the mys­tery of soft­shell crabs, and a gor­geous chick­en dish

Just a pho­to to add to the end­less com­pi­la­tion of images of Avery harass­ing wild birds in pub­lic places. She will not be dis­turbed in her quest to catch one, and fol­lows them around say­ing, “Here chick­abid­dy, here chick­abid­dy,” a la Bet­sy-Tacy.

Well, I can report a qual­i­fied suc­cess on the soft­shell crabs! I say “qual­i­fied,” because while they were very good, they were noth­ing at ALL like the restau­rant crabs I love so much and want­ed to repli­cate. Some­how in the space between get­ting the list of ingre­di­ents and the cook­ing method from the nice wait­ress at Man­darin Kitchen, and pro­duc­ing them in my own kitchen, a cru­cial ele­ment (prob­a­bly mag­ic) was lost. They were very good, and since you prob­a­bly haven’t sam­pled them from Man­darin Kitchen, I can give you this recipe with all con­fi­dence that you will enjoy it. It just was­n’t what I was expecting.

Deep-Fried Soft­shell Crabs with Gar­lic and Chilli

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They were deli­cious! I can­not praise “The Fish Soci­ety” high­ly enough. The crabs arrived prompt­ly, com­plete­ly frozen in dry ice packs. Their qual­i­ty was much high­er than the actu­al crab in the restau­rant: meaty and sub­stan­tial, and tast­ing of per­fect­ly fresh seafood. I will hap­pi­ly order from them again. Appar­ent­ly, this UK-run com­pa­ny gets its soft­shells from Thai­land, but the pur­vey­ors there are for­mer Boston­ian fish­er­men! I love that. You would not believe the vari­ety of seafood avail­able from this com­pa­ny. Dive in and order some­thing exotic.

When I told Becky blithe­ly last week that I was going to buy some soft­shell crabs (not know­ing that it sim­ply can’t be done out­side Chi­na­town and I was too intim­i­dat­ed), she laughed and said, “Oh, Mark will be by lat­er then to pick up Anna and… some soft­shell crabs. He adores them.” So it was but the work of a moment to pick up the phone when they arrived in the post and arrange a din­ner. Nat­u­ral­ly not one sin­gle child would con­sid­er eat­ing one, nor would Becky her­self, so she brought her incom­pa­ra­ble Chick­en Mar­bel­la, chock-a-block with gar­lic, olive, capers and prunes. It was per­fect, and the noo­dles and sprouts I made to go with both went down a treat. Anna, Avery and Ellie were all rather filthy in their horse­back rid­ing gear, after a day at the barn, but nev­er mind. Ash­ley was, in her teenage way, per­fect­ly turned out and sat with the adults. That mys­te­ri­ous trans­for­ma­tion from lit­tle girl to young lady is, of course, tak­ing place.

Becky and Mark have the loveli­est aura of South­ern gen­tle­folk! I love to hear Becky say “vis­it” as she does. “It’s so nice to have a chance to vis­it,” she will say, or tell Mark on the phone, “I’m just here vis­it­ing with Kris­ten.” It’s good to have peo­ple in your life who you know instinc­tive­ly (and by now with a fair amount of prac­ti­cal proof!) will always, always do the right thing in any sit­u­a­tion. In any big city, any big com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment, I’ve found, there’s a good­ly dis­play of expe­di­en­cy. What will this rela­tion­ship, or this deci­sion, net me today? some peo­ple ask them­selves. This was SO not a part of my grow­ing up in the Mid­west (or at least in my fam­i­ly, with our friends) that when I first encoun­tered it in the East, and cer­tain­ly in Lon­don, I was tak­en aback. It’s not evil, it’s just… expe­di­ent. And hap­pi­ly, Becky and Mark are just about the least expe­di­ent peo­ple I know. They are in it for being good, and hon­est. It’s cer­tain­ly an exam­ple I like hav­ing in my life, and set before my daugh­ter. And they’re a hoot, besides! John and Mark know lots of busi­ness peo­ple in com­mon, so sto­ries were fast and furi­ous about “idiot hedge fund man­agers I have knows,” and “invest­ment bankers who have screamed at me,” and extrav­a­gant birth­day par­ties run amok in the busi­ness world.

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that the life John has been liv­ing for the past year, hap­pi­ly unem­ployed, has run its course. His mind real­ly thrives on all those sto­ries, all that knowl­edge and his­to­ry. It’s about time for him to get a job. But noth­ing, noth­ing could ever replace the world we’ve had for a year. A world with one small child and two par­ents to look after her, lunch togeth­er every day, my hus­band to tell every­thing to all day, get his per­spec­tive, a year when he knew all the sto­ries, all Avery’s friends, nev­er missed a per­for­mance or a par­ty or a play­date. Still, all good things must come to an end, and the real­i­sa­tion of this dawned last week when a bunch of us moth­ers (John includ­ed) were talk­ing about senior school deci­sion. “It’s all about the uni­form,” John declared. “The Godol­phin gray and red is real­ly nice…” Sud­den­ly he caught Beck­y’s eye and she burst out laugh­ing. He said rue­ful­ly, “It’s time for me to get a job, when I have opin­ions on SCHOOL UNIFORMS!”

In any case, we had a love­ly evening. Becky brought just enough dessert for all of us (to sup­ple­ment my dessert-chal­lenged con­tri­bu­tion: mixed berries with Coin­treau): peanut but­ter cook­ies topped with mini Reese’s peanut but­ter cups and choco­late chips. Only… while the lit­tle girls were away from the table play­ing dres­sup or what­ev­er, we ate them ALL. Oops. A super evening with super friends.

Beck­y’s Chick­en Marbella

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So today was anoth­er day, and I traipsed over after school to my friend Nan­cy’s house with Avery and Nan­cy’s adorable daugh­ter Sal­ly, to have a snack and do home­work and catch up on life gos­sip. On the way Avery and Sal­ly com­mis­er­at­ed on the not so much evil, as com­plete­ly incom­pe­tent French teacher at King’s Col­lege. “Made­moi­selle… Stan­way!” Sal­ly chor­tled. “My broth­er calls her Made­moi­selle Stein­way, because he’s obsessed with piano,” she added, and Avery said, “We learned the signs of the ZODI­AC today. Why? I can’t even say ‘down.’ Or ‘up’ for that mat­ter!” We arrived at their gor­geous Nash house off Regen­t’s Park and Diana served us a love­ly fresh apple cake and the girls set­tled down to home­work while we chat­ted. Diana is the UK coor­di­na­tor for Barack Oba­ma’s cam­paign, so I was hap­py to get a bird’s-eye view of that sit­u­a­tion. I don’t know enough, frankly, to have a strong opin­ion on the var­i­ous can­di­dates, but Diana is pas­sion­ate about Oba­ma (as she is about every­thing she cares about; Diana is an intense and intense­ly pas­sion­ate per­son in gen­er­al), so I lis­tened. I wish I had the firm con­vic­tion that any one per­son can change any­thing as enor­mous as the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal scene (and there­fore, I’m afraid, a lot of oth­er things). I’m too much of a dreamy non-politi­cian to have a firm grasp of any giv­en year’s choic­es to get too awful­ly com­mit­ted to any one of them. But it’s a lot of fun to have the chance to learn from the woman behind the man (at least one of them!).

Tonight I’m aban­don­ing my fam­i­ly to left­overs (Beck­y’s chick­en will not go unap­pre­ci­at­ed, thank you!), while I head with my friend Sue (aka 6point7 to see an advance screen­ing of “As You Like It” at Baf­ta. I’ll be inter­est­ing tomor­row, I promise.