of princess­es, hors­es and celeriac

We saw Zara Phillips! Yes, indeed, the star of Hel­lo! mag­a­zine, the BBC’s new­ly-crowned “Sports Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year,” and last but not least, a real-live Princess (although some­thing tells me her moth­er, Princess Anne, declined to give her chil­dren titles? must look that up), was at the Horse Show at Olympia yes­ter­day. I must say I have always a bit dis­count­ed her, think­ing she prob­a­bly coast­ed to the top. But now that I know bet­ter, from Avery’s expe­ri­ences strug­gling to learn to trot, then to can­ter, final­ly to jump, and to jump ever high­er, I can say with cer­tain­ty that one coasts nowhere in the horse world. Being a Princess does not keep your horse from knock­ing down a fence, nor does it help you to be the fastest rid­er against the clock. So I was pret­ty thrilled to see her. Avery near­ly jumped out of her skin. And she’s beau­ti­ful in per­son, with a real glow. She and her horse Toy­town were real­ly a joy to see.

We picked Avery up at school yes­ter­day to hear all sorts of excit­ing news. The four hous­es at school (Pot­ter, Nightin­gale, Franklin and Avery’s own Curie) were com­pet­ing at assem­bly in a Quiz­mas­ter-ish pro­gramme. Avery had spent all the din­ner hour the night before ask­ing to be quizzed, and I’m here to tell you the child knows a lot of weird stuff. Strange sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge, like that, in fact, the egg came first, because it was hatched by a dinosaur, but turned out to be a chick­en. I have to feel sor­ry for that dinosaur. Can you imag­ine, going to Dinosaurs R Us, shop­ping for clothes, buy­ing a crib, get­ting all excit­ed for your baby dinosaur, and the egg hatch­es to reveal… a chick­en? Bum­mer. Much worse, even, than buy­ing for a girl and get­ting a boy. Chicken.

But I digress. My point is, at pick­up she report­ed hav­ing won the match for Curie! Cool. Plus a real­ly stel­lar report card for end-of-term. What a troop­er. This being the child who was prac­ti­cal­ly writ­ten off in math­e­mat­ics by her New York school. I can’t tell you how proud we are. The frus­trat­ing thing with Avery is that we don’t get much time to be proud of a thing, or excit­ed, because right around the cor­ner is anoth­er thing to get proud and excit­ed for. I should­n’t let that hap­pen, because she real­ly deserves to be thrilled at each new achievement.

So she shed her hor­rid uni­form, shout­ed, “I’m free!” and hopped into a taxi with us to be tak­en to the Horse Show. And what fun it was. There were the usu­al stun­ning­ly high and scary jumps, and the usu­al dres­sage per­for­mances, but then there were two events that real­ly made the whole show, for me. One was called the “Pony Club Mini-Major Relay,” fea­tur­ing one pro­fes­sion­al grownup rid­er, like Ellen Whitak­er, and paired with a lit­tle tiny Pony Club child, in this case a lit­tle girl called Rosie, I think. The con­cept is that the course is filled with two sets of jumps, one big and one small. The pro­fes­sion­al rid­er starts out, against the clock, deter­mined not to knock over any jumps. Just as she approach­es her last jump, a ref­er­ee sig­nals to the lit­tle rid­er to begin HER round. Fas­ci­nat­ing to see the lit­tle ones impres­sive­ly accom­plished, even in the com­pa­ny of some real­ly famous rid­ers. Hap­pi­ly for the fem­i­nists among us, Ellen and her lit­tle friend came top, over pairs of man and boy, and man and girl, and woman and boy! It must have been the crown­ing glo­ry of that lit­tle girl’s life so far. She then got to ride in the San­ta sleigh with Ellen in the Christ­mas pageant at the end of the afternoon.

The sec­ond most adorable event was the dog jump­ing! They call it “dog agili­ty,” but that’s just the Eng­lish try­ing to lend grav­i­tas and dig­ni­ty to what is actu­al­ly a laugh-out-loud enter­tain­ment. You would not believe the hilar­i­ty of this. The dogs are com­plete­ly over-the-top fran­tic with excite­ment, try­ing to evade their train­ers, escape from their leads, but then when it’s time to jump the course (and go through fab­ric tun­nels! and run a course of lit­tle wick­ets!) they mean busi­ness. And all sorts of dogs! “Here comes that peren­ni­al favorite, the Jack Rus­sell!” the announc­er boomed. “And don’t dis­count the toy col­lie! She’s a beau­ti­ful jumper.” I can’t describe how fun­ny. The dogs absolute­ly run like the wind, flat­ten­ing them­selves like otters to become more aero­dy­nam­ic. And the train­ers! They have to run along to encour­age them and keep them from clock­ing them­selves on the poles. You must go sometime.

Then we shopped. Which got old very quick­ly. One can with­stand only so many tents full of bri­dles, bits, my favorite, the “ship­ping fuzzy,” and so on. Well, one can with­stand only so many, if one is not Avery. She was in heav­en. And the poor child does­n’t even have a pony to hang the things on. Then after a peri­od of intense nego­ti­a­tions (con­sist­ing of Avery’s say­ing, “I want Non­na and Grand­pa Jack to stay, and you guys can go home”), John and I left and had our love­ly din­ner out.

Well, they got home at near­ly mid­night and Avery sim­ply fell into bed, to be dragged out this morn­ing for the Gill Roberts Cook­ery Morn­ing. I got all my fam­i­ly’s pack­ages wrapped and packed up and the enor­mous box from Fort­num and Mason is on its way to Indi­anapo­lis. Sad­ly for them, the box was emp­tied of its gor­geous Christ­mas ham­per, a present from dar­ling Beck­y’s fam­i­ly. Oh, the teas and cof­fees, bis­cuits and choco­late. What a treat.

Now Avery’s been col­lect­ed ear­ly from cook­ing, dri­ven to the sta­ble and swept up by Alexa and the oth­er lit­tle gulls for a rare glimpse of the behind-the-scenes action at the Horse Show. Life at ten is a nev­er-end­ing round of fun. But frankly this evening I think she, and all of us, will be ready for a cosy com­fort din­ner and a Christ­mas movie. Oh, speak­ing of din­ner, I invent­ed, may I say, the best soup I have ever tast­ed, much less actu­al­ly made myself? It won approval all round the din­ner table, so I can say with rel­a­tive impuni­ty that it’s excel­lent. And a com­plete fluke. My moth­er in law hap­pened to point out an extreme­ly ugly veg­etable at Sun­day’s farmer’s mar­ket and said, “I’ve always want­ed to make cele­ri­ac soup.” I had to admit that this life ambi­tion had rather passed me by, until that moment. How­ev­er, I rose to the chal­lenge, and tucked a cou­ple of the nasty-look­ing tuber­ous roots in my bag and brought them home. Where­upon they reposed in splen­dor on my coun­ter­top while I ignored them and cooked oth­er, more famil­iar things. Final­ly, though, their obsti­nate pres­ence made me feel guilty, so before I could lose courage, I pro­duced this, and so can you:

Cream of Cele­ri­ac Soup with Champagne
(serves four, unless you have a straw and don’t tell any­one you’ve made it, then it serves one)

2 tbsps butter
2 bulbs cele­ri­ac, peeled and cut into small­ish chunks
3 cloves gar­lic, chopped coarsely
1 medi­um onion, chopped coarsely
3 cups chick­en stock
1 good splash cham­pagne (mine was rather old and flat, leftover)
1 tsp cel­ery salt
1/2 cup sin­gle cream

I am not kid­ding here: sim­ply throw all this, except for the cream, in a stock­pot and boil gen­tly for an hour. Then pul­ver­ize with a hand blender and add the cream.

DIVINE! Where I thought it might be stringy, like cel­ery soup which has to be strained, it was vel­vety. Where I thought it might taste as bor­ing as it looked (white), it was com­plex and inter­est­ing. And where I thought it might be sim­ply weird, it was per­fect. Com­fort­ing, creamy, per­fect­ly smooth. I can’t say enough about it. Nutri­tion? I have no idea. No, now I’ll look it up and we’ll all be the wiser.

Tonight, how­ev­er, will be roast chick­en, jack­et pota­toes with soured cream and chives, and spicy spinach casse­role with ched­dar cheese. What the hell, I’ll give you that recipe too. It comes from Lau­rie Col­win’s inim­itable and irre­place­able cook­book, Home Cook­ing. There will nev­er be a bet­ter recipe. As Lau­rie her­self says, “It made me sit up and beg like a dog.” Even chil­dren like it. You will too.

Lau­rie Col­win’s Spinach Casserole
(serves 8)

First of all, a word about the spinach itself. Do not use fresh. In my opin­ion, there is only one pur­pose in life for frozen spinach and this is it. Now, in Amer­i­ca, frozen spinach comes in lit­tle square-ish flat box­es. You need two of these. In Eng­land, how­ev­er, frozen spinach comes in bags, in which you will find intrigu­ing sort of hock­ey-puck shapes. For this, you need about 1 pound.

1 lb frozen spinach
6 tbsps butter
4 tbsps flour
1 medi­um onion, minced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
6 ounces evap­o­rat­ed milk
8 ounces any sharp cheese, like cheddar
sprin­kling of chili flakes (or in Amer­i­ca you can use jalapeno Mon­terey Jack cheese)
1 tbsp cel­ery salt (essen­tial!)
3/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs
3/4 cup grat­ed parmesan

Spray a 9x9 glass dish with non­stick spray. Believe me, you don’t want to skip this step. Then put the spinach in a saucepan, cov­er with water, and boil till cooked, but don’t over­cook. In the mean­time, melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and then add the flour, and let bub­ble for about two min­utes to cook the floury taste away. Add the minced onion and gar­lic and saute till soft, but do not burn the floury but­ter. When your spinach is cooked, drain off the water, but into a mea­sur­ing cup, till you have 1 cup liq­uid. Dis­card the remain­der. Slow­ly add the liq­uid to the onion and gar­lic, and stir till thick. Add the evap­o­rat­ed milk, the cheese, the chili flakes, the cel­ery salt, and stir until cheese is melt­ed. Pour the mix­ture into the glass dish and top first with bread­crumbs and then with cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for half an hour, or until bub­bly and browned on top. Heaven.

***********

I have two more days until our next enter­tain­ing event, which will be my friend Twig­gy and her hus­band Eddie com­ing to Sun­day lunch. I’ve recov­ered from the mam­moth din­ner with Vin­cent and Peter here last week­end: roast stuffed pork, my Thanks­giv­ing dress­ing and brus­sels sprouts, roast beet­root with bal­sam­ic vine­gar, a sal­ad, cheese­board and trea­cle cin­na­mon cook­ies! I think I used every saucepan, skil­let, bak­ing dish, plate, uten­sil and glass in my pos­ses­sion. Not to men­tion every ounce of ener­gy! I con­fessed to Vin­cent, who is the com­pleat cook, that I had Wait­rose stuff and tie up my roast for me. “I don’t know how to tie up meat!” I wailed! His reply? “If you can wrap a Christ­mas present, you can tie a roast.” I’m not so sure, espe­cial­ly after my lame attempts to clean a fish. But we had a com­plete­ly love­ly time.

Total­ly unex­pect­ed­ly, we end­ed up on the floor sur­round­ed by my huge col­lec­tion of pho­to albums, look­ing for the New Year’s par­ty we had at our loft on Broad­way, just before I got preg­nant (and stopped hav­ing 60 peo­ple to my house, black tie). Vin­cent had been there along with the McBs, some slight­ly famous guy from MTV, lots of fash­ion design­ers, jew­el­ers, actors, agents! Boy that was fun. I remem­ber John say­ing plain­tive­ly at one point, “Nobody’s hav­ing fun, they’re all leav­ing,” and we looked at our watch­es to see that it was four o’clock in the morn­ing. A jacuzzi bath­tub filled with ice, flash­lights, and bot­tles of cham­pagne! That was the year it was cool for women to smoke cig­ars (if it last­ed a year, that trend, prob­a­bly not), so the pic­tures of us with Vin­cent are all in a haze of smoke. My black silk Ken­zo tuxe­do! John’s goa­tee! What care­free bliss. Such fun to look at all the pic­tures, rem­i­nisce about old times now near­ly 10 years ago, to find the pho­to­graph of Vin­cent hold­ing new­born Baby Avery, real­iz­ing how impor­tant it is to keep old friends.

Not to men­tion that he taught me, at din­ner, the prop­er way to cut dif­fer­ent sorts of cheeses! Igno­rant Amer­i­cans (if there are any besides me) do not know these things. He prac­ti­cal­ly ripped the cheese knife out of my hand, say­ing, “I can­not bear to see you butch­er that inno­cent food­stuff for anoth­er moment. Watch and learn.” So it turns out you need one knife for cheddary, hard cheeses, one knife for any­thing blue, and one knife for goat’s cheese. And one for triple cremes, but I did­n’t have any that night. Then, you cut a round cheese in lit­tle pie-shaped wedges, and a wedge of cheese along the tri­an­gu­lar side, even­ly, and a hard cheese on just one end, to pre­serve the seal on the oth­er sides. Who knew? With them we taste-test­ed oat­cakes, decid­ing that the Prince of Wales’s Duchy label wins out. This is the sort of thing you do when you have real­ly tak­en food pre­ten­sions to the out­er limit.

Well, I’m all alone in my house, so to stave off lone­li­ness I shall go read and look at the Christ­mas tree. If I’m real qui­et, per­haps I can hear the Sal­va­tion Army band at the Marks and Spencers in Oxford Street. “We Wish You a Mer­ry Christmas”…