Life, Speed­ed Up

Why the silence, you ask? I shall explain. Since I last put vir­tu­al pen to paper for my blog, I have: bought a lacrosse stick and meltable mouth­guard, run unsuc­cess­ful­ly in a three-legged race, lost my cat (and found her again), eat­en brill (a fish I had nev­er before tast­ed) in three sep­a­rate recipes, found out that my vagabond uphol­ster­er is actu­al­ly dead, and dis­cov­ered that my oth­er cat, not the lost and found one, is aller­gic to… cat food, and had my street torn up and my water turned off. And I’ve had din­ner at the city’s best fish restau­rant and been tak­en to see “Romeo and Juli­et: The Bal­let.” (As Avery said, at least it was­n’t “The Musical.”)

As well, I’ve been to the last pri­ma­ry school Sports Day, the last pri­ma­ry school Sum­mer Con­cert, the last pri­ma­ry school Art Exhi­bi­tion, and have read aloud and had cri­tiqued my cook­book chap­ter on Moroc­can meat­balls. Plus I invit­ed my next door neigh­bors to din­ner only to find I’d dou­ble booked them anoth­er fam­i­ly entire­ly. And I have met the sev­er­al hun­dred girls and par­ents who will be our new school fam­i­ly next year, and fer­ried Avery to two hideous Offi­cial Roy­al Some­thing or Oth­er singing and vio­lin exams. She is quite sure she failed vio­lin, and frankly the day she takes the wretched instru­ment back to the shop will be a day too late in my book.

Sigh.

Seri­ous­ly. As you can see from the above beau­ti­ful pho­tographs, Avery came through the last Sports Day per­fect­ly well, not mind­ing when we were crushed in the three-legged race. And who were we crushed by? My hus­band and Avery’s friend Sophia, so that was galling. But it was a nice foxy day where when the sun was behind a cloud you rushed to bor­row a cardi­gan from some­one wise enough to bring two, and when the sun came back out, you smoth­ered. We brought an enor­mous pic­nic of shrimp with home­made cock­tail sauce, toma­to, moz­zarel­la and pesto sal­ad, smoked salmon sand­wich­es and… the piece de resis­tance… two pound of Eng­lish straw­ber­ries dipped in melt­ed choco­late. THAT was fun, not that I eat them, but Avery and I dipped them togeth­er and she had to test quite a few, I’ll tell you. “Well, I have to be sure they’re all right!” This adven­ture came at the end of the day that saw us at her new school, buy­ing said lacrosse stick and mouth­guard and sev­er­al gatril­lion pounds’ worth of oth­er essen­tial PE gear: the games skirt (what? I know, it sound­ed odd to me too), the trousers and match­ing hood­ie, the lacrosse socks and dance leo­tard and swim­ming “cos­tume” and white t‑shirts with the school logo… very impres­sive! A real mile­stone, and she was so gra­cious and grownup with the nice Irish lady who helped her find her sizes. Every time we go to the new school we’re more impressed with the seri­ous­ness and yet friend­li­ness of every­one involved.

And yes, we had a rene­gade cat. Tacy, who has always been the vis­it­ing type any­way, strolled out of the gar­den in the mid­dle of one super hot night (through a bed­room win­dow rather high up) with­out her ID tag and col­lar. Two ago­nis­ing days of search­ing ensued, with me walk­ing up and down the fronts of the hous­es whose gar­dens back onto our gar­den, knock­ing at gar­den-flat doors to see if any­one had seen “a gor­geous sleek tor­tie with one orange foot, one black foot, and aqua eyes.” Seen her? One dear lady called Pip­pa answered the door in her dress­ing gown and was quite shir­ty with me until I uttered the words “lost cat,” and then she all but dragged me in and could­n’t have been sweet­er. “Oh, I know Tacy,” she assured me. “A fre­quent vis­i­tor here, but I can’t say my Tilly is too fond of her vis­its. But then Tilly is an old gen­tle­woman of 16 and does­n’t like sur­pris­es. Don’t mind my dress­ing gown. I have just seen my hus­band off to our house in France and I can’t BEGIN to tell you how exhaust­ing it is, hav­ing him in the flat here. Sheer bliss send­ing him away again.”

But alas, none of this pro­duced Tacy. Pip­pa did, how­ev­er, pro­vide an ency­clo­pe­dic inven­to­ry of every cat in the street, on both sides of the gar­den, and indi­cat­ed which might let her pass and which would not. As well, she promised to enact the “Cat Neigh­bor­hood Watch” act which seems to oper­ate in my neck of the woods, and with­in an hour (I was out get­ting fly­ers lam­i­nat­ed) two lit­tle old ladies plus Pip­pa had come to offer their com­bined con­do­lences and deter­mi­na­tion to John, promis­ing to find Tacy ASAP. I ran off to my writ­ing class feel­ing utter­ly sick. “I hate to say it,” John said, “but she’s our high­est qual­i­ty cat, real­ly.” It’s true: she is friend­ly, good-look­ing, does­n’t beg for food, does­n’t fall off things and scare her­self, or chew off all her bel­ly fur or vom­it all over or run away when you try to pet her. Like SOME cats I could intro­duce you to.

Well, just before class began I got a rather inco­her­ent text from John, obvi­ous­ly typ­ing quick­ly: “Racy is home!” Well, she can be rather racy. And here’s what hap­pened. John saw an RSP­CA van in our street and thought there was just a chance… and sure enough, there she was! Wear­ing a paper col­lar say­ing that the RSP­CA had dealt with her and the own­ers need­ed to call an agency to have her microchip reg­is­tered in the UK. Fair enough. She had appar­ent­ly found her­self in gar­den sev­er­al doors down and beat­en on the lady’s gar­den win­dow to be let in! Thank good­ness it was the win­dow of a per­son who did not want a high-qual­i­ty tor­toise­shell cat, but also did­n’t NOT want one enough to, say, poi­son it. She mere­ly called the author­i­ties. So home Tacy/Racy came, none the worse for her adven­ture. And now firm­ly col­lared and tagged at all times, although she’s learned to take it off if she real­ly wants to. I’ve found it deposit­ed polite­ly on the lap of one of Avery’s dolls, and buried deep under Avery’s bed cov­ers, and most amus­ing­ly, set into my bed­side water glass. That is one fun­ny cat.

In the midst of all the dra­ma, John and I had din­ner out at the local fab­u­lous restau­rant, The Brack­en­bury, where I had brill for the first time. Total­ly sim­ply sauteed, on a bed of bean sal­ad made with some­thing else I had nev­er had: bor­lot­ti beans. Love­ly! Then the next day I was tak­en to din­ner with Avery by one of her chums and moth­er for the child’s birth­day, to J Sheekey, quite the most divine fish estab­lish­ment in Lon­don. And there I saw brill on the menu again and thought, why not. This time it was on a bed of new aspara­gus and driz­zled with a mous­se­line sauce which sound­ed very exot­ic. Actu­al­ly it turned out to be noth­ing more or less than hol­landaise mixed at the last moment with whipped dou­ble cream.

So it was but the work of a moment this week to acquire some brill of my own and pro­duce a com­bi­na­tion of these two dish­es, with a side of sauteed steamed new pota­toes. Can I tell you how pleased I am at how this din­ner turned out? And Avery and John devoured every bite, no one com­plained about any­thing, and the left­over sauce was just fine on broc­col­i­ni a few nights lat­er. Let me tell you more. You can do the beans, aspara­gus and pota­toes ahead of time, pret­ty much, and leave them sit while you pre­pare the fish and the sauce. I’m not sure I’d be much good at pro­duc­ing this for more than about two extra peo­ple, but for our lit­tle fam­i­ly it was DIVINE.

Bor­lot­ti Bean Salad
(serves three)

3 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 small red onion, minced
juice of 1 lemon
1 soup-size can bor­lot­ti beans
hand­ful each of fresh mint and flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped roughly

In a medi­um skil­let, heat the olive oil and very GEN­TLY fry the gar­lic and onion, then add the lemon juice and beans and stir over medi­um heat till the onions are soft. Remove to a bowl and add more oil or lemon juice to taste, and to cre­ate the sen­sa­tion of a soft, unc­tu­ous dress­ing. Set aside and use the same skil­let uncleaned for:

Sauteed Steamed Char­lotte Potatoes
(serves three)

1/2 pound Char­lotte potatoes
1 tbsp but­ter, 1 tsp olive oil
sea salt and pep­per to taste

In a dou­ble boil­er, steam the pota­toes for about 25 min­utes or until per­fect­ly soft. Cut them into bite-size pieces if they are not already. Heat the but­ter and oil in the bean skil­let till quite hot and add the pota­toes. Stir­ring occa­sion­al­ly, crisp the pota­toes nice­ly and salt and pep­per to taste. These can be removed and set aside in a serv­ing bowl along­side the beans. Now in the same dou­ble boil­er, prepare:

Steamed New Eng­lish Asparagus
(serves three)

Bring water to a boil in the dou­ble boil­er and add the aspara­gus which you’ve snapped at the vul­ner­a­ble points on the stem and skimmed a bit of rough stem off with a car­rot peel­er. Steam the aspara­gus JUST until it smells good, and is bright green, if you like it to have a lit­tle bite, and longer if you like it soft. Remove to a nice pret­ty place and set aside along­side the pota­toes and beans.

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Now you can go about your busi­ness telling your daugh­ter how won­der­ful she was on Sports Day and clean­ing the lit­ter­box, until about 10 min­utes before you’re ready to eat. Then…

Quick Hol­landaise Sauce (turned into Mous­se­line if you like)
(serves about six, 1 1/4 cups)

2 egg yolks
2 tbsps boil­ing water
1 cup but­ter (two sticks), melt­ed and hot
2 tbsps lemon juice
sea salt to taste

Put the egg yolks in the blender of food proces­sor and blend at low speed just to mix. Then, keep­ing the blender going, add the boil­ing water and then the but­ter, VERY slow­ly! Just a thin stream. Add the lemon juice and salt, keep­ing the machine going all the time. Voila.

Now, if you want to turn this already per­fect sauce into the more fes­tive mous­se­line, fold in gen­tly about 1/2 cup whipped dou­ble cream RIGHT before serv­ing. Don’t add it ahead of time or the sauce will get run­ny. Oth­er­wise, you can keep the plain hol­landaise just at room tem­per­a­ture while you prepare:

Pan-Fried Brill
(serves 3)

2 whole brill fish, fil­let­ed assid­u­ous­ly by your fishmonger
3 tbsps butter
sprin­kle sea salt
fresh­ly ground black pepper

Run the fil­lets under cold water and rinse well, then pat dry with kitchen paper tow­els. In a large skil­let, melt the but­ter and get it quite hot but not brown. Add the fil­lets skin side down and cook for about 4 min­utes, bast­ing with the hot but­ter. At the VERY last minute before serv­ing, turn onto the oth­er side and cook just for a minute.

To serve: lay the aspara­gus on each plate, then top with the fish fil­lets and place a gen­er­ous dol­lop of hol­landaise over all. Add a spoon­ful of bean sal­ad and a spoon­ful of pota­toes and… you’re in business.

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I will tell you: the per­fect din­ner, tru­ly. I was so proud of myself! It was just like both restau­rants and I had the fun of doing it myself.

So let’s see, oth­er than that, what else has been hap­pen­ing? Actu­al­ly, what else COULD have been hap­pen­ing? “Romeo and Juli­et” was tru­ly spec­tac­u­lar­ly love­ly, so do go if you pos­si­bly can. The sad­dest pas de deux at the end where Romeo tries to recre­ate his first dance with Juli­et, only this time she is a dead, limp weight in his arms. Heartbreaking!

John’s been on a very strange eBay kick: he decid­ed we need­ed a drinks trol­ley (have you ever had one? nei­ther have I), so off he went bid­ding to his heart’s con­tent and final­ly got a love­ly cheap veneer and stain­less steel one which he has pro­ceed­ed to art-direct with fan­cy prop gin, prop Scotch and prop ton­ic water. Then he bought a sil­ver plate tea-seat that “if it were the real design­er, would cost a LOT of mon­ey,” he assured me. I nev­er make tea. Then I thought he’d kill poor Hermione last night when she slept on his com­put­er and can­celled his bid for an ice buck­et. Per­spec­tive, please? But the recep­tion room is look­ing love­ly. Except for…

The miss­ing sofa and bench. Remem­ber them? The cats peed on them and scratched them and gen­er­al­ly made it high­ly like­ly that they would appear some­day with their knees bro­ken by their father. Then we found Ye Olde Eng­lish Uphol­ster­er, who came to our house so charm­ing­ly and helped us choose durable yet love­ly fab­rics and had all sorts of clever ideas for help­ing us save mon­ey. Chief among which, as it turns out, was sim­ply nev­er doing the job, nev­er return­ing my phone calls, nev­er being at the shop when we stopped in, and, insult to injury, it turns out he’s… dead. I wish I were mak­ing this up. Final­ly after four months of wait­ing, we got a call from some sur­vivor or such of the poor man who broke the sor­ry news and then com­pound­ed it by con­fess­ing that the mate­r­i­al we liked had been dis­con­tin­ued. It was not clear from his voice which tragedy was the greater.

So today we stopped by again and brought home sev­er­al books of fab­ric. Can I tell you, from my secret heart, and don’t tell John… I real­ly don’t care. That much. As long as it is nice qual­i­ty and will stand up to pets and chil­dren, and does­n’t clash hor­ri­bly with any­thing else we own, I don’t have my heart in the whole debate. Isn’t that awful. I fake it for John, that and look­ing over his shoul­der at all the poten­tial trea­sures we could own from eBay and feign­ing inter­est in umbrel­la stands, nest­ing side tables, the lot. Poor man. Luck­i­ly his moth­er arrives on Tues­day of next week and she can com­mis­er­ate. If only my inte­ri­or-design hap­py moth­er could be here as well! It’s as if he inher­it­ed from MY moth­er all her home inte­ri­or inter­ests, and I got his moth­er’s cook­ing spoon. Odd.

Oh, and do you need, dur­ing these hap­py June weeks, a cou­ple of cool sal­ads that are super easy to make? Try these. I invent­ed them both in that mood of “there must be some­thing I can make out of all these things I have in my fridge.”

Scal­lop, Beet­root and Goats Cheese Salad
(serves four for lunch, or as a din­ner starter)

1 tbsp olive oil, chilli infused if you like spice
1 lb sea scal­lops, mus­cle removed (and roe­less, if you’re me)
hand­ful cilantro (corian­der), hand­ful pars­ley, chopped
6 small beet­roots, roast­ed, peeled and quartered
how­ev­er much goats cheese you like, fla­vored or not
juice of half a lemon
sea salt and pep­per to taste
more olive oil for drizzling

Heat the oil in a skil­let and quick­ly sear the scal­lops over very high heat, turn­ing fre­quent­ly with tongs and try­ing not to break them up (but it’s not a crime if you do). When they are just cooked through (per­haps 3 min­utes), pop them into a large-ish bowl, pour­ing any extra olive oil over them. Throw in the herbs and the beets and mix well, then crum­ble the goats cheese over top. Driz­zle with the lemon juice, sprin­kle with salt and pep­per and driz­zle over the oil. Toss light­ly. This is per­fect with baguette slices, light­ly toasted.

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Then there’s:

Lentil Sal­ad with Red Pep­per and Onion, Pinenuts and Mint
(serves six-ish)

250 grams green lentils (about a cup)
1 red pep­per, diced
1 red onion, diced
1 cup pinenuts, toast­ed or not
hand­ful mint, chopped
juice of one lime
driz­zle bal­sam­ic vinegar
olive oil to taste

Cook the lentils in plen­ty of salt­ed water until just soft (maybe 30 min­utes). Drain and rinse well and place in a large bowl. Add every­thing else, and test for the amount of dress­ing you have in the bot­tom. If you want more (to soak up with more baguettes?), add more lime juice and more olive oil, rely­ing rather more on the oil so it does­n’t get too tart. Divine.

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Well, I think I’m caught up. We just came back from the dis­tress­ing­ly sweaty school Art Exhi­bi­tion where Avery’s draw­ing graced the cov­er, and she has been soak­ing in a nice cool bath while I talked to you. John’s prob­a­bly been bid­ding on a leop­ard-print chan­de­lier or a cof­fee table made entire­ly of cat skele­tons held togeth­er with string, so I’d bet­ter check on him. Oh, but one last sto­ry: Avery and I got turned out of a tube sta­tion when it closed for “sig­nal fail­ure” and found our­selves instead on a bus yes­ter­day, with a very upset lit­tle woman who was clear­ly lost and also clear­ly not ter­ri­bly famil­iar with the Eng­lish lan­guage. I rec­og­nized her accent and we end­ed up speak­ing in French, hers from Gene­va and mine suf­fer­ing from neglect, but we got along all right. She final­ly stopped sniff­ing after I reas­sured her that she head­ed in the right direc­tion, that we’d get off at the same stop. We fend­ed off the friend­ly inter­ests of a large man with lots of bling who was sure that if he shout­ed and ges­tured pro­fuse­ly, her com­mand of the lan­guage would improve.

Final­ly, just as we got to our stop, I said, “I’m cer­tain­ly sor­ry the train sta­tion closed and you had to go out of your way for no rea­son.” And do you know what she said? “Every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son, even if we know not what it is. We see a leaf fall, and it seems for no rea­son. But some­where there is a blade of grass that is wait­ing to be pro­tect­ed from the hot sun, and the leaf falls there. We do not see the rea­son, but that does not mean it is not there.” Very nice…