din­ner from the fridge and… Inspec­tor Lyn­ley! for real

We’re in the throes of trans­fer­ring all data from one com­put­er to anoth­er (this just exhausts me to think about, and I know noth­ing about how it is hap­pen­ing, which fur­ther exhausts me: that feel­ing of lack of con­trol over some­thing immense­ly impor­tant to one­self?!). So I can­not show you any love­ly pho­tos of our two-day jaunt to the Oxford area, which was a com­plete jape, a total pleasure.

And before I even start with that sojourn’s record, I must tell you about our din­ner tonight: no recipes, just a cel­e­bra­tion of what actu­al­ly was in my fridge, and I’m sure a ver­sion of this is already in yours. Add one or two fresh things, and you’re there, feel­ing quite self-right­eous with your bud­get and your health-con­scious­ness. Trust me.

Avery had asked for sauteed red pep­pers for din­ner, plus mush­room soup if you can imag­ine. I had a rare crav­ing for red meat, and I knew had left­over pota­toes dauphi­noise in the fridge, plus a smidgen of creamed spinach. I stopped by the halal butch­er (if you don’t know, it’s the mus­lim equiv­a­lent of kosher, no big deal). I asked, in my spoilt May­fair way, for fil­let of beef. It became quite clear, as it had become at the Irish butch­er I tried before, that our new digs do not spring for fil­let. And why should they? The world’s most bor­ing cut of beef, to my mind, but Avery loves it. So tonight, soaked to the skin from watch­ing her ride for an hour in the rain, I stopped by the halal butch­er and said, “What would you cook if you want­ed beef tonight?” “Rump steak, ma’am,” he said with­out hes­i­ta­tion. “How would you cook it?” “Grill it,” was the lacon­ic advice, and since I now have a grill inte­gral to my oven, I said, “Fine. Bring it on.”

Well, it turns out I already had red pep­pers in my fridge, but I had to buy mush­rooms. Then I res­ur­rect­ed an elder­ly-ish chick­en stock from a roast chick­en ear­li­er in the week. Saute some gar­lic and onions, pile it all in a saucepan and cov­er with stock, sim­mer for half an hour with some dried thyme and a splash of brandy. Puree with a hand blender and stir in a bit of cream. Done.

The beef: I salt­ed and pep­pered it and stuck it under this mys­te­ri­ous grill for about five min­utes on one side and then got SCARED. So I took it out. It smelled divine. I left it on the coun­ter­top while I reheat­ed my scal­loped pota­toes and smidgen of spinach, and sauteed the pep­pers. Anoth­er five min­utes on the oth­er side, let it rest a minute, slice it and brush a but­tery knife against the slices… PER­FEC­TION! Beef for three for what would cost you $5 in the States, 5 pounds here. HEAV­EN. Tasty, not per­fect­ly ten­der, but tasty which to my mind fil­let nev­er is. DULL.

So we sat down amid the tor­rid rain in the gar­den to these myr­i­ad delights: the gar­licky green of left­over spinach, the unc­tious creami­ness of left­over pota­toes, love­ly red pep­pers, effort­less mush­room soup that used up my stock in the fridge… I was com­plete­ly hap­py. If wet from the sta­ble, still!

But our Oxford­shire week­end… What hap­pened was this: we had arranged to take a school chum of Avery’s out to the Cotswolds for a day and a night and it was… rain­ing cats and dogs. That com­bined with the EXTREME close­ness of the Mini Coop­er (“bring as lit­tle as you can POS­SI­BLY bring,” I warned the hap­less child) made me a bun­dle of nerves as we set out on Mon­day morn­ing. “I tend to get car­sick,” topped the depart­ing child, so I sup­plied her with a bot­tle of cold water and our entire car with a Nan­cy Drew on tape, which saved our lives. Out to Oxford we went, to vis­it my friend Jo Ann, part­ner in my ado­ra­tion of Richard Armitage (the crush that keeps on giving).

And the first thing that hap­pened was that we got slight­ly lost. I knew we’d gone too far, so we stopped at a British Petro­le­um sta­tion for direc­tions, and I left all poten­tial car­sick peo­ple in the car and marched into the sta­tion with my google map, and there… was INSPEC­TOR LYN­LEY in per­son! Seri­ous­ly! Nathaniel Park­er in PER­SON! In front of me in the queue. I sim­ply gath­ered my courage and said, “I hate to invade your pri­va­cy, but I must tell you how much plea­sure you have giv­en us with “Inspec­tor Lyn­ley.” We enjoyed “Bleak House” first and that led us to your per­for­mance as Inspec­tor Lyn­ley, and we just love it. Thank you!”

And I strange­ly did not feel like a com­plete fool. With his choco­late­ly gor­geous voice, his hands clutch­ing small bot­tles of apple juice and some yogurt, he said gra­cious­ly, “That gives me great pleasure.”

OOOHHH!

So I con­fessed that I was lost, and he actu­al­ly gave me direc­tions! To the prop­er round­about. What a TREAT, to get lost under those cir­cum­stances. A dear, gen­er­ous and gra­cious man. What fun! More on our Oxford adven­tures lat­er… and pho­tos, I hope, tech­nol­o­gy permitting.