Sausages” to be the recip­i­ents of nation­wide awards.  (I hadn’t really been aware of just how many sausage com­pe­ti­tions there were, until then.)  “I’ll cut you some lovely beef fil­lets, best in the world,” he answered my request, “how you plan­nin’ on cookin’ ‘em?”  And then, face-burning embar­rass­ment: John and I had no money.  And Tony takes only cash.

“Take them along with you now, and just you come back when you get a chance.  Today, tomor­row, just as you like,” he insisted, although I would have been per­fectly happy to leave my wares with him until I could get to the bank machine.  But no: noth­ing would do but for me to go home with my essen­tially stolen goods, on the honor sys­tem.  What makes any­one that kind and trust­ing, in this day and age, in this enor­mous metrop­o­lis?  It felt as if every gen­er­ous impulse I had ever indulged had come back to me.  Heartwarming.

And that pork shoul­der, slow-cooked in the medium oven of my pre­cious Aga, and the next day pro­duc­ing the most sub­lime left­overs?  That was like mak­ing another friend, enjoy­ing that sandwich.

Oh heav­enly day, shred­ded rich pork, grated Ched­dar, thin-sliced red onion, hot gravy, sour­dough toast… noth­ing bet­ter in the world, and in fact — shh — bet­ter than the orig­i­nal slow-roasted shoul­der itself.  Some­times hum­ble left­overs are bet­ter than the fancy sup­per dish, and if that’s not a metaphor for life, I don’t know what is.

When John went back to pay Tony it was as if we had done him an enor­mous favor.  “Just you tell your good wife that if she needs any­thing, any spe­cial out­fit [butcher talk for spe­cial cuts, not a top and skirt], she just lets me know.”

Then there was the lux­ury of lunch at Sonny’s in our new High Street, with my beau­ti­ful friend Elspeth.  Time to dis­cuss all our impor­tant busi­ness.  “First, Kris­ten, can I ask you where I might find an ice crusher for next week’s school event?”  “But of course, I have an ice crusher!” I delighted in say­ing.  Who would have thought I’d be glad one day that Avery, as a 10-year-old, had rather obscure birth­day wishes?  From ice we moved on to gen­er­ally set­tling all the prob­lems of our lives, while rev­el­ling in the ridicu­lously accom­plished cook­ing: fresh bal­lo­tine of sea trout, cov­ered with fresh chopped pars­ley and accom­pa­nied by a demure and decep­tively per­fect beet­root and caper salad.  Tiny, per­fect diced beet­root, tiny baby capers, topped with pea shoots and a light vinai­grette.  Heaven to sit and be served with food I had not pre­pared!  And to look in a clan­des­tine fash­ion over our shoul­ders at Sara Stew­art and Alas­tair McGowan at the next table — I love celebrity-sighting!  Most of all, time to TALK, to appre­ci­ate each other, to ask and get advice.  The joy of a girlfriend!

There was time to devote a morn­ing to cook­ing for the Lost Prop­erty lun­cheon, both lamb meat­balls and Lil­lian Hell­man chicken, to take to my friend Sally’s house because she was kind enough to host the lun­cheon dur­ing our mov­ing chaos.  It’s the per­fect party dish: one part Hellman’s may­on­naise (now you get the name!) to one part grated Parme­san, mixed with lemon juice and Fox Point sea­son­ing, chicken fil­lets rolled in this mix­ture and then in bread­crumbs, and baked at 425F/220C for half an hour.  Bliss.

How peace­ful to take these offer­ings to Sally’s beau­ti­ful gar­den, sit with my fel­low vol­un­teers dis­cussing our teenagers in vary­ing states of socia­bil­ity… And is there any­thing bet­ter than a roast­ing dish full of whole gar­lic cloves, burst­ing with olive oil and sea salt?  I think not.  As long as all your friends eat its but­tery delights, all will be well.

And then, to top off all these happy activ­i­ties, came “Take Your Daugh­ter To Work” Day, a clever scheme at Avery’s school whose aim was to give the girls an inspir­ing, even thrilling day at the work­place of one of their parents.

You can see where I’m going with this.

“I am really NOT going to spend the day either watch­ing you cook, take pic­tures of food and write about it, or watch­ing Daddy work on our invest­ments.  Not that I don’t respect you both, I do.  But NO.”

What on earth were we to do?  It was but the work of a moment to air these con­cerns with my friend Fiona, who I am rapidly com­ing to think of as She Who Can Solve Any­thing And If She Can’t She Knows Some­one Who Can.

“I have a friend,” said Fiona as we packed up all Avery’s Amer­i­can Girl dolls to give to Fiona’s girls, “who has a friend whose part­ner is a fash­ion designer.  Per­haps Avery could go along to his stu­dio, see what he does all day?”

And thus was sprouted the project that — after many emails to and from dar­ling Fiona, her friend, HER friend, and his part­ner and me — put Avery and me on a crowded, stinky early-summer com­muter Tube from our neigh­bor­hood of South­west Lon­don to her des­ti­na­tion… North­east Lon­don.  A true odyssey, end­ing in my hand­ing Avery over to Stephane St Jaymes of Lon­don Fash­ion Week cat­walk fame, for the day of her life.

I looked once or twice or a hun­dred times at my watch that day, won­der­ing what they were talk­ing about, how she was get­ting on, thank­ing Fiona a thou­sand times in my mind… and then off again to pick her up, mak­ing our way by car this time across the river, across town, down a roman­tic brick alley­way, really, through a sug­ges­tive and excit­ing series of door­ways, to find Avery with Stephane and his two assis­tants, talk­ing nine­teen to the dozen about “mood boards” and the new Col­lec­tion, the fun they’d had work­ing together all day.

“I really want her to come and intern with me,” Stephane said in his ele­gant yet friendly way, “She knows so much about com­put­ers, blogs and Face­book and Twit­ter… and she’s so New York.”

How gen­er­ous is that?  For that mat­ter how gen­er­ous was Fiona to go to such lengths for Avery, to give her an excit­ing one-of-a-kind day, and a new ambi­tion… “For­get every­thing I’ve ever said I wanted to do: THAT is what I want to do!”  And really, isn’t that what being 14 should be about: wak­ing up to a new day, meet­ing new peo­ple, giv­ing it your all and then com­ing away feel­ing that another door has been opened to you?

I have my energy back now, after a week sur­rounded by the pals I love who — each in her own spe­cial way — has gone the extra mile to make life worth liv­ing.  It’s never easy to know how to give all that back, but I am ready to begin trying.

I wish I could take you all on a tour of my local farmer’s mar­ket this rather driz­zly, warm Sat­ur­day morn­ing.  It’s the sort of mar­ket where you have to take just a LIT­TLE bit of cash, or you’ll find your­self spend­ing way more than you expected because every­thing is so tempting.

My cook­ing life is set­tled for the next few meals: aspara­gus soup with my fresh 36-hour Aga chicken stock (I know it sounds crazy, but the stock REALLY did cook for 36 hours in the slow oven and is the rich­est, dark­est chicken stock I’ve ever tasted), Eton Mess for Avery’s sleep­over party tonight, with those lus­cious straw­ber­ries, scal­lop and pars­ley pasta for us tonight after I’ve cooked the requested car­bonara for the girls’ din­ner.  What bet­ter way than car­bonara, to use these sadly-named but gorgeous-tasting lit­tle morsels?

And then there will be the pork loin roast tomor­row night… the only ques­tion being whether to cook it high and fast and have it a lit­tle pink, or low and slow and have it ten­der and falling apart?

Of course the tri­umph of any Sat­ur­day at the mar­ket is the ridicu­lously caloric, sat­is­fy­ingly savoury sausage, egg and cheese burger… I’m really sorry I can’t share it with you…

It’s prob­a­bly for the best that I had my cau­tious hus­band in charge of the wal­let today!  Also there’s the nat­ural deter­rent of a small Eng­lish refrig­er­a­tor… I just couldn’t buy any more food.  And those scal­lops came in handy right away.

Scal­lops with Spaghetti and Parlsey

(serves 4)

2 dozen scallops

1 lb spaghetti (I pre­fer De Cecco)

1/2 cup olive oil

5 cloves gar­lic minced

1/2 tsp red pep­per flakes

salt and pepper

1 large hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped

1 large hand­ful curly pars­ley, chopped

1 cup fresh bread­crumbs, toasted lightly

The sauce will cook in just the time your spaghetti needs to boil, so bring the water to a boil and put in the pasta.

In a large fry­ing pan, heat the olive oil and sim­mer the gar­lic, but don’t let it brown. Place the scal­lops in the oil and cook on high heat until they turn opaque (about two min­utes), turn­ing occa­sion­ally. Add the pars­leys, the chilli flakes and salt and pep­per, and toss gen­tly  Turn off the heat.

Drain the pasta and add to the scal­lops, then turn up the heat quite high and toss with the bread­crumbs. Delicious!

It was heav­enly peace­ful to come home, sit in the gar­den chair with a bowl of pop­corn and a good mys­tery, share a cup of tea with the mother, then the father, of Avery’s sleep­over guests, trad­ing sto­ries of school, mov­ing house, recipes.  The girls gig­gled uncon­trol­lably in the back­ground as they do, we had sup­per out­side and watched them scuf­fle and laugh, caper­ing under that mys­te­ri­ous tree — sumac? Japan­ese Ash?  Never mind, it was a glo­ri­ous evening.

And next week at the Mar­ket, I think I’ll be tempted by the fresh whole sea bass… watch this space.

Isn’t it hard to believe that two weeks ago we were still in the old house?  We are now free of the final brown card­board box — hip, hip, hooray! — every sin­gle object is in its new spot, and we have breathed a sigh of relief.  This is the view at night, from the gar­den into the kitchen, com­plete with the crouch­ing kitty at the end of the rug.  All is peaceful.

It’s been a long, hard slog.  The cats have done their best to set­tle in, in the quirky, dra­matic way cats have of deal­ing with any new sit­u­a­tion.  Keechie, the crazy cal­ico, dis­ap­peared for sev­eral hours the day the art installer came (with his noisy drills and clouds of dust).  John and I were sit­ting in our study, try­ing to get some work done while the pic­tures went up, when our eyes swiv­elled toward the fire­place on the far wall.  “What is that scratch­ing sound?” I asked, just in time to see a patchy orange and black face appear from the chim­ney, shades of the last time we moved.  Keechie seems to find the inside of a chim­ney the safest spot to repair to dur­ing moments of stress, for­get­ting each time that she will then be cov­ered with soot which has to be licked up.

“Catch her, catch her, don’t let her get to the beige car­pet upstairs, OR our bed!” John whis­pered loudly, but there was no catch­ing her.  She hud­dled behind the sofa for the dura­tion, emerg­ing only for sips of water from the bowls safely behind boxes of books.  Poor dear.  She’s white again now, where’s she’s sup­posed to be white.

On the bright side, we’ve dis­cov­ered piles and piles of pho­tos of Baby Avery which have found places to live in the new house.

And because just mov­ing in wouldn’t be drama enough, John turned up with a low-grade fever, as he said feel­ing ill enough to feel ill, but not enough to stop unpack­ing boxes.

And Lord Peter Wim­sey, the big white tabby, came home from the ken­nel with reports of teeth that needed urgently to be pulled, so we fit­ted in emer­gency vis­its to the vet to arrange for the unbe­liev­ably expen­sive and wor­ry­ing pro­ce­dure, poor lit­tle guy.  But he’s recov­ered too, from his trau­mas.  Here he is, con­fronting the new Vis­i­tor Kitty in the garden.

And in fact, decid­ing the Vis­i­tor Kitty wasn’t wel­come, and dri­ving him away!  But he comes back every evening.

In my spare time, I have had my first Aga-stove dis­as­ter.  It turns out that the oven doors are so tightly insu­lated that no cook­ing smells at ALL emerge unless you open the doors.  So that “something’s cook­ing” aroma that serves to remind my addled brain that “something’s in the oven” didn’t hap­pen.  It turns out that a blue­berry crum­ble left in even a rather low oven for three hours will be… well, not edible.

But I made up for it with a truly won­der­ful chicken dish.

Braised Chicken with Rose­mary and Yogurt

(serves 4 with leftovers)

1 whole chicken, cut into quarters

2 tbsps butter

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

2 stems fresh rose­mary, leaves only, minced

1 cup fat-free yogurt

1/2 cup chicken stock

1 cup dried porcini mush­rooms, rehy­drated in 1/2 cup boil­ing water

juice of 1/2 lemon

Remove the skin from the chicken parts.

In a heavy oven-proof casse­role dish with a close-fitting lid, melt the but­ter and brown the chicken on all sides.  Remove to a dish and set aside.  In the same casse­role, saute the gar­lic and rose­mary, then place chicken back in dish.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the yogurt and stock.  Drain the rehy­drat­ing liq­uid from the mush­rooms and whisk the liq­uid together with the yogurt and stock.  Pour mix­ture over the chicken, add the mush­rooms and place the lid on top.  Cook in the medium oven of the Aga, or at 325F/170C for at least 1 1/2 hours.  Serve with steamed bas­mati rice.

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

Avery was in heaven.  “Can I just drink this sauce?  Do you have a straw?”  It’s but­tery, savoury, fra­grant and com­fort­ing.  But as with so much of my food, not pretty, so no photo.  That’s my big chal­lenge of the cook­ing future: how to make savoury, lovely food PRET­TIER.  Or I could just sur­vive on “good Eng­lish grass,” steamed and tossed with melted but­ter.  No tweak­ing nec­es­sary to make that plate look like a dream.

But the real story of the past week has been the books.  All 57 brown card­board boxes of them.  In its own strange way, the job of unpack­ing and re-alphabetizing that col­lec­tion of books is a heart­warm­ing task.  Like gong to a school reunion where you encounter all your old friends, remem­ber­ing when you first met them, why you made friends to begin with, some­times shak­ing your head, ask­ing, “What on earth are you doing here, and why did I ever care?”  But more often, cher­ish­ing the Agatha Christies, the Dorothy L. Say­ers, the Salingers and Poes and Dickens.

There’s noth­ing as tan­ta­liz­ing as a eom­pletely empty wall.  Unless it’s a wall full — an hour later — of empty shelves.

And then, after the book­shelf man has departed, the real work begins.  Even though the books were packed in alpha­bet­ized order and num­bered, some­times we had to unpack three or four boxes to get all of one let­ter, and pile them up on the table in order to get them shelved prop­erly.  Exhaust­ing!  And HOT, and dusty.  The after­noon wore on and on, the sun shift­ing overhead.

Finally, six hours later, we had done it.

We con­grat­u­lated our­selves weakly, and poor fever­ish John col­lapsed with a bowl of chicken soup, while I put­tered about, wait­ing for Avery to come home from the the­atre… which she did, in the wee small hours, full of “Franken­stein” and empty of food.  So I made a grilled cheese sand­wich for her, sat with her while she ate, in the Room of Books, then took her up to her own study to pack up for the next school day.

A cozy home.  Finally set­tled.  Onto the next adventure.

What a strange morn­ing to wake up to here in Lon­don, more than 3000 miles from where I was on just such a per­fect blue-sky day nine years and seven months ago.

I can under­stand the jubi­la­tion of those peo­ple whose loved ones died that day, or whose jobs involved dig­ging out the rub­ble or pro­tect­ing all of us New York­ers from future harm, those with loved ones in the brave armed forces.  They must feel a real sense of jus­ti­fied revenge, a life taken in return for so much that was taken from them.

I myself would have pre­dicted I’d be jubi­lant today.  The wishes of that man meant the destruc­tion of my neigh­bor­hood, the loss of my lit­tle daughter’s school, the removal of the sense of safety and a happy future that seemed to belong to most Amer­i­cans on Sep­tem­ber 10, 2001.

But I am not jubi­lant.  I feel instead a wish to turn my eyes and ears away from the news.

On the day, and for some months after­ward, I had some sense of our gov­ern­ment and par­tic­u­larly our Pres­i­dent as a father fig­ure: there to pro­tect us, and if that failed, to hunt down the one who had harmed us and exact jus­tice.  The way you go home after someone’s bul­lied you at school, and your father picks up the phone, or walks down the street, hold­ing your hand if you’re brave enough to go with him, and he con­fronts the bully and even his par­ents, and an apol­ogy is offered, pun­ish­ment is promised, a les­son learned.

As the months and then years went by, I was as scared as any­one — more so.  I love New York City with all my heart, and to see the gap­ing wound in our pre­cious neigh­bor­hood caused a daily, hourly stab of pain that took a great deal of time to lessen.  I was made of The Wrong Stuff, imag­in­ing that the ter­ror­ists had tar­geted me and my fam­ily, would fol­low us wher­ever we went.  I spent far too much time wor­ry­ing about whether I’d rather be blown up on a bridge or in a tun­nel while mak­ing my way to New Jer­sey.  Every day at school pickup I breathed a sigh of relief that another day of sep­a­ra­tion from my child was over and I could take her home and be the pro­tec­tor myself.

No father could help me with the bully.  I was on my own.

And we all did con­front the bully.  We con­tin­ued to go to work, to take our chil­dren to school, to go down the sub­way steps under the streets of New York, to start up new busi­nesses and look to the future.  We rebuilt our lives and came out on the other side hav­ing looked the worst in the eye and said, “You can­not ruin my life.  I am still here.”

Now the bully is dead.  A dif­fer­ent father from the one we expected has exacted revenge, I sup­pose.  But we have come so far, to recover on our own, that I am not pre­pared to go back to who I was nearly ten years ago and feel sat­is­fac­tion at the death of a per­son I’ve worked so hard to thwart.  It took me a long time to rejoice in a per­fect blue-sky day again, and that is exactly what I am going to do, today, hold­ing all my fel­low New York­ers in my heart.