hip hip hooray

When­ev­er I think I have a busy sched­ule, I have to think of what the Queen — age 86! —  has been through in the past week!  The Dia­mond Jubilee, focus of every­one’s atten­tion in this coun­try, cel­e­bra­tion of her 60 years on the throne, has come and gone.  We bell­ringers at St Mary’s played our part, ring­ing on the Sun­day.  Some of my favorite peo­ple in all the world.

Then I came home and pro­duced a burg­er feast so our friends the Cham­ber­lains could come to celebrate.

Thank good­ness Lucy is a whizz at pud­dings.  Rice Krispie treats as you see, ice cream cake, rasp­ber­ries.  Beautiful.

The poor Queen had to stand in the dri­ving, cold rain that is Eng­lish sum­mer, all up and down the Thames, try­ing to look enthu­si­as­tic about a thou­sand boats going past her.  I kept think­ing of the word “frit­ta­ta,” which I lat­er real­ized was a crazy com­bi­na­tion of the words “flotil­la” and “regat­ta.”  One of the boats con­tained eight new­ly-cast bells, ring­ing away on the riv­er in hon­or of the Jubilee.

The next day saw her “cel­e­brat­ing” at a huge con­cert at Buck­ing­ham Palace (the poor Prince Philip hav­ing suc­cumbed to a blad­der infec­tion and gone in some relief to hos­pi­tal).  The Tues­day was anoth­er “cel­e­bra­tion” at St Paul’s Cathe­dral and who knows what else, and final­ly the long Bank Hol­i­day week­end of par­ties was over and she could put her feet up with a gin and ton­ic.  Hold the ton­ic, one imagines.

I was exhaust­ed just watch­ing it on telly!

My qui­et life has been enlivened with a new chal­lenge: cook­ing with­out my beloved Aga!  In the week before the Jubilee, the weath­er turned oppres­sive­ly hot, the sun beat­ing down through our glass kitchen ceil­ing.  This in com­bi­na­tion with the south-fac­ing back win­dows and the con­stant intense heat from the Aga made it absolute­ly unbear­able to be any­where near the kitchen.  Avery and John insist­ed.  We turned it off.  And I have had to learn to cook with­out it, on a small two-burn­er induc­tion hob, and a microwave that turns into a reg­u­lar oven.

A sum­mer menu to die for… and requir­ing very lit­tle kitchen cook­ing!  Chick­en and feta burgers…

Accom­pa­nied by…

Four-Col­or Salad

(serves 4)

2 red bell pep­pers, chopped small

2 hand­fuls sug­ar snap peas, sliced small

1/2 red onion, diced

1 tin black beans, rinsed thoroughly

6 ears sweet­corn, ker­nels cut off

2 cloves gar­lic, minced with a sprin­kling of lemon juice and sea salt

fresh black pepper

dress­ing: 1 part lemon juice, 1 part horse­rad­ish to 3 parts olive oil, 1 tbsp mayonnaise

This sal­ad is sim­ply beau­ti­ful.  Mix all the veg­eta­bles togeth­er.  The rea­son­ing behind minc­ing the gar­lic WITH lemon juice and salt is that the acid­i­ty and sodi­um sim­ply pul­ver­ize the gar­lic to a much fin­er mush than can be achieved plain, per­fect for a raw sal­ad. Toss with the dressing.

And we’ve been on an out­doorsy adven­ture: aspara­gus pick­ing!  At Gar­sons Farm in Sur­rey, a short half-hour dri­ve from our house and a very sur­pris­ing expe­ri­ence.  At first you think there is noth­ing to pick.

As far as the eye can see, a dry, bor­ing field!  But then you pick up your plas­tic bag and begin walk­ing, and lo and behold…

We picked four pounds before we knew it!  And came home to a four-day aspara­gus feast so that I could write my lat­est piece for Hand­Picked Nation.  Sim­ply sauteed, tossed into a stir­fry, pureed into a creamy soup, driz­zled with hollandaise.

Final­ly, thor­ough­ly sick of aspara­gus, we turned to my new favorite friend, the deep fry­er.  What could be more fun on a sum­mer evening than gath­er­ing togeth­er a big hunk of lard — yes!  lard!- and a vat of rape­seed oil, and any food­stuff that does­n’t move, and fry­ing it all?  What an adven­ture.  Mush­rooms?  Check

Had­dock and red bream?  Check.

And final­ly, the piece de resis­tance… French fries.  Super-thin, salty, triple-cooked accord­ing to the great Hes­ton Blu­men­thal’s recipe (sim­pli­fied here by me).

Per­fect French Fries

(serves 4)

1 pound pota­toes — King Edward, Desiree, any floury pota­to will do — cut into French-fry shapes

1 cup/227g lard

enough veg­etable oil to reach the required lev­el in your fryer

sea salt to taste

Run the cut pota­toes under run­ning water for 5 min­utes to remove starch, then place in enough water to cov­er and sim­mer for 20 min­utes.  Place on a rack and put in the freez­er for an hour.

Remove from freez­er and fry at 130C/260F for 7 min­utes.  Put back in the freez­er for anoth­er hour.

Remove from freez­er and just before you want to eat, fry at 190C/375F for about six min­utes (depend­ing on the thick­ness of the pota­to pieces) until gold­en brown.  Drain on kitchen paper and salt liberally!

Now, of course if one were Eng­lish, one would douse all this with malt vine­gar, or brown sauce.  If one were tru­ly Amer­i­can, one would douse all this with ketchup.  If Bel­gian, may­on­naise.  But being me, I like a nice side dish of home­made tartare sauce to com­ple­ment all the crunchy delights.

Tartare Sauce

(serves 4)

1 cup mayonnaise

1/4 mediu, red onion, minced

1 tbsp chopped capers

1 tbsp chopped cornichons

1 tsp fresh, chopped tarragon

1 tsp fresh, chopped chives

juice of 1 lemon or lime

plen­ty of fresh black pepper

Mix all and chill.  Per­fect with all fish, on a burg­er, with fries of course.

I asked Avery to take the pho­to before I stirred it all up because it was so pretty.

Now of course one would not want to ingest lard every day (much less the very tempt­ing brick of some­thing called “beef drip­ping” I also brought home for future fry­ing adven­tures!).  But if you’re going to eat roast­ed beets and sauteed cour­gettes and bean sal­ad and rock­et every oth­er day, once in awhile you must get down and dirty and FRY.  My, how we enjoyed our­selves, every­one pitch­ing in with spe­cial tal­ents — me cook­ing, John tast­ing!  And Avery’s pho­tog­ra­phy?  She is SO talented.

Today I worked off all the fries with a mam­moth spell of bell­ring­ing.  The trou­ble with acquir­ing a new skill is that it comes in many lay­ers, on many lev­els.  First you crawl, then you walk, then you run, and the next thing you know, every­one around you expects a Marathon!  A year ago I had nev­er even made a sound, prac­tic­ing as we do with the clap­pers mut­ed until we are good enough not to annoy the neigh­bors.  Then I made a sound and took my place in the band, and prompt­ly was expect­ed to be up and at ’em every Sun­day morn­ing at ser­vices (nerve-wrack­ing at the best of times).

But that seems like a dream now!  Then came “call changes” where I had to be able to lis­ten to instruc­tions and change the order in which I rang.  Then came the first method, mem­o­rized changes in the pat­terns, called “Plain Hunt.”  How I strug­gled, for months and months of the year.  Final­ly, it was mas­tered on five bells, where­upon instant­ly I had to learn it on sev­en bells.  Now this week­end, a new method, “Grand­sire Dou­bles” on six bells.  Yes­ter­day I burned both hands with an out-of-con­trol rope.  Will it nev­er stop?

No, there will always be new things to learn.  A week from today I will make my first attempt at what is called a “Quar­ter Peal,” in which six of us gath­er at an appoint­ed time and try to ring a method through all its per­mu­ta­tions, which will take about 45 min­utes. STRAIGHT, no stop­ping, no mis­takes!  The rea­son I say “attempt” is that it often goes wrong and the “Quar­ter Peal” is not achieved.  I could­n’t bear it if this hap­pened!  So I have been prac­tic­ing like crazy, but this does not stop me from feel­ing that I will spend the next sev­en days feel­ing that a guil­lo­tine is hang­ing over my head.  We shall see.

And how last week was enlivened by the arrival of our great friends from Amer­i­ca, the Lei­ths… Avery’s first friends, my first friends, when we moved here six years ago.  Three love­ly girls, won­der­ful parents.

Din­ners togeth­er, a shop­ping spree in Regen­t’s Street, lunch at our old favorite spot.  Lots and lots of laugh­ter.  One of the trou­bles of liv­ing in Lon­don — even more so than New York — is how like­ly it is that your beloved peo­ple will move away.  To Hong Kong, Chica­go, New York, Sin­ga­pore.  So often, Lon­don is mere­ly one of many stops a fam­i­ly will make, fol­low­ing its dad around on busi­ness.  We have to enjoy every­one as much as we can.

To think these girls were just lit­tle things when they met.  Young ladies now.

In the four weeks before we head “home” for the sum­mer, we are fac­ing a lec­ture, four plays, a din­ner par­ty, a food fes­ti­val and… I’m sure I’m for­get­ting some­thing.  Watch this space.