Moon­shine Redux

Finally, a great les­son on a great pony! Wim­ble­don Vil­lage Sta­bles has been a suc­cess, for sure, but there hasn’t yet been that mag­i­cal expe­ri­ence where Avery felt like she was a real rider again. Until Moon­shine this week, in the quaint vil­lage of Stan­ton in the heart of the Cotswolds, Glouces­ter­shire. Last year when we were on our “shall we move” trip to Eng­land, we tracked down a highly-recommended trainer called Jill Carenza, out in the coun­try­side, who had taught the chil­dren of one of John’s old Gold­man Sachs friends, Andrea Ponti. Jill is a renowned trainer who really knows how to chal­lenge the stu­dents. She put Avery on Moon­shine, who while not exactly inspir­ing con­fi­dence with her sleepy expres­sion and tongue that wagged through­out the les­son, was nev­er­the­less quite a “mover,” as they say, and it was a great expe­ri­ence. So this week we found our­selves once more at Jill’s barn, and Avery jumped for the first time since Decem­ber. What fun to watch. And a high jump, as you can see, near the end of the course. She was com­pletely wiped out by the end of the hour and is now thor­oughly in the mood to ride over the week­end. It’s great for her to be back in the saddle.

We just had the most inter­est­ing house­guest, Kathryn Hillier, who arrived the night before we left for Worces­ter­shire and was able to spend six days here inves­ti­gat­ing poten­tial spots to show her pho­tog­ra­phy. Check out her web­site, www.kathrynhillier.com, for some beau­ti­ful images of inte­ri­ors, and mys­te­ri­ous objects. She was on a short break from a res­i­dency in Paris, prepar­ing for her solo show at a gallery there to open next week. Kathryn is a friend of my for­mer gallery assis­tant Rebecca, and it was a plea­sure to have our first guest in our new home. We took her to see the Cab­i­net War Rooms, one of my favorite muse­ums in the city. It’s an under­ground bunker where Churchill and his staff spent the war, broad­cast­ing speeches, track­ing con­voys and gen­er­ally man­ag­ing the effort while stay­ing safe under the streets. When the war was over, the rooms were sim­ply closed up, many of them exactly as their occu­pants left them, so the whole place is like a moment in 1945 under glass. Really intriguing.

We also took her to Har­rods where she was able to gaze upon, in some dis­may, the extremely tacky devo­tional mon­u­ment to Princess Diana and her beloved Dodi (I think she declined to sign the memo­r­ial book, how­ever, more’s the pity). Avery acquired some roller blades at Har­rods and I imag­ine a fair bit of our week­end will be spent on the bike path in Hyde Park, just across the road here, work­ing on her new skills.

Well, I’m off for a spe­cial treat: an Indian head mas­sage! I have no idea what to expect, but I have been miss­ing my lit­tle $20–20 minute spe­cials at the Korean nail salon in Tribeca, so this is the next best thing. It’s at a spa called Calmia, in the Maryle­bone High Street, so I’ll be all relaxed for school pickup. It’s a fake pickup, how­ever, more like a hand­off, because Avery’s going to her friend Angelica’s house for a play­date, and from there to Anna’s house for a sleep­over. Life is a never-ending cycle of fun when you’re nine and a half and it’s spring­time in Lon­don. What should John and I do? He has dis­cov­ered a fab­u­lous, unpre­pos­sess­ing Chi­nese restau­rant unfe­lic­i­tously located across the road from the skat­ing rink where Avery’s school has lessons, a really ugly, street called Queensway. But this place, Man­darin Kitchen, is a real find. It got some­thing like a 4 out of 30 for decor in Zagat’s guide, but 26 for food, and was reputed to be the place where actual Chi­nese peo­ple go for great authen­tic dishes. This turned out to be true, because the day after we were there, one of my school-mother friends Amy, who is from Hong Kong, said, “Did I see you at Man­darin Kitchen last night, Kris­ten? How did you find that place? Next time, ask for Amy’s chili chicken. It’s not on the menu, but they know what I like.” We had a soft shell crab appe­tizer that was out of this world, with hot red chilis and green onions, and then a sticky, spicy duck dish with enor­mous slices of gin­ger, and crispy sea­weed. Gor­geous with a Tsing Tao beer or two. So per­haps we could go back there.

Or I could cook in. I invented a recipe over Easter break, which was born out of sheer lazi­ness. I wanted to call it “Han­bury Hall Chicken”, but John says the proper name is “I Want to Take a Bath Chicken.” Because that was the truth. I had bought ingre­di­ents to do a slightly elab­o­rate stir-fry dish that requires con­stant stand­ing at the stove, not to men­tion a lot of chop­ping and strain­ing. The orig­i­nal recipe called for minced gar­lic and onion sauteed in but­ter, then flam­beed cognac or brandy, reduced down, then chopped toma­toes, thyme leaves and sour cream, all sim­mered for ages and strained, and poured over sauteed chicken breasts. It sud­denly sounded like entirely too much trou­ble. I thought, “Didn’t peo­ple used to cook things called casseroles? The whole point being that the oven does the work?” So I melted some but­ter in a casse­role dish, roughly sliced some gar­lic and an onion and threw them in, put whole chicken breasts on top, poured over about three table­spoons of brandy, stirred together a can of whole toma­toes and a con­tainer of sour cream, poured that over the chicken and sprin­kled the whole thing with thyme and salt and pep­per, and… went to take a bath! After 45 min­utes I was clean and happy and the chicken was cooked to per­fec­tion. It had a kind of poached tex­ture, and the sauce was runny with but­ter and pink with toma­toes. Bliss! What could be eas­ier. And there were left­overs, which at John’s sug­ges­tion were poured on lin­guini the fol­low­ing evening. This pro­ce­dure fol­lows my beloved brother-in-law Joel’s mantra, “Cook once, eat twice.” So wise. Try it! I did add part of another can of toma­toes when I heated up the sauce, and I sliced the left­over chicken breast in bite-sized pieces. Avery and I came to the con­clu­sion that we didn’t love chicken with pasta, but luck­ily John did, and there was plenty of sauce. I also did an elab­o­rate chopped salad to go with the pasta, my cook’s heart feel­ing slightly guilty at my short­cut din­ner the night before. It’s per­fect for the anal-retentive chef. You chop all the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents into pre­cisely the same size bits: fresh cherry toma­toes, mush­rooms, cucum­ber, radishes, avo­cado, and red pep­pers. Toss this with a cou­ple of cloves of REALLY finely minced gar­lic (be sure to pull out any lit­tle green shoots which will make you taste like gar­lic for days to come), and very finely torn romaine let­tuce. Any dress­ing is good, but we had a Caesar-ish thing that was quite nice. Enjoy.