a day out in Buck­ing­hamshire, and Frieze!

Mark your cal­en­dars: next Sun­day, 21st Octo­ber, from 11:30–4, “Apple Day” at Iver Flow­er­land Field, Swal­low Street, Iver. If we were not already sched­uled to be in Dublin for the week­end (oh, poor us!) we’d be there. But we can highly rec­om­mend the apple pick­ing, as it’s being organ­ised by the farm we vis­ited yes­ter­day, Home Cot­tage Farm. Iver is a tiny, sleepy lit­tle ham­let about 45 min­utes’ drive from cen­tral Lon­don, sadly along the hor­rid M40, but I bet there’s a shun-motorway way to go, if you can get your Sat­Nav to tell you how.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing we raced to pick up Avery’s chum Anna, then raced to Kens­ing­ton to retrieve Avery from her sleep­over at Jamie’s, and headed out to pick apples in the coun­try­side. The farm itself is a ram­bling old house sur­rounded by field filled with sheep, chick­ens, guinea fowl and their cock (he lit­er­ally said, “cocka-doodle-do” to the girls’ delight). The elderly farmer lady led us to the till where she weighed our shabby old can­vas bags and pointed out the way to the black­berry bushes, cau­tion­ing that “they’re nearly over now, of course.” But there were enough to fill a lit­tle two-pint con­tainer, and rasp­ber­ries besides. But the apples! Cox, Spar­tan, Rus­set, Blenheim. She had men­tioned that there were other vari­eties on the other side of the car park, but by then the girls could hardly carry their bags and we felt we had enough. A blue sky stud­ded with filmy clouds, holly bushes heavy with red berries, a breeze cool enough to make you glad you had a jacket, but then an hour later you tied it around your waist because the sun was warm­ing things up.

It was a plea­sure to give the girls an expe­ri­ence that didn’t cost any­thing (except to buy the apples them­selves), didn’t involve bat­ter­ies or com­put­ers, and got them out in the fresh air. They raced up and down the orchards, pick­ing apples tiny enough to give to their stuffed ani­mals (they’re still pretty lit­tle, after all, these girls), yelling glee­fully over worm holes, shar­ing the weight of the bag. They had a fan­tas­tic time, and next week­end promises to be even more fun with not just apple pick­ing but… fer­ret rac­ing! Dog agility! Birds of prey, even. I’d go if I were you.

So we handed over our loot to the male ver­sion of the elderly lady farmer, quiet and dig­ni­fied in his jumper all over holes. “How long have you been doing this, sir?” John asked, and he answered with a smile, “Forty years.” I can see that being a very good life, in another life. The girls accom­plished some mild stalk­ing of the guinea fowl, and we headed home. To bake! I have cre­ated some­thing of a cook­ing mon­ster in Avery now, who feels she wants a hand in the cre­ation of all meals now, and sug­gests bak­ing projects at the most inop­por­tune times, as in when I’m tak­ing the main course out of the oven and light­ing the can­dles for din­ner. “May I make a dessert?” Well, no, not right now.

But there was noth­ing to stop Avery and Anna yes­ter­day from invent­ing a very com­plex cake using ALL the items they had picked just min­utes ear­lier. It’s a vari­a­tion on the sim­ple cake we made the other night, and they had a great time doing it, although I realised that I am indulging them ter­ri­bly by doing the dishes behind their backs, so they get all the fun and none of the drudgery. It’s a rev­e­la­tion to cook with chil­dren, because they approach all the tasks with a tremen­dous cre­ativ­ity, as opposed to I who sim­ply wants to get the dish fin­ished. “Look at this flour com­ing out of the sieve, it’s like it’s snow­ing,” and “feel how silky this pow­dered sugar is,” and “ooh, how glossy and shiny the but­ter and sugar and eggs are, and SMELL! Oh, that smells so good.”

Anna and Avery’s Apple Cake with Rasp­berry and Black­berry Fill­ing and Apple Sauce

Sift and then mea­sure 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, add 1 table­spoon bak­ing pow­der and set aside.

Cream 1/2 cup but­ter, 1 cup sugar, 2 tsps vanilla and 2 eggs. Beat light and fluffy. Mea­sure 1 cup milk. Add alter­nately to the creamed mix­ture with about 1/2 cup flour at a time. Stir smooth with each addi­tion. Stir in 5 apples, peeled and coarsely chopped.

Pour into 2 well-greased shal­low pans [I used a spring­form and it was per­fect]. Sprin­kle the top of one cake with 1/2 cup brown sugar, and a mix­ture of cin­na­mon, nut­meg and cloves [to your taste]. On the top of the sec­ond cake, driz­zle the juice of a dozen rasp­ber­ries and a dozen black­ber­ries (pushed through a sieve). Bake at 350 degrees for 35–40 min­utes or until a knife inserted in the cen­ter comes out clean.

Let cool for 10 min­utes. Remove spring­form rims from the cakes and spread apple­sauce made from about 6 apples, cin­na­mon, brown sugar and lemon juice over the top of the cake with the rasp­berry top­ping. Place the brown sugar cake on top, and sprin­kle pow­dered sugar through a sieve on top. Then serve warm. If you like, you may serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

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

Let’s see, Fri­day I was a real grownup. Got dressed up, made a new friend, and stretched my brain a bit with the Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park. And unlike my nor­mal inep­ti­tude when I tell you about some­thing I did in Lon­don and it closed that day, you can still get to Frieze today or tomor­row. I met up first with Susan, a lady newly trans­planted from New York, a friend of a friend whose daugh­ter used to ride with Avery in the Bronx in our old happy barn days there. We met at Vil­landry for a bite of lunch, since although it’s prac­ti­cally adja­cent to Avery’s school I don’t get there very often (you’d be sur­prised how cross­ing a sin­gle street can make a place too far away). You can eat either in the sort of com­mu­nal left-hand side of the estab­lish­ment, with long wooden tables and a very buzzy air of con­ver­sa­tion, or as we did in the calmer white-tablecloth side. As always, the ser­vice was very spotty with lan­guid French girls not too inter­ested in help­ing us, and I was very sur­prised when my “chicken club sand­wich” turned out to be may­on­naisey chicken salad instead of the sliced roast I was expect­ing, but it was yummy. Susan had a suck­ling pig sand­wich which looked quite good. Mostly we got to know each other.

There is a cer­tain pro­file of a New York lady that I love: born and raised in Man­hat­tan, highly edu­cated at the best schools, sev­eral impres­sive careers (lawyer, banker, entre­pre­neur), a wry sense of humor and sophis­ti­cated atti­tude toward every­thing from pol­i­tics to food to child-rearing. As she spoke I thought of all the New York friends I have left behind, Francesca, Julia, Alyssa, Liz, and there was some­thing of all of them in her. It made me very home­sick. It felt like putting on an old glove to talk to Susan, even though we had just met, because she reminded me of so many other peo­ple. I sup­pose it’s an amal­ga­ma­tion of the qual­i­ties that make Woody Allen pop­u­lar: super intel­li­gent, with an end­less array of great sto­ries to tell, a New Yorker’s indomitable abil­ity to adjust, fit in, enjoy life, but never suf­fer­ing fools gladly, or at all. At any rate, we had a good time, and then we headed to the art fair. In a nut­shell: a huge array of ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble art punc­tu­ated by a few gems that made my heart go pit­ter pat a bit, and feel nos­tal­gic for my old gallery-owner days in New York.

Susan and I played the ever-entrancing game of “What would I buy if I were buy­ing,” and while she grav­i­tated largely toward pho­tog­ra­phy, I went for my usual: con­cep­tual, min­i­mal­ist, obses­sively repet­i­tive, either sculp­ture or work on paper. There was a sim­ply breath­tak­ing enor­mous Glenn Ligon piece in char­coal, a beau­ti­ful Antony Gorm­ley fig­ure made of artic­u­lated steel cubes, a Carl Andre instal­la­tion of rough-hewn wood (I do love Carl, even if he’s a ques­tion­able bloke in real life), and per­haps most impres­sive, a print by a young Ital­ian artist called Luca Tre­visani. This piece was a sequence of 1200 still shots from a video of ants being attracted to a hole in the ground filled with sugar. He shot the ants, one after another, each the size of a half grain of rice, walk­ing toward the hole, then gath­er­ing around it, then going inside, and then but the film up into stills. Then he placed each still in sequence, then in back­ward order. And then made them into lith­o­graphic sort of stamps, and printed them them. Eeek! So pic­ture an enor­mous piece of white paper, per­haps four feet across and three feet high, cov­ered with tiny, tiny black images that you have to get your face right up against to rec­og­nize as ants, march­ing across the sur­face in a per­fect sequence, mak­ing a beau­ti­ful, abstract but com­pletely geo­met­ri­cally pre­cise pat­tern. Gor­geous! And so FUNNY. Plus frankly I would have been tempted to buy any­thing at ALL from the sub­limely sexy Milanese dealer who explained all this to me in great detail. Ants? Sure, I’ll buy it. Just keep talk­ing, please. And that ges­ture you make with your per­fectly man­i­cured hand against your chin? I’ll take that too.

I haven’t been able to find out a lot about young Luca to tell you, because every­thing is in Ital­ian or very amus­ingly trans­lated. But trust me, those ants are worth a look. But I think I would have seri­ously gone home with two sil­ver gelatin pho­tographs by the tragic sui­ci­dal artist Francesca Wood­man, who my friend Sarah Webb wrote about so beau­ti­fully in her epi­logue to our book. And I would have bought two pieces by the British artist Cor­nelia Parker, although they brought up nasty Holo­caust asso­ci­a­tions for Susan: reclaimed den­tal gold trans­formed into thread-like wire, strung through a golden nee­dle and sewn into beau­ti­ful pat­terns, between two pieces of glass. Stun­ning, but I can see her point. The sec­ond piece was made with a reclaimed bul­let, per­haps less upset­ting. Aes­thet­i­cally, though, just gorgeous.

These few pieces reminded me of how much fun art can be, but the enor­mous pre­pon­der­ance of what was on dis­play annoyed me. Gar­ish, care­less, sloppy and thought­less! Call me old-fashioned, but I need to see effort, pre­ci­sion and skill when I look at art. Ah, well, taste is taste. The humor award went to an artist (didn’t get his name) who cre­ated an instal­la­tion (after a per­for­mance) of empty mus­sel shells in a pile in a cor­ner made by mir­rors. “Let Them Eat Mus­sels,” it was called, after he cooked the mus­sels on site (the recipe was given on the wall text!), gave them to his audi­ence and asked them to throw the spent shells in the cor­ner. Sublime!

Any­way, we had a great time. Go on over and see for your­self. Right now I’m headed to Chi­na­town, for the first time! If I cook some­thing fab­u­lous as a result, I’ll let you know.