get­ting back to normal

Yes, John’s on an air­plane, Avery’s at the sta­ble, I’m at my desk: life has got back to nor­mal in an unnec­es­sar­i­ly deci­sive way. I’ve wad­ed through the mound of paper star­ing me in the face and found all the respon­si­bil­i­ties there­in com­plete­ly uncom­pelling: den­tal appoint­ment for Avery who has already found end­less ways to say, “Don’t make me go,” thank-you notes I’ve writ­ten but not both­ered to send, par­ent-teacher con­fer­ence appoint­ment sheets that have not been filled in, reminders to get a flu jab. You can see why I’m in avoid­ance mode. But it’s either deal with all that admin, or get down to the busi­ness of writ­ing my next cook­book chap­ter, and as a result, here I am, blog­ging. A friend of mine has just begun a new blog because, as he says, it’s a way to get one­self writ­ing every day. True, but it’s also a mas­sive­ly con­ve­nient bolt-hole to save one­self from REAL writ­ing, as in craft­ing, edit­ing, choos­ing one’s words. But per­haps I’m being too hard on myself. And I DO have a load of laun­dry going, so the day has not been for naught.

We dropped Avery off this morn­ing on what looked like a rainy day until we were about halfway to the sta­ble, and sud­den­ly it was all blue sky so we put the top down on the Mini and felt cheer­ful. Sad­ly she arrived too late for the first ride but JUST in time for the first scrap­ing up of horse detri­tus in the Square. Poor child. At least she has real­ly good chori­zo in her lunch­box, which makes up for a lot.

What could be more nor­mal than a good dish of bolog­nese? That’s on the menu for tonight and I’ll tell you why I did not make it last night even though Avery begged. I was in the mood for seafood, some­thing light and real­ly fast and easy. I can’t call it a recipe, exact­ly, but per­haps the descrip­tion will inspire you to save the red meat for anoth­er night.

Fox Point Seafood
(serves three with left­overs for lunch)

2 cloves garlic
juice of 1/2 lemon
pinch sea salt
cou­ple grinds black pepper
1/2 cup good ready­made may­on­naise, or your own fresh
12 raw king prawns
12 raw scal­lops (roe off for me)
2 wild Alaskan salmon fillets
sev­er­al shakes Pen­zeys Fox Point Seasoning
juice of 1/2 lime
sprin­kle olive oil
1 tbsp veg­etable oil

Now, some­thing real­ly inter­est­ing, chem­i­cal­ly speak­ing, hap­pens when you mince gar­lic togeth­er with lemon juice and sea salt. I think it must break down some essen­tial build­ing blocks of sol­id mat­ter (oh dear, I think my art his­to­ry PhD is show­ing), well, what­ev­er it is I mean, the gar­lic is pul­ver­ized by the acid and salt in a very sat­is­fy­ing way. And the results are quite dif­fer­ent to sim­ply minc­ing the gar­lic and mix­ing it with the lemon and salt. Trust me on this point. I once made a mind-bend­ing­ly pun­gent vinai­grette for cole slaw that involved peel­ing and sec­tion­ing a lemon (nice obses­sive com­pul­sive job that was) and chop­ping the sec­tions with salt and gar­lic. I loved it, but I have a mem­o­ry of some of my guests cry­ing. So this mod­i­fied gar­lic rap­ture may be just the tick­et for the faint of heart who nev­er­the­less want some kick to their aioli.

Mix the minced gar­lic, lemon and salt mix­ture into the mayo and set aside.

Place all the seafood on a plat­ter and sprin­kle it all with Fox Point Sea­son­ing. This mir­a­cle condi­ment is a clas­sic exam­ple of a whole being more than the sum of its parts. Why should dried shal­lots, chives and scal­lions be such a per­fect thing to accom­pa­ny seafood, chick­en, scram­bled eggs and dare I sug­gest it, but­tered pop­corn? But it is. Mag­i­cal. Driz­zle the lime juice and olive oil over all the seafood.

In a very large skil­let, heat the veg­etable oil till near­ly smok­ing and place the salmon fil­lets in skin side down. Resist the temp­ta­tion to play with them: don’t poke at them, peek under­neath as they cook, just sit for about 4 min­utes. Now you may turn them. One hopes the skin will have cooked very nice­ly so that you can either enjoy it, or peel it off (I don’t do salmon skin). Cook on the flesh side for just anoth­er minute and remove the salmon to a warm plate. Turn back to the skil­let and see if you need more oil, if so add it, but judi­cious­ly, as you want this to be a nice light dish. Place the scal­lops as quick­ly as you can in the hot oil on one side of the skil­let and throw the prawns in at the oth­er side. Toss the prawns with tongs and after about 2 min­utes, turn the scal­lops over. Now remove from skil­let and arrange nice­ly on the salmon plate. Serve with the aioli.

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Avery’s back from the sta­ble, weary, cold and filthy, but in her usu­al eupho­ria after sev­er­al can­ters. “You just would­n’t believe how gor­geous The Mile was, today, with all the fall­en col­ored leaves under­foot, Mum­my,” she sighed, “but Hobbs freaks out if a leaf falls on his nose. He has very sen­si­tive skin.” To think until that moment, I had­n’t known it. She is becom­ing quite the writer her­self these days, I think inspired by my tire­some­ly con­stant chat­ter about my week in Devon. Yes­ter­day, as she was adding to a sto­ry she’s been work­ing on all week, we had the fol­low­ing exchange, which for some rea­son filled me with joy.

“Mum­my, you can’t real­ly say that stone steps are ‘rick­ety,’ can you?”
“No, but you can say they are ‘well-worn.’ ”
“Oh, thank you so much.”

I’m off to pro­duce spaghet­ti bolog­nese with plen­ty of white wine and whole milk and just a hint of nut­meg, plus wilt­ed pea sprouts and fresh apple­sauce. It’s autumn.