the ulti­mate shrimp dish

No, I’m not pro­duc­ing my own escar­gots! But this is awfully funny. I put out a stock­pot full of chicken stock, out in my “larder,” oth­er­wise known as the space out­side my bed­room door, lead­ing toward our com­mu­nal gar­den. I used a lid that was larger than the pot, hav­ing the sneak­ing feel­ing the true lid was in… Con­necti­cut. Well, I brought the pot in to skim off the fat yes­ter­day, and there, on the under­side of the lid, was this lit­tle fel­low! He was amaz­ingly brave, even when I showed him to the cats (who with true domes­ti­cated dis­in­ter­est just gazed at him). I was tempted to keep him for Avery when she came home from school, but he moved so quickly in just a cou­ple of min­utes that I knew I’d have no idea where he was, very shortly, so off he went back to the garden.

It’s offi­cial: I’ve sent off the last piece of paper­work for Avery’s senior school appli­ca­tions. Each school has a dif­fer­ent sys­tem: some want a copy of her birth cer­tifi­cate (pre­sum­ably so we can’t send a very small 18-year-old to take the exam), some want a pass­port photo, each wants a sub­stan­tial check for their pains. Then there’s the sec­ond tier of paper­work: once you’ve applied to the school, then they send you a form to fill out to apply to the exam. Sigh. Finally, though, done and dusted, all six sets of stuff off my desk and out to the schools. Now it’s up to Avery, poor dear. After a lit­tle early-week melt­down over the hor­rid “mock exams,” she has found her stride again and is pretty cheer­ful. We were walk­ing home in the unbe­liev­ably early dusk last night and stopped off at the news­stand for a lit­tle light read­ing, then headed home. “You know what I want to do when I get home, Mommy? I know it sounds triv­ial, but I just want to draw and lis­ten to the sound­track to “White Christ­mas.” I had to laugh, “Lis­ten, you’re talk­ing to a per­son with Hello! mag­a­zine under her arm, so triv­ial is not really a prob­lem.” “Good point,” she said, and it struck me that she’s a real per­son these days, not really to be treated as a child very much any­more. A real con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist, a per­son who loves Bing Crosby on her own, knows things I don’t know, has had expe­ri­ences I can only imag­ine, can do so many things I can’t do! How did it hap­pen so quickly?

The Christ­mas tree is up (it’s a lit­tle runty, but in the end I chose aroma over size, as the large trees smelled like pre­cisely noth­ing and this one emits a won­der­ful fla­vor) and dec­o­rated as you see, and I’ve been able to turn my atten­tion to lit­tle mat­ters like The Ulti­mate Shrimp Dish. Try it and be amazed.

It’s a vari­a­tion on a recipe I found in Red mag­a­zine while I was hav­ing my hair cut. My Ital­ian hair guy was going on and ON in sweet but unin­tel­li­gi­ble detail about his grandmother’s recipe for chicken escalopes (“her secret, Kris­ten, she cook them twice,” what this means I know not), so I asked him if it was kosher to rip the recipe out of the mag­a­zine, and as it was an Octo­ber copy, yes. The author is an Indian cook called Vicky Bho­gal, from her “A Year of Cook­ing Like Mum­myji,” and I’ll def­i­nitely look for the book. You can also try her web­site. It’s really annoy­ing: in addi­tion to being no doubt a great cook, she’s gor­geous. Just what I need in my life: another Nigella Lawson.

I left out the sug­gested grated coconut (yuck) and sub­sti­tuted ground cumin for cumin seeds, red chill­ies for green, and added gar­lic (how can what’s essen­tially a curry dish not include gar­lic? for shame!). But you can turn all those bits around if you like. I served the shrimps shell-on, with just the back cut with scis­sors, but on sec­ond thoughts I’d shell them: less mess and less effort at the table. But sublime.

Coconut and Cumin Prawns
(serves 4)

1 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 tsps ground cumin
1 white onion, minced
1 can plum toma­toes, squeezed by hand over skil­let
1 tsp sea salt
3 red chill­ies, deseeded and chopped
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp red chilli pow­der
1 tsp garam masala
1 can coconut milk
2 pounds raw prawns, shelled
hand­ful fresh corian­der, roughly chopped

In a large skil­let, melt the but­ter with the oil and then add the gar­lic, cumin and onion and saute until soft. Squeeze the toma­toes to crush them, and add all the juice. Add the salt, chill­ies (wash your hands before you rub your eyes! I didn’t), turmeric, chilli pow­der and garam masala and cook down until toma­toes are thick. Add the coconut milk and blend well. At this point you can put the sauce aside and get on with your other dishes. Then five min­utes or so before you want to eat, heat the sauce again till bub­bling and add the shrimps. Cook until they turn thor­oughly pink, then stop the heat and serve with rice.

**************

With this I made a dish of sauteed green mixed veg­eta­bles with a sauce that was very nice, and could also be very good on, I thought, beef ten­der­loin or chicken breasts.

Mus­tard Seed Cream Sauce
(serves 4)

1 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsps but­ter
1 tbsp black mus­tard seeds
1 tsp ground cumin
1 white onion, finely chopped
2 cloves gar­lic, finely chopped
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 red chill­ies finely chopped
1 tsp garam masala
1 cup creme fraiche
whole milk to thin
aspara­gus, sugar snap peas, broc­col­ini, baby pak choi

Melt the but­ter and oil together and add every­thing except the creme fraiche, stir over medium heat until onion is soft. Then add the creme fraiche, mix well, and set aside. Saute the aspara­gus and broc­col­ini until cooked through, then add the peas and pak choi (be care­ful not to over­cook them as they are very del­i­cate). Heat the sauce again and serve every­thing pip­ing hot.

**************

So good and so simple.

Let’s see, if you’re feel­ing really pre­cious and want to impress a hol­i­day guest with your pre­sen­ta­tion skills, try this:

Beet­root Tower with Goats Cheese and Cucum­ber
(serves 4)

6 beet­roots, roasted in tin­foil for 90 min­utes, then peeled and sliced thin
1 hydro­ponic cucum­ber, or 3 small British cucum­bers, sliced thin
100 grams goats cheese with chill­ies or chives
1 avo­cado, sliced thin
dress­ing: fresh pesto shaken up in a jar with peper­on­cino oil
hand­ful of chopped chives

To assem­ble this beau­ti­ful salad, start with a white plate. Arrange three slices of beet­root in a spi­ral, then layer a slice of goats cheese, three slices cucum­ber and two slices avo­cado. Con­tinue to layer until you run out of ingre­di­ents, then driz­zle the dress­ing over all and sprin­kle the entire plate with chives. Lovely.

************

Tonight we have a Christ­mas party at the ultra-stylish St John’s Wood home of one of Avery’s class­mates, which should be great for John’s ever-present real estate mis­ery. Our rot­ten land­lords have raised the rent for our flat to a truly astro­nom­i­cal level, rub­bing salt in the wound of our house-less state. But there is truly no point at all in buy­ing a house now, when we won’t know where Avery’s going to school next year until Feb­ru­ary. I would really like to live near enough to her school that she can com­fort­ably walk, since every­one with older chil­dren assures me that by mid-autumn next year she won’t want me within sight of the school. No more dropoff and pickup heaven for me. Good­ness, that stage went quickly. I’m sure my mother radar will con­tinue to go off at 3:20 for the rest of my life, and what­ever I’m doing at that hour, in per­pe­tu­ity, I’ll look in panic at my watch and won­der how I could have for­got­ten to pick her up. Maybe some­day she’ll let me pick up her children…