Lost Prop­er­ty redux

To begin with, I know this pho­to­graph does not ade­quate­ly rep­re­sent the sump­tious­ness (as long as you’re not veg­e­tar­i­an) of the pier­rade plat­ter of meats ready to grill, but it’s not too bad. John diag­noses some­thing like “not enough depth of field.” I’ll try again some­day, but in the mean­time, the thin-sliced sir­loin, duck breast mar­i­nat­ed in sea salt and cracked pep­per, and new sea­son aspara­gus, baguette slices to dip into the raclette cheese… the ele­ments are all there. It’s the most enter­tain­ing din­ner to eat, but don’t count on any mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion while you do it, because every­one’s con­cen­trat­ing on “Is that my duck bite?” and “When did you put on that salmon piece?” and try­ing to avoid the hot splat­ters. It was not the best way to cook aspara­gus, but it worked, so I’ve got to give some thought to how to make the veg­etable aspect of the expe­ri­ence bet­ter. Maybe more frag­ile veg are bet­ter: toma­toes, red pep­pers, Swiss chard? I don’t know. Mar­i­nate them all in sea­soned olive oil? Trust me to make some­thing that’s inher­ent­ly fat-free, fatty.

The next night we had some rat­ty, some­what bat­tered but charm­ing old teak fur­ni­ture, pur­chased by my clever hus­band on eBay, deliv­ered and placed in the gar­den, so spatch­cock chick­en hap­pened out there, in the sum­mery twi­light, to the accom­pa­ni­ment of (I’m not jok­ing) an ice cream truck behind the gar­den, and… live bag­pipes. I have no idea.

Spatch­cocked Grilled Chick­en with Herbs
(serves four eas­i­ly with left­overs for lunch)

1 large organ­ic chicken
2 tbsps olive oil
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
hand­ful chives, chopped
hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped
1 large stem rose­mary, leaves removed and chopped
1 stalk lemon­grass, out­er leaf dis­card­ed, the stalk minced
sprin­kle hot chilliflakes

To spatch­cock the chick­en, lay it on a cut­ting board breast down and feel in the cen­ter for the back­bone. Cut front to back along the back­bone on each side of the bone, and remove. Turn the chick­en over and spread it out, cut­ting the par­son­’s nose off (the nob of fat where the head was!) and smash­ing the chick­en flat, cut­ting through any fat you need to, in order to get it com­plete­ly flat.

Mix all the oth­er ingre­di­ents and smear mix­ture all over the chick­en, front and back. Mar­i­nate till at room tem­per­a­ture (per­haps an hour).

Heat grill to 400F degrees. Grill chick­en back side down for 20 min­utes. When you check it at this point, if the back is get­ting too black­ened, turn the grill down and let the heat sta­bi­lize before you cook on the breast side. Grill breast side down for a fur­ther 20 min­utes, or until the dark meat reg­is­ters 170F with a meat thermometer.

*************

The meat sim­ply fell off the bone and we fell upon it. What a love­ly, quick, sum­mery way to get a whole chick­en cooked. At least an hour short­er cook­ing time than I would ever ROAST a chick­en. Love­ly with whole red pep­pers grilled along­side till their skins black­ened (rub them with olive oil before putting them on the grill and grill for the last 20 min­utes of the chick­en cook­ing). Plus we had warm chick­pea, feta and rock­et sal­ad, and a sliced avo­ca­do in lemon juice. Yum yum.

For our last day of free­dom before school start­ed up again, we found our­selves at Rich­mond’s Ham House, sort of a yawn as far as state­ly homes go, but with a love­ly, love­ly gar­den and maze (and a dairy with very creep­i­ly believ­able cast iron cow feet, as you see) and a gor­geous cafe in the 17th cen­tu­ry orangery, cov­ered, COV­ERED with wis­taria. Almost unbe­liev­able as a vista. I think what makes the house a yawn is that it was only one of many prop­er­ties owned by the fam­i­ly, and no one could be both­ered to take it on, so the Nation­al Trust got it. It felt emo­tion­al­ly aban­doned, and emp­ty, yet cared for. Rather like a Vic­to­ri­an child with a moth­er in the attic and father dal­ly­ing with the nan­ny. If you know what I mean. Which is nothing.

And we were able to check in, after­ward, on the progress of the near­by Peter­sham Nurs­eries’ fight against clo­sure, against ridicu­lous accu­sa­tions of the traf­fic brought to the vil­lage by the restau­rant. In this eco­nom­ic cli­mate! The idea of clos­ing a suc­cess­ful restau­rant because it’s too suc­cess­ful and its suc­cess brings TOO many peo­ple call­ing? Sim­ply out­ra­geous. All luck to them. All they can do is wait for judgment.

Today was one of those days where I suf­fered ago­nies of night­mares in the wee hours, and thus woke to a feel­ing of rea­son­less anx­i­ety. The sub­ject of my bad dreams? A bizarre expe­ri­ence where­in I saw a word typed out, and yet could pro­nounce only a wrong, off ver­sion of it. The exam­ple I remem­ber clear­ly is see­ing the word “Flesh” and being able to utter only “Irish.” See what I mean? In my dream I could con­ceive of the rela­tion­ship between the real word and my mis­tak­en pro­nun­ci­a­tion, but I could not con­trol it. At times like that I should just get the hell out of bed, but such is my ingrained habit of appre­ci­at­ing a lie-in that I just could­n’t. Like wait­ing months for a movie date with your hus­band, and then in the first ten min­utes you can tell you HATE the film, but you don’t want to leave because you LOVE movies. And you were real­ly look­ing for­ward to it. But that dream threw me. What on earth can it mean?

So I got up in a fog, and for some com­plete­ly irra­tional rea­son, had one of the most pro­duc­tive days I can remem­ber in months. I edit­ed three chap­ters, wrote out a long list of the chap­ters to come, made name labels for all the guests expect­ed at Fri­day’s Lost Prop­er­ty lun­cheon, wrote the copy for the school newslet­ter, emailed the sec­re­tary for a crime records check on a new vol­un­teer. And that was just the morn­ing and afternoon!

This evening I saun­tered through the breezy, blue ear­ly evening to my first Par­ents’ League meet­ing at Avery’s school. This is a post I now hold because of my new, exalt­ed posi­tion as Head of Lost Prop­er­ty, and I may tell you now, that is one hell of an intim­i­dat­ing table of women. And one man (poor fel­low). Sev­en­teen of Lon­don’s best and bright­est (and then there was me), gath­ered around under the watch­ful oil-on-can­vas gazes of many for­mer head mis­tress­es, crowned over all with the most per­fect, elab­o­rate, sil­very-white plas­ter ceil­ing­work, and sur­round­ed on all four sides by floor to ceil­ing antique books, com­plete with teak and brass lad­ders to swing all round the room.

Good­ness. I am well known to have a sort of prob­lem with female author­i­ty fig­ures, and there I was with sev­en­teen of them! And one man. The agen­da was dis­pensed with with alacrity and effi­cien­cy, I was duly elect­ed and sec­ond­ed (guess they nev­er tracked down that GBH in 1979), my pre­de­ces­sor was praised and raised to her new post as Chair­man of the League. It’s a bit fright­en­ing: the past three Chair­men of the League have come from their most recent post as… Head of Lost Property.

Just love­ly. I did­n’t embar­rass myself, every­one was kind and friend­ly. Plans were made for cof­fees to plan fur­ther bits of bril­liance to come. I came away feel­ing exalt­ed, respon­si­ble, a bit in denial at the intense cool­ness that is Avery’s school. The wit around that table was pal­pa­ble, every­one lis­ten­ing to every com­ment with a view to con­tribute a clever response, an intel­li­gent and fun­ny sug­ges­tion. It’s the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of qual­i­ties in a cer­tain sort of woman (com­plete­ly rec­og­niz­able on either side of the Atlantic): hav­ing achieved some­thing glo­ri­ous on her own before becom­ing a moth­er, this type of woman brings all that ener­gy, all that gen­eros­i­ty and bril­liance, to her child’s life and the school she goes to. A for­mi­da­ble group of ladies. At least I did­n’t throw up or hic­cup, but my stom­ach did growl a bit as din­ner­time came and went. I got a ride home from the new Chair and sim­ply fell upon a plate of left­over spatch­cocked chick­en with home­made pesto.

So the les­son is some­thing like this: you can start out a day feel­ing nau­se­at­ing­ly sun­ny and pos­i­tive, and accom­plish exact­ly noth­ing. Or you can take your black and blue mood, sit down at your desk and try to jus­ti­fy your exis­tence. I said that to my friend Gigi today and we both sighed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and agreed that there are some days when just emp­ty­ing and refill­ing the dish­wash­er is about all that can be done. But when a day like today hap­pens, it gives me a bit of hope.

And did I hear you say you need­ed some­thing to read? I just fin­ished The Unit­ed States of Arugu­la: How We Became A Gourmet Nation by the bril­liant writer David Kamp, and it’s a hoot. I’ll give you a hint: the chap­ter I fin­ished writ­ing this week is all about arugula/rocket, and this book was Way, Way Bet­ter than any­thing I could ever write. You’ll see your eat­ing and cook­ing life flash in front of you with Kam­p’s tales of The Gal­lop­ing Gourmet, Julia Child, Alice Waters, Craig Clai­borne, Gael Greene. A roller-coast­er tale but one writ­ten with a lot of humil­i­ty and just enough opti­mism. I feel quite opti­mistic when my child’s best friend asked from me for Christ­mas a bot­tle of aged bal­sam­ic vine­gar. Either that, or we’re approach­ing Armaged­don. You decide.