A Day in Bath (and a truly great side dish)

Good­ness, we’re wiped out. Just a short trip to Bath, a lit­tle lunch, a lit­tle shop­ping, quite a LOT of walk­ing, and a day full of con­ver­sa­tion with my friend Sam from Totleigh… we’re droop­ing this evening! But it’s all good.

We set off in the morn­ing and arrived at lunchtime, and what a lunch it was… Sam met us in the freez­ing cold wind (it was bet­ter in the sun) and we walked, talk­ing six­teen to the dozen all the time, to Jamie’s Ital­ian, open just two weeks, and abuzz with energy already. At the door (no book­ings) we were told it would be 45 min­utes and no leav­ing! No run­ning around sight-seeing and then com­ing back. Well, there was no ques­tion: we stayed. Had a lovely cran­berry juice spritzer (it really touched me to leave Avery and Sam while I went to the bar and look back to find them talk­ing non­stop, and laugh­ing: that’s the mark of a lovely, warm man, to be able to chat on his own with a lit­tle girl he’s known for five minutes).

But it was only 20 min­utes, so we were really silly glad we stayed. This new Jamie Oliver ven­ture, designed to bring really high qual­ity Ital­ian food to the masses, was a suc­cess from our point of view, any­way. Where else could Sam and I have a whole grilled sea bream for 15 quid? You could hardly buy it raw at the fish­mon­ger for that, and I so far am not quite brave enough to cook a whole fish (although after today, I’m tempted). It was served with what was described as a salsa verde, but while tasty, Sam and I had to dif­fer with the descrip­tion: it was a lovely scat­ter­ing of minced pars­ley, gar­lic and chill­ies, but NOT a salsa verde, and there wasn’t enough of it any­way. We were both dis­ap­pointed to find, upon eat­ing one side and flip­ping the fish over: no salsa on the other side. It needed a whole lit­tle ramekin of the stuff on the side.

But fla­vor: it packed a fresh, crunchy punch and the cook­ing of the fish could not be faulted. Creamy, ten­der, per­fect. A rather phoned-in salad of shaved fen­nel and ran­dom field greens (really “an aver­age pub salad,” Sam decreed, quite right). A side dish of I thought quite aver­age French-style French fries, but my com­pan­ions wolfed them down. Far bet­ter was the side dish of “flash-cooked sea­sonal greens,” which proved to be per­fect, olive oily, chilli-scattered ten­der­stem broc­coli which we ate with our fin­gers. Sam ate, Avery wants you to know, the fish eye­ball. Granted he took a very large gulp of his water after and spit­ted out some­thing rather… solid, but the point is, he tried it.

Avery had wild mush­room ravi­oli which I found a bit heavy, but there were nice whole sauteed sage leaves in the sauce and she ate nearly the whole dish. We all shared, I should say at the out­set, the meat antipasti, and were in heaven: bre­saola, parma ham, mor­tadella, salame, and then lit­tle slabs of the most piquant parme­san topped with a spoon­ful of the famous chilli jam. That jam lived up to its billing and if I could buy a jar of it to have with a cheese plate, I would do so. I can­not say there was any­thing earth-shattering about the pre­sen­ta­tion or any­thing unusual in the fla­vors, but the sim­plic­ity and high qual­ity of the ingre­di­ents was enough. With the antipasti came a melt­ingly (lit­er­ally) buf­falo moz­zarella sprin­kled with chill­ies and basil oil. Just gor­geous. We were happy.

We talked end­lessly about our Totleigh adven­tures, shar­ing sto­ries of slightly drunken episodes and con­ver­sa­tions, remem­ber­ing everyone’s writ­ing efforts, who read what, to what suc­cess. And dear read­ers, Sam shared with me his first child­hood culi­nary effort: a snack for his mum. He calls it quite sim­ply “Diges­tive Balls on Ice­berg Let­tuce,” and that pretty much sums it up. “All you do is line a nice glass bowl with some let­tuce [“Ice­berg?” I spec­ify, remem­ber­ing my own child­hood — “absolutely Ice­berg,” he affirms]. Then you scat­ter on some tomato slices, and THEN, you chew up as many diges­tive bis­cuits as you can, spit them out and roll them into balls with your hands [“unwashed,” I spec­ify], and arrange them on the let­tuce. It’s as sim­ple as that.”

Com­pared to the kitchen exploits of my child­hood, most of them involv­ing canned mush­room soup, this sounds pos­i­tively Lucullan.

We talked fast and furi­ous over lunch and then stag­gered out to begin our round of tourist sights. Bless Sam: he took us every­where: the gor­geous Cres­cent where “Per­sua­sion” and so many other mem­o­rable movies were filmed, Pul­teney Bridge, the Cir­cus and finally the rather odd and occa­sion­ally spooky Jane Austen Cen­tre, located on a hilly street in the cen­tre of town. I would say that the most appeal­ing bit of this museum is the book­shop, where had I had the cash, I could have bought an entire 19th-century edi­tion of all Austen’s books for 625 pounds. Heav­ens. I set­tled for a new copy of “Per­sua­sion” and we sat down for the sort of touch­ing guided-tour speech, and then strolled through the museum look­ing at var­i­ous cos­tumes worn by very creepy man­nequins with what seemed to be stock­ings pulled over their faces: every­one appeared to be in the throes of smoth­er­ing! Very odd.

A quick but deli­cious stop in Pax­ton and Whit­field, a small but well stocked cheese shop where I asked for and didn’t get a gratte paille, my absolute most trea­sured runny, smelly triple creme cheese. I wasn’t too dis­ap­pointed to come away with a cheese made by Neal’s Yard called “Finn,” heavy and creamy.

Finally we escaped to the Bath Sweet Shop in North Parade Pas­sage, for Avery to buy some of her trea­sured “mil­lions,” a truly hor­ri­ble sort of candy that she dis­cov­ered years ago on our school-finding trip. Sam joined her in a bag of some­thing called “toasted tea cakes,” tiny lit­tle… toasted tea cakes, and we walked along in the late after­noon sun toward the Abbey and the Roman Baths. Steamy, green and sug­ges­tive of so many sub­merged delights, we all won­dered how long we could wade in the pool before some CCTV-watching guide found us and chased us out.

Sam walked us to the train, but we stopped along Quiet Street to visit Kitchens, quite the most won­der­ful Aladdin’s Cave of kitchen shops I have ever seen. Sorry, my dar­ling Matthew Mac­fadyen, I will always be loyal to our shared des­ti­na­tion Diver­ti­menti in Maryle­bone, but this shop was sim­ply chock-a-block with trea­sures… it was all I could do not to buy the brushed-steel KitchenAid for Sam who drooled over it, and a com­plete set of new knives for myself. As it was, I restrained myself to a tiny saucepan for melt­ing but­ter for pop­corn (or poach­ing a sin­gle egg). What a fab­u­lous spot.

Home exhausted! Thank you, Sam, for a per­fect day.

Luck­ily there were left­overs to be had when we fell in the door around 8. Bolog­nese to be heated up, and the lovely remains of a new side dish I made from the divine Anna del Conte’s Amaretto, Apple Cake and Arti­chokes. Go very easy on the salt, though, as the salame I found at Carluccio’s was quite salty enough to carry the dish. I spent a very frus­trat­ing morn­ing try­ing to con­vert all the var­i­ous mea­sure­ments she uses into some­thing coher­ent for you, dear read­ers. It’s dif­fi­cult for an Amer­i­can to deci­pher some Euro­pean recipes, espe­cially when they’re writ­ten through an Eng­lish expe­ri­ence. I asked an Eng­lish friend, “How on earth do you con­vert ounces of but­ter into table­spoons?” and he replied in mys­ti­fi­ca­tion, “Why on earth would you ever mea­sure but­ter in table­spoons?” I had to laugh, in cha­grin, and tell him how Amer­i­can but­ter was labeled. Two peo­ples sep­a­rated by a com­mon lan­guage, and it would appear, but­ter labelling. Sigh. So here goes, as best I can man­age. At least it’s not bak­ing, so speci­ficity isn’t nec­es­sary. Just relax.

Baked Potato Puree with Salame and Moz­zarella
(serves 4 easily)

1 1/2 lb floury pota­toes
1/2 cup whole milk
2 tbsps but­ter
1 egg
4 tbsps fresh grated Parme­san
fresh ground pep­per to taste
7 ounces (a chunk about 3 inches thick) first-rate salame, cut into very small cubes
7 ounces (roughly a ball) moz­zarella, cut into very small cubes
hand­ful dry fresh breadcrumbs

Now, del Conte has you boil­ing the pota­toes and then peel­ing them. I found peel­ing boiled pota­toes to be sticky and dis­gust­ing, so next time I would peel then boil. Heat the milk as they boil, and then put the pota­toes through a ricer and mash with the but­ter and milk, beat­ing hard with a wooden spoon. As del Conte says, the longer you beat the puree, the lighter it becomes.

Mix together in a bowl the egg, Parme­san and pep­per. Add mix­ture to the potato puree, then stir in salame and moz­zarella and mix well.

But­ter a souf­fle dish or any oven­proof dish and tip mix­ture in. Top with bread­crumbs and bake at 375 for 20 min­utes, or until top is golden brown. Let rest for sev­eral min­utes and serve warm. Gorgeous.