bangers and mash

It’s an odd life, in a way, that can be encap­su­lated by these two pho­tographs. Actu­ally yes­ter­day was a very pro­duc­tive day in ret­ro­spect, although at the time it felt that all I was doing was retrac­ing my steps over and over, acquir­ing more shop­ping bags each time. Let’s see, after dropoff I climbed ALL the stairs at King’s Col­lege Prepara­tory School to reach Form Three, in time for my first day read­ing with the gulls. A lit­tle sprout called Brynne read from “Stan­ley, Flat Again,” to which I asked, “Have you already read ‘Flat Stan­ley’ then?” “Oh, yes, now he’s flat again,” she explained. “What hap­pened this time?” I asked. “I know the first time a bul­letin board fell on him, but then of course his brother could pump him up with the bicy­cle pump.” Silence. “Really, how did he get flat AGAIN?” I per­sisted. Finally, Brynne explained, “Oh, you know, he just… did. He just… got flat. You know how it is.” After­ward Miss King, the PE teacher (who had been at the com­puter along­side us at the time) said, “That’s what I love about lit­tle girls. He can just GET FLAT and that’s the way it is.”

So I headed off to John Lewis to buy big­ger ver­sions of Avery’s PE kit and cardies, since she’s grown expo­nen­tially this sum­mer. The new ones looked enor­mous at the shop, but when she tried them on after wash­ing and dry­ing, fright­en­ingly they fit. Sigh. I also acquired at John Lewis the items you see here: “Learn­ing with Lady­bird!” Avery is not lov­ing her times tables and the pre­vail­ing wis­dom is that set­ting them to song will help. “I just don’t know my sixes or sev­ens, and PS 234 seemed to think that learn­ing up to the tens was enough, so I thought I knew my twelves, but only up to times ten!” The pres­sure is enor­mous. Her maths home­work the other night made me shiver. John needs to come home.

Then a spon­ta­neous hair­cut! I have been long­ing to get rid of all this awful colour, so I just popped in to a salon in the High Street, and was out again in 40 min­utes, a whole new me. Although Avery called me a muskrat, because it is really short. “But I like muskrats!” was her belated apol­ogy. Then I rushed home, stop­ping at the Body Shop for some new­fan­gled olive-flavoured shower soap John’s inter­ested in. I dropped every­thing off at home, did laun­dry and chose a pho­to­graph for Avery’s birth­day party invi­ta­tion. It’s to be a Hal­loween birth­day, since Eng­lish Hal­loween cel­e­bra­tions are, we have heard, muted to say the best. I’ve already ordered all sorts of Amer­i­can candy and dec­o­ra­tions that poor John will be lug­ging home in his suit­case on Sat­ur­day, bless his heart. So I rushed out again to the But­ton Queen to find black but­tons we can glue on cards to sur­round with eight Sharpy legs and have, voila, a spi­der. While wait­ing at the But­ton Queen as a lady painstak­ingly chose six but­tons for a blouse she was wanted to wear dur­ing the hol­i­days (noth­ing like plan­ning ahead), I looked out the win­dow to see that across the road was a shop devoted entirely to sausages. Yes, sausages. “Big­gles Gourmet Sausages,” it said, with a logo of a fly­ing pig wear­ing pilot’s gog­gles and a jaunty scarf. So after acquir­ing my but­tons I crossed over to the shop and the SMELL! Can I just say how good the siz­zling sausages they were fit­ting into long crispy rolls smelled. I decided then and there that we were hav­ing bangers and mash for din­ner, some­thing I have never put together but is a clas­sic Eng­lish dish of course. I bought four “Maryle­bone Pork” bangers, described in the shop lit­er­a­ture as “An old, res­ur­rected tra­di­tional Lon­don recipe sea­soned with mace, gin­ger and sage.” Mace is, of course, the hard outer shell of a nut­meg that, when grated, is a lovely del­i­cate flavour.

Then to the photo shop to drop off the pho­to­graph for dupli­ca­tion, then to the sta­tionery store for cards and envelopes. Then to col­lapse at Marco Polo in the Maryle­bone High Street for the best hum­mous I have ever had. Is it the pars­ley and tomato driz­zled with olive oil on top that makes it so good? I don’t know, but it was lovely.

At pickup Avery announced that she really needed a new ruler AND a mechan­i­cal eraser (or “rub­ber” as she says since she’s Eng­lish now) so we were back to the stationer’s. Finally a stop at Marks and Spencer for fruit and salad ingre­di­ents to off­set the com­pletely fatty din­ner I was plan­ning, and finally HOME. Sigh. Read a note from school about emer­gency mea­sures in place for “Ter­ror­ist or other attack in Cen­tral Lon­don.” How reas­sur­ing to know that the school has “suf­fi­cient stock of basic emer­gency pro­vi­sions for sus­te­nance for forty-eight hours.” I can rest easy now.

I had the cosiest toes-up on the sofa, Tacy on lap, while Avery did her home­work nearby. What lux­ury to be able to spend the day doing things just to take care of us! I some­times won­der where I found the ambi­tion to run my gallery, when in real­ity I’m often per­fectly happy just tak­ing care of us. I think the answer is that the gallery was the right thing to do when it hap­pened, but I’m not a busi­ness owner at heart.

So bangers and mash. There are sev­eral schools of thought on this topic. Some peo­ple swear by bak­ing the sausages for half an hour in a slow oven (isn’t it funny to describe an oven in terms of speed, instead of tem­per­a­ture?). I myself love the sound of sausages in a skil­let, so that’s what I did. Then, too, some peo­ple feel that gravy is essen­tial to the dish, but I hap­pen to live with a child who thinks gravy is the scourge of God, so no tak­ers there. Then, too, I have read of recipes that call for mash­ing the pota­toes with a tea­spoon of but­ter, and milk. I’m sorry. But­ter doesn’t come in TEA­SPOONS. Unless it’s being rationed. So what I cooked for us was this:

Bangers and Mash
(serves four, since I sim­ply can­not cook for two, or even three)

4 large pork sausages
3 large King Edward or other mash­ing potato
1/2 stick soft­ened but­ter
1/2 cup sin­gle cream
skim mik (to thin)
2 tsps sea salt
fresh ground pep­per to taste

Peel pota­toes and quar­ter them, then put in large saucepan and add water to cover (I love Lau­rie Colwin’s story of a boyfriend who, when given this direc­tion, asked in con­ster­na­tion, “what cover?”). Boil for 30 minutes.

Mean­while, place sausages in a skil­let over medium heat and cover with a splat­ter screen. Turn them fre­quently as they cook to make sure that all sur­faces are nicely siz­zled. The sausages will feel stiff to the poke when they are done, per­haps ten min­utes in all.

Drain the pota­toes. Mash with but­ter and cream, and some milk if they are too thick, then add salt and pep­per to taste.

With this, to salve my con­science, we had sugar snap peas sauteed in olive oil, and a nice salad of spinach, toma­toes and avo­cado. Yum. The per­fect cosy din­ner for a thun­der­stormy Lon­don night.