spring­ing to life

 

I have a con­fes­sion to make: I am find­ing it hard­er and hard­er to blog!  The rea­son for this turns out to be the rea­son for the down­fall of most wor­thy endeav­ors: distraction.

Face­book is per­ni­cious.  I adore it — hear­ing what my kinder­garten friends in Indi­ana and my col­lege friend in South Africa and my moth­er-in-law in Iowa are doing all at the same time, not to men­tion see­ing every­one’s kids’ prom pic­tures.  I love pop­ping up Avery’s inspir­ing pho­tos of what I’m cook­ing for din­ner and get­ting lots of ques­tions about recipe method.  It’s great to get every­one’s sup­port for a bell­ring­ing milestone.

What Face­book has going for it, and indeed every­thing on the inter­net, is imme­di­a­cy.  You put some­thing out there, and some­one replies.  Lots of peo­ple reply.

Embed­ded in the web of the inter­net is my beloved new food-writ­ing gig, “Hand­Picked Nation.”  It’s such fun to muse over a piece as I’m rid­ing my bike or emp­ty­ing the dish­wash­er, then do a bit of research and write it up, send it off and some­times in a mat­ter of day or so, it appears online.  Total strangers from all over the world say “like” and leave their com­ments about the deli­cious­ness of Miso Egg­plant.  How to resist?

So I won’t.  But the blog does some­thing dif­fer­ent.  Leav­ing aside the fact that my beloved moth­er does­n’t “do” Face­book, and so I must con­tin­ue writ­ing the blog so she can have a last­ing glimpse into our lives, it’s also fun for me to con­tex­tu­al­ize the whole of what’s hap­pen­ing to us, to see the con­ti­nu­ity among vol­un­teer work, plays, recipes, fun­ny things Avery says, and of course, bellringing.

I real­ly don’t approve of mod­ern soci­ety’s throw­away atti­tude toward any­thing and every­thing.  Our local dry clean­er actu­al­ly laughed when I brought in a duvet to be washed.  “Why not just throw it out and get a new one at Pri­mark?  It would be cheap­er.”  Throw­ing away a chick­en car­cass with­out mak­ing soup from it would give me night­mares.  And no mat­ter how much I love Face­book, it’s a bit of a throw­away.  Where do Face­book posts go, even­tu­al­ly, any­way?  And how much scrolling can any one per­son be expect­ed to do?

No, the blog must stay.  There are sto­ries to be told.

For exam­ple, what fun was the Gath­er­ing of Nuts in May — as we call the annu­al reunion of nut­ty peo­ple who went on a food writ­ing course near­ly five years ago.

Each year we find a house to accom­mo­date all of us (some­where between 8 and 10 peo­ple), with a decent kitchen to cook in.  This year found us in the out­skirts of the charm­ing Northum­ber­land mar­ket town of Alnwick, a long, dull train­ride away from Lon­don Kings Cross.  Did I men­tion it was on the sea?

With many hugs and instant rep­e­ti­tions of the jokes from all oth­er years, we three who had arrived on the Lon­don train trooped into the kitchen to unpack all the gro­ceries, cock­tail con­tri­bu­tions and, in my case, a large plas­tic con­tain­er of poached and smoked salmon ter­rine I had made that morn­ing.  Rosie, the laugh­ing diva who holds us all togeth­er, had already packed the kitchen with var­i­ous good­ies, and I found it extreme­ly fun­ny that near­ly every­one who came brought a per­son­al stash of Mal­don Sea Salt, which has prac­ti­cal­ly come to replace the sim­ple word “salt” in Eng­lish food-lov­ing cir­cles.  That’s cook­ing friends for you.  Have salt, will trav­el.  Sam even trav­els with his own knives, but then, he drove.  “We’re prac­ti­cal­ly in Scot­land!” he moaned.  “I’ve been dri­ving FOREVER.”

Cer­tain­ly we weren’t in smog­gy, traf­ficky Lon­don any­more.  We went imme­di­ate­ly for a walk “to the sea,” which was abort­ed when it was clear that we’d nev­er get there before dark.  But it was gorgeous.

Din­ner that night was my salmon ter­rine, fol­lowed by Rosie’s Moroc­can-inspired feast of veg­etable cous­cous, an egg­plant-toma­to-cour­gette dish, long-sim­mered with gar­lic and cumin, and fab­u­lous chick­en thighs mar­i­nat­ed in a toma­to-spice-yogurt mix­ture and then baked.  I made my own ver­sion when I got home, to Avery’s and John’s delight.  Stuffed with red pep­pers and cous­cous, they were heavenly.

Moroc­can-Spiced Bone­less Baked Chick­en Thighs

(serves 4)

8 bone­less chick­en thighs, skin on

1 1/2 cups cooked couscous

hand­ful diced sweet red pepper

2 cups full-fat Greek yogurt

1 tsp Baharat seasoning

two pinch­es ras-el-hanout sea­son­ing mixture

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp ground turmeric

pinch garam masala sea­son­ing mixture

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 shal­lot, minced

zest of 1 lemon

2 tbsps toma­to paste

pinch Mal­don sea salt

fresh ground pep­per to taste

Line a 9x13 bak­ing dish with foil (makes for much eas­i­er clean­ing up).  Mix the cous­cous with the red pep­pers.  Lay the thighs in bot­tom side up, and open up.  Place a good spoon­ful of the cous­cous onto the opened thigh, then fold shut.  Line up skin-side up in bak­ing dish.

In a mix­ing bowl, mix all the oth­er ingre­di­ents.  Pour over the thighs and mar­i­nate in fridge for at least 2 hours, or overnight.

Bake at 180C/350F for about 45 min­utes or until thor­ough­ly cooked.

***********

The fun of the GNIM reunion is that it’s the only time in my whole life when I’m able to shop for food, talk about shop­ping for food, come home and cook whilst talk­ing about cook­ing, then EAT whilst talk­ing about shop­ping, cook­ing and eat­ing.  We are tire­less.  Dear Katie, my roomie, arrived late and there was more deli­cious catch­ing up to do.

The next day we motored over to Alnwick itself for a spot of… food shop­ping.  Rosie had brought along a gift from her moth­er which she referred to con­stant­ly as “the big dead pig in the fridge,” which was in fact a gor­geous pork bel­ly.  To sup­ple­ment this, I bought cele­ri­ac to puree and beets to roast — on request — and Pauline, arm in arm with her daugh­ter who lives local­ly, bought a quan­ti­ty of cau­li­flower to roast, too.  Ingre­di­ents were pur­chased for an enor­mous pavlo­va to be con­coct­ed by Caro.  We dropped our bags off at the cars and then mean­dered over to Heav­en on Earth, oth­er­wise known as “Barter Books,” pos­si­bly the largest sec­ond­hand book­shop in all of Great Britain.  OMG.

Set in a dis­used rail­way sta­tion at the top of a beau­ti­ful hill set round with spring flow­ers, this was a mec­ca I can­not ade­quate­ly describe.  Avery would have been in heaven.

I found sev­er­al trea­sures, among them a vol­ume of Avery’s trea­sured Dorothy Park­er’s poet­ry, and a love­ly can­vas bag for her to use for her school books.  We had a crowd­ed and hot lunch, and then depart­ed for anoth­er round of the food shops and final­ly, laden, home again to cook.

A long walk to the beach, and a hap­py wan­der in the set­ting sun.

Dear­est Susan intro­duced us to beau­ti­ful new trends in sushi… which I love… and then the best pork bel­ly EVER, EVER.  And my cele­ri­ac puree went down well.  Up in the morn­ing to dis­cov­er that my train left ear­li­er than I had thought, so off we went for an emer­gency trip to the sea­side — “We MUST show Kris­ten a sandy Eng­lish beach!” — at Bam­burgh Cas­tle.

Old friends.  I was sad to leave.

But home has been busy.  My social work with Home-Start is going very well, with week­ly vis­its to my love­ly fam­i­ly who must go unde­scribed for secu­ri­ty pur­pos­es.  Suf­fice to say, it’s won­der­ful to have chil­dren to play with, and to feel that per­haps my being there is a bit of a help.  It’s a sub­tle way to vol­un­teer, not as dirty as Lost Prop­er­ty, but with its own qui­et sat­is­fac­tion.  And on my way out of my super­vi­sion last week, I came upon cheer­ing crowds and wav­ing British flags, and in just a moment, the Queen and Prince Philip rode past us in their SUV on their way to a par­ty in Rich­mond Park!  Trust me, they’re in here!

The Jubilee — the Queen’s 60th anniver­sary on the throne — cel­e­bra­tions are all around us these days.  Dec­o­rat­ed tins of bis­cuits, ash­trays adorned with the famil­iar crowned face, tea tow­els, bunting, com­mem­o­ra­tive can­dles, cal­en­dars and tea mugs, are every­where.

Speak­ing of Eng­lish insti­tu­tions, if you have a chance to get to the Isabel­la Plan­ta­tion in Rich­mond Park, DO.  Appar­ent­ly it’s plant­ed to have some­thing spec­tac­u­lar flow­er­ing at every season.

I can answer only to May, and… aza­leas.  Remarkable.

And some pret­ty yel­low and pur­ple flow­ers whose iden­ti­ty is beyond me.  But gor­geous.  Magical.

And of course being me, I’m cook­ing back here at home, too.  How­ev­er, I was felled by a 24-bug last week and spent all of Wednes­day hud­dled on the sofa, being brought fizzy water by John, a cup of tea, a throw, a hot water bot­tle.  Tacy was loy­al and fol­lowed me from sofa to bed.  I sim­ply had to be bet­ter by Thurs­day night, because we had reser­va­tions to the new­ly reopened “Son­ny’s Kitchen” in our beloved Barnes Vil­lage, and I could not bear to miss it.  We’d been watch­ing the new chef, Phil Howard, com­pete all week on “Great British Menu” on the BBC, and the thought of actu­al­ly eat­ing his food was a great induce­ment to get bet­ter ASAP.

And I did.  Thurs­day night we traipsed over to the restau­rant where I have had many hap­py “ladies who lunch” with friends, to the open­ing night of the new ven­ture.  And he was there!  So excit­ing to see him, and how lucky I felt to be well enough, and to have so much fun out with John all these years we’ve been eat­ing din­ner togeth­er.  Foie gras ter­rine with elder­flower jel­ly, gaz­pa­cho with sour cream ice cream, lamb rump with an egg­plant stew, piz­za bian­ca with smoked moz­zarel­la and Waygu beef… what a treat!  What a relief to have him con­tin­ue to cook REAL food, in the face of all the super-mod­ern insis­tence on some­thing crazy called “mol­e­c­u­lar gas­tron­o­my.”  Liq­uid nitro­gen!  Turn­ing veg­eta­bles into piped caviar-shaped dots!  Every­thing turned into a wob­bly, reduced jel­ly!  No thank you.

Final­ly, last night saw us out for sushi at Itsu (ah, salmon, tuna, spinach and more salmon!) with Avery and her friend Sam, the four of us res­olute­ly at two sep­a­rate tables!  And thence to Not­ting Hill Gate’s Gate The­atre, a hole-in-the-wall, walk-up, grungy the­atre with a sense of humor.

We were there for a com­plete­ly thrilling, stim­u­lat­ing, intel­lec­tu­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ing play called “Tenet,” a con­fec­tion of two actors (“and Cather­ine!” they cho­rused, refer­ring to the lighting/sound girl behind a cur­tain) play­ing Wik­ileaks’ Julian Assange and a rogue 19th cen­tu­ry French math­e­mati­cian, inves­ti­gat­ing the “tenet” that “rad­i­cals sim­pli­fy.”  I could feel my fore­head screw­ing up in the effort of under­stand­ing what was going on, pic­tur­ing how much bet­ter I could have done in maths if I had ever been taught like THAT.

What a thrill to go to such a play with two teenage girls who can ful­ly explain high­er maths, physics, phi­los­o­phy, polit­i­cal his­to­ry.  We talked fast and furi­ous all the way home, and they are now inspired to try to put on the play them­selves at school.  “But why,” I ask, “do we need to won­der about the 5th dimen­sion if we already have four dimen­sions to wor­ry about?”  “Because,” Avery answered, “the point of the play was, why should we both­er ask­ing ques­tions to which we already know the answers?”  It takes being young, I think!

Don’t you think she could be the per­fect librar­i­an?  She’s wear­ing my old clothes!

She is deep into revi­sions for her sum­mer exams right now, so all I can do is to cook for her, lis­ten to her fre­quent moans about how on earth to jug­gle Russ­ian, Latin AND French, not to men­tion chem­istry, physics AND biol­o­gy.  We’ll have two weeks of this and then back to normal.

One of the treats I’ll be able to offer is a decep­tive­ly sim­ple, com­plete­ly effort­less, sin­ful­ly rich and delicious…

Slow-Roast­ed Duck

(serves 4 with left­overs for soup)

1 duck, Gress­ing­ham if you can get it

6 sage leaves

Mal­don sea salt and fresh black pepper

Sim­ply line a bak­ing dish with foil and place the duck on it.  Put the lemon half inside, then prick the duck all over with a very sharp lit­tle fork or knife, tak­ing care to pierce the skin but not the flesh.  Roast at 120F/200C for two hours, then at 160C/300C for three fur­ther hours.  If the skin needs crisp­ing after that, roast a fur­ther 20 min­utes at 220C/425F.  Remove the duck from the dish which will be filled with fat, and place on a cut­ting board.  Shred all the meat with two forks and serve with gravy, or wrapped in pan­cakes or let­tuce with plum sauce and cucumbers.

I’ll leave you with a book rec­om­men­da­tion, so you know I don’t think only of cook­ing.  Oh, wait.  It’s about cook­ing.  Ah well, one can’t get away from who one is, right?  Hap­py Spring.