a food fes­ti­val, a play and a fur­ni­ture fair!

Well, Avery’s been put on her coach, at 4:30 this morn­ing (get­ting up in the dark in April is def­i­nitely too early), the incred­i­bly youthful-looking teach­ers who are chap­er­on­ing the trip have herded them all together and pumped them up with words of girly encour­age­ment. It was really a land­mark sort of moment, a “this is the last time” sort of feel­ing: never again will we know every par­ent in her class, have happy mem­o­ries of birth­day par­ties, singing fes­ti­vals, Michael­mas Fairs and Christ­mas par­ties with all the girls, know them all by name. The last two years with this group of peo­ple have been so happy, so defin­ing. We all stood around on the pave­ment and com­mis­er­ated about miss­ing them, hop­ing they eat their lunches and don’t get car­sick, hop­ing they don’t need a loo until they get to the ferry… and I think we all felt some com­bi­na­tion of happy and melan­choly. How odd it will be to have no sched­ule this week: no dropoff, no rid­ing, no skat­ing, no pickup. Ah well, soon it will be Fri­day and we’ll be back to normal.

As it is, we’ve been in absolute Cul­ture Mode, try­ing to take advan­tage of all the myr­iad oppor­tu­ni­ties there are in this lovely town. I was dis­cussing this mat­ter with my lovely mother in law over the week­end: she was very dis­tressed that I feel our lives here are quite… ordi­nary! “No! Don’t say that!” she wailed, and I do feel guilty that after being in Lon­don for two and a half years, it’s not as exotic as it used to feel. I think that the real­ity is, the place where you gro­cery shop, clean the lit­ter box, do laun­dry and pick your child up at school becomes… ordi­nary. But I mustn’t let it! And life is def­i­nitely enhanced by doing some­thing out of the ordinary.

In that vein, there­fore, Fri­day morn­ing found me at the Real Food Fes­ti­val at Earl’s Court. It’s some­thing for you to put on your map for next year (the fes­ti­val fin­ished at the week­end), and don’t be put off by the rather heavy-handed spon­sor­ship of Whole Foods Mar­ket. At first when I went in and was con­fronted by smil­ing Whole Foods peo­ple wear­ing aprons embla­zoned with… “Whole Foods,” pass­ing out eco-friendly jute bags with… guess what, “Whole Foods” printed on the side, I thought, “this is merely an enor­mous adver­tise­ment for Whole Foods,” and given the con­tro­versy here over the huge­ness and extrav­a­gance of that place, I didn’t really want to be spoon-fed an entire fes­ti­val about how won­der­ful they are. But I per­se­vered and soon was immersed in a beau­ti­ful mael­strom of admit­tedly twee sawdust-covered floors, but also hun­dreds of unique food pur­vey­ors, offer­ing every sam­ple under the sun. I suc­cumbed to honey made in London’s Royal Parks (it will make the per­fect addi­tion to my chicken wings’ bar­be­cue sauce later this week), kip­pers from the Isle of Man, deli­ciously salty and my first taste of that revered break­fast food! I am tempted to sell John on kip­pers by mak­ing a tra­di­tional kedgeree: boiled rice, kip­pers, hard-boiled eggs, curry pow­der. Doesn’t that sound good?

Then there was the lit­tle lemon cake for Avery’s jour­ney lunch, from Coun­try Fare in Cum­bria, and hot chilli olive oil from Chilli Pep­per Pete. Only DO NOT sam­ple their “dragon’s blood” if you value your life! I thought I would die. “Where are you from?” the cheery pep­per lady asked, and when I answered “Orig­i­nally New York,” she beamed and said, “Oh, this dragon’s blood sauce just won a com­pe­ti­tion there!” so I felt I must try it. OH NO! I cried. I gasped. I rooted around in my bag for a bot­tle of water. “That doesn’t help,” she said.” You think? No, it doesn’t. I nearly died. But the chilli oil is lovely! Although John felt it quite over­pow­ered the crab­meat pasta dish I made that night, so I’ll have to adjust the recipe and get it prop­erly bal­anced before I blog it.

I sam­pled goat’s cheese, gar­lic and chive ched­dar cheese from Isle of Man Cream­eries, chorizo from York­shire, who knows what else. And: celebrity alert, I saw Matthew Fort, one of the judges from “Great British Menu,” our favorite cook­ery pro­gramme on the BBC. I screwed up my courage and went over to tell him how much we enjoy the show, and he replied, “Oh, how lovely of you to tell me, I’m very pleased indeed!” Then he turned away to greet Tom Parker-Bowles, which was also cool, and they walked on together. My last pur­chase was not a sam­ple, but a group of three spice blends from The Spice Spe­cial­ist, where a lovely atten­tu­ated young man assured me that their cel­ery salt is more cel­ery and less salt, which is what I’m look­ing for when I make my cheesy spinach casse­role. I’m find­ing that com­mer­cial cel­ery salt is sim­ply too salty, espe­cially because I used a lot in order to get the cel­ery fla­vor just right, and com­bined with the salt of the Gruyere is slightly off-putting, so I’m hop­ing this is the solu­tion. Then, too, last time I made it I added chopped cel­ery leaves and that made a difference.

I rode home on the bus feel­ing so for­tu­nate to live in a coun­try full of so many com­mit­ted small pro­duc­ers, pro­duc­ing such extra­or­di­nary ingre­di­ents. I hope I’m wrong, but some­thing tells me that the US is lag­ging behind in such a pre­vail­ing inter­est in hon­est ingre­di­ents, prop­erly grown and reared. In time…

Sat­ur­day evening saw us head­ing off to Wind­sor to the The­atre Royal to see Agatha Christie’s “Mur­der on Air.” Well, I say that, but what actu­ally hap­pened is that I was at the front door, my tart for our pic­nic in my hands, ready to head off to Rich­mond to the the­atre there, where I thought the play was to be, when I noticed that the ticket con­fir­ma­tion I was also hold­ing said quite plainly “The­atre Royal WIND­SOR.” Good grief, I could have got us all the way to Rich­mond only to realise we were at the wrong the­atre. John was briefly and silently apoplec­tic at my incom­pe­tence, Avery was defend­ing me, and then we all calmed down and headed off to… Wind­sor. And in the end it didn’t make any dif­fer­ence: we were in plenty of time to spread out our pic­nic by the swans float­ing down the river.

Goats Cheese Tart with Chi­aven­nasca and Spinach
(serves 6)

1 cup whole­meal flour
1/2 cup cold but­ter, cut in chunks
1/2 tsp dried thyme
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup soft goats cheese
2 tbsps creme fraiche
3 hands­ful spinach leaves
8 slices Chi­aven­nasca
2 tsps but­ter
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1/2 medium white onion, minced
1/4 cup grated pecorino or parme­san cheese

Now what, you ask, is Chi­aven­nasca? Well, it’s an Ital­ian air-dried beef, mar­i­nated in spices and pep­per­corns and white wine and aged, then sliced thin. It is sim­ply deli­cious, but if you can’t find it, you can always use Parma ham, or indeed, skip the meat and keep it a veg­e­tar­ian dish.

Put the flour and but­ter and thyme in your Mag­imix and whizz until the but­ter is wholly incor­po­rated and the mix­ture begins to stick together as a dough. Add more but­ter if needed. Press evenly into a 12-inch tart pan.

In a medium bowl, mix the eggs, goats cheese and creme fraiche. Whizz the spinach leaves in the Mag­imix until finely chopped, then mix in with the cream mix­ture. Saute the gar­lic and onion in the but­ter and mix into the cream mix­ture. Roughly chop the dried beef and mix in with the cream mix­ture, then pour all into the tart pan and sprin­kle with the grated cheese. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 min­utes or until the grated cheese is slightly browned and bub­bly. Deli­cious warm or cold!

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Along with the tart I packed up a light and refresh­ing crab­meat salad, and the two were deli­cious together.

Crab­meat Salad with Toma­toes and Lime
(serves 2)

1 cup lump white crab­meat, the best you can get
2 cups wild rocket
hand­ful San­tini toma­toes, quar­tered
1 tbsp snipped chives

dress­ing:
2 tbsps olive oil
2 tsps bal­samic vine­gar
juice and zest of 1 lime
pinch sea salt

Sim­ply toss all the salad ingre­di­ents together and pack it up in a plas­tic box with a tight-fitting lid, and shake the dress­ing ingre­di­ents up in a glass jar (also with a tight-fitting lid), and they can travel sep­a­rately, to be tossed together when you’re ready to eat. Very springlike!

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The play itself, “Mur­der on Air,” was such a plea­sure! Avery and I are tremen­dous fans of the BBC full-cast drama­ti­sa­tions of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Say­ers mys­ter­ies that were orig­i­nally broad­cast as seri­als on the radio, and are now avail­able on CD. I always felt envi­ous of the audi­ences who heard them around their fire­sides, and jumped at the chance to see this play. It’s actu­ally play­ing through May 3, so you could go see it your­self. The con­cept is won­der­ful: the set is an authen­tic repro­duc­tion of a 1930s radio sta­tion, com­plete with the prop man sit­ting behind his tables full of imple­ments to pro­duce all the proper atmos­pheric sounds like doors shut­ting, cof­fee cups and spoons tin­kling, glass break­ing, etc. Then the cast came in: actors dressed in period 1930s cos­tumes and tak­ing their places at micro­phones to read the plays! Three 30-minute Agatha Christie orig­i­nal plays, being read by actors play­ing actors read­ing plays on the radio! Tremen­dous fun. And there was the added bonus of one of my all-time favorite actors, Hugh Fraser, famous for play­ing Cap­tain Hast­ings to David Suchet’s Her­cule Poirot. There he was in the flesh, read­ing away. What fun.

Sun­day we dropped Avery at the sta­ble, all of us peer­ing anx­iously at the dark skies, but what can you do: some­one has to pol­ish all those bri­dles and sad­dles, and she always wants to go, no mat­ter the weather. John and I headed to Bat­tersea for the Dec­o­ra­tive Antiques and Tex­tiles Fair, and while it’s over now, you must make plans to go to the sec­ond open­ing at the end of Sep­tem­ber. Superb vari­ety of dis­plays, lots and lots of shops from all over the UK show­ing their wares. But you know what, as much as any­thing the fair was fun because it got us out of our rut and over to the other side of the river (such a gor­geous dis­play of Chelsea houses to be seen from the Park), and into some­thing NEW. And Avery would have been bored stiff, so it all worked out per­fectly. We are in shocked awe at the prices, of course, of any of the things we wanted, but I think we’ll be able to find some pieces we can live with. There was a won­der­ful ware­house rep­re­sented called Retrou­vius, a lit­tle pun on their stated pur­pose which is giv­ing new life to aban­doned objects. What caught our eye imme­di­ately was an elab­o­rate Vic­to­rian shelv­ing sys­tem from the gut­ted Patent Offices years ago. I think if Avery’s bed­room ceil­ing is high enough, we’ll get some of the shelves for her clothes and toys. There were also fab­u­lous ceil­ing light fix­tures taken from the aban­doned Rover fac­tory out­side Lon­don, and a pair of old leather arm­chairs whose pre­vi­ous life was I know not where.

So we came away pretty excited! As well, on Church Street on Sat­ur­day we found a 1930s green leather Chester­field sofa with what are called “drop ends,” or “drop arms,” so that it becomes a sort of set­tee you can stretch out on. So, once we get the keys on Wednes­day we can scout out where to put things, and then pre­tend we can afford them. Went by today to visit the house just from the out­side, and the vines over the door are begin­ning to flower, lit­tle pale pink flow­ers against dark-red vines, spilling over the blue door! It is really going to be fun, if a lot of work to get out of here and into there. Some poten­tial renters have been com­ing through our flat, which is pow­er­fully annoy­ing as every­thing must be neat and tidy at all times. Wim­sey seems to feel it’s his per­sonal duty to escort every vis­i­tor around the flat, whether they’re cat peo­ple or not. “How many cats do you HAVE?” the estate agent asked John. “I don’t have cats,” he mut­tered. She looked at him as if he were daft, and finally he said, “My wife and child have four cats. I don’t have any. Not a cat per­son.” No won­der Wim­sey and Keechie are insecure!

The house feels so empty! But no news is… as they say, and look­ing at the clock I think Avery is in the land of crois­sants and berets even as we speak. Hope she’s hav­ing fun…