green toma­toes and fennel

Well. Cast your minds back to the day I told you of my cha­grin at… green toma­toes. So pretty as you can see, so tempt­ingly piled up at the farmer’s mar­ket, so com­pletely ined­i­ble. Impen­e­tra­ble is even a fairer descrip­tion. My esteemed Ital­ian mother-in-law gen­er­ously shared her idea of driz­zling them with olive oil, sprin­kling them with gar­lic and roast­ing them, per­haps with a few pep­pers for sweet­ness. That sounded like a stel­lar idea but I never did it. I left them in their blame­less bowl on the kitchen counter and went about my busi­ness. They didn’t take up too much room and they didn’t say any­thing, so after a bit they became as part of the setup, like an extra drawer or faucet.

Until yes­ter­day, when I real­ized that the green toma­toes in the bowl had been replaced with red toma­toes! In the two weeks that they’ve reposed there, they fol­lowed nature’s call and ripened them­selves with absolutely no help from me. No siesta in a paper bag to col­lect the car­bon diox­ide or what­ever other non­sense peo­ple say about putting things in bags. They just held their heads high and did what green toma­toes do if left to their own devices. I think this devel­op­ment has impli­ca­tions for all sorts of other things in life, like child-raising. I remem­ber once Avery was telling me of the extra­or­di­nary schol­arly exploits of one of her lit­tle friends, extolling her virtues, describ­ing all the events her par­ents took her to to broaden her lit­tle mind, the care that was taken with her home­work. After a bit she said, “I guess she’s like a hot­house flower, and I’m just a com­mon gar­den vari­ety, left to grow on its own.”

Just like my green toma­toes. So there.

And so I decided to thank them for their inde­pen­dence of spirit by invent­ing a side dish just for them. And here it is.

Fen­nel with Toma­toes and Pinenuts
(serves four)

good glug olive oil
2 large or 4 small heads fen­nel, outer layer dis­carded, sliced thin
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
pinch fen­nel seeds
8 lit­tle toma­toes, halved
hand­ful toasted pinenuts

Pour the olive oil into a skil­let over medium heat, then throw in the fen­nel plus seeds and gar­lic. Saute till fen­nel is soft­ish, then add the toma­toes and saute until they just begin to break up. Toss with pinenuts and salt to taste.

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So sim­ple and good. This dish would be very nice with the pork fil­let I have in the fridge for tonight, but because I was being so very spon­ta­neous, we had it with a scallop-linguini dish and it was an odd combination.

Today, would you believe it, I am going to make a loaf of bread. Seri­ously. I am. I have read a recipe from my dear men­tor Orlando, and it sounds like some­thing even I can do, baking-challenged as I have proved myself his­tor­i­cally to be. But I have acquired, from the lovely Bushwacker Whole Foods in Hammersmith’s King Street, a bun­dle of fresh yeast. And I also came away with a packet of polenta, which the nice organic lady behind the counter assured me is the same thing as corn­meal. Please God let this be true. It’s only to sprin­kle, though, not to be an inte­gral part of the loaf. Even lis­ten­ing to myself I sound so lame that if the bread turns out to have the con­sis­tency of a ten­nis ball I will not be sur­prised. Wish me luck. I’ll report.

My ankle has returned nearly to nor­mal, which is a relief. Being lit­er­ally lame is a drag. Avery’s school Christ­mas fair was an enor­mous suc­cess, and I mean enor­mous: imag­ine 700 school­gulls, with all their myr­iad sib­lings, par­ents, grand­par­ents and any­one else they could drag along, stuffed into the Great Hall and sur­round­ing class­rooms, moth­ers run­ning along with paper plates piled high call­ing, “Mince pies and brown­ies for a pound!” and “Staff panto in the music room at noon!” By the end of the after­noon, after I had col­lected untold amounts of money in our Book Stall, the mother in charge decided she’d almost rather pay peo­ple to take the books than have to box them all up for Oxfam, and the form IV gulls we had with us were only too happy to begin shout­ing, “Six books for a pound! Take as many as you can!”

It was lovely: an amal­gam of all fairs past, from Avery’s baby school through to PS 234 in Tribeca, where after Sep­tem­ber 11 every school event took on mas­sive emo­tional sig­nif­i­cance, right through to the uni­formed pre­cious­ness of her pri­mary school here, and now to this year, where every week she seems to shed more of her little-girl-ness. John gave her money and she set off alone to trawl the fair, gath­er­ing up this or that lit­tle friend as she went. I saw her, out of the cor­ner of my eye, peri­od­i­cally through the day, eat­ing cot­ton candy (or “candy floss” as they call it here), laugh­ing and chat­ting. Another mile­stone: off on her own.

Right, my unfa­mil­iar lit­tle knob of yeast beck­ons. Really, from the counter it’s wav­ing at me: “Come on, Kris­ten, you can do it, put a lit­tle POWER to it!” Nerve-wracking.