hair­dresser to the stars

I am glad to say that after my brief absence from the world of blog­ging, my read­er­ship is back. I was afraid you would all for­get about me while I removed any poten­tial bomb­shells from my innocu­ous lit­tle blog (sadly, I couldn’t find any, but I removed lots of other bor­ing stuff for you).

But about my hair­cut. I have to admit to always skimp­ing on get­ting my hair cut. I’ll go any­where that might save money, because frankly I don’t have very inter­est­ing hair and it’s not really worth get­ting fancy over it. But a week or so ago, I had to admire my friend Becky’s gor­geous locks, beau­ti­fully cut and styled, so I caved and asked her where she had it done. “Kris­ten, for once you need to go to an expert and get a really good cut, so promise me you’ll call them,” she said earnestly, so I did. I had no idea.

At the front desk I realised at once I was in another world from the usual places I turn up when I’m des­per­ate to get my fringe out of my eyes. At those places, the phones are usu­ally answered rather spo­rad­i­cally by a young per­son who clearly takes the notion of self-expression by hair quite seri­ously: the color is nearly always what you’d be hard pressed to call any­thing kinder than “exper­i­men­tal,” and the cut is gen­er­ally a work in progress. And there’s always a sen­sa­tion of peo­ple liv­ing on the mar­gins, eking out a liv­ing, and recov­er­ing from some other expe­ri­ence in their lives. Not at the place Becky sent me to. This salon, Daniel Galvin in George Street, cer­tainly has a client list to admire. Every­one under the sun seems to get her or his hair cut there! The staff, my good­ness, every­one looks like a bud­ding super­model, all dressed uni­formly in chic black some­thing or oth­ers, and a vast array of com­put­ers behind the recep­tion desk to man­age the place like a well-oiled machine.

And Daniel Galvin him­self was there, very flam­boy­ant and doing the hair of some­one I didn’t rec­og­nize but who, for some rea­son, attracted no fewer than five styl­ists around her at all times. Then, just as I sat down with my wet, unat­trac­tive head in my stylist’s chair, on the lower ground floor of the saloon, I could see a black town car pull up just above my head, and a man who looked as though he might be covertly armed stepped out. He looked up and down the pave­ment as if he were sweep­ing the street for ene­mies, and then opened the car door. Out stepped… Naomi Camp­bell. She walked quickly down the back steps to the pri­vate door just to my right, and swept past me with quite the the­atri­cal air of escap­ing from immi­nent danger.

“Gee, was that Naomi Camp­bell?” I asked, and Dean the styl­ist shrugged with world-weary fatigue. “That’s really not so excit­ing. More inter­est­ing peo­ple, peo­ple who’ve actu­ally achieved some­thing, have come in here. And you know what? She’d attract a lot less atten­tion if she just walked in the front door like every­one else.” Fair enough. But I was intrigued. Unfor­tu­nately how­ever, my hair­cut required that I take my glasses off, and I wouldn’t rec­og­nize my own child with­out my specs. So who knows who else came in and out. In the end, I got a great hair­cut, and my styl­ist turned out to be a foodie, so we exchanged recipes, dish ideas, impres­sions of Bor­ough Mar­ket and restau­rant reviews with aban­don. What fun. And while it broke the bank some­what, the cut is so expert that I don’t need colour, so I saved money in the end. Ish.

I spent sim­ply for­ever yes­ter­day at the skat­ing rink with my friend Vic­to­ria, while our chil­dren went around and around in glee. She is a com­plex, delight­ful per­son to be around: Ital­ian born, Swiss-educated, with an air of quiet self-confidence that I can only admire. And yet she isn’t one bit full of her­self. It’s more a com­plete sense of ease with her­self, and with her approach to the world, that makes her stand out. She speaks Eng­lish with the care­ful per­fec­tion of one to whom lan­guages are not a chal­lenge, but a set of ingre­di­ents among which she can choose, to get just the right dish. Every once in awhile she hes­i­tates, with a gen­tle lit­tle smile of ques­tion­ing on her lips, and says, “Well, as we would say in Italy…” and uses a beau­ti­ful expres­sion that I can just grasp, but it’s a choice she makes, not a fall­back onto a more famil­iar lan­guage. She just knows that some ideas are expressed bet­ter in one lan­guage than in another. I am fas­ci­nated by peo­ple who have hid­den depths, or if not hid­den, then lay­ers, that take time to uncover. I know I myself reveal absolutely every­thing about myself, whether my com­pan­ion wants me to or not, within about ten min­utes. But Vic­to­ria has a mys­te­ri­ous oth­er­wordly qual­ity about her that means I get to know her slowly, but it’s worth it. And a truly empa­thetic spirit. And a great mother. So all in all, it made the three hours we spent shiv­er­ing and watch­ing our girls make goo­gly eyes at us to get us to watch, quite a lovely interlude.

Oh, and we’ve found another two houses that are pos­si­bil­i­ties, but as in every real estate sit­u­a­tion, there’s some­thing deal-breakingly wrong with each one. One is just the right size, on a nice road, con­ve­nient to the schools we’re look­ing at for year after next, but a truly wretched kitchen. And it’s too expen­sive. The other one is tremen­dously afford­able, but in a dicier neigh­bor­hood, needs exten­sive updat­ing, and has not so much a wretched kitchen as a room crammed with junk that serves as the kitchen, but only because no other room would do it bet­ter. A sim­ply ancient Aga stove, cold as a herring’s elbow (as one of my screen­writ­ing class mem­bers penned) and sur­rounded by other lesser fry as far as appli­ances go. Just awful. But a gor­geous over­grown gar­den. But it feels cot­tagey, and as always hap­pens in these sit­u­a­tions, John seems to get big­ger as the min­utes tick by. By the time we left, he was hunch­ing over as if he’d been tour­ing a Wendy house. What to do? Spend much less money and always feel that he needs to be six inches shorter, or spend more money and be poor for the fore­see­able future? Nei­ther, prob­a­bly, we’ll just keep looking.

At this stage, though, one of the few really nasty per­son­al­ity clashes we suf­fer as a cou­ple begins to emerge: John could hap­pily look at houses in per­pe­tu­ity, stor­ing each detail away in his mem­ory for­ever, liv­ing with the cer­tainty that if we ever do buy a house, the one he REALLY wanted will come on the mar­ket the next day. Whereas I could make do with almost any­thing; I just want to set­tle down. So we exchanged some mildly acri­mo­nious remarks and then repaired to the quite splen­did butcher that popped up out of nowhere just around the cor­ner from house #2. Now, see, that could decide me right there. Butcher around the cor­ner? I’ll take the house. It’s J. Hunt at 173 Uxbridge Road, staffed by the loveli­est central-casting British chaps you could ever wish for. “Now what sort of work do you do, my boy?” the chief guy asked John, as we gos­siped about the neigh­bor­hood and our love for Lon­don. “Actu­ally, I don’t work right now,” John said sheep­ishly. “But he will do, some­day! We can’t afford for him not to,” I said, and the butcher laughed said, “Oh, you made a mis­take there, my lad, not mar­ry­ing a woman with enough money to keep you!” I came away with a sim­ply to-die-for rack of pork spareribs, yum yum. But rather than doing the com­pli­cated mari­nade I did last year, I sim­ply roasted them with salt and pep­per. So good.

But the week’s best din­ner was prob­a­bly my favorite chicken dish, the recipe for which I’ve given you before, but ages ago and it’s worth repeat­ing. I swear, some­day I will have lit­tle clever links to the side of my posts with all the recipes lined up and you can just click on them. But until then:

Lil­lian Hellman’s Chicken (to be served with Dashiell Ham­mett Spinach, but that’s another story) Serves four

2 whole bone­less chicken breasts, split and finely trimmed
1/2 cup Hellman’s may­on­naise (get it?)
1/2 cup grated parme­san or pecorino cheese
juice of 1 lemon
freshly ground black pep­per to taste
1 1/2 cups home­made bread crumbs

Now before you object, there is sim­ply no need for canned bread crumbs to exist. Have you ever won­dered what sort of bread the Pro­gresso com­pany deems bad or old enough to be pul­ver­ized and put in a can? So march your­self over to your pantry, take out that blue can, and pitch it. Go on, you know I’m right. Then start sav­ing your left­over hot dog buns, that third of a baguette you right­eously didn’t eat last night, the crusts of the bread you used in your pic­nic lunch. If you just have a bowl on your counter where you can throw these lit­tle left­overs as they appear (don’t cover the bowl or the bread will get moldy), then when you are in the mood you can grind them up. Just throw them in your Cuisi­nart and whizz away. The sound of stale bread in a Cuisi­nart, for the first few sec­onds, is a very sat­is­fy­ing, vio­lent rat­tling noise like a car crash where nobody gets hurt.

Mix together the mayo, cheese, lemon juice and pep­per in a bowl big enough to acco­mo­date a sin­gle chicken breast. Pour your bread crumbs on a wide plate. Line a cookie sheet with alu­minum foil for easy cleanup. Pre­heat your oven to a nice high tem­per­a­ture. My New York oven used to oper­ate at only one tem­per­a­ture, no mat­ter where I set the dial, so all my recipes can sur­vive at 425 degrees.

Smear each chicken breast gen­er­ously with the gooey mix­ture and then roll equally gen­er­ously in bread crumbs. Lay each on the foil with some space between them. Bake for 30 min­utes, and voila.

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With it you have no choice but to serve the afore-mentioned Dashiell Ham­mett spinach, so here’s that as well. Of course it’s really by the incom­pa­ra­ble Lau­rie Col­win, but lit­er­ary needs must.

Lau­rie Colwin’s Spinach Casse­role
(serves 8)

First of all, a word about the spinach itself. Do not use fresh. In my opin­ion, there is only one pur­pose in life for frozen spinach and this is it. Now, in Amer­ica, frozen spinach comes in lit­tle square-ish flat boxes. You need two of these. In Eng­land, how­ever, frozen spinach comes in bags, in which you will find intrigu­ing sort of hockey-puck shapes. For this, you need about 1 pound.

1 lb frozen spinach
6 tbsps but­ter
4 tbsps flour
1 medium onion, minced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
6 ounces evap­o­rated milk
8 ounces any sharp cheese, like ched­dar
sprin­kling of chili flakes (or in Amer­ica you can use jalapeno Mon­terey Jack cheese)
1 tbsp cel­ery salt (essen­tial!)
3/4 cup fresh bread­crumbs
3/4 cup grated parmesan

Spray a 9x9 glass dish with non­stick spray. Believe me, you don’t want to skip this step. Then put the spinach in a saucepan, cover with water, and boil till cooked, but don’t over­cook. In the mean­time, melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and then add the flour, and let bub­ble for about two min­utes to cook the floury taste away. Add the minced onion and gar­lic and saute till soft, but do not burn the floury but­ter. When your spinach is cooked, drain off the water, but into a mea­sur­ing cup, till you have 1 cup liq­uid. Dis­card the remain­der. Slowly add the liq­uid to the onion and gar­lic, and stir till thick. Add the evap­o­rated milk, the cheese, the chili flakes, the cel­ery salt, and stir until cheese is melted. Pour the mix­ture into the glass dish and top first with bread­crumbs and then with cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for half an hour, or until bub­bly and browned on top. Heaven.

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Here’s a bit of wis­dom (gleaned from my clever hair­styl­ist, of all peo­ple). Since you can­not find the cheese you really want for this dish, Mon­terey Jack cheese with jalapeno pep­pers in Lon­don (at least I can’t), the clos­est thing turns out to be… Edam. Sur­pris­ingly. Just peel off the red cas­ing and you’re in busi­ness. It’s slightly sharper, more aged-tasting than the Jack, but it’s lovely.

Avery’s had her first foray into the land of act­ing! She had her first class at the Sylvia Young The­atre School this after­noon, and loved every minute of it. She reported, some­what dis­joint­edly, on an exer­cise involv­ing a mys­te­ri­ous let­ter, and impro­vi­sa­tions thereto, and of her all-English class­mates, which I love. I hate turn­ing up for some­thing truly British and then find­ing that it’s full of other Amer­i­cans. Why live in for­eign places if you can’t watch the locals at their own game? So I think act­ing class is a win­ner. Pretty soon she can sup­port us, and then the butcher will be happy.

Then I had a fan­tas­tic long cof­fee break with my friend 6point7, fel­low Matthew Mac­fadyen enthu­si­ast of course. We dished a bit about his lat­est onscreen ven­ture, a ter­ri­bly upset­ting but fan­tas­ti­cally acted telly pro­gramme called “Secret Life.” All of us whom adore him, includ­ing the lovely ladies at dar­cy­li­cious, were wor­ried that it was a rough career move, but the reviews have been uni­ver­sally won­der­ful. Now we can all sit back and wait for his next project, a play called “The Pain and the Itch” that’s come from Step­pen­wolf. It’s in June and I sim­ply can’t wait. 6point7 is a pos­i­tive over­flow­ing font of infor­ma­tion on all things filmic and stage­like, and we talked non­stop for hours, trad­ing opin­ions on var­i­ous British actors, gos­sip­ing about who directs whom, who writes what. I myself would dearly love to turn a beloved novel into a screen­play and see if I could sell it. It’s “Shine on, Bright and Dan­ger­ous Object,” by the same Lau­rie Col­win who cre­ated my spinach recipe. Oh to be that multi-talented! A lovely story about grief and loss and reju­ve­na­tion, set in New York. Oh, I know, Matthew could play the lead! Not that I haven’t thought about that before. We’ll see.

Then, in my quest for felt so that Avery can com­plete a gift project for her Grandpa Jack, I came upon what I can describe only as a knit­ting shop for true believ­ers. The peo­ple at I Knit Lon­don, while not able to sup­ply me with felt, were so kind in their replies to me that I feel duty-bound to pass along the high­est praise. Surely some­one read­ing this blog has been des­per­ate to know where to find yarn, nee­dles and fel­low devo­tees of purl­ing, in Lon­don? Well, now you know. Still have to find felt, though. A trip to John Lewis may be in order.

Well, it’s off to the gro­cery store for me. I’m think­ing red-cooked shrimp…

Szech­wan Red-Cooked Shrimp
(serves four)

3 tbsps peanut oil
1 lb uncooked large shrimp, shells on, heads off (call them prawns in Eng­land)
3 bunches green onions, sliced thin (white part only)
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1-inch knob fresh gin­ger, minced
1/2 tbsp coarse sea salt

4 tbsps soy sauce
2 tbsps Japan­ese mirin (rice wine)
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp chili paste or sauce

1 cup bas­mati rice

Arrange your shrimp in a sin­gle layer on a plat­ter and scat­ter the gar­lic, gin­ger, green onions and sea salt over them. They can sit there, thaw­ing as mine will have to from the freezer, while you do every­thing else.

Mix all the rest of the ingre­di­ents except the rice in a bowl and set aside. Put your rice on to sim­mer with a lit­tle under 1 1/2 cups water. Now, in a wok over high heat, heat your peanut oil. It has a very high smok­ing point, so you can get it good and hot. I find the shrimp are more ten­der if they’re cooked hot and short. Throw in the shrimps with their gar­nish, and toss very quickly until the shrimp turn pink. Take them out with a slot­ted spoon and place them in the bowl you intend to serve in (no sense mess­ing about with extra bowls!). Pour the liq­uid mix­ture into the wok and bring to a boil, mix­ing in the gar­lic and gin­ger left behind in the wok. Boil high for two min­utes, then throw the shrimp back in and toss for 30 sec­onds. Serve with rice.

Now gather up a bunch of paper nap­kins and start pulling their lit­tle legs and shells off. This din­ner is messy, spicy, and glorious.