Life, Speeded Up

Why the silence, you ask? I shall explain. Since I last put vir­tual pen to paper for my blog, I have: bought a lacrosse stick and meltable mouth­guard, run unsuc­cess­fully in a three-legged race, lost my cat (and found her again), eaten brill (a fish I had never before tasted) in three sep­a­rate recipes, found out that my vagabond uphol­sterer is actu­ally dead, and dis­cov­ered that my other cat, not the lost and found one, is aller­gic to… cat food, and had my street torn up and my water turned off. And I’ve had din­ner at the city’s best fish restau­rant and been taken to see “Romeo and Juliet: The Bal­let.” (As Avery said, at least it wasn’t “The Musical.”)

As well, I’ve been to the last pri­mary school Sports Day, the last pri­mary school Sum­mer Con­cert, the last pri­mary school Art Exhi­bi­tion, and have read aloud and had cri­tiqued my cook­book chap­ter on Moroc­can meat­balls. Plus I invited my next door neigh­bors to din­ner only to find I’d dou­ble booked them another fam­ily entirely. And I have met the sev­eral hun­dred girls and par­ents who will be our new school fam­ily next year, and fer­ried Avery to two hideous Offi­cial Royal Some­thing or Other singing and vio­lin exams. She is quite sure she failed vio­lin, and frankly the day she takes the wretched instru­ment back to the shop will be a day too late in my book.

Sigh.

Seri­ously. As you can see from the above beau­ti­ful pho­tographs, Avery came through the last Sports Day per­fectly well, not mind­ing when we were crushed in the three-legged race. And who were we crushed by? My hus­band and Avery’s friend Sophia, so that was galling. But it was a nice foxy day where when the sun was behind a cloud you rushed to bor­row a cardi­gan from some­one wise enough to bring two, and when the sun came back out, you smoth­ered. We brought an enor­mous pic­nic of shrimp with home­made cock­tail sauce, tomato, moz­zarella and pesto salad, smoked salmon sand­wiches and… the piece de resis­tance… two pound of Eng­lish straw­ber­ries dipped in melted choco­late. THAT was fun, not that I eat them, but Avery and I dipped them together and she had to test quite a few, I’ll tell you. “Well, I have to be sure they’re all right!” This adven­ture came at the end of the day that saw us at her new school, buy­ing said lacrosse stick and mouth­guard and sev­eral gatril­lion pounds’ worth of other essen­tial PE gear: the games skirt (what? I know, it sounded odd to me too), the trousers and match­ing hoodie, the lacrosse socks and dance leo­tard and swim­ming “cos­tume” and white t-shirts with the school logo… very impres­sive! A real mile­stone, and she was so gra­cious and grownup with the nice Irish lady who helped her find her sizes. Every time we go to the new school we’re more impressed with the seri­ous­ness and yet friend­li­ness of every­one involved.

And yes, we had a rene­gade cat. Tacy, who has always been the vis­it­ing type any­way, strolled out of the gar­den in the mid­dle of one super hot night (through a bed­room win­dow rather high up) with­out her ID tag and col­lar. Two ago­nis­ing days of search­ing ensued, with me walk­ing up and down the fronts of the houses whose gar­dens back onto our gar­den, knock­ing at garden-flat doors to see if any­one had seen “a gor­geous sleek tor­tie with one orange foot, one black foot, and aqua eyes.” Seen her? One dear lady called Pippa answered the door in her dress­ing gown and was quite shirty with me until I uttered the words “lost cat,” and then she all but dragged me in and couldn’t have been sweeter. “Oh, I know Tacy,” she assured me. “A fre­quent vis­i­tor here, but I can’t say my Tilly is too fond of her vis­its. But then Tilly is an old gen­tle­woman of 16 and doesn’t like sur­prises. Don’t mind my dress­ing gown. I have just seen my hus­band off to our house in France and I can’t BEGIN to tell you how exhaust­ing it is, hav­ing him in the flat here. Sheer bliss send­ing him away again.”

But alas, none of this pro­duced Tacy. Pippa did, how­ever, pro­vide an ency­clo­pe­dic inven­tory of every cat in the street, on both sides of the gar­den, and indi­cated which might let her pass and which would not. As well, she promised to enact the “Cat Neigh­bor­hood Watch” act which seems to oper­ate in my neck of the woods, and within an hour (I was out get­ting fly­ers lam­i­nated) two lit­tle old ladies plus Pippa had come to offer their com­bined con­do­lences and deter­mi­na­tion to John, promis­ing to find Tacy ASAP. I ran off to my writ­ing class feel­ing utterly sick. “I hate to say it,” John said, “but she’s our high­est qual­ity cat, really.” It’s true: she is friendly, good-looking, doesn’t beg for food, doesn’t fall off things and scare her­self, or chew off all her belly fur or vomit all over or run away when you try to pet her. Like SOME cats I could intro­duce you to.

Well, just before class began I got a rather inco­her­ent text from John, obvi­ously typ­ing quickly: “Racy is home!” Well, she can be rather racy. And here’s what hap­pened. John saw an RSPCA van in our street and thought there was just a chance… and sure enough, there she was! Wear­ing a paper col­lar say­ing that the RSPCA had dealt with her and the own­ers needed to call an agency to have her microchip reg­is­tered in the UK. Fair enough. She had appar­ently found her­self in gar­den sev­eral doors down and beaten on the lady’s gar­den win­dow to be let in! Thank good­ness it was the win­dow of a per­son who did not want a high-quality tor­toise­shell cat, but also didn’t NOT want one enough to, say, poi­son it. She merely called the author­i­ties. So home Tacy/Racy came, none the worse for her adven­ture. And now firmly col­lared and tagged at all times, although she’s learned to take it off if she really wants to. I’ve found it deposited politely on the lap of one of Avery’s dolls, and buried deep under Avery’s bed cov­ers, and most amus­ingly, set into my bed­side water glass. That is one funny cat.

In the midst of all the drama, John and I had din­ner out at the local fab­u­lous restau­rant, The Brack­en­bury, where I had brill for the first time. Totally sim­ply sauteed, on a bed of bean salad made with some­thing else I had never had: bor­lotti beans. Lovely! Then the next day I was taken to din­ner with Avery by one of her chums and mother for the child’s birth­day, to J Sheekey, quite the most divine fish estab­lish­ment in Lon­don. And there I saw brill on the menu again and thought, why not. This time it was on a bed of new aspara­gus and driz­zled with a mous­se­line sauce which sounded very exotic. Actu­ally it turned out to be noth­ing more or less than hol­landaise mixed at the last moment with whipped dou­ble cream.

So it was but the work of a moment this week to acquire some brill of my own and pro­duce a com­bi­na­tion of these two dishes, with a side of sauteed steamed new pota­toes. Can I tell you how pleased I am at how this din­ner turned out? And Avery and John devoured every bite, no one com­plained about any­thing, and the left­over sauce was just fine on broc­col­ini a few nights later. Let me tell you more. You can do the beans, aspara­gus and pota­toes ahead of time, pretty much, and leave them sit while you pre­pare the fish and the sauce. I’m not sure I’d be much good at pro­duc­ing this for more than about two extra peo­ple, but for our lit­tle fam­ily it was DIVINE.

Bor­lotti Bean Salad
(serves three)

3 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 small red onion, minced
juice of 1 lemon
1 soup-size can bor­lotti beans
hand­ful each of fresh mint and flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped roughly

In a medium skil­let, heat the olive oil and very GEN­TLY fry the gar­lic and onion, then add the lemon juice and beans and stir over medium heat till the onions are soft. Remove to a bowl and add more oil or lemon juice to taste, and to cre­ate the sen­sa­tion of a soft, unc­tu­ous dress­ing. Set aside and use the same skil­let uncleaned for:

Sauteed Steamed Char­lotte Pota­toes
(serves three)

1/2 pound Char­lotte pota­toes
1 tbsp but­ter, 1 tsp olive oil
sea salt and pep­per to taste

In a dou­ble boiler, steam the pota­toes for about 25 min­utes or until per­fectly soft. Cut them into bite-size pieces if they are not already. Heat the but­ter and oil in the bean skil­let till quite hot and add the pota­toes. Stir­ring occa­sion­ally, crisp the pota­toes nicely and salt and pep­per to taste. These can be removed and set aside in a serv­ing bowl along­side the beans. Now in the same dou­ble boiler, prepare:

Steamed New Eng­lish Aspara­gus
(serves three)

Bring water to a boil in the dou­ble boiler and add the aspara­gus which you’ve snapped at the vul­ner­a­ble points on the stem and skimmed a bit of rough stem off with a car­rot peeler. Steam the aspara­gus JUST until it smells good, and is bright green, if you like it to have a lit­tle bite, and longer if you like it soft. Remove to a nice pretty place and set aside along­side the pota­toes and beans.

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Now you can go about your busi­ness telling your daugh­ter how won­der­ful she was on Sports Day and clean­ing the lit­ter­box, until about 10 min­utes before you’re ready to eat. Then…

Quick Hol­landaise Sauce (turned into Mous­se­line if you like)
(serves about six, 1 1/4 cups)

2 egg yolks
2 tbsps boil­ing water
1 cup but­ter (two sticks), melted and hot
2 tbsps lemon juice
sea salt to taste

Put the egg yolks in the blender of food proces­sor and blend at low speed just to mix. Then, keep­ing the blender going, add the boil­ing water and then the but­ter, VERY slowly! Just a thin stream. Add the lemon juice and salt, keep­ing the machine going all the time. Voila.

Now, if you want to turn this already per­fect sauce into the more fes­tive mous­se­line, fold in gen­tly about 1/2 cup whipped dou­ble cream RIGHT before serv­ing. Don’t add it ahead of time or the sauce will get runny. Oth­er­wise, you can keep the plain hol­landaise just at room tem­per­a­ture while you prepare:

Pan-Fried Brill
(serves 3)

2 whole brill fish, fil­leted assid­u­ously by your fish­mon­ger
3 tbsps but­ter
sprin­kle sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

Run the fil­lets under cold water and rinse well, then pat dry with kitchen paper tow­els. In a large skil­let, melt the but­ter and get it quite hot but not brown. Add the fil­lets skin side down and cook for about 4 min­utes, bast­ing with the hot but­ter. At the VERY last minute before serv­ing, turn onto the other side and cook just for a minute.

To serve: lay the aspara­gus on each plate, then top with the fish fil­lets and place a gen­er­ous dol­lop of hol­landaise over all. Add a spoon­ful of bean salad and a spoon­ful of pota­toes and… you’re in business.

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I will tell you: the per­fect din­ner, truly. I was so proud of myself! It was just like both restau­rants and I had the fun of doing it myself.

So let’s see, other than that, what else has been hap­pen­ing? Actu­ally, what else COULD have been hap­pen­ing? “Romeo and Juliet” was truly spec­tac­u­larly lovely, so do go if you pos­si­bly can. The sad­dest pas de deux at the end where Romeo tries to recre­ate his first dance with Juliet, only this time she is a dead, limp weight in his arms. Heartbreaking!

John’s been on a very strange eBay kick: he decided we needed a drinks trol­ley (have you ever had one? nei­ther have I), so off he went bid­ding to his heart’s con­tent and finally got a lovely cheap veneer and stain­less steel one which he has pro­ceeded to art-direct with fancy prop gin, prop Scotch and prop tonic water. Then he bought a sil­ver plate tea-seat that “if it were the real designer, would cost a LOT of money,” he assured me. I never make tea. Then I thought he’d kill poor Hermione last night when she slept on his com­puter and can­celled his bid for an ice bucket. Per­spec­tive, please? But the recep­tion room is look­ing lovely. Except for…

The miss­ing sofa and bench. Remem­ber them? The cats peed on them and scratched them and gen­er­ally made it highly likely that they would appear some­day with their knees bro­ken by their father. Then we found Ye Olde Eng­lish Uphol­sterer, who came to our house so charm­ingly and helped us choose durable yet lovely fab­rics and had all sorts of clever ideas for help­ing us save money. Chief among which, as it turns out, was sim­ply never doing the job, never return­ing my phone calls, never being at the shop when we stopped in, and, insult to injury, it turns out he’s… dead. I wish I were mak­ing this up. Finally after four months of wait­ing, we got a call from some sur­vivor or such of the poor man who broke the sorry news and then com­pounded it by con­fess­ing that the mate­r­ial we liked had been dis­con­tin­ued. It was not clear from his voice which tragedy was the greater.

So today we stopped by again and brought home sev­eral books of fab­ric. Can I tell you, from my secret heart, and don’t tell John… I really don’t care. That much. As long as it is nice qual­ity and will stand up to pets and chil­dren, and doesn’t clash hor­ri­bly with any­thing else we own, I don’t have my heart in the whole debate. Isn’t that awful. I fake it for John, that and look­ing over his shoul­der at all the poten­tial trea­sures we could own from eBay and feign­ing inter­est in umbrella stands, nest­ing side tables, the lot. Poor man. Luck­ily his mother arrives on Tues­day of next week and she can com­mis­er­ate. If only my interior-design happy mother could be here as well! It’s as if he inher­ited from MY mother all her home inte­rior inter­ests, and I got his mother’s cook­ing spoon. Odd.

Oh, and do you need, dur­ing these happy June weeks, a cou­ple of cool sal­ads that are super easy to make? Try these. I invented them both in that mood of “there must be some­thing I can make out of all these things I have in my fridge.”

Scal­lop, Beet­root and Goats Cheese Salad
(serves four for lunch, or as a din­ner starter)

1 tbsp olive oil, chilli infused if you like spice
1 lb sea scal­lops, mus­cle removed (and roe­less, if you’re me)
hand­ful cilantro (corian­der), hand­ful pars­ley, chopped
6 small beet­roots, roasted, peeled and quar­tered
how­ever much goats cheese you like, fla­vored or not
juice of half a lemon
sea salt and pep­per to taste
more olive oil for drizzling

Heat the oil in a skil­let and quickly sear the scal­lops over very high heat, turn­ing fre­quently with tongs and try­ing not to break them up (but it’s not a crime if you do). When they are just cooked through (per­haps 3 min­utes), pop them into a large-ish bowl, pour­ing any extra olive oil over them. Throw in the herbs and the beets and mix well, then crum­ble the goats cheese over top. Driz­zle with the lemon juice, sprin­kle with salt and pep­per and driz­zle over the oil. Toss lightly. This is per­fect with baguette slices, lightly toasted.

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Then there’s:

Lentil Salad with Red Pep­per and Onion, Pinenuts and Mint
(serves six-ish)

250 grams green lentils (about a cup)
1 red pep­per, diced
1 red onion, diced
1 cup pinenuts, toasted or not
hand­ful mint, chopped
juice of one lime
driz­zle bal­samic vine­gar
olive oil to taste

Cook the lentils in plenty of salted water until just soft (maybe 30 min­utes). Drain and rinse well and place in a large bowl. Add every­thing else, and test for the amount of dress­ing you have in the bot­tom. If you want more (to soak up with more baguettes?), add more lime juice and more olive oil, rely­ing rather more on the oil so it doesn’t get too tart. Divine.

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Well, I think I’m caught up. We just came back from the dis­tress­ingly sweaty school Art Exhi­bi­tion where Avery’s draw­ing graced the cover, and she has been soak­ing in a nice cool bath while I talked to you. John’s prob­a­bly been bid­ding on a leopard-print chan­de­lier or a cof­fee table made entirely of cat skele­tons held together with string, so I’d bet­ter check on him. Oh, but one last story: Avery and I got turned out of a tube sta­tion when it closed for “sig­nal fail­ure” and found our­selves instead on a bus yes­ter­day, with a very upset lit­tle woman who was clearly lost and also clearly not ter­ri­bly famil­iar with the Eng­lish lan­guage. I rec­og­nized her accent and we ended up speak­ing in French, hers from Geneva and mine suf­fer­ing from neglect, but we got along all right. She finally stopped sniff­ing after I reas­sured her that she headed in the right direc­tion, that we’d get off at the same stop. We fended off the friendly inter­ests of a large man with lots of bling who was sure that if he shouted and ges­tured pro­fusely, her com­mand of the lan­guage would improve.

Finally, just as we got to our stop, I said, “I’m cer­tainly sorry the train sta­tion closed and you had to go out of your way for no rea­son.” And do you know what she said? “Every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son, even if we know not what it is. We see a leaf fall, and it seems for no rea­son. But some­where there is a blade of grass that is wait­ing to be pro­tected from the hot sun, and the leaf falls there. We do not see the rea­son, but that does not mean it is not there.” Very nice…