All’s Well… (well you know)

I think that mag­i­cal phrase can be uttered: Sum­mer Has Arrived! Of course our stan­dards in Eng­land are slightly dif­fer­ent from those in Amer­ica, some bet­ter, some worse. We can’t count on the bright blue skies of Con­necti­cut, but there are the Eng­lish wild­flow­ers that make the heart sing. To see a lit­tle girl roam through the coun­try­side on a white pony through fields of tiny yel­low but­ter­cups is a lovely experience.

But prob­a­bly the best of Eng­lish sum­mer, early sum­mer, are the soft fruits, and the rhubarb. Avery had a lovely crum­ble last night before the the­atre (more on that in a moment), and so I came home and created:

Sum­mer Fruit Crum­ble
(serves 8 as a fine dessert or break­fast)

1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup light brown or Demarara sugar
1 tsp cin­na­mon (less if you’re sen­si­tive)
1/2 tsp nut­meg
dash ground cloves
1/2 cup cold but­ter, cut in small cubes

1 cup each:
chopped apple
sliced peeled rhubarb
rasp­ber­ries
straw­ber­ries, quar­tered
1/4 cup light brown of Demarara sugar

Put the flour, sugar and spices in a food proces­sor and turn it on. Through the hole in the top, drop the but­ter cubes one at a time, let­ting them process for sev­eral sec­onds after each drop.

Mix all the fruits and the sugar in a large bowl and stir well. Toss into a but­tered 9-inch square glass dish and top with the flour mix­ture, cov­er­ing all the fruit. Bake in a 350F, 280C oven for about half an hour or until fruit is bub­bling up along the sides and the crum­ble top­ping is nicely browned.

***************

This was mag­i­cal, even for me, a per­son who does not like sweet things. The rhubarb is intensely sum­mery, and the bet­ter straw­ber­ries and rasp­ber­ries you can get, the bet­ter, because the sim­ple fla­vors really sing. A but­tery, slightly crunchy crum­ble top­ping, plus you know ALL the ingre­di­ents and so have a clear con­science. A per­fect break­fast for a school­girl, trust me.

Yes, the the­atre last evening was “All’s Well That Ends Well” at the National The­atre, a des­ti­na­tion we seem to head to more than any other. I adore the lit­tle inti­mate Olivier The­atre within, with its seats around three-quarters of the stage. And what a mag­i­cal, whim­si­cal pro­duc­tion it was. Still in pre­views, so there was a feel­ing of “what now?” about many of the moments: two par­tic­u­lar bits of totally unex­pected slow-motion at times of supreme drama: the action all slowed down almost imper­cep­ti­bly while fil­i­greed leaves fil­tered down from the ceil­ing… some bril­liant touches of play­ing around with the orig­i­nal lines: dur­ing a par­tic­u­larly long list-sort of speech by a char­ac­ter, she turned to the audi­ence in the mid­dle and said wearily, “Etcetera…” Brilliant!

Look out for the sin­gle scene-stealing instant of the entire play: the third, or even fourth girl is offered up for the Count as wife, and as she looks at him through comic-book spec­ta­cles, clutch­ing her knit­ting, she sim­ply squeaks, “Minna minna minna!…” And as Avery pointed out, “for that moment, she had the whole the­atre.” Oliver Ford Davies and Clare Hig­gins were proper main­stays for the play, but the younger set (includ­ing the Count who, when he bared his chest to change his shirt, an audi­ble gasp rip­pled through the audi­ence!) were more than enough to hold up the energy. It is such fun to see a play early on in its run: the grins of sheer unabashed delight from the play­ers at the bow was a joy!

We were home so very, very late. It’s half-term break for Avery, but only in a way, because she and her other first-year com­pa­tri­ots in senior school are given fairly seri­ous amounts of what’s called “revi­sion” to do, what I sup­pose we Amer­i­cans call “study­ing.” Piles of papers of geog­ra­phy, Eng­lish, maths, Latin, sci­ence, art, French, every­thing, to dig through and try to remem­ber every­thing the teach­ers have said since Sep­tem­ber. So I felt some­what guilty throw­ing her into bed quite close to mid­night, but thought self-righteously, “It’s bl**dy Shake­speare!” She slept late, and stuck close to the kitchen today as I con­cocted my fruit crum­ble, pesto, water­cress and sweet­corn soup for lunch, and for din­ner, a quite mag­i­cal new ingre­di­ent, not for the faint of heart: black gar­lic. It’s not as evil as it sounds; rather, it’s sweet, sticky, coal black and nearly weight­less in its papery outer skin. Sim­ply peel away the skin to reveal the shriv­elly cloves, then squish the cloves into sub­mis­sion for the mari­nade of your life.

Pork Fil­let in a Black Gar­lic Mari­nade, Served in Let­tuce
(serves 4 eas­ily)

2 medium pork ten­der­loins, com­pletely trimmed of mem­branes and fat
1 whole head black gar­lic
2 tbsps soy sauce
juice of 1 lime
1 tbsp sesame oil

1 red pep­per, diced
1 large Por­to­bello mush­room, diced
1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsps pinenuts, chopped
hand­ful cilantro/coriander leaves
1/4 cup plum sauce

1 head Boston or ice­berg let­tuce, pulled into large leaves

Place the trimmed ten­der­loins in a Ziplock bag. In a small bowl, com­bine the gar­lic, soy sauce, lime juice and sesame oil and mash them together, then leave for 5 min­utes or so to let the acid in the lime juice break down the gar­lic. Mash some more until nice and smooth, then pour all the mari­nade into the bag with the pork and seal well. Squish around until the ten­der­loins are com­pletely coated with the mari­nade. Leave in the fridge for as long as you can, within rea­son: an hour to a day.

Jut before you’re ready to eat, assem­ble the rest of the ingre­di­ents, and saute the pep­pers and mush­rooms in the olive oil. Set aside. Cut the ten­der­loins into 1-inch slices and place in a food proces­sor, then blitz until chopped but not pureed. Heat a heavy fry­ing pan to very hot, then add the pork and saute, break­ing up with a wooden spoon as you go. When cooked, remove to a bowl.

Serve all ingre­di­ents with let­tuce leaves, and pile on as you like! Have plenty of nap­kins, as it’s a messy dish.

********************

Light, diety, but sat­is­fy­ing. If your chil­dren don’t like let­tuce leaves, pro­vide Chi­nese pan­cakes for them. It’s all lovely and you can assem­ble each one as you like it.

Good­ness, it’s been a whirl­wind since Mon­day. In fact, it all began Sun­day evening when we picked up Avery’s friend Lille and brought her home for pier­rade and Eton Mess, then pack­ing up for their lovely week­end away. It was that heart­warm­ing com­bi­na­tion of the famil­iar and the utterly lux­u­ri­ous. For many years our fam­ily, includ­ing John’s mother and much-missed father, have trav­elled from Lon­don to the cradling beauty of the Cotswolds, for that occa­sional break from crazy daily life. Given our druthers, our des­ti­na­tion has to be Lords of the Manor, sim­ply my favorite lit­tle hotel in the world, tucked away in Upper Slaugh­ter, a place where you can actu­ally bor­row Welling­tons if you need them, or order the finest single-malt Scotch in the world, and watch a heli­copter land on the back gar­den, and sam­ple the finest fried bread in an Eng­lish break­fast you ever tasted.

When we first began to retreat there, and I truly can’t remem­ber why we ever first did, it was the ulti­mate in coun­try shabby 17th cen­tury chic: worn Ori­en­tal rugs, fam­ily por­traits in fire-stained oils, half-empty bot­tles of Cal­va­dos on the well-worn bar, leather fend­ers before the fire­places. How we loved it. How many pre­cious evenings we got dressed up, in our rooms above the din­ing rooms, dawdling in old-fashioned ceramic baths with feet, lis­ten­ing to “Wogan” drift­ing in from the telly in the bed­room, to meet up in the sit­ting room where a smil­ing wait­ress brought heavy menus of what was to me, then, very remark­able and unat­tain­able food. We chose, over much laugh­ter and Scotches, and then repaired to the din­ing room.

Well, all things must change, for bet­ter or worse, or prob­a­bly in this case from won­der­ful to worse to bet­ter, but always chang­ing. Two years ago we took a lit­tle friend of Avery’s there to stay for a week­end while her mother had a baby, and it was lovely, but the food? I’m ashamed to say I’d out­grown it. It was nice hotel food. But I could do more than I could do in the old days, and I was loath to spend pre­cious food money on some­thing sort of tepid.

So this year I thought, “Right, we’ll have a fab­u­lous time in the coun­try, but have din­ner in a nice pub some­where, save some money.” In the end, after the girls had been put through their paces at Jill Carenza’s, rid­ing school (more on that in a moment!), all they and we wanted for the evening was to col­lapse and order room ser­vice. I noticed with a mix­ture of delight and alarm and nos­tal­gia that the shabby chic had all gone, in favor of a muted ele­gance: all col­ors like mush­room, sage, brick red, stripes instead of flow­ers, lovely damask in the place of the old chintz and vel­vet. No more flocked wall­pa­pers, no more shabby old mis­matched books in the shelves, and the oil paint­ings had gone in favor of lovely Cotswolds land­scapes in pas­tels. Gor­geous, but not quite the old days. John’s father, I felt, would have felt it too posh. And yet…

Girls ensconced in their room of our suite, clutch­ing the excit­ing gra­tu­itous sham­poos and lotions from a fancy French maker instead of the lovely Molton Brown the hotel used to stock, we all col­lapsed. “Room ser­vice!” the girls crowed, and scrubbed the horses from their hands. Tagli­atelle all round, with ham and mush­rooms, we decided. I opted for an addi­tional “mixed salad.”

WELL.

When the food arrived, John and I looked at each other. This was no sort of for­get­table pasta with a dull sauce of but­ton mush­rooms and ham. Home­made noo­dles, mixed wild mush­rooms in a sub­tle, slightly but lightly creamy sauce, with smoky chunks of some arti­sanal ham. What was going on here? Then I pulled toward me the salad. And my dear read­ers, you have never tasted such a salad. So lightly and yet skil­fully dressed that it appeared naked at first, but the mus­tardy, olivey, slightly gar­licky fla­vor clung to every leaf. And the leaves! Baby every­thing: minus­cule leaves of baby cilantro, baby radic­chio, baby endive, baby dan­de­lion, baby beet­root. GOR­GEOUS. “What has hap­pened here?” we asked silently. And then, the girls’ desserts arrived. A sin­gle per­fect hol­low ball of spun sugar sit­ting on a bed of poached rhubarb and ice cream, a cof­fee pra­line souf­fle for Lille… and the most gor­geous petits fours you can imag­ine: a pas­sion­fruit jelly, a creamy caramely square the size of a postage stamp, a Turk­ish delight of the most per­fect pis­ta­chios. Perfection.

I high­tailed it straight to the front desk, and you know what? Since we there last, there is a new chef, a cer­tain Matt Wee­don, poached (as it were) from a Scot­tish cas­tle restau­rant who must have been dev­as­tated to lose him. With his arrival and hard work, the hotel restau­rant has gained its first cov­eted Miche­lin star! How I wish we had sucked it up for the money and had the whole nine yards in the din­ing room! I had no idea. Next time. Per­fec­tion. Go!

In the morn­ing we ended up repeat­ing the girls’ incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence at rid­ing the day before: cross-country event­ing! Quite sim­ply, all the scary things that moth­ers the world round dread that their girls will want to do, when they begin rid­ing. But I was fine! Jump­ing, in the coun­try­side, far­ther than I could see, across unmov­able jumps in the grass, on ponies they’d never rid­den before. The skies were ulti­mately change­able: blue, grey, scud­ding white clouds, grey threat­en­ing drops, all smil­ing down on fields full of but­ter­cups. I felt John’s father all around us, he who had smiled his Irish eyes so many times on Avery jump­ing in just this place. How his pride in her shone from his smile: lean­ing against the fence, rev­el­ling in the jumps get­ting higher, never fear­ing for her safety, always con­fi­dent that his grand­daugh­ter would be equal to the chal­lenge. He was there, with us. And always will be. How he would have loved to see her red cheeks and grin­ning eyes, shout­ing, “That’s the most fun I’ve EVER had!” as she brought her pony in from the far­away fields, where metaphor­i­cally and really, she had left me far behind.

And yet even there, things change: Avery and Lille were taught not by the famous Jill, who pre­sides over the barn, but her up and com­ing daugh­ter Emily. At first we harumphed silently a bit, “What about Jill!” but quickly saw that the new gen­er­a­tion had taken over, and she gave as good as she got, shout for ear-piercing shout the image of her mother. And the girls were in heaven, hot, sweaty, scared to the point of exhil­a­ra­tion but never for a MOMENT want­ing to say no, to do any­thing less than what they were offered. “More ring, you lot, or the field?” Emily asked at one point, and Lille shouted, “Field field field!” “Tell us what you REALLY think,” John teased. What a com­plete joy to give this expe­ri­ence to them.

Back to the hotel, putting the top up in the poor tiny lit­tle con­vert­ible at one point for a brief rain­storm! Then to get food for the ducks in Lower Slaugh­ter, another beloved tra­di­tion, end­ing once in a giant white duck tak­ing a giant bite out of John’s ancient Bar­bour coat! We always get duck food at the same place, where Avery always gets her favorite ice cream, and looks in the mir­rored front of the “AVERY” scale set out in front of the shop. And we were off with duck food. But again: changes. Where were the ducks? There were just two, or three, and they weren’t hun­gry, not sur­pris­ingly, since prob­a­bly every tourist all morn­ing had insisted on feed­ing them! “No ducks,” Avery said mourn­fully, and just as I was plan­ning to go buy some so she could con­tinue her tra­di­tion, up popped a mother and at least seven tiny duck­lings! “What we lack in quan­tity, we make up for in qual­ity,” John said, and all was well.

High tea at the hotel, the tra­di­tional search­ing through “Horse and Pony” Mag­a­zine for the ONE pony in the clas­si­fieds that they could agree on… and home. It’s actu­ally fun to go on a long drive with two highly aca­d­e­mic near-teenagers: they spend the time singing their Latin noun declen­sions! And imi­tat­ing their Latin teacher in her high-pitched cheery tones, and singing “The Grand Old Duke of York” while skip­ping var­i­ous words… very entertaining.

As for me, the high­light was our visit to Stow, on the way home. Lam­bournes Butch­ers in Dig­beth Street pro­vided not only the divine pork fil­let for our black gar­lic din­ner tonight, but also the most fla­vor­ful and oppor­tunis­tic toma­toes on the vine: why don’t more butch­ers offer fresh veg­eta­bles? It’s my favorite way to shop: “Hey, this would be good with that…” Then next door to the butcher was Hamp­tons Fine Foods, spe­cial­iz­ing in the sorts of lux­ury ham­pers we can only DREAM about (my birth­day, any­one?) where I picked up local rape­seed oil and the BEST CHEESE EVER: Stow Soft, a sort of mildly smelly, intensely but­tery and fla­vor­ful creamy cheese, the kind you slice the top off and then spoon out, like an Epoisse or a Vacherin, not to be too foodie all over you. But I wish so much I had bought more than two (I gave one to Lille’s mother when we dropped her daugh­ter off, dirty and nearly as smelly as the cheese, oh, ponies!).

Home in a stu­por of fatigue, appre­ci­a­tion, extreme close­ness from 48 hours in each oth­ers’ com­pany, dirty laun­dry, the small­est car ever, and so many mem­o­ries. It’s all we can do, in the end. Pull our chil­dren and our hus­bands through the tough­est moments, give them a kick when they need it (and take our kicks when they come!) and then sit back and LOVE the blinky after­noons when you’re watch­ing a not-so-little girl on a white pony, in a flow­ery field, hav­ing the time of her life.

Then come home to a fruit crumble…