a week of calm

At least, that’s what I have in mind. Last week deliv­ered the dra­mas of ortho­don­ture from hell, “to voiceover or not to voiceover,” capped off with a Fri­day after­noon at the skat­ing rink clos­et­ed with (actu­al­ly, if only I could have shut her up in a clos­et) the loud­est, most obnox­ious moth­er at the adja­cent table… oooh, I could have smoth­ered her with a roll of paper tow­el. Final­ly home in the cold rain for a tru­ly love­ly week­end appre­ci­at­ing the Christ­mas tree, a sleep­over date from one of Avery’s sweet­est friends, and a Sun­day nap, in a shaft of gen­tle late-after­noon sun­light on the sofa. Bliss.

So my hopes are that the dra­ma has been exhaust­ed and we can hope for peace. We’ve been play­ing ten­nis dogged­ly in quite too-cold sprin­kling rain, shiv­er­ing and feel­ing fool­ish, but I fig­ure we’ve burned off at least a table­spoon of mayo. I fin­ished the last of the Christ­mas cards and popped them in the post on my rainy way to school pick­up, and we are now con­tem­plat­ing noth­ing more dra­mat­ic than a car­ol con­cert at school on Wednes­day. Quite, quite peaceful.

But you know me, the most peace­ful thing I can think of is cook­ing, fol­lowed by eat­ing and as my favorite cook­ery writer Lau­rie Col­win says, the best pos­si­ble thing which is “talk­ing about cook­ing while eat­ing with friends.” That will be the sto­ry here at home after the car­ol con­cert, since my friend Annie and I have decid­ed to bring the two fam­i­lies togeth­er for a smor­gas­bord sup­per. I must con­fess that as much as I dote on a nice meat, veg and starch din­ner near­ly every night, my favorite way of eat­ing is choos­ing among lots of dif­fer­ent fla­vors, a lit­tle of this, a lit­tle of that. Could it be my Scan­di­na­vian blood com­ing through? So we’ve divvied up the bits we’ll each bring, and I’m quite excit­ed, respon­si­ble as I shall be for “meats and fish.”

Meats… I think a small gam­mon (ham) roast­ed with a mix­ture of minced gar­lic, Dijon mus­tard, hon­ey and plum sauce, then sliced real­ly thin. And a turkey breast: they are avail­able here, won­der­ful­ly, as small as a large chick­en breast in the States, so you’re not mak­ing a com­mit­ment of hol­i­day pro­por­tions. Fish… how about hot smoked roast­ed salmon, cut in thick slices to serve with a dip of creme fraiche and wasabi paste? The wasabi cuts into the cream and turns it a love­ly pale green, a col­or that seduces you into for­get­ting how HOT the dip will be!

Then, I will indulge in my lat­est food obses­sion, which tends to crop up every night at about mid­night when the ten­nis-play­ing side of my brain is hushed up by the indul­gent side. “Go on, so what if a table­spoon of this spends your entire hour of ten­nis? Life is short!” This obses­sion is just about any prod­uct from the Find­later com­pa­ny out of Scot­land, my favorites so far being a smoked salmon pate (light and rich at the same time, creamy and not too fishy), and a duck pate with just a hint of chopped apri­cot rim­ming the dish (a bless­ing for John who abhors any com­bi­na­tion of fruit and meat, so he can avoid the fruit). These pates are sin­ful­ly indul­gent, per­fect either on a bit of toast­ed baguette or that most appo­site of all crack­ers, the Bath Oliv­er. Order some, do! And have that mid­night snack and think of me.

If you are out and about as we were on Sun­day in Maryle­bone, our old stomp­ing grounds when Avery used to be in school there, I can high­ly rec­om­mend the Nat­ur­al Kitchen for brunch. Pass up all the over­priced (shock­ing­ly so, even for Lon­don!) raw ingre­di­ents on the ground floor, don’t be tempt­ed to sit right down in the chilly win­dow. Head upstairs and be pre­pared to wait 15 min­utes or so for a table in the bustling, warm, chic and delec­tably-smelling first-floor din­ing room.

We were not put off by the fact that every­one there besides us looked incred­i­bly, how shall I put it, rich. Just like peo­ple who’ve been out Christ­mas shop­ping and to whom the word “reces­sion” applies only to their gum­lines. Such great peo­ple-watch­ing, and ‑lis­ten­ing. Avery has a pet peeve: the new ad cam­paign by Patek Philippe for their watch­es, with the slo­gan, “You nev­er actu­al­ly own a Patek Philippe. You mere­ly look after it for the next gen­er­a­tion,” and a pho­to of an actu­al father and son, smirk­ing into the cam­era. At the Nat­ur­al Kitchen, Avery looked around and said, “Every­one here looks like one of those ads.” She looked down at her own clean but per­ma­nent­ly horse-stained jodh­purs and boots and sighed.

But all that wealth around us did­n’t stop the Eggs Bene­dict from being tru­ly sub­lime, per­fect­ly run­ny yolks, French ham and a fault­less Hol­landaise. John’s full Eng­lish was equal­ly remark­able with Lin­colnshire sausages, spicy and tempt­ing. Avery had a ham and Emmen­thal crois­sant that was love­ly too.

Some­times, how­ev­er, meat, veg and starch is the way to go, and when you’re in that sort of mood, where you want a din­ner that requires noth­ing more chal­leng­ing than scoop­ing up some­thing sim­ple on a fork, you can­not do any bet­ter than:

Chick­en Pojars­ki with Caramelized Car­rots and Rice
(serves 4)

CHICK­EN:
splash of olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 shal­lot, minced
1 tbsp papri­ka (sounds a lot, but trust me)
4 chick­en breast fil­lets, cubed in bite-size pieces
splash of Madeira
1 cup chick­en stock
1 cup creme fraiche (half-fat is fine)

CAR­ROTS:
5 tbsps butter
1/2 cup dark brown soft sugar
4 car­rots per per­son, sliced in rounds

RICE:
1/2 cup bas­mati rice per person

For the chick­en, saute the gar­lic and shal­lot gen­tly in the oil, then add the chick­en and cook on all sides briefly (not ful­ly cooked). Set chick­en aside and add the Madeira to the pan and raise the heat. Scrape all cooked bits into the liq­uid and add chick­en stock. Low­er heat and whisk in creme fraiche. Add chick­en and its accu­mu­lat­ed juices and poach very gen­tly for 15 min­utes. At this point you may turn off the heat and leave the dish until you are ready to eat, heat­ing it gen­tly just before serving.

About 40 min­utes before you want to eat, melt the but­ter and sug­ar togeth­er and sim­mer, siz­zling. Drop car­rots in and cook, stir­ring occa­sion­al­ly, low­er­ing the heat as necessary.

About 20 min­utes before you want to eat, steam the rice. I’ve found that the rice sticks much less to the pan if you turn the heat off for five min­utes or so before serv­ing, keep­ing the lid tight­ly shut.

Pile the rice in the cen­ter of the plate and ladle the chick­en and sauce on top, then make a nice mound of the car­rots on the side. All you need is… a fork.

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Eat this din­ner unashamed­ly in front of the tel­ly while you watch Delia Smith’s Christ­mas pro­gramme, or if you’re all alone, car­ry your lap­top to the din­ing table and, for the next five days, you can lis­ten to this won­der­ful pro­gramme on BBC Radio Four with Simon Parkes, all about “The Food Mem­oir.” If, like me, you’re try­ing to write a food mem­oir your­self, you can sit back and wail a bit at the genius of the writ­ers Parkes talks to. Jeal­ousy: it’s ugly. But then I wipe away my tears and pick up my fork, and with an unwieldy bite of creamy com­fort food, all’s right with the world.