friends, food, film and… a flop

First of all, drum roll please:

Vincent’s Salmon with Cream & Vegetables

Prepa­ra­tion time: 10–15 min­utes
Cook­ing Time: 25–30 min­utes
Level of Dif­fi­culty: Very Easy
Occa­sion: Din­ner Party or Sun­day Lunch

Approx 1 Kilo of Salmon Fil­let in one piece if pos­si­ble — (Enough to
feed 4 gen­er­ously or 6 if you’re hav­ing a starter)
3 Medium to large car­rots
1 Large fen­nel bulb
1 Medium Onion
1 Large Red Pep­per
2 Large Cel­ery Stalks
200g Green Veg­eta­bles (Green Beans, Aspara­gus etc.)
3 Tbsp Chopped Flat Leaf Pars­ley
1 1/2 Tbsp Chopped Dill
1 1/2 Tbsp Chopped Chervil (Not absolutely nec­es­sary)
Grated Rind of 1 Lemon
Juice of 1 Lemon
400 ml Creme Fraiche
150 ml White Wine (Chardon­nay, Viog­nier, Sauvi­gnion Blanc)

Pre­heat your oven to 200C (Medium hot oven). Put the veg­eta­bles through a food proces­sor with a shredding/julienne blade. Trans­fer the grated veg­eta­bles to a mix­ing bowl. Add the grated lemon rind. In a sep­a­rate mix­ing bowl, add the Creme Fraiche, lemon juice, white wine, chopped herbs and mix well. Sea­son this with gen­er­ous amounts of pep­per and some salt. Pour the liq­uid mix­ture over the veg­eta­bles and mix thor­oughly. When you’re done, you should have a very wet mix of veg­eta­bles sit­ting in but not cov­ered by liquid.

Par­tially strain and arrange 3/4 of the veg­etable mix­ture evenly on the bot­tom of a large and flat back­ing pan/tray. Place the salmon fil­let skin-side down on the veg­eta­bles. Sea­son the salmon. Strain and place the remain­der of the veg­eta­bles on the fish. You should have about 1 1/2 cups of liq­uid left in the bot­tom of your mix­ing bowl. Pour that over the salmon.

Bake the salmon for 25–30 min­utes, check­ing half-way and bast­ing the fish with some of the cook­ing liq­uid. When the time is up, check that the fish is cooked. It should be a bit “pink” in the middle.

Serve over white rice or boiled new pota­toes and with some steamed green vegetables.

Chef’s Tip: If the Salmon and veg­eta­bles ren­der too much liq­uid dur­ing cook­ing, and the sauce looks watery/runny, then when you are done cook­ing, remove the fish from the pan along with most of the veg­etable mix­ture. Take the remain­ing veg­eta­bles and all of the liq­uid and place in a pan. Add 2 Tbsp of creme fraiche, and reduce on a medium/high heat (stir reg­u­larly). When the sauce has achieve a pleas­ing con­sis­tency, add some of the fresh herbs if you have any left for color and pour over the fish and vegetables.

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As you will have noted, I have kept in Vincent’s charm­ing recipe style, much more col­or­ful than my own, but PER­HAPS less hon­est, since I do think labelling this recipe as “very easy” is a bit, shall we say, opti­mistic? Not to say men­da­cious, since Vin­cent prob­a­bly thinks this is “very easy.” But I do know he is hon­est in his direc­tions, so go ahead, dear read­ers, and enjoy.

At any rate, we did achieve our house, but not before Avery and I stopped to gro­cery shop at Marks & Sparks for din­ner, SIGH! I never shop whilst full of food, all diet instruc­tions to the con­trary. I find myself much hap­pier shop­ping when I’m hun­gry and I don’t (although I know other peo­ple do) buy things I wouldn’t nor­mally want. What I do do is buy good food that I want to eat, and I enjoy myself doing it. But this trip was purely busi­ness: full as we were, five other hun­gry peo­ple were about to arrive at our house and want din­ner, poor strug­gling tourists, Phoebe’s fam­ily from Tribeca.

Lit­tle did we know. These peo­ple plumbed more excit­ing Lon­don des­ti­na­tions in four days than we have in a year! Well, not quite per­haps, but they were full of infor­ma­tion. And did they eat. Fresh from tea at the Wolse­ley (so I don’t know how they had any appetite at all). First, though, it was such fun to see Avery and Phoebe encounter each other, since it’s been over a year and they had only one semes­ter in school together before we moved here. But a great ice breaker is: match­ing spec­ta­cles. Or prac­ti­cally match­ing, plus both wear­ing brown t-shirts and with lit­tle plaits of hair. They stared at each other for a long moment while all par­ents held a col­lec­tive breath… and then it was off to play. Phoebe’s brother Julian hunted down a book in my study, sat down with Roald Dahl’s “The Witches” and was down for the count. We adults repaired to the kitchen where, I have to say, I was get­ting kind of enthu­si­as­tic about my din­ner, as full as I was. Two lus­cious roasted chick­ens were sput­ter­ing in the oven (this time I sim­ply cov­ered them with olive oil and salt and roasted them for two hours at 350-ish), sautee­ing broc­col­ini in olive oil, and good old Eng­lish jacket pota­toes, with sour cream and chives. A nice Eng­lish repast for a Sat­ur­day evening.

Liz is a fas­ci­nat­ing mix­ture of carpe diem enthu­si­asms for any­thing and every­thing rang­ing from Eng­lish foot­ball (they had been to a Man­ches­ter United game (or “manyoo” as Liz wrote to me) and reported all the crazy antics there, like the fact that the song I thought was “God Save the Queen” all dur­ing the World Cup has its words replaced by long strings of pro­fan­ity! who knew) to her daughter’s sail­ing through the hell that is pri­vate school entrance exams in New York City. They are strongly con­sid­er­ing Field­ston, where John and I envi­sioned Avery going, since it’s a stone’s throw from her sta­ble in Riverdale; these are the depths to which a par­ent sinks, fresh from a 45-minute com­mute each way three times a week to watch a child go round and round on a pony. School nearby? Take it!

Liz regaled us with tales from Tribeca, the new prin­ci­pal at PS 234, the new hideous build­ings jump­ing up on all vacant lots. I think we left at the right time. “But,” she said, “where we’re stay­ing this trip, Hamp­stead, feels like the old Tribeca.” So we planned to run up there after din­ner and see the house-swap place they had found. Real estate: John was in heaven. But first we plowed through din­ner, and I have never had such good cus­tomers! Phoebe ate her weight in chicken and scraped her potato com­pletely clean. If I had been more inspired I would have rubbed the pota­toes (nice Maris Pipers) all over with olive oil and sprin­kled them with salt before bak­ing, and then the skins would have been crispy. Do try that. We chat­ted about the cer­e­mony of the keys at the Tower of Lon­don, to which they had acquired tick­ets by writ­ing two months in advance! And they had seen “The Tem­pest” with Patrick Stew­art. This is the sort of hol­i­day you have when two bril­liant par­ents with true his­tor­i­cal moti­va­tion are in charge. I on the other hand drag my fam­ily through farmer’s mar­kets, cafes and book­stores. Ah well, we all have our strengths. I wish so much I had known Liz bet­ter, and Avery Phoebe, before we moved. But I think we’re on track for a nice friend­ship across the pond, never a thing to despise.

We fin­ished with Avery’s fresh layer cake with rasp­berry jam fill­ing, and she is jus­ti­fi­ably proud of it. It stayed deli­cious for three days! Gone now, how­ever. Good on you, Aves.

Avery’s Layer Cake
(serves 9)

1 1/4 sticks but­ter, soft­ened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, sep­a­rated
2 cups flour
1 cup milk
2 tsps bak­ing pow­der
1/4 tsp salt

Cream but­ter and sugar together in a large mix­ing bowl at low speed, then add egg yolks, beat more, add milk, beat more. In another bowl sift together flour, bak­ing pow­der and salt, then stir into bat­ter. Beat egg whites till stiff and fold into bat­ter. Pour into two non-stick sprayed layer cake pans and bake at 350 for about 40 min­utes, or until they spring back from sides and a fork dipped in the cen­ter comes out clean. Cool slightly, then place one layer on a large plate and smear with jam. Put sec­ond layer on top and put jam all over the top and sides. Serve warm!

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At that point, I threw the two chicken car­casses in a large stock pot, poured on water to cover, sprin­kled in a lot of salt and turned the burner up high while we cleaned up in a hurry, then turned the stove off so as to get up to Hamp­stead and tour the amaz­ing house in which they were stay­ing. Owned by a writer called Simon Nye (author of “Men Behav­ing Badly”) and lived in by him, his Ger­man wife and their four chil­dren, it’s quite sim­ply the cozi­est, hap­pi­est house I think I’ve ever seen. All old details like pocket doors and win­dow shut­ters, mold­ings and old floors, a huge kitchen with one wall com­pletely cov­ered with black­board mate­r­ial, and all the evi­dence of a busy family’s life writ­ten on it: birth­day par­ties, gro­cery lists, doo­dlings. Sim­ply gor­geous. And exactly what we want, only smaller, except we can’t afford it. Sigh. But it was fun to see.

So we left Phoebe’s fam­ily framed in the door­way, sur­rounded by fairy-lit trees, and drove home, think­ing that yes, the vil­lagey atmos­phere of Hamp­stead did feel like Tribeca. Maybe some­day. Phoebe’s dad, who I found as we parted com­pany is a really sig­nif­i­cant writer (I felt very igno­rant, hav­ing thought of him merely as… Phoebe’s dad), with a new book com­ing out in Octo­ber that sounds won­der­ful, “A Short His­tory of the Amer­i­can Stom­ach”) assures us that this hol­i­day house-sharing scheme is a won­der­ful thing, so I think we’ll give it a try at some point. Surely some­one wants to rent a farm­house in Con­necti­cut?

Sun­day found Avery at the sta­ble to head out for the sec­ond round of the Pony Club Quiz, at which first round she had been so bril­liantly clever last month. John and I repaired to the cin­ema and saw “Venus,” which I am ter­ri­bly dis­ap­pointed did not win an Oscar last night. I hate it that every year, nearly, the most highly-acclaimed film is far too scary for me to see. “The Departed”? For­get about it, I’d never sleep again. But Peter O’Toole, oh, he was lovely. And the novice (but extremely tal­ented) Jodie Whitaker. If it turns out she can do more than what I think might have been a York­shire accent, I would imag­ine the sky’s the limit. Beau­ti­ful, aggres­sive, piti­ful, child­like and seduc­tive by turns, she ben­e­fits from a script that never lets you fig­ure out exactly who she is. Do go see it.

Then my phone rang and it was Avery (I always find her voice so com­i­cal the few times I hear it on the phone, like a car­toon char­ac­ter speeded up), say­ing, “We’re back from the Quiz!” “Oh, good, how did you do, dar­ling?” “Well, we came in sixth place.” (Under­whelm­ing). “Good for you, out of how many teams?” “Six.” Oh.

Well, at least this saves us from any­more mind-bendingly dull quiz ses­sions, as well as har­bor­ing the com­fort­ing knowl­edge that Avery can recog­nise sweet itch at a moment’s notice, pack up a com­plete vet­eri­nary kit for ponies and small horses, and tell you how many feet in a fur­long. No such thing as wasted knowl­edge, as I and my dor­mant PhD will tell you.