life returns to normal

I sit here on my sofa with the thin March sun at my back, nurs­ing a cold, feel­ing a heavy, warm cat draped over my legs.  The back gar­den sports its col­or­ful expanse of spring flow­ers, the emer­gence of which took us by such sur­prise last year, our first spring in this house.  As my Amer­i­can friends, espe­cial­ly my fam­i­ly in Indi­ana and Iowa, describe the con­stant snow­falls and frigid tem­per­a­tures, I’m torn between grat­i­tude at the mild beau­ty here, and a bit of envy of a real winter.

As always, the annoy­ance of being felled by a cold is assuaged by the beau­ty of a pot of chick­en soup.

Just as med­i­c­i­nal as the ambrosial, gold­en soup is the relief of climb­ing into bed with a good book, in my cosy bed­room, from whose win­dow I can see the Thames, feath­ery in the wind.  Sur­round­ed by books and love­ly can­dle­light, I often wish bed­time could last for hours.

The fan­fare of “Tonight at 7.30″ has evolved into a gen­tler, dai­ly plea­sure, of find­ing new reviews on Ama­zon, hav­ing friends ring me up to say they’ve seen a sto­ry about it in the dar­ling Lon­don mag­a­zine “Angels and Urchins.”  Then, too, the local book­shop rings up to say they’ve run out of copies and could I bring anoth­er stack?  Most cer­tain­ly.  Every morn­ing my email inbox and Face­book pages are full of reports of what’s been cooked and how it was received, and just the plea­sure of leaf­ing through the book almost as fic­tion, as in this love­ly blog review.  I love the idea of Avery and me being a “dream team.”

Now that the book is a real­i­ty, I’ve been able to turn my atten­tion away from that con­stant respon­si­bil­i­ty and give some time to the oth­er things I love, name­ly bell ring­ing.  Or to be pre­cise, what should be the annu­al — but is nev­er such — job of Clean­ing the Bell Tow­er.  Hoover­ing dan­ger­ous­ly under the bells in the bel­fry, the wind­ing and per­ilous stair­case, the car­pet under our ring­ing feet, clear­ing out the decep­tive­ly small cup­board.  Who would ever dream that it takes quite so much clob­ber to run a ring­ing cham­ber?  Ring­ing instruc­tion book­lets, ban­dages for sore hands, thumb­tacks for spe­cial notices, back issues of “The Ring­ing World,” which is, believe it or not, a week­ly report on ring­ing doings.  We made a good job of it, in the dust-motey sun­shine in church.

What hap­py mem­o­ries I have of this teach­ing tool, the col­or­ful yarns trac­ing our methods.

There is some­thing ter­ri­bly touch­ing about this week­ly prayer, said every Sun­day by some­one in the Tow­er, so sim­ple and sincere.

The box­es on which small ringers stand now and then were found to be hous­ing quite a num­ber of spi­ders.  It was time for a brush-off in the fresh air, along­side the var­i­ous signs we need to com­mu­ni­cate with vis­i­tors to the bell chamber.

How lucky I felt to spend the day there, like a char­ac­ter in an Agatha Christie nov­el.  Our fear­less leader, the love­ly tow­er cap­tain Trisha, would be such a fan­tas­tic character.

I’ve also had time for some much-need­ed new cook­ing ideas!  The cook­book is filled, of course, with our fam­i­ly favorites, and every time I cook one of them I feel a surge of pride that the book is real­ly just what it says on the tin: recipes we use all the time, with such hap­py mem­o­ries of din­ner at 7.30.  But at a cer­tain point, even the most beloved and deli­cious list of favorite dish­es needs an infu­sion of fresh fla­vors.  And with Avery’s wish to eat more fish, we delved into some­thing tru­ly delec­table last week.  Keep in mind that these are my pho­tographs, as Avery has accept­ed a well-deserved ear­ly retirement.

Baked Eng­lish Trout with Lemon and Thyme

(serves 4)

4 fil­lets Eng­lish trout

zest of 1/2 lemon

juice of 1 lemon

4 sprigs thyme, leaves only

splash white wine

driz­zle olive oil

fresh black pep­per and sea salt

Line a bak­ing dish with foil and arrange the fish fil­lets in a sin­gle lay­er.  If you can’t find Eng­lish trout (if for exam­ple you live in Amer­i­ca), you can sub­sti­tute any del­i­cate white fish, like sole.

Sprin­kle even­ly over each fil­let all the remain­ing ingre­di­ents, then bake at 220C/425F for about 8 min­utes, or slight­ly longer if the fil­lets are thick.  Do not overcook.

This dish was deli­cious with a side offer­ing of sauteed bright pep­pers and broc­coli, tossed with bean sprouts and soy sauce.

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And because we are only three, we had a fil­let left­over next day for lunch.  Inspired by my friend Camille, who report­ed mak­ing my crab cakes (pp. 108–9 in the cook­book) with roast­ed salmon instead of crab, I decid­ed a trout cake was just the thing.  Sim­ply mixed by fork with minced red pep­pers, spring onions, Panko bread­crumbs and a spoon­ful of may­on­naise, then sauteed in olive oil.  Sim­ply heav­en­ly, and RICH.

Then I was giv­en a fan­tas­tic new idea by a re-read of one of my old favorites on the cook­book shelf, “Taste” by David Rosen­garten.  His prose sim­ply makes you want to rush to the super­mar­ket and fill your bas­ket with a world­wide list of ingre­di­ents, and come home to cook all day.  While I prob­a­bly will nev­er be brave enough to cut off the face of a soft-shell crab, I cer­tain­ly was capa­ble of prepar­ing a ver­sion of his “Hacked Chick­en,” a Szechuan spe­cial­i­ty.  “Hacked” is just a cheffy term for shred­ded, real­ly.  I added gin­ger and lots of it, because I love gin­ger, and I left out his sug­gest­ed brown pep­per­corns because I did­n’t have any, but the basic premise is David’s.

Hacked Chick­en on a Let­tuce Leaf

(serves 4)

4 chick­en breast fil­lets, well-trimmed

6 cloves gar­lic, peeled

2‑inch knob gin­ger, peeled

100ml/1/3 cup dark soy sauce (the dark sort real­ly makes a dif­fer­ence, if you can find it, but if you can’t, reg­u­lar soy sauce is fine)

100 ml/1/3 cup Japan­ese mirin or dry sherry

100 ml/1/3 cup clear honey

12 tbsps/3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

1 bunch spring onions, thin­ly sliced includ­ing green parts

2 heads butter/Little Gem let­tuce, leaves sep­a­rat­ed and washed

Bring a pot of salt­ed water to the boil and add the chick­en breasts.  Turn water down to a high sim­mer and cook the breasts until “just past pink” David says.  This will take about 10–15 min­utes.  It won’t hurt the chick­en a bit to cut into the mid­dle to see if it’s cooked through.  Drain the chick­en in a colan­der and run cold water over it to stop it cook­ing.  Set aside to cool.

Now place all the oth­er ingre­di­ents except the spring onions and let­tuce in a small food proces­sor or blender and blend until smooth.

Shred the chick­en fair­ly fine­ly by tear­ing in long strips along the grain of the meat.  Place in a bowl and pour the sauce over.  Toss well, and serve topped by the spring onions, in let­tuce leaves.

What makes this dish inter­est­ing, as David says, is that the chick­en is not mar­i­nat­ed in the sauce.  The chick­en is plain, sim­ple and del­i­cate.  The sauce mere­ly coats it, and since it’s not a cooked sauce, it’s ter­ri­bly fresh and light.  It’s nice to know that every once in awhile, I can cook some­thing that does­n’t depend on but­ter!  This would (and will) be the per­fect dish for a Lost Prop­er­ty lunch, because it can eas­i­ly be dou­bled or even tripled.  Savoury, unusu­al, delicious.

It’s impos­si­ble to cook, or eat, these days with­out being incred­i­bly grate­ful for the lux­u­ry of hav­ing enough.  This view­point has been enhanced by my new vol­un­teer job: spend­ing cold Fri­day morn­ings in a shed at the local Food Bank!

What fun it is to bun­dle up and ride my bike to the shed and spend a few hours organ­is­ing the dif­fer­ent sorts of tinned and boxed fish, veg­eta­bles, waxy car­tons of juice and milk, box­es of tea and cof­fee, bags of pas­ta and rice.  Fam­i­lies turn up with vouch­ers from var­i­ous neigh­bor­hood organ­i­sa­tions and my friend Francesca and I fran­ti­cal­ly fill up bags and weigh them, then deliv­er them to the warm cafe where the clients are enjoy­ing a cup of cof­fee and a chat with local volunteers.

“You’re the first vol­un­teer I’ve had,” Francesca said laugh­ing, “who reads the ingre­di­ents on all the food, not just the ‘best-by’ date.”  I con­fess that I do obsess over the ingre­di­ents, and was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to find that so much pre­pared food in Eng­land real­ly con­tains no rub­bish.  And then there’s the inim­itably British sense of design.

Life has been fur­ther enhanced by a vis­it from my young friend Sam, recipe tester and edi­tor extra­or­di­naire, who came for din­ner and to spent the night.

We trooped off to church togeth­er in the morn­ing so Sam could see and hear me ring.  I like to think he was ter­ri­bly impressed.

So life moseys along in these qui­et weeks of late win­ter.  More to be grate­ful for than I could ever wish.  Hap­py spring, everyone!