Nonna’s visit, Part Two

I need some­thing to cheer me up today, as John’s mom has flown away home and left us alone.  I am very lucky, I know, to have a mother-in-law who is a chum, a com­pan­ion and a friend — not to men­tion a dab hand at minc­ing all the cloves of gar­lic our fam­ily seems to require every evening to keep going.  I get used to hav­ing her here, lis­ten­ing to all the sto­ries that make up my ordi­nary and tran­quil life.  Most won­der­ful, though, is hav­ing an extra per­son in the house to gaze at my daugh­ter with all the admi­ra­tion I feel she deserves!  Hav­ing her here to appre­ci­ate Avery and to take always the best pho­to­graph of us, to cap­ture a moment, is what I miss most when she goes away.

So a lit­tle cherry-picking out­ing in the gar­den seemed in order.  What to make of them?  I would say a crum­ble, but a straw­berry ver­sion I made last week went wrong — rather watery and for­get­table.  I cer­tainly don’t want to waste these lit­tle beau­ties, fresh from my own back­yard.  Maybe just pit­ted, with a lit­tle Demer­ara sugar.

Rosemary’s time here was a truly won­der­ful visit, full to the brim with activ­i­ties, and yet also laced with plenty of hours of quiet as Avery revised for her exams.  Some­times we left her behind when we went on our adven­tures, but there were also times when it was just pleas­ant to sit down with a book, put­ter about in the kitchen, lis­ten to a light rain on the con­ser­va­tory win­dows, curl up with a cat, or indulge in that lovely past­time: watch­ing John’s mom look through the enor­mous pile of photo albums that await her visits.

But most of our time dur­ing her visit was filled with fun.  There was din­ner with our friends with four daugh­ters — one of them Avery’s great friend Meg­gie, home on half-term from board­ing school and so a treat to see — all of them starv­ing, so it is always a plea­sure to pro­duce a plat­ter of plump sausages and a mas­sive dish of five-cheese mac­a­roni and cheese and tuck in.

Unbe­liev­ably, until now I have not offered you this recipe!  How cruel of me, as there is noth­ing more com­fort­ing, more all-pleasing, more savoury and sat­is­fy­ing than a big spoon­ful of cheesy good­ness.  Here are my basic guide­lines, although the beauty of this dish is that you can use any and all cheeses you have lurk­ing in your fridge, mak­ing a clean sweep of the bits and pieces and result­ing always in a lus­cious treat.  I have found that no mat­ter the cheeses I use, pro­vided that one of them is super-creamy like Dairylea or Philadel­phia, the dish tastes the same.  My recipe pro­vides a lot more sauce than most mac­a­roni and cheese recipes, and it is this detail that makes the dish so lux­u­ri­ous, and yet sim­ple and inex­pen­sive.  Perfect.

Lux­ury Mac­a­roni and Cheese

(serves about 8)

1 1/2 lb mac­a­roni, or conchiglie, cooked and drained

3 tbsps butter

2 tbsps flour

1 liter whole milk

skim milk to thin if sauce is too thick

as many cheeses as you have avail­able: Wens­ley­dale, Red Leices­ter, Dou­ble Glouces­ter, sharp Ched­dar, Emmen­thal: total 1 1/2 lb, grated

1/2 cup cream cheese: Dairylea or Philadel­phia or Laugh­ing Cow

dash fresh-ground nutmeg

tiny dash cayenne pepper

sea salt and black pep­per to taste

1 cup fresh breadcrumbs

3 tbsps melted butter

Have the cooked pasta avail­able, spread into a large but­tered dish, large enough to eas­ily accom­mo­date all the pasta and sauce.

Melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and add the flour, cook­ing together for a bub­bling minute or so.  Whisk in the whole milk, whisk­ing con­stantly and scrap­ing the bot­tom to get all the floury but­ter incor­po­rated.  Cook this white sauce until thick­ened.  If you feel it is too thick, add a bit of skim milk, whisk­ing all the while.

Add all the cheeses together, whisk­ing as they melt.  Sea­son with the nut­meg, cayenne, salt and pepper.

When the sauce is thor­oughly melted and creamy, pour it over the cooked pasta and stir care­fully so that all the holes in the pasta receive the sauce.  Top with bread­crumbs and driz­zle with melted but­ter.  Bake at 350F/180C for about 45 min­utes, or until the mid­dle of the dish is hot through.

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Such fun to see the girls all lap­ping up sec­ond help­ings of this creamy delight, plus savoury pork sausages and piles of fine green beans, sauteed with but­ter and olive oil and gar­lic and lemon zest.  Shout­ing with laugh­ter over all our usual top­ics, espe­cially John’s grief over my insis­tence on tak­ing his Amazon.com sug­ges­tions of books I might like, and run­ning with them to the very pre­cious book­shop in the vil­lage.  “Are you TRY­ING to bank­rupt us?”  “No, I just want the book­shop to stay in busi­ness!”  “Even if WE don’t?!”

The next morn­ing found us in Shored­itch, try­ing to help John find a plot of empty land to buy to develop.  This is his pas­sion these days, and he spends a lot of his time bicy­cling around the East End look­ing for an unap­pre­ci­ated spot to res­cue.  Clerken­well, Spi­tal­fields, Hack­ney, they are all on his radar.  We sat down for a reward to have lunch at the Albion, a spot I nor­mally adore, but I must tell you, the fish and chips were very dis­ap­point­ing: rather soggy and taste­less.  Thank­fully my greedy self also ordered duck liv­ers on toast, and oh my, a savoury delight.  I’m still loyal to the Albion.

And then, my dream adven­ture.  A trip to St Matthews, Beth­nal Green, for a tour of their bell tower!  You all know of my love affair with the nov­els of Dorothy L. Say­ers — after all, I named my cat after her detec­tive, Lord Peter Wimsey!

In 1897, this church, its ring of eight mag­nif­i­cent bells, and its merry band of ringers spent over nine hours ring­ing over 15,000 changes, to cel­e­brate the New Year.  And Dorothy L. Say­ers heard of the feat, and memo­ri­al­ized it for us in “The Nine Tai­lors,” either her great­est detec­tive novel or the most bor­ing book ever writ­ten, depend­ing on who you ask.  You know where I stand.  I adore that book.

Well, in Sep­tem­ber 1940, on the first night of the Blitz, the church was hit and every­thing destroyed.

Except, mag­i­cally, the bells in their tower!  They sur­vived, but have been sorely neglected since.

The empty spot where the church had been was filled with a sad tem­po­rary church until 1961 when it was rebuilt and recon­se­crated, and of course now the 50th anniver­sary of that reded­i­ca­tion has come along.  To cel­e­brate, a restora­tion of the bells them­selves, and their tower, has begun.  And we con­tributed! (You can too.) So a tour was in order.

The dear Bell­mas­ter and Tower Cap­tain Leon was there to intro­duce me to Bell Num­ber 7.  John made the novel sug­ges­tion that the bells should be named after peo­ple and insti­tu­tions who con­tribute to their ren­o­va­tion!  “Here you are, Kris­ten, the Mer­rill Lynch Bell!”  So far, though, just Num­ber 7.

I actu­ally got to ring him!  Just the back­stroke, of course; Leon took care of the sally.  But I was very, very happy.

And he took us up into the roof where, for safe­keep­ing, the peal boards are kept.  These are boards that com­mem­o­rate, in golden paint (under many lay­ers of dirt going back 110 years!) the type of method rung on a given date, the ringers and the length of the peal.  And THIS was, believe it or not, the actual board describ­ing the 1897 peal that inspired Dorothy L. Say­ers.  Unbelievable!

To me, this was like meet­ing a celebrity I had always revered.  It was his­tory — the pecu­liar, par­tic­u­larly Eng­lish, very spe­cific his­tory I love! — come to life.  Sim­ply wonderful.

John and Rose­mary very sweetly smiled upon me and Leon as we bab­bled (I bab­bled, he was very coher­ent) about Sted­mans — a method rung often in St Matthews, named for the man who really invented change-ringing, in the 17th cen­tury.  They did not, how­ever, fol­low along when Leon and I climbed pre­car­i­ously into the actual bel­fry, so I could see Bell 7, my friend.

I came home in an absolute glow.  I know it is a weird obses­sion of mine, but midlife crises come in many forms!  This one is fairly benign, I think.

But I could not glow for long because we were hav­ing guests for din­ner: our old friends from Agate Road, the gor­geous Selva and Sara and Stephanie, our friends whose pres­ence in our old neigh­bor­hood meant din­ners and drinks, par­ties and thank-you notes fly­ing through let­ter­boxes, friends who were will­ing to try a new recipe, take a par­cel from the post­man, keep our spare key, let our cats through their win­dows.  How I miss them all.

Our slow-cooked bone­less ducks, stuffed with rose­mary, gar­lic, lemon and but­ter and rolled and tied by Tony, had been cook­ing all day in the slow Aga oven while I was ring­ing bells, and while they were gor­geous to eat, they were ugly, so I shall not share a photo.  But the cour­gettes, pep­pers and mush­rooms, stuffed with sauteed minced bits of them­selves, plus pinenuts and goats cheese, were beautiful.

But we could not rest on our lau­rels.  The next day we were up and ready for our day out: a tour of Cambridge!

Now, nor­mally when in a for­eign place, John and Avery and I are keen to blend in, to look as if we belong.  But there are times when this sort of dis­cre­tion is just silly and means that you wan­der around look­ing like you belong, but not actu­ally learn­ing any­thing.  So we booked a guide through Oxbridge Tours, and if you can pos­si­bly get Sarah Weaver, DO.  She is bril­liant: a friendly Amer­i­can grad­u­ate stu­dent get­ting her PhD in Eng­lish, spe­cial­iz­ing in Ten­nyson.  Oh, the things she knew!

Did you know that Cam­bridge was founded in a spe­cific year, 1209, in order to flee Oxford!  That brave fact alone makes me feel fondly toward Cam­bridge.  I sup­pose it’s the Amer­i­can rebel­lious pil­grim in me com­ing out, root­ing for the under­dog rather than the author­ity fig­ure.  It’s a village-feeling place, rather than the city feel of Oxford.  I’ll leave you with some images, to inspire you to take your own tour.

Newton’s Bridge

Trin­ity Hall Col­lege (where Sarah goes).

Trin­ity Hall Gardens.

St John’s College.

Cam­bridge punters.

Kings Col­lege.

Lunch in Hall.

Finally, the tiny lit­tle 11th cen­tury St Bene’t’s (short for St Benedict’s) Church.

This church would have been a plea­sure to see in any case: its bell tower dates from 1033: IMAG­INE!  Thirty three years before the Nor­man Con­quest!  It is the old­est build­ing in Cam­bridge.  We went inside and there were its bell ropes, its peal boards, and THEN, most incred­i­ble to me, a plaque hon­or­ing the 300th birth­day of none other than Fabian Sted­man, father of change-ringing.  He was a ringer there, right in St Bene’t’s.  I couldn’t believe my luck.

We jumped onto a train just in time and sat in exhausted awe, back towards Kings Cross, then onto the tube, then into the car in wretched traf­fic home­ward, and to a much-needed super-nutritious din­ner.  A clean-out-the-fridge stir­fry, and I can just tell you that it revived EVERYONE.

Every­thing Stir-Fry with Fried Rice

(serves 4 very hun­gry people)

4 chicken breast fillets

2 fil­let steaks

3 tbsps soy sauce

2 tbsps toasted sesame oil

1 tbsp Mirin (Japan­ese rice wine)

1 tbsp peanut oil

1 bunch spring onions, sliced thin, put into two equal piles

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

1-inch knob gin­ger, peeled and minced

1 tsp Chi­nese five-spice

2 orange or red bell pep­pers, cut in mostly chunks, but one hand­ful minced and set aside

2 bunches aspara­gus, cut into bite-sized pieces

hand­ful frozen peas, thawed

1 cup bas­mati rice

3 eggs, beaten

2 tbsps peanut oil

sprin­kle of sesame oil and soy sauce

Cut the chicken and beef into bite-sized pieces and add the soy, sesame, mirin and stir well.  Set aside.

Pour the first table­spoon of peanut oil in a heated wok and cook the pep­per chunks and aspara­gus, and peas, plus one pile of spring onion slices, till they are soft­ened to your lik­ing.  Set aside in a bowl large enough to even­tu­ally hold all the ingre­di­ents for this dish.

Steam the bas­mati rice. Mean­while, pour the chicken and beef plus their liq­uids, and the gar­lic and gin­ger and Chi­nese 5-spice, into the hot wok and cook JUST until done.  Do not over­cook!  Place in the large bowl with the vegetables.

Pour the remain­ing two table­spoons of peanut oil into the wok and saute the sec­ond pile of spring onions, plus the hand­ful minced pep­per.  Add the eggs and scram­ble until done.  Add the steamed rice and sprin­kle on a bit of sesame oil and soy sauce, then toss all together.  Pour in the chicken, beef and veg­eta­bles and toss until well-mixed.

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Sat­ur­day morn­ing I had a thrill that harkened back to my var­i­ous bell­ish adven­tures of the week… Tri­cia, my sec­ondary teacher at church, let me pull a rope with the clap­per free!  And what’s more, I rang proper rounds with all the other ringers, for the first time.  Thrilling.

Sun­day we left Avery to revise, poor girl, and repaired to Angelus in Bayswa­ter for their clas­sic, unfor­get­table foie gras creme brulee, surely our favorite food on earth.  And the usual Angelus con­ver­sa­tions, remem­ber­ing times there in the past (the day Avery received that amaz­ing pile of school accep­tances for her 11+!).  The joy of being together, enjoy­ing ridicu­lously good food that I could never make at home: duck four ways… con­fit of shoul­der, per­fectly pink roast breast, fag­gots and a liver sauce.  Crazy!  Duck, duck… duck.

Once home, we res­cued Avery and headed off for her reward, a shop­ping trip to West­field.  Never my favorite thing, shop­ping, it was nev­er­the­less lovely just to be with my two ladies, watch­ing Avery try on dozens of out­fits, finally choos­ing just a cou­ple of things, plus some makeup she couldn’t live with­out.  The mall closed at 6 and sim­ply kicked us out, into a mas­sive rain­storm!  Oh how COLD it was!  Walk­ing with­out umbrel­las around and around out­side, try­ing to find a taxi!  Shoes squelch­ing, clothes drip­ping.  “Look at my fringe!” Avery wailed, lift­ing up the offend­ing bang, and let­ting it fall, splash­ing mis­er­ably into her eyes.  Finally we ordered a pri­vate cab and stood shiv­er­ing, wait­ing for it to arrive, feel­ing martyred.

Noth­ing ever felt so good as the Aga when we got home!  And noth­ing ever tasted so good as the scram­bled eggs, rich with dou­ble cream, and the bacon — both Eng­lish and streaky! — with crisp rye toast and potato pancakes.

What a won­der­ful time we had, with Rose­mary.  Now we can start count­ing the days until she comes to us, this sum­mer, at Red Gate Farm.