of Lords and roy­al joints

My good­ness, there is some­thing in the air that is caus­ing mas­sive sneeze dra­mas here in my house­hold. Our gar­den is coat­ed with some lit­tle evil-look­ing yel­low flo­rets and all the pink and white blos­soms (again, my gar­den­ing exper­tise is show­ing now) that made the neigh­bor­hood trees so love­ly to look at are now air­borne and as such… unpleas­ant. I know my rela­tions in Iowa who called recent­ly to report a post-East­er bliz­zard will growl when they read of my dis­com­fort with osten­ta­tious spring. But there you have it.

We con­tin­ue with our cred­it-crunch hol­i­day, and I can hearti­ly rec­om­mend Stonor Park, just a few min­utes from Hen­ley-on-Thames and quite the most roman­tic coun­try set­ting you can imag­ine. The same fam­i­ly have lived in it con­tin­u­ous­ly for 800 years. I am not mak­ing this up. John and I paid assid­u­ous atten­tion to the guide’s reportage on cur­rent avail­able males to mar­ry off to Avery, but alas there’s only a tod­dler son (Avery put her foot down), and a baby expect­ed this sum­mer (which could be a girl any­way, so what’s the point, she won’t inher­it any­thing). A fal­low deer park, and just look at this house. The con­tents gave a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse of the life of a very active Catholic fam­i­ly in Eng­land (the pho­tos of the cur­rent Lord Camoy with var­i­ous popes was my first clue). While I found the end­less sort of 18th cen­tu­ry por­traits a yawn, the gallery full of glass cas­es hous­ing ephemera were touch­ing and love­ly: let­ters com­mand­ing the Camoys to attend a Thanks­giv­ing ser­vice to observe the Prince of Wales’s recov­ery from typhoid, a seat­ing plan for a din­ner par­ty includ­ing Roth­schilds and Princess­es from var­i­ous Euro­pean coun­tries, a hand let­tered thank-you note from Beat­rix Potter.

And duck­lings! The rest of the tour — archi­tec­ture, art, his­to­ry — was entire­ly eclipsed for Avery by the pres­ence in the for­mal gar­den of a fam­i­ly of ten duck­lings accom­pa­nied by a MOST atten­tive moth­er duck. She all but chased them through the plant­i­ngs of hydrangeas, mag­no­lias, fruit trees, top­i­ary and hol­ly bush­es, in utter hap­pi­ness. At one point she dis­cov­ered a baby duck had been left behind in an orna­men­tal pond, and she and two lit­tle French boys dashed around try­ing to coax it out of the water but suc­ceed­ing only in scar­ing the lit­tle thing out of its feath­ers. Final­ly it escaped and was reunit­ed with its irre­spon­si­ble duck moth­er, and the dra­ma was over.

At home in the evening Avery was per­form­ing her usu­al ver­sion of every child’s favorite occu­pa­tion — look­ing in the refrig­er­a­tor to see if any­thing more inter­est­ing has mate­ri­al­ized since the last time she looked — and there on a shelf at eye lev­el was… a duck. A butchered one, mind you, not look­ing at all duck-like, await­ing its trans­for­ma­tion into pier­rade tonight. Silence. Lat­er, at bed­time, she asked me what sort of duck it is that we eat. I was ready for her. “NOT, def­i­nite­ly NOT, a duck that has ever been a moth­er to ten lit­tle chicks. We eat two types of ducks, Gress­ing­ham and Ayles­bury, and I’m pret­ty sure both of them have white feath­ers, not the beau­ti­ful brown and gold feath­ers of the duck we saw today.” A sigh of relief. “Oh, thank good­ness,” she breathed. “I don’t real­ly like ducks who have white feath­ers, any­way.” So din­ner is safe. These nego­ti­a­tions are inter­mit­tent and fraught with ten­sion, and some are unsuc­cess­ful, but it appears that pier­rade is on for this evening, at least.

John is off to a screen­ing of a film pro­duced by some intrigu­ing peo­ple who are inter­est­ed in intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights and, inci­den­tal­ly, inter­est­ed in HIM. Could a job be in his future? I must say I would nev­er have pre­dict­ed that my techy, mon­ey­ish, wheel­in’ and dealin’ hus­band would ever have been offered a job by some touchy-feely arty types, but hey: we live in inter­est­ing times. The film is called “Team Qatar” and fol­lows the adven­tures of a group of Mid­dle East­ern high school debaters. Who knew? I mused to Avery, “I won­der what these peo­ple are like, these pro­duc­ers,” and she said loy­al­ly, “Very good peo­ple, if they are inter­est­ed in Dad­dy.” Watch this space. John actu­al­ly men­tioned my favorite nov­el­ist, Lau­rie Col­win, to them to ask what the pro­ce­dure would be in secur­ing the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights to her nov­els, and they KNEW about her, unheard of! I like them already.

Avery and I, mean­while, shall mosey on over to the V&A for our sort of semi-annu­al pil­grim­age to the per­ma­nent fash­ion exhi­bi­tion. I always get a charge out of South Kens­ing­ton, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the V&A in whose mam­moth and old-fash­ioned library I spent so many years study­ing, writ­ing my PhD all those years ago. Per­haps John’s new friends would like to make a film about my dis­ser­ta­tion? Hmmm…

Our East­er was like all East­ers: filled with choco­late, an egg hunt, and a baked ham. Actu­al­ly, this last is the under­state­ment of a cook­ing life­time, I’m not exag­ger­at­ing to say. On Thurs­day we acquired a pos­i­tive jew­el of a gam­mon joint, the best end of a joint that Mr Sten­ton, my local butch­er, assured me was his own East­er din­ner. “No, no, that’s all right, you go on and take it, I’ll have fish and chips, no mat­ter at all…” We car­ried the joint home like we car­ried new­born Avery home from her first pedi­a­tri­cian’s appoint­ment in the West Vil­lage of New York City. Thereupon:

Baked East­er Glouces­ter Old Spot Gammon
(serves EVERYONE!)

1 3 kg (6‑pound) smoked gam­mon joint
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup Dijon mustard

Place the gam­moin joint in a stove- and oven-proof casse­role and add water to cov­er. Boil for 20 min­utes, skim­ming the bub­bling scum from the water. Drain, rinse and dry the joint with paper tow­els. Place a VERY large piece of heavy-duty alu­minum foil in the casse­role and place the joint on it, cut side up. Mix hon­ey and mus­tard and pour over the entire joint. Wrap the joint in the foil as tight­ly as possible.

Bake at 160C, 325F for three hours. Then unwrap the joint, place cut side down in the con­sid­er­able cook­ing juices and bake at 200C, 400F for a fur­ther half hour. Remove from oven and cov­er with foil for 15 min­utes, then carve and serve.

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You have, we have NEV­ER tast­ed any cut of meat so smoky, so suc­cu­lent, so evoca­tive of the hol­i­day, and believe you me, I have been cook­ing baked ham for East­er since you first wrote longhand.

We ate at about 3, and I can assure you that by 9 p.m. we were all quite peck­ish, and a sand­wich on multi­grain arti­sanal bread with a good smear of more Dijon and a thick slice of red onion hit the spot. Then the fol­low­ing evening it was onto the fol­low­ing clas­sic pas­ta dish, light­ened up by my dear sis­ter and changed just a bit by me:

Spaghet­ti Carbonara
(serves 4)

8 oz dry spaghetti
1 1/2 cupes diced cooked ham (you know the one I mean!)
4 coves gar­lic, minced
1/2 cup grat­ed Pecori­no or Parme­san cheese
1/4 cup creme fraiche
3 tbsps light cream
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs, light­ly beaten
fresh ground pepper

About 15 min­utes before you want to eat, boil pas­ta accord­ing to direc­tions, about 10 min­utes. Drain over a bowl so you can reserve 1/2 cup of the cook­ing water. Set aside. In a large heavy skil­let, warm the ham and add the gar­lic, stir­ring over the flame until the gar­lic is JUST cooked but not burned. Add the pas­ta, toss well and take off the heat.

In a large bowl, mix the cheese, creme fraiche, creme, salt and eggs. Then add the reserved past water and whisk well. Pour over the ham and spaghet­ti in the skil­let and turn the heat up high for just long enough to toss the whole mix­ture togeth­er with tongs. Serve immediately.

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Quite the most home­made, creamy and yet light­ly smoky car­bonara ever. You will thank me, and with a huge rock­et sal­ad on the side, or new-sea­son aspara­gus, you have a meal. My sis­ter swears by adding peas to her car­bonara. I hate peas, but there you go. Up to you.

Now, it’s onto the home stretch as far as this hero­ic gam­mon joint goes. As soon as I make it, I will share with you my moth­er in law’s beloved recipe for “Unit­ed States Sen­ate Bean Soup,” a child­hood favorite of my hus­band’s and with my new­found love of all things beans, doubt­less to be one of my favorites too. At this point, your sol­id-gold, heir­loom, Slow Food, posh ham has become quite the most eco­nom­i­cal raw ingre­di­ent you could ever have imag­ined. Even lords have to watch their pen­nies, after all.