Chiswick, a new Cobb Sal­ad, and royalty

And I will tell all, about my encounter with Her Majesty, but first I will keep you in Ghast­ly Sus­pense while I extol the virtues of… Chiswick.

First of all, for my com­pa­tri­ots across the Pond, it’s pro­nounced “Chizzick.” So you don’t arrive and embar­rass your­selves by pro­nounc­ing it as it looks, any more than you would look at “South­wark” Cathe­dral and say any­thing but “Suthuck.” But I can top both those by telling you about a girl I know whose last name is “Feath­er­stone­haugh” pro­nounced… “Fan­shaw.” I am not mak­ing this up.

My point upon salient point is, I have been hear­ing from my friend Annie for don­key’s years, or how­ev­er long it is I’ve known her, about the untold joys of… Chizzick. We had one adven­ture there dur­ing a late evening when I had a white crab­meat emer­gency (don’t ask) and I was charmed, the lit­tle I could see of it in the Jan­u­ary dark­ness. “Some­day you and I will go and mooch around there and shop…” Annie would say, and I put it aside as you do com­ments like that, like “Some­day we’ve got to go through the entire medieval sec­tion of the V&A,” not think­ing it will ever actu­al­ly hap­pen. BUt it did.

On Fri­day I was scooped up, in her own words, by Annie after my stint at Lost Prop­er­ty (an actu­al Links of Lon­don sil­ver charm bracelet with TWO claimants, high dra­ma) and swift­ly trans­port­ed to the love­li­ness that is Chiswick, or Turn­ham Green, depend­ing on your post code or sense of neigh­bor­hood, or tax code, I know not. Trust me, it’s the food­ie’s par­adise in West Lon­don. We erupt­ed from Annie’s car to be enveloped in a com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed rain­storm. “What the hell?” we both snapped. “This was­n’t in the brief! Lunch then, first, and shop­ping after?” Where­upon the rain stopped with the sen­sa­tion of an old lady purs­ing her mouth, and we decid­ed to shop any­way, and have lunch after.

We start­ed out at Whisk, which was a dan­ger­ous thing to do because there is absolute­ly noth­ing I real­ly, real­ly need from a kitchen shop. But it’s like a can­dy store is to Avery: I sim­ply can­not walk in and walk with­out buy­ing some­thing, and actu­al­ly it was­n’t even for me, strict­ly speak­ing, but for John and Avery: a big heavy non­stick fry­ing pan for her break­fast eggs. And, I admit it, a tiny lit­tle orange can­dle-lighter, because it was orange and I love can­dles. But I’ll have you know I did NOT buy the lit­tle ter­ra-cot­ta egg-box shaped con­tain­er to hold eggs on my counter. I’ll ask for it for my birth­day. Whisk was fun.

Then we were onto Mor­timer and Ben­nett, the famous del­i­catessen-cheese shop (and gen­er­al Aladdin’s Cave of unnec­es­sary things to eat), and again I met with temp­ta­tion. Annie was plan­ning a cheese board for din­ner, and I suc­cumbed to a tiny lit­tle St Mar­cellin in a cun­ning pot­tery dish, plus an enor­mous num­ber of gar­licky olives, and a box of organ­ic straw­ber­ry bis­cuits in the shapes of mice and lions, for Avery and Jamie’s pre-ice skat­ing snack. I could have bought every­thing in the shop! Untold types of smoked fish and meat, bis­cuits and crack­ers, yogurts and creams and but­ters. “You know, I read about this shop when search­ing for a sort of obscure juice called… oh, shoot, now I can’t remem­ber, but it start­ed with a ‘v’…” I bur­bled, and the pro­pri­etor said calm­ly, “Yes, ‘Ver­jus,’ only our pur­vey­or moved back to New Zealand, tak­ing all of it with her.”

Then we popped into the sub­lime Covent Gar­den Fish­mon­ger Turn­ham Green and I picked up a kilo of mas­sive frozen scal­lops with­out roe, which made me very hap­py because I sim­ply hate pay­ing for the weight of some­thing I’ll come home and detach and throw away. I do not like roe. But these scal­lops were sub­lime, and led me to cre­ate a per­fect, sim­ple sal­ad for din­ner, which I’ll tell you about in a moment.

Final­ly we were tempt­ed into Zec­ca, a gor­geous shop filled with pot­tery, nap­kins, place­mats, can­dle hold­ers, so many things cry­ing out to be brought home by me. I end­ed up with a mod­est lit­tle flut­ed blue dish to put steamed aspara­gus on, as we’re now eat­ing the love­ly green things as many times per week as we can stand, to enjoy the season!

From there to the secret (shh) of Chiswick, the The Roe­buck, the best pub lunch you will ever have for a fiv­er. Grilled salmon fil­let on a bed of chick­peas doused with love­ly fresh pesto and tossed with rock­et. For a fiv­er! Annie had cheese and chut­ney sand­wich with hand­cut chips… for a fiv­er. Go, do, and make the pow­ers that be at the Roe­buck know they have an audience.

Since then, I thawed my bril­liant Chiswick scal­lops and made a new, mod­ern and quite British ver­sion of the old Amer­i­can 1937 clas­sic, Cobb Sal­ad.

Scal­lop Cobb Salad
(serves 2 as main dish, 4 as light starter)

1 tbsp sun­flower oil (or oth­er rather taste­less oil)
1 kilo scal­lops, cleaned of mus­cle and dried
8 ounces pancetta cubes
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1/2 lb new pota­toes, steamed in their skins and quartered
hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped
hand­ful chives, chopped
3 beet­root, roast­ed, peeled and diced
1/2 cup goat cheese, crumbled
2 cups rocket
sea salt and fresh ground pepper
olive oil to drizzle
1 lemon, quartered

So just like the old Cobb Sal­ad, only not with any of the same ingre­di­ents. Heat the oil in a heavy fry­ing pan and sear the scal­lops for two min­utes on the first side, get­ting a good col­or, then turn over and do the same to the oth­er side for per­haps a minute. Do NOT over­cook. Turn out onto paper tow­el to drain.

In same fry­ing pan, where there will still be oil, fry the pancetta gen­tly till well browned. Set aside. Fry gar­lic gen­tly in the pancetta fat, then add steamed pota­toes and pars­ley and chives. Toss well for a moment, then take off heat.

Now: assem­bly job. On a long, wide plat­ter, place the scal­lops, the pancetta, the pota­toes, the beet­root, the goat cheese and the rock­et in rows.

Let your guests assem­ble their own arrange­ments of all the ingre­di­ents and pro­vide the salt, pep­per and oil to dress, along with the lemon wedges. Enjoy!

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This is a divine, and gor­geous, dish. A nice devel­op­ment from the chick­en, hard-boiled egg, bacon, blue cheese ver­sion of years past. Go for it. Scal­lops are the new chick­en, just like 44 is the new 37. I hope not.

Well, Sun­day then we end­ed up at the Roy­al Wind­sor Horse Show, where the favorite activ­i­ty was the Pony Club Mount­ed Games. Just hilar­i­ous! All the bits of Great Britain com­pet­ing against each oth­er, and sad­ly, Wales as usu­al was at the bot­tom. But their red jumpers were so charm­ing! And there was the Queen to award the plate for “Best Turned-out” sol­dier, or what­ev­er: the shini­est coats, the best-combed manes, the plushi­est feath­ered caps… We had a mar­vel­lous time, albeit suf­fer­ing as usu­al from a hor­ri­ble burg­er lunch. How to solve the food prob­lem? Awful insti­tu­tion­al fare, or we bring our own pic­nic and drag it around. None of the sce­nar­ios has so far worked for me. Next year, per­haps, I’ll fig­ure it out.

This week has been full of dra­ma. Today was my writ­ing class, host­ed by my dear friend Vale­ria, and our spe­cial guest was Jane Mul­vagh, she of the recent pub­li­ca­tion fame of Madres­field: The Real Brideshead. Her brief was to help us strate­gize find­ing agents and pub­lish­ers, but hon­est­ly what she accom­plished, for me at least, was just a mas­sive intim­i­da­tion of how cool and effort­less her rise to fame has been, ver­sus our fledg­ling and fright­ened efforts. I’m strug­gling this month with writer’s block, I must con­fess. None of my ideas feels worth writ­ing down. I need a boost of some kind, an inter­ven­tion. Should I write next about child­hood mem­o­ries with my dad, or Irish coun­try hous­es with cook­ery on an Aga? Or lemons? Or arti­choke dip? I’m stymied. But all the writ­ers I know assure me that such peri­ods are nor­mal. All I can do is go swim­ming, let John drag me out for a ten­nis game, and cook a love­ly din­ner of grilled salmon, warm chick­pea sal­ad with feta, cur­ry and rock­et, and steamed broc­col­i­ni. That’s all I can do right now. Not being roy­al, that is…