a riot of rocket

Actu­ally I’m tak­ing con­tri­bu­tions under advise­ment: you have your mur­der of crows, your pom­pos­ity of pro­fes­sors, your cloud of bats and leap of leop­ards. But what do you call a very large gath­er­ing of rocket leaves?

These are, of course, known to Amer­i­cans as arugula, in which case I’m quite sure there’s an entirely dif­fer­ent col­lec­tive noun. An amal­ga­ma­tion of arugula? Not roman­tic enough.

In any case, imag­ine my cir­cum­stances. I invited 11 peo­ple for din­ner, fair enough, to con­clude with an enor­mous salad of rocket leaves, my absolute favorite green leaf and unprocur­able in Amer­ica, there­fore of great cachet dur­ing the 10 months of the year I live in Eng­land. It turned out only nine of my invited guests could come so already I had too much rocket, and THEN we turned out to be far too full after the dense and per­fect 72% dark choco­late tart brought by my guests… so no salad. Still the rocket lived in my fridge.

In these days of simul­ta­ne­ous credit crunch bud­getary con­sid­er­a­tions AND envi­ron­men­tal guilt over the tiny lit­tle draw­ings of air­planes on every pack­age of veg these days (“air freight!” the bags pro­claim), I sim­ply could not let the rocket lan­guish as I might have done in more care­less days. What was a girl to do?

Well, first I took a look in the other cor­ners of the fridge and found beet­root, goats cheese, and some lit­tle cubes of pancetta I bought in a mood of lazi­ness and hunger, and a lit­tle dish of home­made pesto. In the freezer were some lux­u­ri­ous whole tiger prawns. It was sim­plic­ity itself to buy some sup­ple­men­tary scal­lops and produce:

Warm Scal­lop and Prawn Salad with Beet­root and Rocket
(serves 4)

1 dozen frozen raw whole tiger prawns
1 bag rocket (about 2 cups loosely packed or about 70 grams)
1/2 cup pancetta, cubed
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp but­ter
2 dozen small scal­lops
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
3 medium beet­root, roasted and cubed
1 small log (about half a cup) goats cheese
1 tbsp pesto
1 tsp bal­samic vine­gar
juice of half a lemon

It’s an assem­bly job. Thaw the prawns in cold water and pat dry. Gird your loins and take the heads off the prawns, mak­ing sure to get the anten­nae as well. Scat­ter the rocket on a nice plat­ter. In a heavy skil­let, fry the pancetta till crisp, then set aside. Add the olive oil and but­ter to the skil­let and cook the prawns until thor­oughly pink, but not so long as to let them get tough. Remove from the skil­let and set aside. Turn up the heat under the skil­let and cook the scal­lops for about a minute on each side, till nicely browned, but again, not tough. Remove from skil­let and set aside. Now fry the gar­lic gen­tly, gen­tly, just till soft but not browned.

Throw the beet­root cubes onto the rocket, then crum­ble the goats cheese over. It’s all very pretty now, like the Ital­ian flag. Scat­ter over the scal­lops and prawns and pancetta, then whisk together the pesto, vine­gar and lemon juice and driz­zle it over all. Spoon up the gar­lic in its olive oil and but­ter bath and scat­ter it over top of all.

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This salad was very sat­is­fy­ing and stim­u­lat­ing to eat. “There are too many ingre­di­ents, I can see that,” I said, wolf­ing down another mouth­ful, and John agreed. “But what would you leave out?” We couldn’t think of anything.

Well, that took care of one pack­age of the long-suffering green guys, but I had three more pack­ages to go. They spent another day in the fridge while I racked my brains for some­thing to do with them. Clearly I have too much time on my hands. “Don’t invent any­thing, Mummy!” Avery wailed. “Not just for the sake of invent­ing some­thing. Wait till you have a really GOOD idea.” And then it came to me.

Creamy Sweet­corn and Rocket Soup
(serves 4)

2 tbsps but­ter
4 cloves gar­lic, sliced
2 shal­lots, sliced
4 ears sweet­corn, ker­nels cut off
3 cups chicken stock
3 bags (about 6 cups loosely packed, or 200 grams total weight)
1/2 cup cream

Melt but­ter in heavy stock­pot and saute gar­lic and shal­lot just until soft, then add sweet­corn and cover with stock. Sim­mer high for about 10 min­utes, then add rocket and stir just to soften. You will be aston­ished at how it sim­ply dis­ap­pears. Blend with hand blender, stir in cream, and pass through a sieve to catch the corn ker­nelly bits (or not, if you like more of a potage than a smooth liq­uid). I find that the best way to get soup through a sieve is to put the stock­pot that is your des­ti­na­tion pot into the sink, pour the into it through the sieve, and then SHAKE the sieve gen­tly till the solids are left behind. It’s a bit messier than just stir­ring (hence the sink), but it’s much faster.

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How to describe this soup? I am well known, I real­ize, for being inor­di­nately fond of any veg sim­mered with chicken stock and pureed with a hand blender. I could be made to eat almost any quan­tity of any veg­etable in this man­ner. But this soup… it boasts a very appeal­ing golden yel­low color flecked with the bright green rocket, and tastes much creamier than the scant amount of cream actu­ally in the soup would lead you to believe, and it’s unex­pect­edly SWEET. A sur­pris­ingly com­plex fla­vor, given the small num­ber of very ordi­nary ingre­di­ents. But there is some­thing in the strong bite of the rocket com­bined with the, dare I say it, unc­tu­ous smooth­ness of the sweet­corn that is extremely happy-making. And I’ve googled it and I think… I invented it. I know there’s no new recipe under the sun, but I haven’t seen this com­bi­na­tion and I think you should all try it, right now. Of course I am extremely lucky to live here in Eng­land where rocket can be found around any cor­ner and the Nor­mandy cream is mine for the tak­ing, but look at it this way: if you live in Iowa or Indi­ana, your corn will be bet­ter than mine. I bet canned corn would be just fine, too, and would make the soup even less expen­sive than it already is.

I am very proud of myself for this inven­tion, in no small part because it encour­ages me to try new things. Of course for every suc­cess­ful inven­tion (or even small depar­ture from the norm) there will inevitably be sev­eral culi­nary howlers, but how else do we rise above the relent­lessly quo­ti­dien in the kitchen?

Let’s see, in between these rock­etish dis­cov­er­ies, I went shop­ping. I know, I know, credit crunch. But two things hap­pened: a Boden cat­a­logue landed on my desk, and my par­ents sent me a check for my birth­day! Found money! Like what you find in your jacket pocket from last win­ter. Pure manna from heaven. So when my friend Annie saw me perus­ing said cat­a­logue on a recent trip to the charm­less West­field Shop­ping Cen­tre in my fair bor­ough, she said, “Save the postage: I’ll take you there.” Now that’s why one has friends who are real Lon­don­ers. They know where the bod­ies are buried. So off we went.

It was a sort of mile­stone: my first real grownup clothes shop­ping trip with my on-the-verge-of-teendom daugh­ter! Of course I’ve taken HER shop­ping count­less times: for rewards for an exam well-passed, or des­per­ate for shoes that don’t pinch. But to go to a shop where we could both find things? And with friends? It was a great after­noon. Spitty grey skies, we were perched high in Annie’s SUV-ish vehi­cle (as opposed to either of the orange Minis owned by our fam­i­lies), not notic­ing traf­fic because we had so many sto­ries to tell. Our girls are at an age where they are fas­ci­nated by any moth­erly rem­i­nis­cence about things famil­ial that hap­pened before they appeared on the scene. “How did Keith pro­pose to you, any­way?” I asked, and that was good for sev­eral miles. We seem to do noth­ing but laugh when we are together, and before we knew it we were at Boden, I with my metaphor­i­cal money burn­ing a hole in my pocket. Annie and the three girls were on a mis­sion to help me spend it. Shop­ping is actu­ally fun with the right staff, I found!

“No brown! And no grey,” Emily instructed me, and insisted on bring­ing over many selec­tions in fuch­sia and teal, all of which I vetoed. “And no orange!” Avery opined, which cramped my style. An entire shop, mind you, with no black gar­ments; it’s amaz­ing I found any­thing to buy. “Am I too old for a cropped cardi­gan?” I asked meekly and at least four ladies turned around and said in tan­dem, “No!” We have to help each other through these lit­tle shaky moments.

So today I am proudly wear­ing a new jumper with blue stripes. I feel I’ve dis­ap­peared and been replaced by an exact replica. Thank you, Hoosier family.

It’s an unusual half-term hol­i­day in that we have NO plans. None. A day with a skat­ing les­son to remem­ber feels quite crowded. John of course is still limp­ing around with his bum ankle, Avery nursed one of her mys­te­ri­ous one-day febrile adven­tures, and I have been feel­ing mon­u­men­tally unmo­ti­vated to do any­thing more last­ing or sig­nif­i­cant than cook. This after­noon is a pos­i­tive ode to grey­ness: the ground, the skies, the very air. So I have a pot of car­rot and corian­der soup on the stove (I know, veg in chicken stock again) and a new novel on my desk. Have you all dis­cov­ered Sophie Han­nah? My friend Kather­ine will be glad to see that I’m rec­om­mend­ing some fic­tion instead of the end­less lists of cook­ery books I’ve trot­ted out for your perusal. Sophie Han­nah is CREEPY. All her sto­ries involve dou­ble lives, lying, dead peo­ple who aren’t dead, faked iden­ti­ties. They are all plots that you can imag­ine some­one (Sophie Han­nah appar­ently) com­ing up with by watch­ing or expe­ri­enc­ing one odd thing and think­ing evilly, “What if the bizarre thing I imag­ined hap­pen­ing really did? What if the per­son involved went just that bit fur­ther down the road of bad behav­ior than I would ever dare? What’s the worst that could hap­pen?” I just fin­ished “The Point of Res­cue” and am now embarked on “Hurt­ing Dis­tance.” When did you last stay up till 2 a.m. to fin­ish a book? They’re just that good. I’ll be lucky if I remem­ber to take my car­rot soup off the stove…