get­ting through January

Have I aged over the last 21 years?  What do you think?  In response to an implicit chal­lenge from my age­less buddy Alyssa, who posted on Face­book a sim­i­larly time­less photo of her­self and her age­less hus­band… WHERE did I get that hair­cut?  That eye makeup?  Avery is shud­der­ing on my behalf.  But I do think that the last cou­ple of months have taken their toll on my appear­ance.  Could any­one EVER have been as young as I was in 1990?

Here I am, sit­ting at the long ban­quet table in my kitchen, a rem­nant of yesterday’s lun­cheon for my 25 Lost Prop­erty vol­un­teers, try­ing to sum­mon up the energy to fold up the table, carry the extra chairs back up to the top of the house, to carry the boxes of cham­pagne glasses back down to the basement.

Sigh.

Am I exhausted from, and recov­er­ing from, the glo­ri­ous hol­i­days?  Yes.

Then, I go back to read my own accounts of those two weeks, snow­bound in Amer­ica, and I am over­come with nos­tal­gia for a life that hap­pened just over a week ago.

I con­fess to being some­what over­whelmed by the sep­a­ra­tion from those won­der­ful times, to be replaced by jet­lag, sweep­ing up nee­dles end­lessly, being back at Lost Prop­erty, sewing on but­tons on for­got­ten pre-holiday clothes, order­ing an autumn’s and holiday’s worth of pho­tographs to fill albums I was given for Christ­mas, dither­ing over Avery’s home­work anx­i­ety… in short, real life.

These are, offi­cially, the kind of prob­lems one has when one has no prob­lems.  All is well.  I’m just slightly over­whelmed by the sweep of emo­tions that come around when one spends two weeks in that alter­nate life — too short a period of time really to set­tle in, as we do in sum­mer, but long enough to get entrenched — and then by the rush of love I feel for our life here in Lon­don.  For our quirky and bizarre cats, for Avery’s gor­geous school, the joy of 30 dif­fer­ent cheeses in just the super­mar­ket shop.  Even the end­less gra­da­tions of the GREY of a Lon­don sky.

In this mood, I feel a desire to cook dark, savoury, slow foods.  Do you cook sea­son­ally?  By that I don’t mean what foods are IN sea­son, but what foods are appeal­ing in cer­tain sea­sons.  In the sum­mer, I want to cook things quickly, on the grill, or even not at all — cold soups, enor­mous sal­ads.  But in the win­ter, when it’s dark by 5 o’clock, and you’ve got to have some­thing cook­ing itself while you’re at a Par­ents’ Guild meet­ing, it’s time for…

Savoury-Rubbed Slow-Braised Shoul­der of Lamb

(serves at least 6)

1 whole lemon

6 cloves garlic

hand­ful frsh rosemary

hand­ful fresh thyme

2 tbsps capers

ONE anchovy

plenty of black pepper

hand­ful flat-leaf parsley

Put ALL these ingre­di­ents in your food proces­sor — really, the whole lemon, quar­tered — and blitz until a nice smooth paste.  Rub the mix­ture all over the shoul­der of lamb, on both sides.  Roast in a nice sealed tent of alu­minum foil for at least six hours, at 120C/220F.  In the last half hour, drain all the cook­ing liq­uids from the dish, pour in a cup of cooked Bel­uga lentils, and sep­a­rate the fat from the cook­ing liq­uids.  Dis­card the fat, then hear the cook­ing liq­uids with a table­spoon of flour whisked in.  Per­fect gravy.  PERFECT.

When the lamb is fin­ished cook­ing, let it rest for 15 min­utes and then sim­ply tear apart with two forks.  The meat will sim­ply FALL off the bone.  Serve with the gravy, and stand aside for the avalanche of com­pli­ments and gratitude.

Serve the lamb with this, the most savoury of all side dishes.

Sausage and Spinach-Stuffed Mushrooms

(serves 4, one mush­room per person)

5 large flat mush­rooms (one to chop up for stuffing)

1 tsp olive oil

1 large sausage, cas­ing removed

1 shal­lot, minced

3 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

hand­ful fresh spinach leaves

1/3 cup fresh breadcrumbs

3 tbsps goat cheese

sea salt and pep­per to taste

olive oil to drizzle

Remove the stems from the flat mush­rooms and chop them with the extra mush­room.  Set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a heavy fry­ing pan and add all the ingre­di­ents up to the spinach leaves.  Saute till soft.  Mix in a bowl with the spinach, bread­crumbs, goats cheese and sea­son to taste.  Pile the stuff­ing mix­ture onto the flat mush­rooms and driz­zle with olive oil.  Bake at 200C/425F for about half an hour, till hot and cooked through.

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And then there is the incom­pa­ra­ble aroma of a roast­ing duck, in the dark evening while your daughter’s at a birth­day party.  The recipe for this dish is shock­ing.  In that there is no recipe.  Put it in the oven.  Let it cook.  Eat it.

Roast Duck

(serves 4)

1 Gress­ing­ham free-range duck (about 2 kilos)

salt and pepper

Lay the duck with its giblets in a large roast­ing tin, breast side up.  Prick all over with a sharp fork, just deep enough to pierce the skin.  Sprin­kle plenty of salt and pep­per over the duck.  Roast for 2 1/2–3 hours, till skin is nicely browned and the legs sep­a­rate eas­ily from the body.

You could eas­ily serve this duck, sliced beau­ti­fully, just on its own with a cou­ple of side dishes.  But if you steam a pile of Chi­nese pan­cakes and pile bites of duck on them, driz­zle them with Hoisin sauce and sprin­kle with a cou­ple of match­sticks of cucum­ber… HEAVEN.  Sadly, though, the cook­ing juices are mostly fat, so gravy is not an option here.

These are the foods I dream of prepar­ing when I wake up in the night, with jet­lag, wor­ry­ing about Avery wor­ry­ing: dis­cus­sions her wor­ries ver­sus adult wor­ries.  “I know adults say, ‘your wor­ries don’t really mat­ter; wait till you have to pay taxes,’” she said one after­noon after school.  “But our wor­ries are the ones we have, and it’s really hard to keep remem­ber­ing every­thing, where to be, what to bring, and hav­ing to put up with adults not treat­ing us with any respect!”

I actu­ally read of the results of a study that deter­mined adults could tol­er­ate the life of a second-grader for only a week!  No author­ity, no power, lit­tle respect: just peo­ple all around telling the poor child what to do, rather arbi­trar­ily most of the time, invok­ing empty author­ity as an inducement.

I’ve tried to be dif­fer­ent as a par­ent, to give author­ity to Avery as much as pos­si­ble unless it REALLY mat­tered that she do what I said: will that help with the pres­sures of being an almost-adult?  I don’t know.  Most of the time she seems quite happy, if stressed with all the pres­sures that her life– again, a life with no prob­lems — has to offer.

Some­times it seems that the sum total of what I can give her is secu­rity.  The sense that she can col­lapse at home, com­plain with aban­don, and get up the next day to face it all again.  In the mean­time, of course, I can give her din­ner.  And blue­berry lemon cake for break­fast.  Not a bad job for a mother, after all.

And now that the hol­i­days are past, I can get down the busi­ness, once again, of just liv­ing, and help­ing my fam­ily to live, through January.

Lemon Blue­berry Cake

(makes one loaf cake)

225 grams (one cup) unsalted but­ter, soft­ened
225 grams (one cup) caster (ordi­nary Amer­i­can) sugar
4 eggs
zest of 3 lemons, finely grated

1 cup blue­ber­ries, dusted with a bit of flour

zest of 1 lime, finely grated225 grams (one cup) self-raising flour, or plain flour with 1 tsp bak­ing powder added

driz­zle top­ping
juice of 3 lemons
85 grams (1/3 cup) caster sugar

Beat the but­ter and sugar till soft and fluffy, then beat in eggs one at a time. Stir in zests and flour gen­tly until fully mixed (includ­ing the bak­ing pow­der if you are using plain flour). Fold in the blue­ber­ries.  Tip into a loaf pan and smooth the top flat with a spoon. Lick the spoon.

Bake for about 45 min­utes in an oven set to 185C, 350F. Watch care­fully, because all ovens are dif­fer­ent. Take care not to burn bot­tom or brown top too much. The cake is done when the mid­dle of the top doesn’t jig­gle when pressed gen­tly. Err on the side of bak­ing less rather than longer.

Cool cake enough so that you can han­dle the tin. In the mean­time, mix the lemon juice and sugar till dis­solved. Prick the top of the cake all over with a fork and then SLOWLY driz­zle the mix­ture over it. If you driz­zle too fast, the mix­ture will end up all slid­ing down the sides of the cake. Serve warm.