a week of calm

At least, that’s what I have in mind. Last week deliv­ered the dra­mas of ortho­don­ture from hell, “to voiceover or not to voiceover,” capped off with a Fri­day after­noon at the skat­ing rink clos­eted with (actu­ally, if only I could have shut her up in a closet) the loud­est, most obnox­ious mother at the adja­cent table… oooh, I could have smoth­ered her with a roll of paper towel. Finally home in the cold rain for a truly lovely week­end appre­ci­at­ing the Christ­mas tree, a sleep­over date from one of Avery’s sweet­est friends, and a Sun­day nap, in a shaft of gen­tle late-afternoon sun­light on the sofa. Bliss.

So my hopes are that the drama has been exhausted and we can hope for peace. We’ve been play­ing ten­nis doggedly in quite too-cold sprin­kling rain, shiv­er­ing and feel­ing fool­ish, but I fig­ure we’ve burned off at least a table­spoon of mayo. I fin­ished the last of the Christ­mas cards and popped them in the post on my rainy way to school pickup, and we are now con­tem­plat­ing noth­ing more dra­matic than a carol con­cert at school on Wednes­day. Quite, quite peaceful.

But you know me, the most peace­ful thing I can think of is cook­ing, fol­lowed by eat­ing and as my favorite cook­ery writer Lau­rie Col­win says, the best pos­si­ble thing which is “talk­ing about cook­ing while eat­ing with friends.” That will be the story here at home after the carol con­cert, since my friend Annie and I have decided to bring the two fam­i­lies together for a smor­gas­bord sup­per. I must con­fess that as much as I dote on a nice meat, veg and starch din­ner nearly every night, my favorite way of eat­ing is choos­ing among lots of dif­fer­ent fla­vors, a lit­tle of this, a lit­tle of that. Could it be my Scan­di­na­vian blood com­ing through? So we’ve divvied up the bits we’ll each bring, and I’m quite excited, respon­si­ble as I shall be for “meats and fish.”

Meats… I think a small gam­mon (ham) roasted with a mix­ture of minced gar­lic, Dijon mus­tard, honey and plum sauce, then sliced really thin. And a turkey breast: they are avail­able here, won­der­fully, as small as a large chicken breast in the States, so you’re not mak­ing a com­mit­ment of hol­i­day pro­por­tions. Fish… how about hot smoked roasted salmon, cut in thick slices to serve with a dip of creme fraiche and wasabi paste? The wasabi cuts into the cream and turns it a lovely pale green, a color that seduces you into for­get­ting how HOT the dip will be!

Then, I will indulge in my lat­est food obses­sion, which tends to crop up every night at about mid­night when the tennis-playing side of my brain is hushed up by the indul­gent side. “Go on, so what if a table­spoon of this spends your entire hour of ten­nis? Life is short!” This obses­sion is just about any prod­uct from the Find­later com­pany out of Scot­land, my favorites so far being a smoked salmon pate (light and rich at the same time, creamy and not too fishy), and a duck pate with just a hint of chopped apri­cot rim­ming the dish (a bless­ing for John who abhors any com­bi­na­tion of fruit and meat, so he can avoid the fruit). These pates are sin­fully indul­gent, per­fect either on a bit of toasted baguette or that most appo­site of all crack­ers, the Bath Oliver. Order some, do! And have that mid­night snack and think of me.

If you are out and about as we were on Sun­day in Maryle­bone, our old stomp­ing grounds when Avery used to be in school there, I can highly rec­om­mend the Nat­ural Kitchen for brunch. Pass up all the over­priced (shock­ingly so, even for Lon­don!) raw ingre­di­ents on the ground floor, don’t be tempted to sit right down in the chilly win­dow. Head upstairs and be pre­pared to wait 15 min­utes or so for a table in the bustling, warm, chic and delectably-smelling first-floor din­ing room.

We were not put off by the fact that every­one there besides us looked incred­i­bly, how shall I put it, rich. Just like peo­ple who’ve been out Christ­mas shop­ping and to whom the word “reces­sion” applies only to their gum­lines. Such great people-watching, and –lis­ten­ing. Avery has a pet peeve: the new ad cam­paign by Patek Philippe for their watches, with the slo­gan, “You never actu­ally own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next gen­er­a­tion,” and a photo of an actual father and son, smirk­ing into the cam­era. At the Nat­ural Kitchen, Avery looked around and said, “Every­one here looks like one of those ads.” She looked down at her own clean but per­ma­nently horse-stained jodh­purs and boots and sighed.

But all that wealth around us didn’t stop the Eggs Bene­dict from being truly sub­lime, per­fectly runny yolks, French ham and a fault­less Hol­landaise. John’s full Eng­lish was equally remark­able with Lin­colnshire sausages, spicy and tempt­ing. Avery had a ham and Emmen­thal crois­sant that was lovely too.

Some­times, how­ever, meat, veg and starch is the way to go, and when you’re in that sort of mood, where you want a din­ner that requires noth­ing more chal­leng­ing than scoop­ing up some­thing sim­ple on a fork, you can­not do any bet­ter than:

Chicken Pojarski with Caramelized Car­rots and Rice
(serves 4)

CHICKEN:
splash of olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 shal­lot, minced
1 tbsp paprika (sounds a lot, but trust me)
4 chicken breast fil­lets, cubed in bite-size pieces
splash of Madeira
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup creme fraiche (half-fat is fine)

CAR­ROTS:
5 tbsps but­ter
1/2 cup dark brown soft sugar
4 car­rots per per­son, sliced in rounds

RICE:
1/2 cup bas­mati rice per person

For the chicken, saute the gar­lic and shal­lot gen­tly in the oil, then add the chicken and cook on all sides briefly (not fully cooked). Set chicken aside and add the Madeira to the pan and raise the heat. Scrape all cooked bits into the liq­uid and add chicken stock. Lower heat and whisk in creme fraiche. Add chicken and its accu­mu­lated juices and poach very gen­tly for 15 min­utes. At this point you may turn off the heat and leave the dish until you are ready to eat, heat­ing it gen­tly just before serving.

About 40 min­utes before you want to eat, melt the but­ter and sugar together and sim­mer, siz­zling. Drop car­rots in and cook, stir­ring occa­sion­ally, low­er­ing the heat as necessary.

About 20 min­utes before you want to eat, steam the rice. I’ve found that the rice sticks much less to the pan if you turn the heat off for five min­utes or so before serv­ing, keep­ing the lid tightly shut.

Pile the rice in the cen­ter of the plate and ladle the chicken and sauce on top, then make a nice mound of the car­rots on the side. All you need is… a fork.

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Eat this din­ner unashamedly in front of the telly while you watch Delia Smith’s Christ­mas pro­gramme, or if you’re all alone, carry your lap­top to the din­ing table and, for the next five days, you can lis­ten to this won­der­ful pro­gramme on BBC Radio Four with Simon Parkes, all about “The Food Mem­oir.” If, like me, you’re try­ing to write a food mem­oir your­self, you can sit back and wail a bit at the genius of the writ­ers Parkes talks to. Jeal­ousy: it’s ugly. But then I wipe away my tears and pick up my fork, and with an unwieldy bite of creamy com­fort food, all’s right with the world.