Rock in Cornwall

Let’s see: we’ve recov­ered from all our adven­tures, no more jet lag, no more sense of being a cup filled with a cup and a half of olive oil, stuffed with gar­lic and over­flow­ing onto the counter! I’m sorry if that sounds odd, but it’s how I felt for the past two or three days. Now I’m sleep­ing a nor­mal amount (although I stayed up FAR too late last night on the tele­phone, per­fectly delight­ful, to my mother in law, the usual thing after we get back from Amer­ica and she’s accepted the fact that we’re away again). We played ten­nis twice today, enjoy­ing one of the most beau­ti­ful blue-sky days ever in Lon­don: a Red Gate Farm day, really. Warm, joy­ous, the ten­nis courts filled with teenagers shout­ing the score, chil­dren infu­ri­at­ing their instruc­tors, cou­ples flirt­ing under cover of “Was mine in?” and “Love all.” So we tried for a long game in the morn­ing but were kicked off by peo­ple wise enough to book a court.

Then it was off to West­field for a sushi lunch. That’s one of the few things I really miss while I’m in Amer­ica for the sum­mer, and lord knows if I tried I could find some sushi, but in South­bury, Con­necti­cut? No thank you. I had a cou­ple of sub­lime bites at the Japan­ese steak­house in West Hart­ford with Jill and Joel. But not enough! Lunch was lovely: salmon with dill, corian­der, tuna, a cou­ple of rolls with avo­cado. We stopped before we wanted to, which was virtuous.

A sec­ond ten­nis game before din­ner made us feel even more vir­tu­ous and there­fore we greatly over­ate at din­ner, but too bad. It was a good, old-fashioned nour­ish­ing din­ner, cheap and com­plexly fla­vored, my first attempt at chilli. It was inspired by the gor­geous dish left for us at Christ­mas by my friend Judy, and it was she who pro­vided me with the very Amer­i­can seasoning.

Chilli con Carne
(serves 4)

1 lb. lean beef mince
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 small onion, minced
1 soup-can chopped or diced toma­toes, NOT drained
1 can each: red kid­ney beans, fava beans, can­nellini beans, NOT drained
1 pack­age McCormick Chilli Sea­son­ing
1/2 tsp chilli pow­der
loads of fresh ground black pep­per
salt to taste
shred­ded Ched­dar cheese
sour cream or fro­mage frais

This dish could not be eas­ier, sim­pler, quicker or cheaper. Sim­ply brown the beef in a heavy-bottomed pot, then add every­thing else and sim­mer for at least an hour, very low, stir­ring occa­sion­ally. Adjust the chilli pow­der and salt as you like. Serve with cheese and sour cream on top.

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To bal­ance the rich­ness of this main dish, we had John’s absolute favorite slaw: cele­riac, red cab­bage and Savoy cab­bage. Hon­estly, he could eat his WEIGHT in that slaw, with a spicy dress­ing of poppy seeds, mus­tard, lemon juice and olive oil.

We’re eat­ing our way through a list of foods that Avery doesn’t like, so last night was mixed seafood: scal­lops, king prawns and sar­dines, all from our day in Corn­wall. Tomor­row will be spicy Szechuan chicken with chillis and peanuts. Then… She’ll be home! And let me tell you, what­ever she wants to eat, I’ll pro­vide it. We’ve missed her so much.

But we can’t pos­si­bly wish her home early, because she is hav­ing the TIME OF HER LIFE. Annie texted John this after­noon to say that her surf­board les­son was a suc­cess and she stood up! And then she kindly emailed me this evening to say she actu­ally got a pho­to­graph of her doing so! Thrilling. We can say with impunity that the longer one is able to stay in Rock, Corn­wall with Annie and her fam­ily, the bet­ter: at least for the guests, if not for Annie, who must be com­pletely exhausted: 12 for din­ner last night, 8 of them chil­dren! But if I know Annie (and I do), she is in her ele­ment, if also wiped out. She is one of those ener­gized peo­ple who gets her thrills from peo­ple, loads of plans explod­ing here and there, meals to pre­pare, things to give to the peo­ple around her. And aid­ing and abet­ting her is her deli­cious hus­band Keith, who is that rarest of men who is as fond of cook­ing as his wife is! So between the two of them, course after deli­cious course appear.

We our­selves appeared last Thurs­day, after a five-hour drive of first enor­mous bore­dom as we got out of Lon­don and the Heathrow Met­ro­pol­i­tan Area (although it’s so lovely in com­par­i­son to, say, the JFK or Newark area that I should bite my tongue). Soon, how­ever, the land­scape was quite lovely, the Devon coun­try­side mak­ing me nos­tal­gic for my writ­ing course spent there in Octo­ber. Then we reached Corn­wall and got excited. Shrubs look­ing like the seashore, exotic arrange­ments of wind­mills dot­ting the coun­try­side here and there! And then we came upon Rock in Corn­wall, a gor­geous, lowkey, sub­tly lux­u­ri­ous, def­i­nitely relaxed enclave on the South­ern coast of Eng­land. It’s called the “St Tropez” of Eng­land, or the “Kens­ing­ton of Corn­wall,” since appar­ently only the BEST peo­ple go there! We knew that already because Annie and her fam­ily were there.

We had no sooner arrived, hugged every­one and thrown our suit­cases into our bed­rooms than we were instructed to leap into swim­ming cos­tumes and off we went to the beach! No mat­ter that skies were dark grey, winds were high. No, no prob­lem there! We sim­ply got into the car and went up and down the wind­ing roads of Rock, arriv­ing at a mas­sive beach, stretch­ing out into infin­ity, with a makeshift sandy park­ing lot sim­ply COV­ERED with vehi­cles, camp­ing tents and shiv­er­ing British peo­ple, all laugh­ing and talk­ing nine­teen to the dozen about the surf. And surf there was! White in the dis­tance, the sea filled with leap­ing and bound­ing wet peo­ple, ALL in wet­suits except for we four adults, for whom it seemed to be a mat­ter of pride to be uncov­ered and vul­ner­a­ble. The more fools we! It was FREEZ­ING! We attached body boards to our wrists (mine per­haps a bit too assid­u­ously as, an hour later, my hand was pur­ple!), and into the surf we went.

OUCH, SCREAM­ING AGONY, then WAIT, this is FUN!

The whole expe­ri­ence took me back to child­hood sum­mers in South Car­olina where the surf was about three thou­sand degrees warmer, and the sun shone, but never mind: the waves were the same, and the body board sim­ply the most fun ever. You wait for the per­fect wave (get­ting it wrong a lot of the time, if you’re me), then flop onto your stom­ach onto the board and sim­ply FLOW up the beach, run­ning into other peo­ple, laugh­ing, scream­ing, gen­er­ally insane! Sim­ply the most fun you can have in the ocean. Avery had accepted a wet­suit but eschewed a body board, and so her dear friend Emily kindly stayed with her, the two of them bounc­ing and laugh­ing and get­ting soak­ing wet. John, of course, went out as far as he could go, with Fred (bask­ing in the glory of his mas­sively impres­sive GCSE results, well done, Fred!) and Keith. Annie and I leapt around together, she with a glow­ing smile and face drip­ping wet with surf and RAIN, shout­ing in glee, “This is me, in my element!”

I loved it, until… it was time to walk back up the enor­mous, end­less beach in the WIND, with the body­board flap­ping against my legs. I grad­u­ally lost the use of my lips, so just let intre­pid Annie and John chat, as Annie’s daugh­ter Cor­nelia dashed ahead, some­what errat­i­cally, to open the car and have tow­els ready. By the time we got there, my hand and in fact my entire body were pur­ple, I could hardly believe life could be so cold in August! Home, for the most wel­come shower of my life. Just heaven to get clean and warm, even if I was a bit taken aback by the var­i­ous sea­weeds, rocks and sand that emerged in the shower from my swim­ming costume!

Cups of tea all round, and then talk of din­ner began, with cock­tails and my bean dip, and Annie’s spe­cial salami, plus olives, bread­sticks. The appear­ance of food always makes me happy. Keith began to get din­ner prop­erly ready, and the rain cleared and a mag­i­cal light began to steal across the land­scape. “Keith, dar­ling,” Annie began, “I’d really like to take Kris­ten and John for that beach walk, they have only the one evening… do I have time? An hour?” So off we went, across a golf course set against quite the most sat­u­rated sun­set against beach that you can imag­ine, then down dunes into the beach, and walk­ing along the River Camel, a tidal river like the Thames, across which glit­tered the lights of Pad­stow. “We’ll go there tomor­row on the ferry,” Annie explained, and we walked the length of the beach, gath­er­ing slates (me, for what pur­pose I do not know, but I came away with a lovely pile of them), talk­ing real estate (John) and the his­tory of the area (Annie). Finally we came up again into the lit­tle town and came across Avery and Emily, ready for a ride home!

Can I just say: we arrived back home to find the table beau­ti­fully set, the chil­dren already fed with mozzarella-stuffed meat­balls, and the adults’ plates all set out with a half a steamed lob­ster each, a wedge of lemon, a bowl of Keith’s home­made may­on­naise, bowls of toma­toes, cucum­ber, every­thing one could wish. And then, his coup de grace, my maiden voy­age with clams! And I am so glad to be able to say, I like clams. Espe­cially when wrenched from the local sand just hours before din­ner… I’ve given you the recipe just as it was given to me, Keith-style.

Keith’s Lin­guini alle Von­gole
(serves 4)

Heat 2 fl oz of good olive oil, soften 2 chopped cloves of gar­lic in it on a low heat for 5 min­utes; remove from heat and add half a chopped and deseeded red chilli and 2 table­spoons chopped parsley.

Mean­while cook lin­guine or spaghetti for 6 mins til still VERY al dente, drain and stir in some olive oil to pre­vent from sticking.

In the hot pan, add 2 fl oz of dry white wine, bring to boil, throw in cleaned clams, tip the spaghetti in on top, and jam on the lid. Allow to steam for 5 mins until the clams have opened and the pasta is cooked but still al dente.

Stir in the oil, chili, pars­ley, gar­lic mix­ture till well com­bined and tip into a serv­ing bowl.

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Sim­ply heav­enly: ten­der clams no doubt bet­ter than any I will ever have again. It’s like my first sushi expe­ri­ence, at… Nobu. Down­hill from there, forever.

And we played Karaoke! I have never before, and I would have, until that evening, laid down my life on the argu­ment that John never EVER would, EVER, but I hadn’t counted on one essen­tial com­po­nent to his per­son­al­ity: COM­PE­TI­TION. If you can com­pete for it, it turns out, he will. Even do some­thing com­pletely con­trary to his per­son­al­ity, which shies away seri­ously from any­thing smack­ing of per­for­mance. No, if you can add up num­bers and give some to some peo­ple and more to oth­ers, no mat­ter how idi­otic the task at hand, he’ll do it, gladly, and more than once. Hilar­i­ous! Abba, Tears for Fears, Duran, Duran! Too, too funny.

I have not men­tioned Avery, almost at all. Guess why? Once she and Emily were reunited, we were of about as much inter­est to her as… Karaoke was to John until he tried it. She was so happy, after her sum­mer of adults, to be with her close friend, that we were ren­dered com­pletely use­less to her. Which is FINE.

The next morn­ing found every­one at the break­fast table, eat­ing “eggy bread” (French toast), cereal and yogurt, con­sum­ing vast amounts of tea and cof­fee. Keith reached for a cereal bowl and Annie snatched it from him, point­ing with mock sever­ity at the kitchen clock. “Break­fast is from 8:30 to 9:30 and it’s 9:30!” He grabbed it back, say­ing recal­ci­trantly, “It’s 9:28, give that back,” and he man­aged to get a bowl or at least a few bites in before we were all ready to run off to the ferry.

Along the wind­ing road again, Annie pointed out the var­i­ous mem­o­rable homes (one belong­ing to Jemima Khan!), and I noticed, as I had the day before, that nearly all the house names began with either “Tre”, “Pol”, or “Pen.” Why on earth? Fred, with his GCSE hat on, guessed per­haps these were pre­fixes like the Irish “O’” or Scot­tish “Mac”? When I came home I looked it up, and found out that each of these pre­fixes is the old Cor­nish indi­ca­tion of “home of,” and would then be fol­lowed by the fam­ily name, result­ing in “Treleven,” etc. It’s a lan­guage dom­i­nated by “home of,” rather than “son of,” as in “Hen­drick­son.” Very interesting!

Of course, on the way to the ferry, the skies sim­ply OPENED and we were soaked to the skin, but only on our fronts! The winds pro­tected our backs, and grad­u­ally, any­way, we dried off. But my hair, my hair! We reached the ferry with only sec­onds to spare, to find that inside were our girls, who had left home ten min­utes or so ear­lier! What a delight, that ferry ride, across the river, mov­ing from one arable coast to another built-up coast, and the town of Pad­stow, dom­i­nated by the fishy (and I mean just FISH) com­mer­cial inter­ests of one Rick Stein, England’s fore­most fish chef, arguably. I mean, he would argue it, I think. “Good­ness, this town is just over­whelmed by… Rick Stein!” I mar­velled to Keith, who said iron­i­cally, “Yes, it’s nor­mally called ‘Pad­stein.’” There’s a gatrillion-dollar restau­rant, which we passed and I remarked to Fred, not at all orig­i­nally, “Let’s eat here, just for the hal­ibut,” which he repeated with glee and all the enthu­si­asm of a per­son hear­ing a really old joke for the first time. God love a young man.

Then there’s the patis­serie, and his wife’s home fur­nish­ings shop, and finally the pasty shop and deli where we retrieved our lunch! The jury is still out with me regard­ing pasties, which are tra­di­tional Cor­nish treats of a flaky, but­tery pas­try filled, turnover style, with meat, cheeses, what have you. What had I was smoked had­dock and dou­ble cream, and while the fill­ing was tasty, it took at least three bites to dis­cover any had­dock, and while John’s steak pasty was also deli­cious, the steak was in small pro­por­tion to the pota­toes and onions. Now, this ten­dency may be part of the essen­tially peas­ant (or fish­er­man) deriva­tion of the dish, in which the expen­sive ingre­di­ents are less plen­ti­ful than the fillers. I wouldn’t mind, if I could cozy up to the idea of pas­try a bit more than I usu­ally do, try­ing some other fill­ings. I thought of a clas­sic “crispy duck” fill­ing of roast duck, cucum­bers, spring onions and hoisin sauce. Maybe someday?

We picked these up at the deli and ate them on the quay­side, on a stone retain­ing wall as you see, chat­ting, peel­ing off lay­ers of cloth­ing that had seemed so wel­come min­utes before! Then off on the ferry again, back to Rock. I must say, Pad­stow was lovely, very pic­turesque (and the girls and Fred bought mas­sive amounts of local fudge), but I greatly pre­fer the quiet of Rock.

We went off again then to the beach: the boys and girls to body surf again, but Annie very kindly went with me beach­comb­ing: she to find lit­tle tiny cowrie shells to add to her col­lec­tion, housed in a bowl in her Lon­don house. I myself found some frag­ments of shells for which I have a very spe­cial pur­pose, but I can­not reveal this until Avery comes home. I’m work­ing on it tomor­row. Beach­comb­ing is one of my favorite activ­i­ties: you didn’t real­ize until you FOUND it, how much you wanted some­thing! We were taken aback, unawares, by one par­tic­u­lar wave, and SMASH! Soaked to our underwear.

We met the surfers, shiv­er­ing and ready for a shower, on the beach, and drove home, then Annie and I were off for my most favorite occu­pa­tion (next to beach­comb­ing and eat­ing Keith and Annie’s food, and hug­ging Avery, and…): food shop­ping. This place is heaven. A proper butcher, a proper fish­mon­ger, Den­nis Knight, a fab­u­lous cheese counter at one of the local all-purpose shops, and a great place to find lit­tle presents for the lit­tle (not so) girl on your list, Mooch. I did not get any defin­i­tive answers on the nag­ging ques­tion on my mind, namely, “What do Cor­nish Game Hens have to do with Corn­wall,” since no one in Corn­wall seems ever to have heard of them, nor in all of Eng­land from what I can find out, and yet they are pop­u­lar lit­tle poul­try items in the United States. It was but the work of a moment to come home and look them up. Turns out: some­where in the mists of time they might have come from breed­ing some­thing from Corn­wall from some­thing else feath­ered, but the main point of them now is that they’re heav­ily breasted and tiny-legged, and one serves a per­son nicely.

What I was sold, at the Rock butcher, was some­thing called a guinea fowl, intensely dark in color, larger than a game hen but smaller than a roast­ing chicken. Why not? I like things that peo­ple tell me I’ll like, gen­er­ally, so home it came with me. It’s in the freezer, as it came, until such time as Avery’s home and ready to try some­thing new.

We got home laden with pro­vi­sions, I nicked some rose­mary from the ENOR­MOUS bushes at the cot­tage (that’s what you get when you rent a cot­tage from a land­scape gar­dener), and with hugs and kisses all round (very tight from Avery), we were off. How wrench­ing to say good­bye to her! My con­so­la­tion was that she was deep in laugh­ter with the O’Shaugnessy chil­dren, who had just arrived, and the father was giv­ing a rot­ten but hilar­i­ous imi­ta­tion of some Mex­i­can man say­ing “there will be no paella tonight,” so she was obvi­ously happy and occupied.

And home we went, bereft but very happy at her wel­come in that house, over­flow­ing with fun, gen­eros­ity, great food (they were hav­ing spatch­cocked bar­be­cued chick­ens for din­ner), love and adven­ture… Thank you, Annie and Keith. It’s great to know Corn­wall is there, and some­thing tells me we’ll be back.