all things British, plus more black garlic

What a thrill it’s been, liv­ing in Eng­land dur­ing the 65th anniver­sary of D‑Day. I con­fess to a spe­cial inter­est in the sub­ject because of one unfor­get­table sum­mer of my life, spent in Brit­tany and Nor­mandy when I was a junior in high school. For the Fourth of July, our school group spent the week­end in Ste. Mere Eglise, a tiny town in Nor­mandy where the 101st and 82nd Air­borne Divi­sion para­troop­ers land­ed on June 6, 1944. I actu­al­ly got to stay overnight with the man who had been may­or of the town the night the para­troop­ers arrived, and I will nev­er for­get the sto­ries he told, tak­ing us to the bridge that divid­ed the Ger­mans from the advanc­ing Amer­i­cans, with a white line down its cen­ter to show the exact bound­ary. Any­one who ever gets a chance to see the muse­um at Ste. Mere Eglise, see Oma­ha and the oth­er beach­es, GO.

So to com­mem­o­rate the anniver­sary we’ve been watch­ing “Band of Broth­ers,” a stun­ning HBO minis­eries from 2001. All I can say is that this por­tray­al of wartime under­scores the extent to which I am made of The Wrong Stuff. I just don’t think I could sur­vive the sheer ter­ror these men lived with. Not to men­tion the food.

In true British spir­it, this week­end our neigh­bor Toni knocked on our door and enlist­ed our help in a lit­tle neigh­bor­hood coop­er­a­tion. There’s a coun­cil house (gov­ern­ment spon­sored hous­ing) across the road from us whose hedge has grad­u­al­ly encroached onto the pave­ment out­side the house and near­ly cov­ered all walk­ing space. Toni, whose com­mu­ni­ty spir­it is sec­ond to none (she reg­u­lar­ly push­es fly­ers about neigh­bor­hood safe­ty and cat iden­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments through our let­ter­box), decid­ed that rather than wait for the coun­cil to do any­thing about it, we should all just get togeth­er and take care of it our­selves. Two love­ly neigh­bor­hood men turned up, one with elec­tric clip­pers and one with heavy duty rub­bish bags, so we met up with them car­ry­ing our lad­der and a broom. “How are we going to plug this thing in?” the clip­per man mused aloud, and Toni marched up to the door of a near­by house where we could hear activ­i­ty, knocked loud­ly, and wait­ed. Two young girls threw open the win­dow over our heads and said, “What do you want?” “For you to plug THIS into your elec­tri­cal sock­et, young lady!” and she threw up the exten­sion cord. The girls gig­gled and sat in the win­dowsill as we worked, dan­gling their legs over the side of the house. “It’s my birth­day, I don’t nor­mal­ly sit in the win­dow,” one girl explained. Why not?

We made short work of the hedge, swept up all the debris and enlist­ed the help of a pass­ing Ham­mer­smith stranger to take our pho­to­graph. It was a love­ly, peace­ful, friend­ly sort of after­noon, spent on an activ­i­ty that absolute­ly encap­su­lates the British spir­it: pitch­ing in, gen­tly defer­ring to the lady in charge, qui­et­ly con­tribut­ing the nec­es­sary bits and pieces to get the job done. No fan­fare. These coun­cil house peo­ple will come home to a bit of unex­pect­ed gar­den­ing hav­ing been done!

Well, Avery’s dread­ed exams are final­ly over. That is, she’s suf­fer­ing her Mod­ern Lan­guages Orals even as we speak, but the writ­ten exams fin­ished on Fri­day, to her total joy. She’s giv­en me per­mis­sion to tell you a fun­ny sto­ry, a sto­ry that reflects how impor­tant it is to be fun­ny, if you’re going to be wrong. In Reli­gious Stud­ies, the exam­in­er asked, “Which were the two church­es involved in the Great Schism?” Hav­ing absolute­ly no idea, Avery answered, “The Sis­tine Chapel and St Paul’s Cathedral.”

Fri­day saw me on a lit­tle Lon­don art adven­ture, spon­sored by my Oxford friend Jo. As usu­al, in my lame way, I am telling you about some­thing you can­not do because I went on pre­cise­ly the last day. Have you ever been to West Dul­wich? Well, until Fri­day nei­ther had I, even though my erst­while crush Richard Armitage is reput­ed to live there. And believe you me, we kept our eyes peeled for him, but to no avail. No, what actu­al­ly took us to West Dul­wich was “Sick­ert in Venice” at the Dul­wich Pic­ture Gallery. Now, not being a per­son who par­tic­u­lar­ly likes rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al art, and being espe­cial­ly not fond of por­trai­ture, Wal­ter Sick­ert has nev­er flut­tered my heart­beat. But Jo want­ed to go and I want­ed to see her, so Sick­ert it was. I’m not real­ly any more moved by him than I ever was, but there were some extreme­ly good draw­ings: fig­ure stud­ies whose lack of emb­sell­ish­ment made me won­der how quick­ly he might have pro­duced them. When it comes to grit­ty real­ism, I think I pre­fer the Amer­i­can Ash­can School to the Cam­den Town School but to tell you the truth, I don’t like either one very much. But I was a good girl and went, and just about my favorite thing about the after­noon (oth­er than shar­ing Jo’s com­pa­ny which is always uplift­ing and hilar­i­ous) was the excel­lent lunch in the Gallery Cafe.

Don’t you love going out to lunch with some­one who likes to share? We ordered three starters: a aspara­gus and goats cheese tart, smoked salmon fish­cakes with herb may­on­naise, and a meze plate with hum­mous, cous­cous, feta and roast­ed toma­toes. Per­fect! So now you know where to eat when you’ve ful­filled your cul­tur­al duty and looked at the paintings.

And West Dul­wich itself has a love­ly shop­ping street, with one-off cloth­ing shops and a real­ly gor­geous tiny deli called Romeo Jones (scroll down to the shop name and click on ‘read more’). It’s owned by two locals who are excit­ed about get­ting all their pro­duce as close to home as pos­si­ble, and sev­er­al things are made in-house, includ­ing the superb (and strong!) gar­lic pate I brought home. I also bought a pecori­no cheese with rock­et and pis­ta­chios, not sure exact­ly what I want to do with it, oth­er than just scarf it down, but it might be good shaved over pas­ta. They car­ry a fan­tas­tic bre­sao­la that they brought from Italy (so much for local pro­duce!) which is Avery’s new favorite break­fast meat. That plus a good help­ing of sum­mer fruit crum­ble, and break­fast is sort­ed for her.

I raced home to take Avery and Jamie ice skat­ing, then John met us with Avery’s friend Lille and we raced them to Covent Gar­den, there to see “Ondine” at the Roy­al Opera House. A thrilling reward for their exam week. They were all dressed up and feel­ing quite frisky, meow­ing at pass­ing pedes­tri­ans as we drove along in the Mini, top down even in the sprin­kling rain. And then to be met at the door of the Opera House by a man­ag­er who did­n’t think they were OLD ENOUGH to be allowed to stay on their own! I swal­lowed my anger and irri­ta­tion, real­iz­ing that the whole hon­ey-rather-than-vine­gar thing was going to have to kick in (rather than my kick­ing HIM). “They’re near­ly 13, and in senior school, and VERY respon­si­ble,” I cooed, and they put their heads to one side and looked respon­si­ble. And inno­cent, not at all as if they had spit balls in their hand­bags. Final­ly he relent­ed. As if I was going to walk away hav­ing giv­en up on their fab­u­lous evening! Lille’s moth­er had arranged for them to have ele­gant lit­tle sand­wich­es at the first inter­val, and choco­late fon­dants at the sec­ond. What luxuries.

John and I, unlike nor­mal peo­ple who would have tak­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to eat out in Covent Gar­den, came home to an old favorite, spiced up with my new favorite ingre­di­ent: black gar­lic.

Szechuan Chick­en with Black and White Gar­lic, Red Pep­pers and Pistachios
(serves four)

4 chick­en breast fil­lets, cut in bite-size pieces
1 head black gar­lic, cloves squeezed out and sliced
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
3 tbsps soy sauce
2 tbsps sesame oil
1 small hot red chilli, deseed­ed and sliced thin
1 bunch scal­lions (spring onions) sliced: white and green parts
1 2‑inch knob of gin­ger, peeled and sliced rather thick
4 red pep­pers, cut in bite-size pieces
1 tsp peanut oil
1 cup shelled raw pistachios

This dish is a win­ner on many lev­els: it’s a snap to make and you can have every­thing on hand in your pantry except for the chick­en and pep­pers. It’s pun­gent and unfor­get­table from the two sorts of gar­lic, and slic­ing the gin­ger instead of minc­ing it adds a sur­pris­ing ele­ment of spice and energy.

Com­bine all the ingre­di­ents except the pep­pers and pis­ta­chios in a medi­um bowl and stir around thor­ough­ly to coat the chick­en. Mar­i­nate for as long as you like: at least 15 minutes.

Heat a wok or fry­ing pan and throw in the con­tents of the chick­en bowl. Stir fry over a high heat JUST until chick­en is cooked, per­haps 4 min­utes depend­ing on your heat: be brave and stop before it’s too done because the ten­der­ness is an unbe­liev­able addi­tion to the dish. It will cook a bit when you take it off the heat, any­way. Remove from wok with a slot­ted spoon and place in your serv­ing bowl. In the oil and sauce left behind in the wok, fry the pep­pers until just soft­ened, then remove from the wok to the serv­ing bowl.

Still over high heat, add the peanut oil to the wok and fry the pis­ta­chios for sev­er­al min­utes, until they’re crunchy instead of chewy, but take care not to scorch them. Throw the chick­en and pep­pers back into the wok and stir till every­thing’s hot. Serve with steamed rice.

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This was fab­u­lous. With, I must aver, the pro­vi­so that every­one you are plan­ning to see that evening has some. Because the gar­lic is won­der­ful­ly pun­gent! It’s not for the faint of heart, this dish. You’ll love it.

And while it’s not worth writ­ing up as a recipe, how’s this for cred­it crunch cook­ing: if you’re like me, you have sev­er­al bags of toma­to sauce in your freez­er (“for an emer­gency” although what emer­gency would involve toma­to sauce I do not know) and you might even have, as I did, a bag of bolog­nese sauce, and a bag of minced pork or beef. Now I am per­fect­ly capa­ble of keep­ing such things in my freez­er for MONTHS and then throw­ing them away. Isn’t that awful? Well, on Sat­ur­day I just felt too guilty doing this, and so came up with the idea to use them ALL as sauce for lasagna! And you know what: it was won­der­ful. If you had a vac­u­um pack­er, as I do now, your left­overs will stay even nicer, but even with that lit­tle bit of freez­er burn, the sauce was very tasty! And typ­i­cal me, not hav­ing labelled the bags, one of the toma­to sauces was Moroc­can spiced. I held my breath: would Avery and John like it? And would you believe: one bite and Avery said, “Wow, Moroc­can lasagna, that’s new!” I felt very vir­tu­ous. Just get fresh cheeses (mas­car­pone, ricot­ta and moz­zarel­la) and make sure you have noo­dles in your pantry, and din­ner’s done.

Well, ten­nis beck­ons before the heav­ens open (the sky looks very threat­en­ing), so I shall run and work off the calo­ries from all that lasagna!