Any­one for Pimms?

Well, the time is approach­ing to say good­bye to our Lon­don life for the sum­mer. I walked Avery this morn­ing up the street to meet a friend, chat­ting cheer­fully all the way about get­ting to the pool in Con­necti­cut, see­ing our old friends, babies grown sud­denly into lit­tle peo­ple, set­tling into the vaca­tion rou­tine. But once I’d left her and come back on my own, I could only think of all the things I will miss about London!

Part of this feel­ing is my love for our neigh­bor­hood, and how we’ve set­tled in like a stone in its set­ting. On my walk home I passed the house where a lit­tle group of elderly peo­ple sit on hard chairs in the front win­dow, play­ing clas­si­cal music on a whole vari­ety of instru­ments, some sort of tiny cham­ber orches­tra, the sounds spilling out the open win­dow onto the pave­ment. Then I passed the gar­den where a lady grows rhubarb, squashes and toma­toes, with her children’s toy farm ani­mals care­fully posi­tioned among the plants! There is my beloved friend Annie’s lit­tle vin­tage car, which makes me think of her and how we’ll all miss each other over the sum­mer months, no more shar­ing rides to act­ing class and the sta­ble. Up to Chez Kristoff to get a latte for John and a gor­geous runny St Mar­cellin cheese for me, to say hello to my friend Alan behind the counter, gen­er­ous as always, giv­ing me a block of choco­late from the fridge case, say­ing, “Try this, it’s the best ever, and how is French ham in your sand­wich instead of salt beef? The beef is gone…”

And the BBC! There is noth­ing like its pre­sen­ters and their cheer­ful, ana­lytic com­men­tary of Wim­ble­don! Even the zany Amer­i­cans gain some stature and seri­ous­ness sit­ting next to their British col­leagues, over a pitcher of what is prob­a­bly iced tea, but I’d rather think is Pimms! And I don’t even like Pimms, but it’s Eng­lish sum­mer­time in a glass, so I have a slight soft spot in my heart for it.

So hard to believe there are only five more days to pick Avery up at school. I have a sink­ing feel­ing that next year I may not be so very wel­come at the school gates, that she might want to bring her­self home from school, or even stay after to do what­ever near-teenagers want to do. Next week will bring the crazy energy of the Lost Prop­erty Sale, with girls rac­ing in on Pre­view day for the last chance to retrieve items they seemed per­fectly will­ing to live with­out for months but NOW, the idea that some other girl might buy them the next day and wear them to school! Hor­rors! I have spent more hours than I can tell you, writ­ing emails to the Form Teach­ers and Sports and Drama and Music teach­ers, wail­ing plain­tively, “Please tell your girls to come and col­lect their textbooks/pencil cases/violins/tennis rack­ets before they are all sent to some deserv­ing char­ity.” And fur­ther hours on the tele­phone fran­ti­cally try­ing to snag all the best moth­ers for next year’s efforts, to replace the moth­ers of the girls who are grad­u­at­ing! They are called the “Leavers”, which term for some rea­son cracks me up. It’s so… unpo­etic, for the Eng­lish. So clev­erly, I have found a place at school that isn’t depen­dent on Avery’s being will­ing to put up with me, next year.

I’ll miss my beloved rocket, all sum­mer being forced, if I just can’t live with­out it, to buy bags of enor­mous leaves of some­thing labelled “arugula,” which I know pur­ports to be the same thing, but it ISN’T. It’s tough and huge, not the del­i­cate lit­tle pep­pery leaves I’m so addicted to here. And I’ll miss run­ning around the cor­ner to The Every­thing Store, so named because aside from fab­ric dye and a dig­i­tal ther­mome­ter, the store has EVERY­THING. Bas­mati rice, Dan­ish salami, French cheese, laun­dry pel­lets, bak­ing pow­der, Orang­ina, birth­day cards, tooth­paste. Every­thing! And I’ve grad­u­ated, over the past week or so, from being treated with scrupu­lous respect by the lovely Pak­istani fam­ily who own it, to being called “dar­ling girl.” That’s when you know you’ve bought a LOT of every­thing. Or they’re just nice people.

So we’re slowly accu­mu­lat­ing the piles of things to take away with us: pho­tographs to frame and place about the Con­necti­cut house (mostly of my niece Jane, if truth be told), boxes of Mal­don salt with­out which I can­not cook, torn-out recipes that I’m absolutely sure I’ll try once I have loads of time on my hands (but it never feels that way, once I’m there). Nov­els and cook­books and biogra­phies that have piled up on my desk and are now des­tined for sum­mer read­ing, an Eng­lish cheque­book in case I’ve for­got­ten to pay some essen­tial bill and find out only when I’m across the ocean. The vet’s num­ber, our neigh­bor­hood cat lady’s num­ber, and the clean­ing lady’s num­ber, all gath­ered together in case some­thing hap­pens to a cat (heaven forfend).

So we’re nearly ready. One more act­ing class and day with the horses for Avery, a lovely bar­be­cue to attend at Annie’s house, a din­ner party to give, a pic­nic for the last day of school, and “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest” to see at the Regent’s Park out­door the­atre! It’s the very favorite play for all of us, and I sim­ply can’t wait. One last Eng­lish cel­e­bra­tion, under the stars and waver­ing plane tree branches, before we’re off. And one more fan­tas­tic Eng­lish recipe for you before we go! This might not be the most obvi­ously sum­mery dish, but it is falling-off-the-bone delec­table, and it cooks itself. And it makes use of that under­rated cut of lamb: the shoul­der, who often hangs its head before its racier and much more expen­sive coun­ter­parts like the rack, the chop and the leg. I’ve changed the recipe slightly to suit our tastes, but I wanted you to know that the ver­sion by Tom Aikens at last week’s Taste of Lon­don was my inspi­ra­tion. Avery is not keen on bal­samic vine­gar, so I’ve sub­sti­tuted chicken stock. I had no French Roscoff onions (do you?!), so I’ve sub­sti­tuted plain old white onions. And I love red lentils, so they’ve made a sur­prise appear­ance. You’ll love it.

Tom Aikens’ Eight-Hour Braised Lamb Shoul­der with Lentils and Gar­lic
(serves 4 with lots of leftovers)

1 shoul­der of lamb, room tem­per­a­ture
2 heads of gar­lic, cloves sep­a­rated and peeled
2 white onions, quar­tered
2 tsps dried thyme or about one bunch fresh, leaves sep­a­rated
3 tbsps olive oil
1 cup red lentils
1 cup chicken stock

Set your oven to 180C, 350F. Place the shoul­der of lamb in a large, heavy pot with a good heavy lid, and sur­round it with the gar­lic cloves and onion. Sprin­kle with the thyme, driz­zle with the olive oil, and salt and pep­per it well. Place it in the oven and roast for 20 min­utes. The onions will have col­ored and the lamb, too. Turn the heat down to 110C, 220F and cook for 90 min­utes. Then remove the lamb to your even­tual serv­ing plat­ter, and remove the onions and gar­lic to a bowl. Pour the lentils into the pot, place the lamb over them and pour over the chicken stock. Cover the pot and cook for another 4 1/2 hours.

Remove the lid, turn the oven up to 150C, 300F and cook for a fur­ther hour. Remove lamb to your serv­ing plat­ter, pour off the cook­ing juices as best you can into a gravy sep­a­ra­tor and dis­card the fat on the sur­face. Scoop out the lentils into a bowl and then put the onions and gar­lic that you’ve set aside back into the pot. Put them over a medium heat on the stove­top and stir until nice and sticky, about 15 minutes.

The lamb will fall off the bone with the use of spoons, which is lovely. Serve with the lentils, onions and maybe a side of mashed potato.

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This dish would be absolutely gor­geous, if you’re a fruit-and-meat per­son, with apples instead of lentils. In that case, the bal­samic vine­gar is prob­a­bly a must. Give it a try.

Right, must pro­duce some lunch for us and then get back to… pack­ing. Depar­ture beckons.