the great Amer­i­can musi­cal (or not)

When Avery was a lit­tle, lit­tle girl, per­haps four years old, she made a brief foray into the world of bal­let. All her friends were doing it, it seemed a shame to let her child­hood pass by with­out a pink leo­tard and a tutu. So off she went to first the rather (very) seri­ous Jof­frey Bal­let, where she was nearly kicked out for insub­or­di­na­tion. She did not take kindly to the auto­cratic meth­ods of “Miss Liz”, the prissy instruc­tor, but she kept going because her friend Annabelle was show­ing real tal­ent and has con­tin­ued to be a true Nut­cracker bal­le­rina as the years have gone by. But Avery? No. The low­est point came when Avery and all her friends decided to attend a dance class com­bin­ing bal­let and sort of mod­ern move­ment, with a crea­ture at the helm called “Miss Kim­ber­ley.” Miss Kim­berly had a high, grat­ing voice like a char­ac­ter on the Simp­sons, and a way of fran­ti­cally clap­ping her hands as she lost con­trol of the class, shout­ing inef­fec­tu­ally, “Dancers! Dancers!” After attend­ing sev­eral of these classes with me, one of the other moth­ers turned and made pok­ing ges­tures to her eyes. After class I said, “What the hell?” and she said, “I’d rather stick hot nee­dles in my eye­balls than EVER go to that class again. Just so you know.”

Well, sadly, John turns out to feel that way about the Great Amer­i­can Musi­cal. Last night we saw “Carousel” at the Savoy The­atre with friends, and Avery and I were in heaven. Brought up on Amer­i­can musi­cals (not in per­son, not in Indi­anapo­lis, but on tele­vi­sion and with records of all the sound­tracks) I remem­bered all the songs and was bounc­ing along in a sub­dued way in my seat, mut­ter­ing all the lyrics under my breath, when I hap­pened to catch John’s face out of the cor­ner of my eye. A stony vis­age some­how com­bin­ing intense bore­dom with sleepi­ness and annoy­ance. At inter­mis­sion I said meekly, “You don’t like musi­cals?” “I do NOT like musi­cals,” he said flatly. “But why?” Avery asked. “Let’s see: bad act­ing, bad Amer­i­can accents, end­less chore­og­ra­phy, cliched plots…” Fair enough. But that’s all the stuff I LIKE.

Well, any­way, the rest of us had fun. Lots of mem­o­ries of high school musi­cals (before High School Musi­cal), my par­ents in the audi­ence, all the behind-the-scenes romances that devel­oped, but never with me! Alas.

Les­ley Gar­rett was very impres­sive, the per­fect vehi­cle for “You’ll Never Walk Alone” which I remem­ber clearly singing at junior high school grad­u­a­tion (nat­u­rally), mak­ing all the moth­ers cry. After­ward we walked in the typ­i­cal Lon­don driz­zle to the Embank­ment tube sta­tion which is always fun, late at night, see­ing the bridge lit up and the Eye in the dis­tance. One of those times when we remem­ber we’re liv­ing in Lon­don, not just in Shepherd’s Bush. But I don’t think I’ll get John to any more musicals.

Thanks­giv­ing was just lovely here, with Amer­i­canophile British friends. Our host­ess Annie is a for­mer pro­fes­sion­ally trained cook, so there was no ques­tion about her turkey turn­ing out well, even if it was a very seri­ous turkey indeed, as opposed to the Dolly Par­tonesque spec­i­mens I rebel­liously insist on haul­ing out of the super­mar­ket freez­ing com­part­ment. No, this lit­tle guy came from my new best friend, Mr John Sten­ton of Sten­ton Fam­ily Butch­ers just up the street in nearby Brack­en­bury Vil­lage. Annie rang me up on Thanks­giv­ing morn­ing to ask if I wanted to come along to col­lect her turkey and inci­den­tally be intro­duced to Mr Sten­ton and indeed I did. I had felt quite shy going alone. You know when peo­ple say to you, “Oh, you’ll just LOVE so-and-so, every­body LOVES him and he is the best per­son,” you feel shy? At least I do. I start think­ing, “He’s not going to want to meet ME if he’s so all that,” and so three months in my new neigh­bor­hood and I’m still buy­ing my meat at Marks & Spencer (except for that ill-fated and now infa­mous attempt to secure pork from a Muslim).

Off we set, chat­ting all the way about the evening’s menu, and there we were at Mr Stenton’s. Red awning, door­way full of those fly-defying paper stream­ers, Mr Sten­ton pre­sid­ing behind the counter. He is a spare, twin­kling man with a strong hand­shake and a very firm meet­ing of the eye, suss­ing me up for any non­sense. He accepted Annie’s intro­duc­tion of me as a “food writer” with equa­nim­ity and pointed to the book­shelf behind him, groan­ing beneath the weight of the food writ­ers and restau­ra­teurs who he sup­plies with the finest Glouces­ter Old spot, eight-week cured hams, sausages made the night before with the thinnest of cas­ings (mine melted, as per Mr Stenton’s instruc­tion, in hot water in less than a minute, leav­ing the per­fect sausage meat, lov­ingly sea­soned, to slip into the bowl, naked and ready for my stuffing).

Most intrigu­ingly, Mr Sten­ton is quite, quite invested in the notion that Amer­i­cans would, if they could, care more about the prove­nance and qual­ity of the food­stuffs they buy. His daugh­ter has recently mar­ried an Amer­i­can, and what’s more, a Florid­ian and as such a “real” Amer­i­can as opposed to a New Yorker or Cal­i­forn­ian who, let’s face it, could be ANY­BODY. His son-in-law’s father came recently for a visit to see exactly who pro­duced the guy his beloved princess is shack­ing up with, and spent quite a lot of time in Mr Stenton’s estab­lish­ment, mar­vel­ling over his wares. “I pointed to the pho­to­graph of the cows on my wall, and then to the side of beef hang­ing in the back, and then I showed him these steaks that have hung for 45 days, and he was amazed. He’s a sur­geon, see. And he said, ‘Things are going to have to change in Amer­ica.’ But look at this…” and as if by sleight of hand, Mr Sten­ton pro­duces of all things a brochure from Pon­derosa. “All you eat, break­fast buf­fet, $3.99. Who’s going to want to cook when you can get all that for $3.99? The fact that it’s all rub­bish isn’t going to bother any­body.” Such a typ­i­cal British reac­tion to most things Amer­i­can: they’re bemused and half-admiring, but at rock bot­tom com­pletely disgusted.

Then I was off to Kens­ing­ton to meet my friend Dalia who injects me with sort of weekly doses of “Live life to the full! Get out of the loop! Embrace even suf­fer­ing because it means you’re alive!” She is a beau­ti­ful girl, which makes it fun to hang out with her, and she is an absolute walk­ing adver­tise­ment for energy. Her black eyes sparkle and she runs her hands through her long, thick dark hair and when she laughs you just can­not help laugh­ing, as it’s as likely as not she’s laugh­ing at you and your silly pre­ten­sions and hes­i­ta­tion about… life. With Dalia, you can­not be hesitant.

More food shop­ping for the evening’s fes­tiv­i­ties ensued, this time at Whole Foods where I suc­ceed in find­ing but­ter­milk but not corn­meal for my Thanks­giv­ing corn­bread, requested by Annie. Ah well, it was but the work of a moment to dis­cover that to almost every­one, corn­meal is just cheap polenta, and cer­tainly my lovely local Frenchy del­i­catessen runs to polenta.

Thanks­giv­ing itself was just per­fect. Bobble-headed paper turkeys, autumn leaves and can­dles adorned the table in Annie’s warm and open kitchen. The turkey was very nice, if a lit­tle spare from an American’s point of view, obsessed as I am not with the din­ner turkey but the prospect of turkey left­overs. There was a casse­role of sweet potato with wal­nuts and honey, I brought an enor­mous saucepan of really creamy mashed pota­toes, there were green beans and Brus­sels sprouts and my stuff­ing. And the most delight­ful chil­dren: Avery and her dear friend Emily, plus Emily’s older sis­ter Georgina and brother Sam, and three boys from Annie’s best friend’s fam­ily, so at least Avery for once had her pick of nice, accept­able, even enter­tain­ing and intel­li­gent boys. Per­haps we can arrange for a once-weekly ses­sion or so, to dis­pel her nat­ural scorn.

Since then, let’s see, I’ve been read­ing, and writ­ing. And read­ing and writ­ing. I have become addicted to food writ­ing. One book I can rec­om­mend whole-heartedly, and not just as food writ­ing but as really touch­ing auto­bi­og­ra­phy, is Tamasin Day-Lewis’s Where Shall We Go For Din­ner? I looked for­ward to read­ing this espe­cially because Tamasin read aloud from it to us dur­ing our Devon food-writing adven­ture, and in doing so she trans­formed her­self from famil­iar, rant­ing tutor, a real per­son, into an actress to rival her brother Daniel Day-Lewis. She read a pas­sage about the death of her father, the British poet Lau­re­ate Cecil Day-Lewis, very affect­ing. In the end, the whole premise of the book is a bit sad: it chron­i­cles her love affair with both an Amer­i­can cheese pur­veyor from New York, and with Amer­ica itself, and it turns out that after the pub­li­ca­tion of the book, he left her. Ouch. What an awful end­ing. But the book is beau­ti­fully writ­ten, evoca­tive of every fla­vor you can imag­ine, full of won­drous and improb­a­bly com­plex recipes. A good ride.

I can­not on the other hand rec­om­mend Daisy Garnett’s Cook­ing Lessons. This book had been touted to me by many peo­ple as “just what you’re try­ing to write,” so I sup­pose we were doomed to be a match not made in heaven. I learned as a pro­fes­sor, long ago, never to point out to stu­dents the sim­i­lar­i­ties between two paint­ings because auto­mat­i­cally they would then see only the dif­fer­ences. I think that’s in part what hap­pened to me with Gar­nett. While it’s true her book is based on anec­dotes from her life and then includes recipes, I balked at the recipes being nearly exclu­sively taken from other cook­books: of course she cred­its them, but that seems a bit lazy to me. And there were repet­i­tive anec­dotes, sev­eral typos (some­one “leant” her a book?) and other dis­tract­ing mis­takes that were irri­tat­ing. She is a jour­nal­ist and the book reads that way. Maybe it will be your cup of tea, but it wasn’t mine.

Then I devoted a day to Richard Mabey’s The Full Eng­lish Cas­soulet, and it was one of those books that would ben­e­fit from being spaced over sev­eral days. He’s evan­gel­i­cal, not to say a bit cracked, on the sub­ject of eat­ing off the land (gath­er­ing every­thing under the sun, a book about which prac­tice made him famous with Food For Free), but also about such earnest and wor­thy aims as “mak­ing do,” in sort of Depres­sion way (using absolutely every­thing, recy­cling ingre­di­ents for a stock that sits on the back burner of the stove every day for weeks, churn­ing but­ter on a bicy­cle wheel, seri­ously). It’s a hoot, really, and while I admire a lot of what he says about sea­son­al­ity (and he is evan­gel­i­cal on that sub­ject as well), I can­not claim to aspire to liv­ing in that way. I have to admit it: I’m evan­gel­i­cal about almost NOTHING.

I know I should shud­der at the thought of buy­ing straw­ber­ries in Britain in Decem­ber. I know it. But if they smell good through the pack­age, and Avery wants to eat them, I buy them. Of course it’s more fun (I’m not really sure it’s more deli­cious, but then there’s my non-evangelical nature again) to buy aspara­gus in enor­mous, gluttony-inspiring bun­dles at the farmer’s mar­ket in June, when you can choose between fat, medium and thin… but just the same, last week I had a mar­vel­lous salad of steamed aspara­gus, beet­root, moz­zarella and rocket, and the aspara­gus was lovely. Full of fla­vor, firm, very green. Where did it come from? I really don’t know, and I rec­og­nize that I am a lesser per­son for that. But there you go.

No, give me Nigel Slater’s Toast any day of the week. Of course there are things Nigel Slater is evan­gel­i­cal about, in other books. (I have a clear mem­ory of his say­ing in The Kitchen Diaries some­thing along the lines of “I count a day lost when I do not have at least a table­spoon of Greek yoghurt.”) But in “Toast” he is a pure racon­teur. How on earth does he remem­ber his child­hood in such detail? The many times his par­ents tried to make him drink milk (“They tried choco­late and straw­berry, but the only thing that changed was the color of my vomit”), the way his mother’s Christ­mas cake tasted, what his step­mother wore on a pic­nic, the color of the kitchen cur­tains, it’s end­less. The book is noth­ing more or less than a series of gen­er­ally uncon­nected vignettes about the space of his life between about age 8 to 14, dur­ing which time his father grows pink bego­nias and scares him to death with red-faced shout­ing, his gar­dener is sacked for undress­ing casu­ally in front of lit­tle Nigel, he inter­nal­izes his stepmother’s recipe for lemon meringue pie by stealth (since she won’t share her kitchen). It’s a won­der­ful ride.

Now I’m onto Fer­gus Henderson’s The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eat­ing. Hen­der­son runs St John restau­rant in Shored­itch (John’s been but I have not), a restau­rant where the diner is expected to be able to stom­ach absolutely ANY part of the ani­mal: snout to tail. I appre­ci­ate the notion that if we’re going to eat any part of the ani­mal, we should be able to eat ANY part, and I do think the mod­ern obses­sion with wrap­ping up pris­tine, bone­less, fat­less, skin­less parcels of someone’s flesh in plas­tic is too far from the real­ity of meat. I do love to go into a butcher’s shop where part of a real ani­mal is hang­ing up in the back and I can see it being appre­ci­ated, taken apart, offered to me as part of some­thing real. But ears and snouts? Tes­ti­cles and hearts? Stom­ach lin­ings? I know I am silly to be squea­mish and prob­a­bly what I need is just to be served some of these things in the best pos­si­ble way and I would over­come my nerves. I’m look­ing for­ward to the book.

In the mean­time our Lon­don writ­ing class has really been heat­ing up. We’ve decided that the most reward­ing thing to do is to get together with­out the tutor and sim­ply set our­selves exer­cises. It’s imi­tat­ing what we did in Devon, and to great results. Last Fri­day, all of us soaked to the skin from the relent­less Lon­don rain, we all gath­ered at Gigi’s house to write about… an object in the room. I wrote about a pic­ture frame, and found the story turn­ing rather darker than any­thing else I’ve writ­ten. Then my friend Vene­tia reached into a bas­ket full of paper scraps and pulled out the first line of a short story, and we were to turn it into a story of our own. For the first time, I found myself writ­ing from a man’s point of view. I don’t know who the man will turn out to be, but the line was “I once knew a girl who sat apart at the party, down on the floor.” My char­ac­ter turned out to be madly attracted to this girl, although he already knew enough about her to know that he should turn away. I won­der what he knew? Time will tell…

Herbed Corn­bread
(serves 12)

2 cups yel­low corn­meal (or polenta)
1 cup plain flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbsp bak­ing pow­der
1/2 tbsp bak­ing soda
1 tsp dried sage
1 tsp dried mar­jo­ram (I used 1 tbsp fresh chopped)
1 tsp fresh ground pep­per
1/2 cup but­ter, chilled, cut into 1/2 pieces
1 1/2 cup but­ter­milk
3 eggs

Mix all dry ingre­di­ents in food proces­sor. Cut in the but­ter by turn­ing on proces­sor and adding but­ter pieces one at a time, let­ting them incor­po­rate them­selves into the dry ingre­di­ents. In a large bowl, whisk together but­ter­milk and eggs. Add dry mix­ture to wet and mix well. Turn into a but­tered 9x9 dish and bake at 400F for 30 minutes.