Devon beck­ons

Well, strictly speak­ing, an island right off the coast of Devon beck­ons. Just the two of us. But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

The last few days have been insane. There was Fri­day spent look­ing at houses: one too small but in a per­fect loca­tion (plus owned right now, I learned from the estate agent AND the paint­ing of their “coun­try house” over the fire­place which was a CAS­TLE, by a Duke and Duchess of quite peer­less beauty), and then there’s the sort of nasty one in an even more per­fect loca­tion, but it was, I’m not kid­ding, uphol­stered. I mean the walls. Uphol­stered. And a truly evil kitchen. Sigh.

From there we picked up Avery and Jamie and quite ALL their belong­ings in the world from school and took them ice skat­ing, where I hung around with Becky, and my new skate-mother friend Heidi who has the two most beau­ti­ful lit­tle girls in the world. Heidi is going, guess where, Mar­rakesh for the long half-term hol­i­day, so we had a lot to talk about. From there to the most deli­cious din­ner at Man­darin Kitchen where we ate every­thing in sight (I think my hands-down favorite dish ever there is the soft-shell crab lib­er­ally sprin­kled with sliced red chilis, scal­lions and cilantro, quickly deep fried. Divine. Avery and Jamie are peas in a pod, talk­ing over each other in an attempt to bet­ter each other’s sug­ges­tions for their favorite word game, “You think of a word that starts with the last let­ter of my word,” really cute. Off to home and movies (we had thought about pop­corn but were too full to con­sider it once we arrived), and a suit­ably late bedtime.

In the morn­ing we had to drag poor Jamie off to see house #3 with us, an old favorite in a yucky street, now on the mar­ket for longer than it should be: why? Jamie and Avery were full of per­spi­ca­cious com­ments, and the house did not wear well for me on this the sec­ond visit. A scary reno inter­nal stair­case, ugly, ugly, ugly. But a gor­geous ground floor kitchen-eating space which, given my ten­dency to live in the kitchen, is a bad thing indeed. Will we ever find a house?

We dropped Jamie at home, dropped Avery at her act­ing class, raced home to do all the lit­tle house­hold chores, then raced back to get Avery and head off to the Royal Wind­sor Horse Show! I’m sorry to say, how­ever, that for all the fun it was last year, this year was a bit of a dis­ap­point­ment. For one thing, it rained. Not a drench­ing, but enough to make all the pub­lic thor­ough­fares a big, muddy, sucking-at-feet dis­as­ter. And for some rea­son there was much less seat­ing for the hoi pol­loi (I admit I tried to get Mem­bers’ Enclo­sure tick­ets, but they were sold out), and so we were pressed six-deep at the fence of the Arena try­ing to see what was going on. Finally, though, peo­ple at the front got tired of watch­ing and we moved up to the gate and could see the show jump­ing and the tail end of the Shet­land Pony races. By the time we’d had a pretty decent grilled chicken wrap for lunch, there were open seats in the bleach­ers and THEN we could relax. I went off to the Food Fes­ti­val and what hap­pened there? Dayles­ford Organic was miss­ing, the Prince of Wales Duchy label was gone, there was only one pro­duce stand with fruit and veg. I won­der if it turned out to be unprof­itable last year, so peo­ple stayed away? I also think I’ve got spoiled with farm­ers’ mar­kets and food shops and so I’m harder to impress this year. In any case, I got some things for our Sun­day din­ner with Vin­cent, so that was good.

As always, the best events were the Accu­mu­la­tor and the Puis­sance wall, so we stayed for those and then headed back in the bloomy almost-dark to arrive home quite late. I accom­plished some desul­tory pack­ing for both Avery’s trip this week and ours, and then Sun­day dawned rainy and nasty, which put a bit of a damper on my Maryle­bone Farm­ers’ Mar­ket trip, but I per­se­vered. Poor John has a nasty, lin­ger­ing cold, so he stayed home while I got Avery to the sta­ble (icky to imag­ine rid­ing and muck­ing out in the rain, but the girls don’t seem to mind).

I came home and spent the after­noon cook­ing. And what did I learn? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. As in, if one’s roast chicken is always good, don’t be a sucker for the lat­est Angela Hart­nett recipe that insists you steam the chicken part of the cook­ing time and then open the foil pack­age for the last 15 min­utes to “brown.” Why not? Because it doesn’t brown, and you find your­self turn­ing the heat up super high for an extra ten min­utes hop­ing the skin will crisp but… it doesn’t. It tasted fine (why not, with tar­ragon, fresh thyme, lemon halves, but­ter and gar­lic slathered all over it?) but roast­ing in open air is bet­ter. Sorry, Angela. Maybe all Gor­don Ramsay’s bul­ly­ing is tak­ing its toll.

Then, too, if I always have suc­cess with nice mashed pota­toes (this time a lovely bag of Clarets from the Potato Shop at the mar­ket), why mess about and add cele­riac to the mash? Either I didn’t add enough and so it was just a dull hint of cele­riac, or I added too much and it over­whelmed the pota­toes. Bor­ing! And in my bid to be not just the cook but part of the party, I let the aspara­gus cook too long and it was too soft! What a dis­as­ter, in minor pro­por­tions. The best parts of the din­ner party were the guests (Vin­cent, Pete and Vincent’s two lit­tle girls, Estee and Ines, eas­ily the most charm­ing chil­dren I know). Oh, and the salad with spicy chili oil dress­ing. No, the best part was the…

Coquilles St. Jacques au gratin
(serves four as a starter)

1 dozen fresh scal­lops
1 cup white wine (or dry Ver­mouth)
1 tbsp Madeira wine
dash cayenne pep­per
3 tbsps but­ter
2 tbsps flour
2 shal­lots, finely minced
1 hand­ful curly pars­ley, finely minced
1 egg yolk, beaten slightly
salt and pep­per
fresh soft bread­crumbs
grated pecorino or parme­san cheese

If you’ve got your scal­lops on the shell, as I did (first time! scary), care­fully remove the red roe and the mem­brane that con­nects it to the scal­lop. Remove the tough mus­cle that clings to the out­side of the scal­lop, too. Is it all nice and smooth and white and clean? Wash and rinse and lay the scal­lops on paper tow­els, then scrub out four of the shells and rub with butter.

Pour the wine and Madeira in a small saucepan, dust with cayenne and bring to a sim­mer. Place scal­lops in the saucepan and sim­mer (don’t boil!) for five min­utes, then remove with a slot­ted spoon to a cut­ting board and cut each scal­lop in half, and place six halves in each scal­lop shell. Add the flour, but­ter, shal­lot and pars­ley to the saucepan and whisk until mixed, then add the egg yolk. Pour this mix­ture over the scal­lops and top with bread­crumbs and cheese. You can do all this ahead of your din­ner. Five min­utes before you want to eat, place the scal­lop shells in a glass dish big enough to hold them all and put in a very hot oven (425 degrees) for five min­utes. Serve hot, with a fork AND a spoon. You will want every bite.

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My cheese board was good, at least: one good cheese from our Wait­rose, a prince among super­mar­kets: an ash-covered goat’s cheese. And from the Food Fes­ti­val yes­ter­day I brought back a lovely Cotswold Brie from Simon Weaver, a blue from the Cor­nish Cheese Com­pany, and a ched­dar from Wyke Farms.

Well, we’re off! We’ve deposited Avery at school with her gar­gan­tuan bag, for her five days’ away on the school trip… when we walked into school with the bag, her back­pack, her lunch and her bot­tle of frozen water, the thought of climb­ing the six flights of stairs to her class­room was too much! Luck­ily the PE teacher (cen­tral cast­ing: young New Zealan­der, always in a track suit with a bot­tle of water in her hand, call­ing Avery “sweet­haaat”) Miss Ellis said cheer­ily, “Just leave you bags in the library, and head on up,” so with a min­i­mum of good­bye, she was off. And we’re headed to Burgh Island. I’ll report on our adven­ture (no ser­ial mur­ders, though, one hopes?) when we return…