Paris Butter

(makes a large banana-sized roll, keeps for up to 3 months in foil in the freezer)

250g/1 cup butter

1 tbsp each: garlic, shallots, cornichons, capers, fresh tarragon, fresh thyme, fresh dill, fresh chives, freshrosemary, tomato paste, lemon zest, pine nuts, anchovy, brandy, madeira

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 pinch each: curry powder, cayenne pepper, paprika

juice of 1/2 lemon

Simply throw everything into a food processor or blender and mix until completely smooth.  Roll in foil in a cylinder shape and freeze.  Cut off one coin-shaped piece for each steak.

You know how it is.  Carrot cake, “Shake ‘n Bake” and tofu in my childhood in the 1970s, cold pasta salad and stuffed potato skins in the 1980s, “nouvelle cuisine” in the 1990s with every portion cut in half and every sauce reduced to a sticky spoonful, and anything fat-free in the noughties (appropriately enough!).  These trends pop up everywhere, and overnight everyone is eating them and maybe even cooking them.  Some of them even take up a permanent place in our diets, like arugula — my personal favorite.

Like everything else in the super-modern world, food fads are speeding up.  Especially in a big international city like London, every year it seems something new takes the food world by storm.  I’m not  much of one for going out to restaurants as you know — preferring the comfort of my own kitchen.  But it’s important to go out now and then just to see what innovative, mad trend has taken hold for the moment.

Two years ago, it was “sous-vide,” a French technique for cooking everything under the sun vacuum-packed in a hot-water bath.  I’ll admit it: we bought a vacuum packer and filled an enormous stockpot with hot water, cooking a leg of lamb for 150 hours or some such nonsense.  It was funny to try, but in the end a bit silly.  That was that for sous-vide and moi.

Last year saw an atrocious development called “foam,” or “espuma,” known in our household as “spit.”  Every lovely piece of meat in a trendy restaurant was topped with a spoonful of Emperor’s New Clothes in the form of bubbly spit.  “Basil foam,” “celeriac foam.”  It was spit.

This year, from what I can see, the fad is everything turned into “dirt.”  I am cautiously optimistic and even tempted to make some dirt of my own.  The concept is this: you cook an ingredient to the point of dehydration, then you crumble it into a crunchy handful and scatter it over the dish.  For example, the photograph at the top of this post is from our absolute favorite new restaurant, The Corner Room at the Town Hall of Bethnal Green.  It’s squid topped with chorizo dirt.  Savoury, simple, unexpected, crunchy and strangely exciting.

This same restaurant serves a dish of venison loin covered in ash, sprinkled with… dirt made from rye breadcrumbs soaked in squid ink and dehydrated.  Heaven!

The other new fad I see all around is poaching.  This can be done in a sous-vide manner, or as I like to do, poached in a shallow amount of olive oil.  The Corner Room offers this completely innovative dish of poached cod in a clam porridge, drizzled with a coriander pesto.  I know, it sounds MAD.  But in the right hands, these new, daft, jolly techniques can raise food to a level where every mouthful is a delightful surprise.

The older I get, the less tolerant I am of paying anyone to cook for me something I could cook for myself.  That’s what makes the Corner Room and restaurants like it - l’Etranger in Kensington, for example — such fun to patronize.  Ingredients you might not think to pair at home (foie gras and tuna tartare!), cooked in a way you would never imagine, techniques beyond my skill!

I’m hot on the trend here in England for nose-to-tail eating.  The idea behind this rather felicitous phrase is that if we’re going to kill animals to eat them, we should eat ALL of them.  It’s just too bad that the term for all the parts of the animal that Americans don’t want to eat is “offal.”  Liver, kidneys, sweetbreads, hearts: the butchering term simply means any part of the animal that is interior, inside other parts.  And my new hands-down favorite: beef cheeks.

Sadly I cannot give you a photograph of this dish because like so many of my homely, cozy, slow-cooked dishes, it is just awful to look at.  But do give it a try.

Beef Cheeks Slow-Braised with Mushrooms

(serves 4)

2 beef cheeks, trimmed of sinew (but don’t go crazy trimming)

2 tbsps vegetable oil

1 white onion, diced

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 carrots, diced

6 large-ish mushrooms, quartered or cut in eighths depending on size

2 tbsps chopped thyme leaves

1/2 bottle good red wine

chicken or veal stock to cover

Slice the beef cheeks in half to make a portion per person.  In a heavy ovenproof dish with a lid, heat the oil and saute the beef cheeks just briefly on all sides and remove to a dish.  In the remaining oil, saute all vegetables till soft.  Add the thyme, cheeks and the wine, then add enough chicken stock for the meat and vegetables to be completely, generously covered.  Place in a low oven, 300F/160C, covered.  Cook for at least four hours and serve with noodles or mashed potatoes.

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Now this is a food fad I can get behind.  It’s morally upright, it’s the most inexpensive cut of beef on earth, it’s fun to say.  It’s also foolproof, cooks itself and falls apart on your fork.  You will never eat a more heartwarming, comforting cut of beef.

Get out then, out of the kitchen and pop into a trendy but not silly restaurant.  Suspend disbelief and order some dirt, or an innard.  Even an innard topped with dirt.  See if you’re not inspired.

(serves 4)

2-lb/1 kilo pork belly, skin scored

1 tbsp sea salt

pinch fresh black pepper

1 stalk rosemary, leaves only, chopped

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tbsp olive oil

Mix all seasonings.

Place pork belly in sink and pour over 1 cup boiling water.  Lift pork belly into roasting tin and rub the seasoning mixture into the scoring slits.

Roast at 425F/220C for 30 minutes, then turn heat down to 260F/140C and roast for 5 hours.  Remove from oven and raise temperature to 425F/220C again.  Let belly rest for 10 minutes before removing the “crackling,” the skin and putting belly back into hot oven for 10 minutes.  Serve hot or warm.

(serves about 6 as main dish)

4 medium eggplants, cut in 1/2 slices

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3 large potatoes

1 lb/500g lamb or beef mince

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 medium white onion, minced

1 large tin crushed plum tomatoes

3 tbsps tomato paste

large bunch curly parsley, chopped

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 tbsps butter

2 tbsps flour

2 cups whole milk

pinch ground nutmeg

sea salt and fresh black pepper

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

Fry the eggplant slices in the vegetable oil until soft, then drain on paper towels and set aside.  Meanwhile boil the potatoes and slice them in 1/4 inch slices.  Set aside.

Discard the eggplant oil and fry the beef.  When nearly cooked through, add the garlic and onion and fry until they are soft.  Set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, parsley and cinnamon, then stir into the beef mixture.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, then add the flour and cook for about a minute till bubbly.  Gradually whisk in the milk and nutmeg and whisk over medium heat till thickened.

Now, assembly time.  Place half the eggplant slices in the bottom of a large casserole dish (at least 9x13 inches).  Spread the potato slices on top, then add the rest of the eggplant.  Pour over the beef mixture, then pour over the milk sauce.   Sprinkle over the Parmesan cheese.  Cover the dish with foil and bake at 425F/220C for 40 minutes.  Serve hot or warm

(serves about 6 as side dish)

4 medium eggplants, cut in 1/4 inch slices

1/2 cup olive oil (add more if and as needed)

1 soup-size tin chickpeas

1 soup-size tin plum tomatoes

2 medium white onions, sliced thin

6 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup shredded cheddar or mozzarella cheese

sea salt and fresh black pepper

With all eggplants sliced and ready, heat olive oil in a large shallow frying pan.  In a series of single layers, fry eggplant slices until soft.  Set aside on paper towels.

Fry sliced onions in the leftover oil until soft, then add garlic.  Do not burn the garlic.

When all eggplant and onions are fried, cover the bottom of a 9x13 casserole dish with a layer of eggplant, then spread the onions and garlic over them.  Add another layer of eggplant and scatter over half the plum tomatoes, squeezing them into smallish pieces as you take them out of the tin.  Add salt and fresh pepper.  Add half the cheese, then finish with a layer of eggplant and top with the rest of the tomatoes and scatter the remaining cheese on top.

Cover with foil and bake at 425F/220C for 30 minutes.  Serve hot or warm.

(serves four as a side dish)

2 medium eggplants

1/4 cup sunflower or other vegetable oil (add more as needed)

2 tbsps Mirin (Japanese rice wine)

2 tbsps soy sauce

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 tbsp miso paste (either white or brown)

juice of 1/2 lemon

Cut the eggplant into bite-sized pieces and saute in the vegetable oil slowly until very soft.  Drain eggplant on paper towels and discard oil.  Mix all other ingredients and toss with the eggplant.  Serve warm.

Left Hand

It was used well before, like a mould-mottle book

hastily written notes tasting of ink

bluish-green dye of a near forgotten Easter

recalling the stark white and red nurses’ uniforms

the coarse wool of a soldier’s coat

the flimsy paper of cigarettes and yellowed tobacco stains

a tumbler of whiskey, the weight of the glass

crescents of nails pressing into its palm

not quite an entity in itself,

not quite enough on its own,

content in its inferiority –

an understudy, unprepared.

********

I cannot extol enough the brilliance of the Arvon way of life.  Several years ago I spent a week in the wilds of Devon on a course designed to teach us “food writing.”  Mornings of workshops with fellow writers and tutors — published food writers — lunches spent discussing whose work had been the star that morning, then afternoons in private tutorials and massive editing after hearing what they had to say!  Then dinners cooked in teams and evenings spent reading aloud.  An intensity I can’t really describe, but now Avery understands.

Almost better than the writing are the friendships forged.  I don’t want to think about life without the dear, dear friends I made during that week.  We will have our annual reunion in May, bringing masses of ingredients together to spend endless hours in the kitchen cooking our favorite dishes, laughing and catching up.  Oh, the pork crackling, the 15-ingredient leg of lamb, the celestial chocolate pudding…  In the afternoons we will read aloud whatever we’ve been writing lately.  A life-changing experience.  I am thrilled for Avery that she has had the same joyous week, never to be forgotten.

How we missed her!  But we were out in the countryside having our own adventures.  Over 20 years ago John and I, together with his fabulous parents, discovered the cleverest of English organizations: The Landmark Trust.  It calls itself a “building preservation charity,” but in reality it’s a completely quirky and quixotic group of people obsessed with saving the past and bringing it into the present.

They find abandoned barns, churches, mills, and that most eccentric of British buildings, the “folly.” (picture a giant stone pineapple with beds and bathrooms inside!)  They chase away birds in residence, tear away plaster walls to reveal 18th century paintings, frescoed ceilings, ancient floors and doors.

Everything that can be preserved is preserved, and furnished with blue willow china, pristine white bedlinens, priceless oriental rugs and antique furniture, puzzles, books and oh… the views.

Since our early days living in England in the 1990s right through to this week, we’ve stayed in perhaps 20 Landmark Trust buildings — in England, Scotland, Florence, Vermont, Ireland… simply heavenly.  And I can cook!  This time it was the West Banqueting House in Chipping Campden, the Cotswolds.  There is no more gorgeous place on earth, to my mind.

Naturally, when it’s April in England, a great deal of time must be spent pursuing the local livestock, namely… lambs.

We took endless long walks across the fields of stunning rapeseed, soon to be harvested and made into the precious elixir, rapeseed oil.

We visited another of our old favorite places from many years ago, Buckland Manor.  Images of a long-ago visit with my parents filled my mind, my young and healthy dad emerging dripping from the swimming pool, looking forward to the hotel’s luxury cream tea and a walk in the beautiful gardens.

We visited church after church, admiring the ancient floors with their inset gravestones.

Of course, you can’t always have deadly serious graveyards.  This particular specimen from our local churchyard had us shaking our heads.  Either Alice Mabel was an awfully understanding wife, or there’s some strife in the afterlife.

We visited the lovely market town of Stow-on-the-Wold for a little cheese — Stowe Soft, a very nicely smelly goat cheese — and organic salmon, and the incomparably posh and stylish Daylesford Organic, where I picked up a head of celeriac and a bundle of wild garlic for the stunningly delicious:

Celeriac Puree with Wild Garlic and Sour Cream

(serves 4)

small head celeriac, peeled and cut into cubes

skim milk nearly (but not quite) to cover

2 tbsps sour cream

2 tbsps butter

handful wild garlic leaves, chiffonade-chopped

salt and pepper to taste

In a medium saucepan, place the celeriac and pour on skim milk, perhaps 1 1/2 cups depending on the size of the celeriac head.  Do not cover celeriac completely or you will end up with celeriac soup (still gorgeous but not this recipe!).  Cook over medium heat, taking care not to burn on the bottom, until the celeriac is soft, perhaps 25 minutes.  Puree with hand blender, then beat in sour cream and butter, then add wild garlic.  Season to taste.

As always when we are without Avery, I cook madly a whole host of dishes she doesn’t like.  Among them this week was roasted pork belly from Checketts butchers in Bourton-on-the-Water.

Is there any more savory, rich dish?

And the simplest of all possible side dishes, an onion with its center spooned out and filled with Robiola cheese, then sprinkled with Fox Point Seasoning and baked for 30 minutes.

With a visit to historic Chastleton House…

And our traditional walk across the fields between Lower Slaughter and Upper Slaughter to gaze upon Lords of the Manor Hotel, another favorite from over the years…

Home again, and reunited with our newly minted poet, life is very peaceful indeed.

I keep thinking life will slow down and that “tomorrow” will be quiet enough for me to sit down and relish all the activity.  But every day brings more, more, more.  So I have randomly chosen “today” so I can finally tell you what’s been going on in our busy lives.

Lots of writing!  I am terribly excited to be the London correspondent for an up-and-coming foodie website, “Handpicked Nation.”  This article is the result of what my family will report are many, many eggs being eaten in taste tests, much canvassing of my friends.  Do you refrigerate your eggs?  Why or why not?  Do you buy free range, organic?  Eggs everywhere, in a nutshell.

Next up is a piece on pork belly, a wonderful ingredient very popular here in England, and in Asia, and just making its way around American kitchens and restaurants.

And theatre!  We’ve been to a marvellous production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, at the Lyric theatre in Hammersmith. I hate to tell you that it’s closed now, but if you ever get a chance to see the Filter Theatre Group do anything, RUN don’t walk.  Avery’s been struggling to write what is ultimately a brilliant essay, analyzing the production.  A play within a play within a play, etc.  Fourth wall?  Forget it.

And then it was “Being Shakespeare” with Avery and a school friend, and whilst it was impressive, I must warn you that you’ll have to go prepared to care a LOT about the Bard.   I might not be quite enough of a devoted fan to have appreciated it as much as others might.  A one-man show, almost no props!  All about Will.

The most impressive thing about the play was — as is anything to do with Shakespeare here in England — is the alive-ness of the man himself.  We feel he is quite here, with us, judging the production.  “Wouldn’t he love that ‘Midsummer’?” we ask, and we all feel he has an opinion.

And Simon Callow is a national treasure, in the role or in any other role.  Love that man.  Once, 20 years ago, John and I were coming out of a London restaurant and John hid around the corner of the entrance, to jump out at me coming along behind him and shout BOO!  Only somehow Simon Callow had got between him and me, so poor Simon got the shock!

And then we had American visitors, as we so often do, and I took them to see “Out of Sync,” a vastly impressive art installation at Somerset House.

And the cooking that has been going on!  Even more exiting to me than the actual cooking is the new collaboration that has grown up between me and Avery.

As you all know, I struggle with the evolution from little-girl Avery to growing-up Avery.  There are so many little milestones that somehow knock me sideways: the first trip home from school alone (no more fun hanging outside the school to walk home with her), of course no more reading aloud (she reads ten books now to my one, and my dears, the dystopia!).  The first time she got herself home from seeing a play.  Tomorrow in fact, she goes off with a school group to spend five days in Yorkshire, writing poetry.  I have never in my life written a poem!  She is growing up.

And so it has been an absolute joy for us to find something we like to do together, something that points out the utter wonderfulness of having a nearly grown person to share our lives.  She can elevate the humblest dish to emerge from my kitchen, into a work of art.  I give you: celeriac remoulade, inspired by my lunch with my friend Caz at La Fromagerie in Marylebone.

Celeriac Remoulade

(serves lots of people at a picnic)

1  head celeriac (celery root), peeled

dressing: olive oil, mayonnaise, wholegrain mustard, lemon juice (in proportions to suit your taste)

Here is where any obsessive-compulsive tendencies will come in handy.  Julienne the celeriac by cutting VERY thin slices and then cutting those slices into VERY thin slices.  Toss with the dressing and serve straightaway.

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You can see what I mean about her talent.  She takes any dish and finds the most exciting presentation, the most unexpected and inspiring angle.  Look at our Easter ham, our feast with Daisy and her family.

And my latest experiments with aubergine/eggplant.  Luscious with olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and onions, chickpeas and Parmesan.

We have had such a good time together.  We envision a cookbook in fact!  A collaboration between the two of us.  In July she will go off to Brooklyn for a two-week photography camp and after that I can only IMAGINE the brilliance.  What can they possibly teach her?  It has all been a tremendous comfort and compensation for the disappearance of a sticky little hand to hold, a toddler on my lap.

And the evening she popped her head round the bedroom door, around 11:30.  “So, what’s your opinion on Nietzsche?”  You don’t get that sort of discussion with a kindergartner.  At least not one I’d want to live with.  So we discuss.

More visitors arrived!  John’s sister and her adorable family, fresh from Minnesota and on their way to Paris, spent four blissful days with us.  The de rigeuer open-top bus tour!

And the ensuing boat ride back up the Thames.  Home for a rich dish of macaroni and cheese and a huge casserole of spinach, and the first of many book talks between Avery and Cathy, the only person I know who reads even more than Avery does!  The books piled up on the dining room table and they compared, “You HAVE to read this!  WHAT?  you haven’t read THIS?”

Up the next day for a trip to the Globe Theatre, where believe it or not, we encountered the Filter Group’s head actor, Ed Gaughan from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”!

We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for what project he might be bringing to the Globe.  We discussed this and many other issues of English life over a superb fish and chips lunch at the Swan Cafe, linked to the Globe.  Twice-cooked chips, garlic mayonnaise… heaven.  What fun to have family to eat with, laugh with, and be tourists with.

From the Globe we sauntered over to the Tate Modern where we all fell in love with Do Ho Suh’s superb installation, a metaphysical polyester stairway to heaven.

And the German artist we had encountered in the Bundestag in Berlin!  The nail man, Gunther Uecker, whose work reminds me so much of Eva Hesse.  Here is Uecker:

And here is Hesse:

There is something to discover on every trip to the Tate, and thank goodness for our visitors who get us out of the house, away from our computers, and dashing about the city remembering how much fun it is to live here.

Then it was to see “Matilda: The Musical,” I think the best musical I have ever seen.  Clever, accomplished, and anchored by a performance by Cleo Demetriou, one of the four little girls playing the title role.  How does she manage to carry an entire cast and audience with her so masterfully?  Go, if you get the chance.

Sunday found me nursing a miserable cold I had been trying to ignore, so after early bellringing I begged off going to the British Museum and curled up on the sofa, popping up only to prepare dinner for the returning tourists.  Here is our lovely chicken dish, shredded the next day for “everything on a pancake.”

Vinegar Chicken

(serves about 6)

1 whole chicken, cut into legs and breasts

2 cups malt vinegar

2 sprigs each fresh rosemary and thyme

salt and pepper

1/2 cup flour

2 tsps each: dried basil, dried oregano, onion powder, garlic powder, smoked paprika

3 tbsps sunflower or other vegetable oil

Soak the chicken pieces in the vinegar and herbs, salt and pepper for at least four hours, refrigerated.  Combine flour with spices in a sealable plastic bag and shake chicken pieces in the mixture.  Lay chicken pieces skin-side down in an ovenproof dish in which you’ve poured the oil.  Bake at 425F/220C for half an hour, then turn over skin-side up and bake another half hour.  Tangy, crunchy and delicious!  Many thanks to my old friend Jerry for this recipe.

And our visitors heartlessly abandoned us for their adventures in the City of Light.  Our March madness was over, and what a wonderful adventure it was.

April has only been more insane, so far, with dinner dates (sushi!), a lunch date at the Corner Room in Bethnal Green (sea trout, squid, chorizo crumbs and venison in ash, anyone?), a concert and… did you all hear about the drama yesterday in the 158th Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, passing down the Thames just across the road from our house?

 “There’s a swimmer in the water!” we suddenly noticed.  “He’ll be cut to ribbons by the motorboats, if he isn’t decapitated by an oar first!”  And the race was stopped, right before our eyes, whilst the crazy guy — protesting the elite nature of the race! —  was fished out and arrested.

How amazing that the first time we paid attention to this historic race, crossing the street to walk along the path and gaze out at the river, such drama happens!

Happy Easter to you all, and a huge thank you to my friend Lucy for this magnificent Easter dessert of a chocolate basket, filled with strawberries (photo courtesy of Avery, naturally).  May your April be as sweet as ours has been, so far.

I promise not to leave it so long next time to keep you posted on our fun.

(allow 1/2 avocado per person)

Cut avocado in half lengthwise, feeling with the knife for the pit and getting as close as possible.  Twist avocado open and lay avocado half with pit in it on a cutting board.  Carefully whack the pit with the knife, keeping hands away.  Twist knife and pull pit out and discard.

Scoop out a hollow in the avocado with a spoon.  Carefully tip in a raw egg and sprinkle the lot with grated Parmesan.  Bake at 425F/220C for 15–20 minutes depending on how done you like your egg.  Sprinkle with chives and serve either warm or at room temperature.

This is easily explained.  I’ve been so focused on getting myself a real life — as opposed to a life spent watching Avery grow up, as sweet as that has been — that I didn’t completely understand how the seeds of my ideas would sprout.  It all started with bellringing, of course, and being new Tower Secretary has been a lot of fun.  Part of my new job has been to set up a blog for us to report on our outings, special services, recordings and parties.  It’s all a blatant attempt to keep our four teenage ringers interested.  They bring so much laughter and energy to the atmosphere at Saturday practices!

Then there is my training for social work with Home-Start, the social work volunteer project.  Every Thursday finds me spending all day in a rather bleak office building in a nearby village, sitting in a circle with about 15 other volunteers, listening to hour after hour of intense lectures and exercises on the most depressing situations facing families in our borough.  Specialists come in to teach us about encountering multiple births, birth defects, every sort of abuse you can imagine, alcohol and drug, emotional and sexual, and last week, post-natal (or post-partum as we say in America) depression.  We brainstorm, take notes, gather in groups and share our reactions to possible scenarios.

Someday in April, I will finally be ready to turn up at my designated clients’ family home, to do whatever is required of me.  “We make it clear that you are not babysitters, or housecleaners,” our trainers repeat.  But then they smile.  “And yet a lot of times you’ll find that just to pitch in and do a load of laundry is what an exhausted mum needs, while she feeds her twins, or you’ll take a baby to the park so the mum has a moment to sit down and play doll’s houses with her toddler.  Sometimes you will just sit and listen, while she talks, or cries.”

And I’ve had a spate of writing assignments!  Soon there will be a new issue of the brilliant Vintage Magazine out of New York, and it will contain a piece by me about the joys and wonders of the AGA stove.

I’ve been hard at work writing for a new website, HandPicked Nation, the brainchild of Staci Strauss and Craig McCord, two artists who used to show in my Tribeca Gallery.   They are passionate about food — and very funny — and it’s exciting to contribute.  Lastly, I’ve been hired to contribute a piece to my beloved EXTREMELY specialist magazine, “The Ringing World.”

I’ve been busily cooking, of course.  In this blustery, winter/spring greyness that is London in February and March, I’d be perfectly happy eating nothing but meatballs and mashed potatoes every night, but I do realize it’s my job to provide some healthier, more varied fare as well.  Hence, my newest offering.

SuperFood Salad

(serves 2)

1 bunch small beets

3 tbsps olive oil

fresh black pepper

1 avocado, sliced and drizzled with lemon juice

2 artichokes, trimmed down to the heart, sliced very thin, drizzled with lemon juice

4 ounces goat cheese, crumbled

handful small tomatoes, quartered

handful rocket leaves

dressing (optional): 1/3 cup olive oil, juice of 1 lemon, 1 tbsp Dijon mustard, 1 tbsp prepared horseradish, 1 tbsp mayonnaise

Cut the scrubbed, unpeeled beets in quarters and drizzle with olive oil, then sprinkle with fresh black pepper and toss till beets are coated with oil.  Roast at 425F/220C for 30 minutes.  Cool while you prepare the rest of the salad.

On individual plates, arrange the other ingredients and drizzle with dressing if wanted (this salad is perfectly good without).  Arranged the beets on top and serve with a bit of baguette.

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As if this weren’t all enough to keep me busy, we’ve had endless dinner guests to entertain us.  Friends from America, friends from London, friends from Cambridge, friends from Mexico…

AND I spent Monday of this week in… Paris!  Well, I say I spent the day there.  It would be fairer to say I spent the day in the train, with a brief interlude in the City of Lights.  A power failure AND a track fire greatly delayed my arrival there, but it was all worth it to see Linda Meehan, my beloved singing teacher from high school.  I haven’t seen her for 22 years!  But nothing had changed.  Her beautiful, gentle smile and voice were just the same.

We talked nonstop over an enormous platter of pates, rillettes, hams and salamis.  Then we headed off to see the Eiffel Tower, shivering in the blowy early-spring weather.  Walking back toward the train station — I had only three hours with them! — we encountered some of Avery’s favorite street art.

A brief shopping trip down the achingly tempting Rue Cler yielded cheeses from La Fromagerie Cler, duck liver pate from a delicatessen filled with every delicious prepared food you could possibly want.  What a street.  What a city.

The journey back to London that evening almost, but not quite, spoiled the fun of the day.  Eight hours!  Eight hours that was meant to be two!  Hungry babies cried, nicotine-deprived would-be smokers fumed, train conductors fended off frantic questioning with remarkable calm.  I stood in the corridor and chatted with fellow passengers, my colloquial French exploding with new vocabulary every minute!  And I met a lovely Swiss girl as my seatmate, so at least I made a new friend.  But when the taxi pulled up at home at 3 a.m., I felt as if I’ve been put through a mincer.

Travel!  People say it is broadening.  Certainly it is an adventure, and an exhausting investment in the memories that have to last us a lifetime.  This was our experience on our recent trip to Berlin, without a doubt.

The three of us swept up Avery’s chum Daisy and headed off one Sunday evening, to visit a city none of us has ever seen.  I can’t remember the time that was the case.  Normally one of us knows what’s going on!  But it was new to all of us.

It was a journey more than a holiday, with Berlin’s desperate, lonely, tragic character larger than life on the world stage.  It is really an unsual atmosphere: a city rooted in the past, but not in the way of any place I have been before.  Berlin is rooted in a sad, shameful past that everyone is simultaneously memorializing on every street corner, and also trying to forget, to put away in a drawer and move on with the future.

At the same time, there is a youthful buoyancy to the culture, a joy in cultural expression that raises graffiti to an art form.

I’m not sure I would have recognized that without our two teenagers to appreciate it, and record it with their cameras.

We decided to rent an apartment rather than stay in a hotel, as is our habit ever since we went to Venice several years ago and I was in a fever of frustration at not being able to cook.  Having to figure out where to shop for ingredients, how to express what and how many of something you want in a language you’re not fluent in, gets you right under the tourist experience and gives you a glimpse of what it’s like to be a Berliner.

We arrived late at night and stood shivering outside our apartment building, waiting for the owner to bring the key.  “Let’s go exploring, girls,” I said.  “John can wait for the key”  So we sauntered down the street in the former East Berlin neighbourhood of Mitte, passing seedy shops and dusty sushi bars, peering into darkened pharmacies and “lebensmittelen,” which are the German equivalent of convenience stores.

We popped into one shop, shabby and piled high with shelves full of boxes and jars in a language we could not understand.  In the increasingly Starbucks-ized modern world, I love finding myself in a place that is truly of its own culture.  We picked up the essentials: a loaf of white bread I would never normally buy in London or America, but it was “brot”, it was German, it was local.  It had to be good.  I felt just the same about a package of what looked like Kraft American cheese, not something I would ordinarily succumb to, but it was “Kase” which sounded exotic, so into the basket it went.  A box of “Eier,” eggs, a package of “Speck,” a German bacony sort of meat, and a carton of what I could translate as “super high in Vitamin C orange juice,” and I could project tomorrow’s breakfast.  The girls, of course, bought German chocolate.

Our breakfast next day exceeded all our greedy expectations.  There is nothing like a European egg, its yolk a bright improbable orange, its flavour incomparably rich.  And the “Speck”!  Glossy with a perfect fattiness, salty and crisp.  The bread and cheese glowed with preservatives and romanticism.  We were shored up for our day of tourism.

Our first adventure was a spontaneous visit to the Berlinische Galerie.  What a sublime collection of modern art, so much of it political, tragic, as so much of everything is in Berlin.

From there we found ourselves in the Jewish Museum, whose installations by Daniel Liebskind were overwhelmingly sad, hopeless, tragic.  Here is a detail from the Holocaust Tower: endless concrete walls, freezing cold, almost no light.  A place without hope.

This was a ladder whose lowest rung was just, tantalizingly, too high for the tallest human being to reach.  It stretched up into total darkness in the ceiling.

There was an installation of cast-iron faces, 10,000 of them, each an expression of loss and horror, some tiny like a baby’s.

We were overwhelmed, emotional, tired and hungry.  Just the sort of state in which people make impulsive decisions like popping in for lunch at the nearby Yezda’s Diner.

I do not know who Yezda is, so I cannot blame her for what was a terrible meal.  “How can food be this shiny and hard?” Avery wondered rhetorically as she poked at the cheeseburger she and Daisy had each ordered.

We escaped into the street and walked along feeling we’d swallowed a tire, and promptly came upon this gem, Soup Kultur.  Oh, I want to go back to Berlin right now, just remembering the menu in the window.   Creamy tomato soup, leek and “Kartoffeln,” potato soup, and best of all, “Rosi’s Hähnchen Penicillin,” which at first puzzled us and made me doubt my ability to read menu German.

Suddenly I remembered the clichéd New York expression that chicken soup is Jewish penicillin.  “Hähnchen,” chicken.  Please promise me that if you go to Berlin, you will visit “Soup Kultur” and report back.

We did not let our scary lunch scare us.  We wandered past Checkpoint Charlie, which was an anticlimax.  It was impossible to believe in the historical standoffs that took place here.

The girls posed by the wall, again, stripped of its menace.

We visited a museum that housed the Stasi papers, and stopped to take in the bronze plates in the ground that indicated where the wall had stood.

From there we walked, endlessly, to the Brandenburg Gate which stopped us all in our tracks with its majesty.

And onto our tour of the Bundestag, the German Parliament, with its Russian graffiti inside, uncovered as evidence of the liberating Russian soldiers’ presence in 1945.

Oh, the dome of that Parliament!  Surely one would make more intelligent decisions in such an atmosphere.

After  that exhausting day, we dropped into a supermarket on our way home and, leaving the girls to peruse the shelves of foreign toothpaste and shampoo, I bought ingredients for spaghetti carbonara, taking advantage of a positive SLAB of “Speck” which lent its smoky magic to the sauce, along with the grated “Kaiserkase,” a hard German cheese similar to Gruyere.

The next day we made our way across town, passing the incredible Berlin Cathedral which simply did not look real, and dropped intto the fascinating time capsule that is the DDR Museum.  We all agreed to have lunch first at the well-reviewed museum cafe, so as not to be distracted in the museum by hunger pangs.  It is true: we were no longer hungry.  But not in a good way.

We decided each to order something different, so as to have a variety of things to try.  It was not a success.  Four different types of “Fleisch,” meat, in various unpleasant sauces.  “At least my dish is listed on the menu as being Erik Honecker’s favourite,” John said, leading us all to have a new theory of why the Berlin wall fell.  Honecker was too hungry to object.  The best thing we had at lunch was Vita-Cola, East Germany’s 1957 answer to Pepsi and Coke.  You can order it in regular flavour, or “black” (they taste exactly the same).

Is it possible to feel nostalgic for something you’ve never had?  Wurst!  Real German Wurst and sauerkraut, from a street cart.  We passed so many of these carts, and also little huts advertising various types of true German wurst, including “Currywurst,” the notion of which obsessed me the whole of our holiday.  What could it be?  A hot dog in a curry sauce?  A wurst made from a pig raised on curry powder?  The girls hustled me past all such carts, having a youthful disdain for weird-sounding food.  But the thought of what could have been haunts me now we’re home.

On a long walk through the East Berlin neighborhood of Mitte, the girls found endless displays of the city’s famous graffiti art to photograph.

(Wonderfully, this graffiti says, “This is not a photo opportunity.”)

I, happily, found Bio Company.

This store was like a mini-Whole Foods, a positive mecca for organic produce, meat, cheeses and the inimitable display of cured meats that only Germany can produce.  I bought more than I actually needed because the atmosphere was so beguiling.  I tried out my German on the dairy stocking lady because I simply couldn’t stay silent.  “I LOVE your shop!”  She looked at me in total bewilderment and then handed me a container of sheep’s milk yogurt, and then another in a different flavor.  I was puzzled, until I realized that German for yogurt is “Schaf.”  She must have thought I was some bizarre American cultured-milk fanatic.  “I LOVE your Schaf!”

I bought a pot of “Auberginen Pastete,” eggplant pate, which proved to be gorgeous, garlicky and salty with chunks of eggplant.  I bought a package of “Lieblings-Puffer,” a sort of potato pancakes described on the label as “thick and crispy.”  I figured out what “Rinde” meant (beef) and picked up four gorgeous fillets, a head of garlic, a pile of mushrooms and a quantity of thick German cream.  I had to be dragged out of the shop kicking and screaming.   That night I cooked happily in our tiny Ikea kitchen, producing a deliciously savory, creamy mushroom sauce for our steaks.  The potato pancakes?

Well, I was hampered by not being able to read the instructions, which it turned out involved frying in a quantity of an oil I did not have.  They were a bit peculiar, just baked, but we were happy anyway, chewing and chatting and listening to the nightly news and picking up the odd word or two.

In the morning, on our last day, John took us to an absolute find, the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall.  Here artists from all over the world have been asked to contribute paintings and poems to this long, long fragment of the Wall, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Finally we made our way back across town to our final lunch in Berlin. Oy vey.

This cafe was actually a destination, written up in the German Elle magazine I perused in a vintage clothing store while Avery and Daisy tried on every garment in the place.  It was also featured in the cute “Wallpaper” guide to Berlin we’d brought along, as being the “best baked potato restaurant in Berlin.”  “Surely it is the ONLY baked potato restaurant in Berlin,” John said.  In any case, we made our way to Bixels, a charming black-board-lined room furnished with a giant community farmhouse table and redolent of the crunchy, brown, salty smell of baked potatoes.  What could go wrong?

 We three ladies ordered the truffle oil/goat/cheese/spinach/yogurt version.  John went for the Argentine beef/carrot/apple/yogurt version.  “Unusual,” I volunteered cheerfully.  And COLD, as it turned out. We chewed in silence for a time, trying desperately to think of something positive to say.  Finally the girls swept aside their toppings and brought up tiny fragments of still-warm potato, gasping for air from under the weight of cold yogurt.

Walking back to the apartment, we passed Vietnamese restaurants, Thai restaurants, endless sushi restaurants.  I felt regretful that I had succumbed to my desire to eat only German food while we were in Berlin.  Maybe ethnic food is the way to go?  Or Rosi’s Penicillin.

We were exhausted.  Berlin had shown us many things, had stretched our imagination, had shown us a glimpse into the past and the present fused together.

It was time to go home.  At the airport I succumbed to a vacuum-packed trio of “currywursts” which I put in my handbag.  In the flurry of unpacking at home, I left them there, in my bag, overnight.  In the morning I thought, “Food poisoning from an unrefrigerated airport snack would be such an ignominious way to die,” and pitched them in the rubbish.

We’ve recovered from our trip and settled into real life.  For me this means Home-Start training in the morning.  Deep breath.  I’m ready.