are we there yet?

Well, in the mad run-up to mov­ing day on Tues­day (yikes) I’ve been fill­ing our cal­en­dar with things to do to keep our minds off the impend­ing drama and chaos. And for once, I have a play to tell you about that I didn’t see on its last day! In fact, it’s still in pre­views, and you sim­ply must go if you can. The delight­fully ver­sa­tile Tim Pigott-Smith plays Pro­fes­sor Henry Hig­gins in “Pyg­malion” at the old Vic across the river, and his per­for­mance, while to my mind lack­ing a sub­tlety in the last act that would have ele­vated the play, is well worth see­ing. This photo is from a site devoted to him and believe you me, once you start think­ing about it, you’ve seen him in lots of things. He was in one of my favorite early “Spooks” episodes, and did the voiceover for the lovely lit­tle BBC series about the life of the British monar­chy behind the scenes, and then he was in “North and South” with my beloved Richard Armitage (it’s hard not sim­ply to post a pho­to­graph of Richard every day, but that might be tan­ta­mount to… stalking?)

Plus the gor­geous new­comer Michelle Dock­ery is divine: to my ear per­fect Cock­ney, but then as well cut-glass posh Eng­lish, very funny, but also touch­ingly vul­ner­a­ble. That’s my only tiny com­plaint about the play in this incar­na­tion: I wish Pigott-Smith had made Hig­gins more vul­ner­a­ble. I think to care about him, to feel sorry that the rela­tion­ship will never work (I had for­got­ten the play does not have a happy end­ing, sorry Lerner and Lowe) the audi­ence must feel for Hig­gins, if only in the very last act, must see him as truly, if inar­tic­u­lately, heart­bro­ken, and Pigott-Smith played him more petu­lant, with­out a con­vinc­ing level of regret for what he’s los­ing. I sup­pose that could have been the direc­tion, too. In any case, it’s a very small quib­ble about a very good play. Avery was in heaven! But we did all agree after­ward that we kept expect­ing the char­ac­ters to burst into song, which was dis­con­cert­ing. And: our din­ner at the Pit under the the­atre was lovely too, and just in time for the cur­tain going up. So go, do.

Well, that’s not all that’s been keep­ing us busy these days. We took Avery for her first time to Cam­den Mar­ket, or rather the Sta­bles Mar­ket across the road since the fire destroyed so much of the place last year. We did admit­tedly drive all over north­west Lon­don try­ing to find it, since our lat­est sat­nav was lifted from the car (grr). I know real Lon­don­ers will com­plain that the mar­ket has lost some of its truly quirky appeal, but there was enough idio­syn­cracy and charm to make us happy (not to men­tion the still-warm home­made dough­nuts sprin­kled with cin­na­mon sugar that made even no-sweet-tooth me sit up and beg like a dog). Avery dis­cov­ered a latent pas­sion for vin­tage cloth­ing, and we could sud­denly fast-forward about five years to see her shop­ping there with her friends for the lat­est 1950s bar­gain. In the end she bought a fab­u­lous fit­ted (well, it will be some­day!) leather jacket, a tweed hat and pair of slinky white gloves. One of her friends is hav­ing a birth­day party next week with a “cock­tail party” (I know, I know), so the gloves will come in handy. It was a gor­geous sunny day and noth­ing could burst our bub­ble, not even find­ing out that the bean-bag stall we’d come to visit had… burned down. Now we must find another source, for Avery’s new room.

Speak­ing of new room, we’ve been spend­ing a lot of time there tak­ing over bits and pieces, wait­ing for fur­ni­ture deliv­er­ies, try­ing to fig­ure out why the phone doesn’t work (and con­se­quently our broad­band), lay­ing out news­pa­pers in the shapes of rugs and fur­ni­ture to see if they fit. One day I sat in the kitchen wait­ing for some­thing or some­body and just drank in the seren­ity. Of course it will con­sid­er­ably less serene when the kitchen is filled with our stuff and our peo­ple and our issues, but that day… it was quite windy and the many plants and trees in the gar­den waved in the breeze, throw­ing shad­ows on the gar­den paving stone. Our lit­tle res­i­dent pair of tiny robins flew in and out, some­times perch­ing on one of the Moroc­can lanterns our land­lady kindly left behind. Pure peace. Won’t last, I know, but it was a nice moment.

What am I most wor­ried about with the move? With­out a doubt it’s the sit­u­a­tion with the cats. I know that at 9 a.m. tomor­row morn­ing I must get them stuffed into their car­ri­ers, the car­ri­ers stuffed into a taxi and us all dri­ven to the vet, where the cat­tery will col­lect them and take them to Kent for their “hol­i­day.” Ner­vous! I don’t really want to do any of that, and I’ll miss them for the week. Avery is beside her­self when­ever she thinks about it.

To dis­tract her, we went yes­ter­day to the Royal Wind­sor Horse Show, always a great event. We took Anna along, and because last year we stood seat­less in the rain for the dura­tion of the after­noon, I bought tick­ets to the Mem­bers’ Enclo­sure, for not a lot more money (I’d def­i­nitely rec­om­mend it, if only for the really clean loos). For all it sounded so snooty, the peo­ple were per­fectly nor­mal, just dressed up (John huffed and puffed over hav­ing to wear a TIE). And the Queen came and sat quite near to us! All our favorite events hap­pened: the accu­mu­la­tor, where each suc­ces­sive jump is worth more than the last, with “the joker” at the end: a jump that if you dare to try it, wins you lots if you get over it, and costs you lots if you don’t. It was thrilling! The win­ner was a chap I had never heard of called Gra­ham Love­grove (great name, but not crush­wor­thy sadly) who sim­ply tore through the course (as well as clear­ing the jumps, the win is based on time against the clock) and pos­i­tively gal­loped out of the “joker.” Won­der­ful stuff! Then there were the Pony Club games, and at the end of the day the Shet­land pony races, which the girls absolutely loved. It was hot, hot, hot, and by the time we left we were all a lit­tle wilted and dusty. A great day out, although the Food Fes­ti­val asso­ci­ated with the show gets more piti­ful every year, which is a dis­ap­point­ment. I won­der if the orga­niz­ers have con­cluded that horsey peo­ple don’t buy much in the way of exotic ingre­di­ents? At least not for humans.

Well, it’s nearly time to get Avery from the sta­ble (she will be pos­i­tively FILTHY after both yes­ter­day and today, but it hardly seemed worth it to scrape the dust off her last night when today would only bring more horsey muck). First, how­ever, I must give you an absolutely SUPERB recipe that struck me as the per­fect buf­fet dish, should you need one. I think, too, that mixed with some chilled wild rice it could be even nicer. I’ve been think­ing a lot lately about what prompts me to cook a given thing (I took a bit of cook­ery writ­ing with me for my home­work to class this week and got loads of help­ful feed­back). I must find a way to orga­nize all my recipes, and I’m fairly com­mit­ted to hedg­ing them all round with some rem­i­nis­cences, some con­text, some sug­ges­tions of the friends and fam­ily I feed. This dish really took me back to old New York days, not even Tribeca but before that: as new­ly­weds in SoHo (before it became the Short Hills Mall, back when the neigh­bor­hood still had real charm, before every fab­ric and sta­tionery store became a Gap or a Star­bucks… end of rant).

Back in those golden olden days, there was a Thai place that deliv­ered, and we ordered out every Mon­day night after I taught my art his­tory class and got home pumped and full of myself, but not inter­ested in cook­ing. Our favorite dish was called “larb,” an unap­peal­ing name, but a fab­u­lous light dish. We’d eat it directly out of the alu­minum con­tainer, feel­ing hip and cool and New Yorky, stand­ing out on our fire escape and look­ing at the view to the south of the Wool­worth build­ing, and the view to the north of the Chrysler build­ing. What fun that was! It was in that first New York loft that we dis­cov­ered Avery was on the way, so we both have very fond mem­o­ries of the whole period in our lives: the last as irre­spon­si­ble babies.

Well, for some rea­son John has been talk­ing about “larb” all the time, only nei­ther of us remem­bered the name. Instead we resorted to the clumsy moniker “that chilly minced chicken spicy dish.” And since we have no Thai deliv­ery place (in fact I have no Thai place at all), it was grad­u­ally borne in upon me that I would have to learn to make it myself. I finally asked him why he was obsess­ing about one of the few things I have never tried to cook and don’t know how to cook, and after think­ing about it for awhile, he said, “You know why? It was the first meal we had in our old Tribeca loft, the first night we moved in. Sur­rounded by boxes, eat­ing that chilly minced chicken Thai thing.” Fair enough! Well, as long as it’s not some com­pli­cated dessert that I’ll undoubt­edly screw up and not want to eat any­way, I’m game to try to make any­thing. All I had to do was type “Thai minced chicken” into google, and I was sent right to the excel­lent BBC “Good­Food” site (although their solemn assur­ance that “every recipe is tested before pub­li­ca­tion” makes me laugh a bit: is there any other way to pub­lish a recipe? do some cooks not bother to test it before publication?).

There it was! Larb, in all its glory. Being me, of course I had to mess around with the recipe a bit since it is against my nature to enter the city of Mecca or to fol­low a recipe exactly. I had no lemon­grass or lime leaves as the recipe required, so I sub­sti­tuted the grated zest of a lemon and a lime. Per­haps it would be even more exotic with the proper cit­rus bits, so I’ll try it again (I’ll test it! hee hee) and see if it makes any dif­fer­ence. But I’m pretty sure that most of you don’t always have lemon­grass and lime leaves on hand, so let’s be flex­i­ble. I also was lazy and blitzed the chicken in the food proces­sor instead of chop­ping it, and it was per­fectly fine. I also omit­ted the sug­gested red chill­ies and used chilli-infused olive oil instead, and it was lovely. And just so you know (I didn’t), Thai fish sauce sounds off-putting, but is actu­ally a very sim­ple clear mix­ture of anchovies and oil. Essen­tial for any Thai cook­ing, it turns out.

Larb
(allow one chicken breast fil­let per per­son; this serves four)

zest of 1 lemon and 1 lime
5 gar­lic cloves
1-inch piece of gin­ger­root, peeled
1 tbsp chilli-infused olive oil
1 tbsp sesame oil
4 chicken breast fil­lets, skin­less
50 ml (about 3 1.2 tbsps) Thai fish sauce
1 red onion, finely chopped
3 tbsps lime juice
hand­ful each, roughly chopped: corian­der, mint, basil leaves
1/2 cup chopped mixed nuts or pinenuts
1 head but­ter let­tuce or 2 heads Baby Gem let­tuce, sep­a­rated into leaves
1 cucum­ber, seeded and cut into strips lengthwise

Throw the zest, gar­lic and gin­ger in the Mag­imix and whizz until very finely blitzed. Scoop it all out with a spat­ula and then throw in the chicken and whizz it until finely chopped, but not mush. I don’t know if it could become mush, but don’t let it!

In a large skil­let or wok, heat the oils and siz­zle the cit­rus mix­ture briefly, then add the chicken. Fry the chicken, con­stantly chop­ping and sep­a­rat­ing it into tiny bits, for 4 min­utes, then add the fish sauce. Turn down the heat and let the chicken bub­ble for a few more min­utes, then add the chopped red onion and bub­ble just briefly, about a minute. Remove to a serv­ing bowl and chill until it’s at the tem­per­a­ture you like: it’s lovely warm, we found, but very refresh­ing cold.

Just before you’re ready to eat, pour in the lime juice and sprin­kle over the herbs and nuts, and toss. Serve in the let­tuce leaves with the cucum­ber strips: it’s messy!

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This is sim­ply DIVINE. And since I am occa­sion­ally accused of try­ing to clog your arter­ies and cre­ate love han­dles with too many creamy but­tery recipes, MAY I respect­fully point out the osten­ta­tious lack of any such ingre­di­ents? It’s prac­ti­cally a diet dish! You might want some steamed rice on the side, to catch all the lit­tle bits that will fall out of your let­tuce leaf as you eat. Lovely, I guar­an­tee it. I tested it! Just for you.