a kalei­descope of a weekend

Like French women who can tell if a bot­tle of cognac has been opened in the next room (so my favorite nov­el­ist Lau­rie Col­win tells us), I can tell if a cucum­ber has been sliced three sto­ries down in my own house. And not, obvi­ously, because I sliced it, but don’t you notice that food prepa­ra­tion aro­mas travel in unpre­dictable and pleas­ing ways through­out your house? They do in mine. Slow-cooked lamb with lentils and rose­mary halfway to the laun­dry room, cin­na­mon from the three-berry crum­ble lin­ger­ing on the land­ing out­side my bed­room, crunchy cucum­bers at the door to the guest room!

The guest room! Which my dear friend Char­lie will occupy this Thurs­day and Fri­day, to my intense joy. He was part of my group of best chums in Devon last Octo­ber, and while we’ve enjoyed our email and phone rela­tion­ship, and the fan­tas­tic day out at Taste of Lon­don last sum­mer, what I think really MAKES a friend­ship is hav­ing a per­son to stay over, with you, at home. You get to know the per­son: tea or cof­fee? Dress­ing gown or paja­mas first thing in the morn­ing? Does he like cats? What cock­tail is his pre­ferred tip­ple? These mys­ter­ies and more will be revealed. I am plan­ning a feast for Thurs­day evening, but as with all my plans, they are sub­ject to change in the mid­dle of each night between now and then, and each ten­nis game, and each other moment when what passes for my mind is not oth­er­wise occu­pied. Scal­lops baked with a dux­elles (a sauteed mush­room and madeira con­coc­tion) and gooey cheese top­ping? Or the decep­tively sim­ple mush­room soup, also with madeira, and creme fraiche with fresh thyme?

And to fol­low? I am favor­ing a super-tender pork ten­der­loin, grilled expertly by John, hav­ing been mar­i­nated (the ten­der­loin, not John, just to clar­ify) in some herbs sym­pa­thetic to those in the starter course… and John’s favorite slaw of cele­riac, red and Savoy cab­bages, with a dress­ing of sharp Dijon mus­tard, fro­mage frais, poppy seeds and lemon juice… At this point Avery wails, “And what can I eat, any­way?” Fair enough. Not scal­lops or slaw, for sure. But chopped spinach sauteed with gar­lic and Gruyere? Now you’re talking.

But first I have to digest the last 24 hours of stu­pen­dous food that’s passed my palate. I should space our eating-out adven­tures a lit­tle far­ther apart, really, than great-dinner-great-lunch. It’s a bit of a waste, really. Nev­er­the­less, so it was. John and I had tick­ets to see John Simms (I’m sorry, but that’s how I saw it) onstage and all I can say is, the reviews were split. It must be pointed out that the play in ques­tion, “Speak­ing in Tongues,” was on the sec­ond night of PRE­VIEWS, so what­ever kinks there were may be worked out. But when the main objec­tions to the play are as per­va­sive as John’s were (let’s see, cast­ing, stag­ing, dia­logue, plot were among the ele­ments he didn’t like), no amount of tin­ker­ing is going to help.

John Simms, can we just spec­ify, was won­der­ful. We agreed on that. But John has laid down the law that he no longer wants to be taken to plays where we’ve gone merely to watch the actor. He wants to see the play, as well. Fair enough. There were prob­lems to be sure. Simul­ta­ne­ous speak­ing of dia­logue by all four actors, though not EXACTLY together, is bad. A bad idea, can­not be enacted well. It’s just mas­sively irri­tat­ing. All you can hear are the dis­so­nances, and the “him” rather than “her”. I argued in my best PhD style that the dis­so­nance was delib­er­ate, to show how all the four char­ac­ters were unique and yet inter­change­able. I was met with resistance.

The plot unfolded in a way that I thought was very clever, not chrono­log­i­cal, but out of sequence and illu­mi­nat­ing as such. “Oh, THAT’S what hap­pened to her!” John found it pre­cious, and since he didn’t care about the char­ac­ters, he didn’t care what hap­pened to them. Ah me.

So I was not fla­vor of the month last night, based on the play. I was, how­ever, pop­u­lar as ever for sug­gest­ing Kulu-Kulu for sushi before. I had rushed there by bus down Pic­cadilly, after leav­ing Avery with friends in Kens­ing­ton for the evening (“we’re walk­ing Bon­nie to a Dog Party,” my friend assured me, “while we wait for Lille to return from bal­let,” so I left them to it, dragged by the tiny pug). The traf­fic! Sim­ply LAGGED but I didn’t mind, partly because I could feast my eyes on the gor­geous scenery of Hatchard’s, Fort­num and Mason, the Meri­dien Hotel, the Park Lane Hotel (home of Lord Peter Wim­sey, after all). Any­one who’s begun to take liv­ing in Lon­don for granted must sim­ply jump on the Num­ber 9 bus and ride along to Pic­cadilly Cir­cus. I just adore it, and I had my Julia Child mem­oir to enter­tain me as well.

Can I just inter­rupt myself and say (as I watch the BBC) that I love liv­ing in a coun­try where the Pres­i­dent of another coun­try is fea­tured PROMI­NENTLY on the nightly news just because he appeared on five talk shows that morn­ing? My own beloved United States nightly news can­not be both­ered, much of the time, to pay atten­tion to the Pres­i­dent of any other coun­try at all, unless it’s to scare peo­ple to death occa­sion­ally with vague threats about Iran or North Korea. But here, the news cov­er­age actu­ally delves in depth, on a daily basis, into what is hap­pen­ing around the world. I do admire that.

But more about eat­ing. We dived into salmon with cucum­ber and daikon, tuna with spicy spring onions, cut rolls of all these com­bi­na­tions, and finally my favorite veg­etable dish of all time, freez­ing cold packed-tight slices of steamed spinach cov­ered with a spicy peanut sauce, sprin­kled with sesame seeds. I’m SURE I could fig­ure out how to make this, don’t you think? I’ll look into it.

From there was the play. Enough said. Then we awoke this morn­ing to go slightly sep­a­rate ways: John to col­lect Avery from Kens­ing­ton, me to the kitchen to make her lunch for the rid­ing day, and to con­coct tonight’s din­ner, which had to cook all day by itself, as we were away from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The result was a deli­cious but unpre­sentable dish which met with mod­i­fied rap­ture. I will tin­ker with the recipe, but the basics were a leg of lamb, perched on a bed of red lentils and fresh rose­mary, sur­rounded by sliced car­rots and my friend Jo’s parsnips (thanks, Jo!), onion quar­ters, and the whole splashed with white wine and chicken stock. The ver­dict was that the lamb was per­fect, cooked tightly cov­ered at 110C all that time. But the veg­eta­bles were a mushy, slightly baby-food-ish con­sis­tency. Nurs­ery food, invalid food (if one were a very lucky baby or invalid). I’ll tin­ker with it, as I say.

Into the oven it all went, and off we went to meet Avery at her fourth annual Horseman’s Sun­day. Now, when we first moved here we were com­pletely bemused by the rit­ual of peo­ple — chil­dren and adults alike — being will­ing to orga­nize rid­ing their horses up to the fore­court of a CHURCH to have them blessed by the local priest. Sounds odd, does it? Sadly, it sounds nor­mal to us now. They all gath­ered and were stepped on, slob­bered on, Avery strug­gled with her stir­rups, Mr Nye of the sta­ble (all his 84 years) ordered the girls to have their hair plaited, dogs were con­stantly under­foot being trod­den on. Off we all went to the church, hymns were sung, ser­mons read, cham­pagne drunk, cakes from local schools sold to sup­port the church. Truly an Eng­lish phenomenon!

We cal­lously aban­doned the rit­ual for lunch with our friends Ed and Twiggy at Angelus, one of my most favorite restau­rants in the world (infre­quently as we go out, we go there more often than you’d think). And Ed and Twiggy never fail to delight. I hope I never know them long enough that they lose their new­ly­wed splen­dor, although it’s been years now. They sim­ply bask in each other’s pres­ence, and bring their love of life, adven­ture and friend­ship to every time we’re lucky enough to meet. They are ded­i­cated veg­e­tar­i­ans, how­ever, and as such had to avert their eyes from the piece de resis­tance of our lunch: creme brulee de foie gras. Creamy, unc­tu­ously smooth, topped with an impossible-sounding crunch of demer­ara sugar and black sesame seeds. It is the PER­FECT DISH OF ALL TIME. As John’s dad would have said, “It’s a dish to kill for.” Unless one hap­pens to eschew all ani­mal prod­ucts, that is.

Twiggy had a gor­geous salad of sliced figs with hazel­nuts and a gen­er­ous flour­ish of mixed baby greens, Ed bravely ordered Eggs Flo­ren­tine even though they weren’t on the menu and… lo, there they were. For my main course I had the most melt­ingly ten­der lemon sole meu­niere, fil­leted per­fectly and then put together, the two halves, as a real fish. Quite, quite stun­ning. With capers and tiny brown pot­ted shrimps. MY! John had beef cheeks with mous­se­line of potato… how we dined. Through it all, as we ate out­side, Avery and her friends dashed to and fro, jump­ing off horses in the mews to bring ear­rings to be taken care of, lunch detri­tus to take home, and just to offer a wave and a grin. “Stop grow­ing!” Twiggy ordered sternly. “Right now.”

Finally, how­ever, we had to depart for the Gymkhana and take our leave of our pals. We made our way to the ring in Hyde Park and watched as the chil­dren jumped, can­tered, obeyed the shouted orders of the var­i­ous semi-adults in charge. As always in these sit­u­a­tions, I sim­ply sus­pend judg­ment and throw my con­fi­dence, unde­servedly placed as it may be (but it never is unde­served) behind the pow­ers that be of the Horse World. I alter­nately sneezed and coughed, hav­ing for­got­ten my anti­his­t­a­mine. “Who’s ten years old here?” bel­lowed Mr Nye in his Bar­bour and tweeds. “Here is your rosette. Do not let me see it in the dust, young lady. And say “thank you, MR NYE, if you please.”

Home finally with filthy, exhausted, dying-of-thirst Avery to throw her into a bath­tub and escape to the ten­nis court. An hour of getting-better-every-day ten­nis. Not good yet, mind you, on my side, but get­ting more deserv­ing of John every time we play, which is nearly every day! Have to do some­thing to work off all that foie gras, after all.

Tomor­row will bring Avery’s dreaded ortho­don­tist appoint­ment. We have mutu­ally agreed among the three of us that if action is advised this time, a sec­ond opin­ion will be sought. I opt for non-intervention in all med­ical sit­u­a­tions, so clearly I need help in decid­ing. Poor dear. She’ll be con­soled by miss­ing BOTH net­ball and lacrosse, and the dubi­ous joys of see­ing me at… Lost Prop­erty upon her return to school. It’s the sale tomor­row, and the soul quakes.