last Lon­don sum­mer adventures

My, it’s hot.  Although Lon­don­ers always express amaze­ment what­ev­er the weath­er, it real­ly is amaz­ing­ly hot.  We’ve dragged our sprin­kler from the base­ment to try to alle­vi­ate the dry­ness.  The smell of wet grass evokes love­ly child­hood Indi­ana mem­o­ries of my dad water­ing the toma­to gar­den, and kind­ly turn­ing the water on the grass for a bit so we could race through it.  Wet grass is universal.

Tacy does­n’t mind the heat.

The day has final­ly arrived: Avery is com­ing home from Rus­sia this evening, our bags are packed, pass­ports sort­ed, cat dish­es full, and tomor­row we leave for Connecticut!

Final­ly.

It’s been a fun­ny time here in Lon­don, with every­one I nor­mal­ly see dur­ing the year say­ing in a puz­zled way, “Aren’t you usu­al­ly gone by now?”  I’ve spent an extra month with my Home-Start fam­i­ly, watch­ing the babies grow almost vis­i­bly on our week­ly vis­its.  I’ve nev­er spent this much time with small babies since Avery was one, and it’s incred­i­ble to see them acquir­ing new skills — track­ing a pass­ing train with their eyes, hold­ing their own bot­tles of milk, sit­ting up with their fat lit­tle hands on either side to sup­port them­selves.  The extra month has been a real joy, and it’s a bit of a wrench to think how they’ll have grown and changed in the com­ing month that we’ll spend apart.

My fel­low bell ringers looked star­tled to see me at Sun­day ser­vices yes­ter­day.  “You’re still here?”  I sweat­ed my way through Grand­sire Dou­bles, ring­ing the tenor behind to Sted­mans, and even call­ing some changes myself, and get­ting very flus­tered call­ing us back into rounds.  “Ner­vous sweat,” diag­nosed Andrew sage­ly.  Then it was onto Chiswick where for the first time ever in my expe­ri­ence, the back door to the ring­ing cham­ber was open, to admit a breeze.  The atmos­phere was so love­ly, so ancient and yet so breezi­ly mod­ern, and of-the-moment, that I felt I could­n’t breathe for the beauty.

While Avery’s been away — and near­ly silent­ly, with­out inter­net of phone most of the time and so tan­ta­liz­ing­ly with­out tale-telling — we’ve been busy feed­ing friends, see­ing plays, see­ing oth­er friends.  We’ve made a cou­ple of superb and deli­cious dis­cov­er­ies.  John always mocks me for get­ting obsessed with a dish and mak­ing it over and over until I get it just right, but some­times it’s not too dif­fi­cult to live through the process.  Oh, clams.

Von­gole e Spaghet­ti con Pomodori, Olive e Aglio

(serves 4)

1.5 kilos/3.5 lb small clams, raw

50ml/1/4 c very good qual­i­ty extra vir­gin olive oil

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

3 tbsps butter

2 large hand­fuls flat-leaf pars­ley, minced

1 hot Thai chilli, seeds removed and minced (or to taste)

fresh black pep­per, sea salt to taste

12 cher­ry toma­toes, quartered

12 oil-cured Moroc­can black olives, pit­ted and halved

1 lb spaghetti

2 tbsp olive oil

75 ml/6 oz good white wine

Clean the clams care­ful­ly and dis­card any that are not firm­ly closed, or do not prompt­ly close when you tap on them with a fingernail.

In a small fry­ing pan, heat the olive oil and sweat the gar­lic gen­tly in it.  Do not brown the gar­lic.  Add the but­ter, half the pars­ley and the chilli, the pep­per and salt, toma­toes and olives and heat gen­tly until but­ter is melted.

Just before you are ready to serve, boil the spaghet­ti until very slight­ly under­cooked, then drain into a serv­ing bowl and toss with the olive oil to stop pas­ta from sticking.

To the hot, emp­ty pas­ta pan, pour in the white wine and bring quick­ly to a boil.  Tip in the clams and put the spaghet­ti in on top.  Clap a tight lid on and cook, stir­ring twice, for 5 minutes.

Pour the clams and spaghet­ti into the serv­ing bowl and pour the gar­lic mix­ture over top, then toss well till com­plete­ly mixed.  Scat­ter the rest of the pars­ley on top.  Serve with a good crusty bread.

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I just knew John and Suzanne would be the per­fect guests for the first draft of this meal — with­out the toma­toes or olives, just a TON of gar­lic and pars­ley — and they were their usu­al ebul­lient selves, up for any guinea pig food assignment.

With a first course of ice-cold vichys­soise and Suzan­ne’s divine peach tri­fle to end, this was a meal to remember.

So sim­ple: crushed amaret­to bis­cuits with amaret­to poured over, then whipped cream, ripe peach slices and sliv­ered almonds.  Heaven.

Why is it so much fun to eat some­thing that makes a mess?  Bones or shells, always a winner.

While the very sim­ple ver­sion of the clam dish was love­ly, I think the added toma­toes and olives ele­vat­ed the expe­ri­ence, almost to a put­tanesca lev­el, but we agreed that adding anchovies and capers would take the exper­i­ment too far.  One nev­er knows, though; I could be con­vinced to try it in Connecticut.

Over din­ner, John and Suzanne remind­ed me of a gor­geous dish he made for us years ago, a mirac­u­lous feat of almost no cook­ing, a bit of wait­ing, and one hell of a per­fect cut of beef.

 

Turmer­ic-rubbed Seared Beef Fillet

(serves 4)

600–800g beef fillet

olive oil to coat

1/2  tsp each: corian­der seeds, sea salt, lemon zest, fresh black pepper

1 tsp soy sauce

1‑inch knob fresh turmer­ic, peeled and grat­ed, or 1/2 tsp ground turmeric

1 tsp olive oil

Coat the beef with the olive oil.  Place all oth­er ingre­di­ents in a mor­tar and pes­tle and mash until a nice paste.  Rub all over the beef fil­let and leave to mar­i­nate at least 1 hour in the fridge.

Heat the olive oil in a heavy fry­ing pan and fry the beef at a very high heat on all sides, and both ends, for a total of 10 min­utes.  Wrap tight­ly in four lay­ers of alu­mini­um foil and leave to rest for at least 10 minutes.

Slice extreme­ly thin and serve the beef with lots of fresh wild rock­et and lash­ings of shaved parme­san, the whole dish driz­zled with a good-qual­i­ty olive oil.

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Turmer­ic.  The won­der spice.  It is reput­ed to solve any num­ber of health issues: inflam­ma­tion, pain, even can­cer.  I have nev­er before found it in its fresh form, but I came upon some at the sub­lime Green Val­ley gro­cer in Upper Berke­ley Street, and snapped it up.

A fun­ny lit­tle plant, isn’t it?  It looks like a hybrid between a Jerusalem arti­choke and a gin­ger root.  It tastes like a sort of hyped-up car­rot on steroids, and the deep yel­low you’d asso­ciate with the ground vari­ety in a jar isn’t a PATCH on the gold­en hue that per­me­at­ed my fin­gers and last­ed through wash­ing din­ner dish­es AND the next day’s show­er.  Ground up in a mor­tar and pes­tle with heav­en­ly fresh corian­der seed…

The exot­ic rub, bare­ly-cooked, vel­vety beef, salty Parme­san and bit­ter rock­et: this dish was a def­i­nite win­ner, and even bet­ter cold for lunch the next day.

We need­ed all the strength we could get for our cul­tur­al out­ings.  We had seen “Medea” with Avery just before she left, and my good­ness, what a tour de force for Helen McCro­ry.  If you had asked me before the play if it was even remote­ly inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate a char­ac­ter who would kill her chil­dren because she was jilt­ed by her hus­band, I’d have hon­est­ly laughed.  Espe­cial­ly wav­ing my only child off on a bit of a rocky adven­ture to Rus­sia the next day, the idea of sac­ri­fic­ing lit­tle ones in ret­ri­bu­tion for being aban­doned by their father seemed and seems very sil­ly.  That’s what makes McCro­ry’s per­for­mance so per­fect, and so chill­ing.  You believe it’s a pos­si­ble choice.

And then there was “Sky­light.”  Again, the suc­cess of the play is in the res­cu­ing of an old-hat sce­nario — much old­er man try­ing to get back into the good graces of the young woman who’s reject­ed their rela­tion­ship.  In this case, the cliche is brought to life by the impos­si­bly charis­mat­ic Bill Nighy (yup, he’s 64) and the lumi­nous Carey Mul­li­gan (uh huh, she’s 29).  They are com­plete­ly believ­able as a cou­ple, and their emo­tion­al machi­na­tions total­ly com­pelling.  The irony?  With all the polit­i­cal con­tent of the play — the two char­ac­ters divid­ed by their places in very dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic class­es — the tick­ets were notably pricey.  Avery would have choked.

Still under the spell of “Sky­light,” we wan­dered in the late after­noon heat to the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery to meet my pal Jo and take in the exhi­bi­tion about Vir­ginia Woolf.  It is ter­ri­bly sad, even when you know the end­ing is com­ing.  Again, isn’t that a tes­ta­ment to the qual­i­ty of an artis­tic achieve­ment: tak­ing the famil­iar, even the trite, and mak­ing it new and mov­ing.  Love­ly orig­i­nal edi­tions of her books, child­hood pho­tographs, diaries.  The most upset­ting bits to me were the pho­tographs of the Blitzed homes of the Woolfs and the Bells, and the let­ters she wrote to her sis­ter and hus­band before killing her­self.  How these things, so com­mon­place in our under­stand­ing of his­to­ry, could still be so mov­ing, means that you should go and see them if you can.

All we could do was fall into squishy leather chairs and imbibe cock­tails at the ridicu­lous­ly chic St Mar­t­in’s Hotel Bar just around the cor­ner.  Jo is one of those effer­ves­cent, total­ly-her­self peo­ple who is a joy to share all things with, sad exhi­bi­tions and gin and ton­ics alike.  The atmos­phere made us all feel very cool.

Final­ly, to fill up our cul­ture cup, one breath­less­ly hot evening we cycled up the vil­lage street to the local Olympic Cin­e­ma to relax in wel­come air con­di­tion­ing for “Camille Claudel 1915.”  Those of you who know me from the old coun­try, in my dark art his­tor­i­cal past, will remem­ber that I wrote my dis­ser­ta­tion on this trag­ic artist, sub­ject of the mas­sive­ly suc­cess­ful and beau­ti­ful 1988 film “Camille Claudel.”  That ear­ly film focused on the dis­as­trous rela­tion­ship between Claudel and Rodin, and was very dra­mat­ic and lush.  This film, by con­trast, chron­i­cles three days in the life of the old­er Claudel, now com­mit­ted to a men­tal asy­lum on a windswept hill­top in wartime France.

Depress­ing?  There are no words.  But Juli­ette Binoche puts in a per­for­mance of deep sad­ness and authen­tic­i­ty.  To me, the most touch­ing thing about the film was its use of quo­ta­tions from Claudel’s heart­break­ing let­ters, as dia­logue.  I remem­ber so clear­ly read­ing them in their orig­i­nal French in the attic archives of the Musee Rodin in Paris, feel­ing her iso­la­tion and des­per­a­tion.  They were stored in the lit­tle room with the win­dow just at the top of the house, on the right.

Hear­ing the words spo­ken aloud was stun­ning.  The film will have a lim­it­ed release, but seek it out if you can.

The clock ticks.  Avery’s plane is in the air.  Tomor­row at this time we’ll be await­ing our flight to Con­necti­cut, to our sum­mer hol­i­day, to Red Gate Farm.  A month with­out the­atre, with­out muse­ums, with­out fan­cy films.  But it will have green grass, red barns, white pick­et fences, fam­i­ly.  I can’t wait.