Peter­sham Nurseries

It turns out the cred­it crunch isn’t all bad: it’s con­vinced the great Rich­mond restau­rant Peter­sham Nurs­eries to offer a shock­ing­ly rea­son­able prix fixe lunch. I would nev­er have thought of going, so famous­ly pricey is this brain­child of Aus­tralian import Skye Gyn­gell, but my jour­nal­ist friend Louise emailed, “They’re hav­ing a Christ­mas bazaar in the nurs­eries and even if we can’t afford lunch, we can get a cup of soup in the cafe and wan­der around.” Our dear friend Sam was in from Bath to spend the day with us, so a short tube ride it was, and Louise picked us up from the sta­tion and took us on a quick tour of Rich­mond’s hid­den trea­sures, among them a trip through the enor­mous Park. Rather unnerv­ing was a sign announc­ing a deer cull, which although undoubt­ed­ly nec­es­sary, made me hope there would­n’t be veni­son on the Peter­sham menu, giv­en my recent squea­mish-mak­ing encounter with that too-red meat.

Upon arrival at the restau­rant we decid­ed we’d take a look at the sam­ple menus just to make our­selves mis­er­able, and lo and behold, prix fixe. Three cours­es, 27 pounds. Done. Min­utes lat­er we were sam­pling paper-thin square ravi­o­li filled with vel­vety pump­kin and flecks of fried sage, in a sauce that was described as “sage and but­ter,” but my good­ness, that but­ter had under­gone the most reli­gious of clar­i­fi­ca­tion because it was all but trans­par­ent, with just the essen­tial fla­vor of but­ter. Mag­ic. Sam went for grilled squid with chori­zo (a word our dear tutor Orlan­do appar­ent­ly hates to say, as I feel about “moist”), padron pep­pers and a papri­ka aioli. I am no fan of squid, but we all shared and shared alike and I will say that if I were to like squid, it would be in that dish. Not a hint of rub­ber, very chewy and dense and charred to perfection.

Then it was onto baked ricot­ta for me, a too-gen­er­ous wedge of it with fresh thyme and mar­jo­ram, and topped with an olive and toma­to crush (this seems to be a new and to me annoy­ing food­ie term: every­thing late­ly that isn’t a foam is a crush when to me it is a sauce, pure and sim­ple, or since mine was room-tem­per­a­ture, per­haps a sal­sa?) and what was described as a “win­ter sal­ad.” Sam diag­nosed lemon mint, and I could iden­ti­fy beet leaves, but beyond that it was pure­ly fresh and sim­ple and not drenched in dress­ing, just enough of a gar­licky vinai­grette. Sam and Louise both had a monk­fish cur­ry with coconut milk (very lit­tle, which made the cur­ry pleas­ing­ly light and sub­tle) and kaf­fir lime leaves and bhatu­ra. What, you ask, is bhatu­ra? So did I. It’s a fried Indi­an bread, in this case thin and slight­ly crisp, topped delight­ful­ly with fen­nel seed.

As you know, I do not grav­i­tate to sweet things, but it was a three-course lunch, so sweet things came. We ordered one of every­thing and shared. Hazel­nut ice cream served clev­er­ly in one of those gild­ed and paint­ed short glass­es that Indi­ans drink tea from, and choco­late mousse with a very gin­gery caramel sauce, and a dis­ap­point­ing­ly ordi­nary apple gal­let with creme fraiche. To my essen­tial­ly tidy mind, apples need to be peeled or not peeled, but not both in one dish. It’s dis­con­cert­ing and looks like some­one was­n’t pay­ing atten­tion. As well, the creme fraiche was just that: a rather messy blob of pure creme fraiche. A sprin­kling of vanil­la bean or cin­na­mon would have added a note of thought­ful­ness. Small complaints.

It’s a treat to find one­self in a restau­rant offer­ing only eight dish­es, and among them no few­er than five ingre­di­ents I had to look up in a food ency­clo­pe­dia to know what they were. I still don’t know exact­ly what sort of cheese is “capri­ni fres­chi,” so please enlight­en me if you do. Far­ro? It turns out to be the sort of moth­er of all grains, and I wish I knew what it was doing with a beef fil­let, but none of us ordered it, dash it all. Far­i­na­ta? A sort of piz­za-like Ital­ian pancake.

A fun­ny aside about ingre­di­ents, pre­ten­tious and oth­er­wise: Sam has been help­ing out a rather famous chef and food writer, test­ing recipes and such, and he had lots of juicy sto­ries to tell, in his inim­itable Sam man­ner: wicked­ly teas­ing, very much in the Eng­lish tak­ing-the-piss tra­di­tion. But he’s hard­er on him­self than any­one else. “She asked me, ‘could you fetch haris­sa for me, Sam?” and I won­dered if that was her child, need­ing to be col­lect­ed from school. It’s toma­to paste.”

All in all a gor­geous, lux­u­ri­ous meal. We talked over and over each oth­er, rem­i­nisc­ing about our insane writ­ing course, com­par­ing notes on the feed­back we’ve got from our erst­while tutors and from each oth­er. I’ve hit a wall, how­ev­er, when it comes to my writ­ing (of course I except my dear blog from this; this isn’t writ­ing, real­ly, it’s con­ver­sa­tion). The wall is due, I fear, to too much read­ing of oth­er peo­ple’s work. This over­ex­po­sure hits with a dou­ble wham­my: it makes me want to write like these oth­er peo­ple, and con­vinces me that I can’t write any­thing near as good as their work. This is a bad sit­u­a­tion. There is some­thing almost mys­ti­cal about the pub­lished word any­way: work takes on an aura, deserved or not, of qual­i­ty when it’s between the cov­ers of a book, while mine lan­guish­es on a com­put­er screen, or even worse, trapped with­in my shad­owy brain. So I’m tak­ing a bit of a break from my chap­ters right now, to try to see with some per­spec­tive the gap between what I want to accom­plish and what I’ve actu­al­ly done.

The same conun­drum occurs with cook­ing, actu­al­ly. I read too many recipes, have too fine a lunch out, and come home feel­ing that I can­not myself pro­duce any food of great inter­est. It’s a hell of a lot eas­i­er to cook than to write, how­ev­er, so I can dis­pel my fears on that lev­el pret­ty easily.

Sea Bass with a Polen­ta Crust
(serves four)

4 sea bass fillets
1/2 cup polen­ta (yel­low cornmeal)
2 tsps Pen­zeys Fox Point Seasoning
dash gar­lic powder
dash olive oil

Trim and rinse and de-bone the fil­lets if your child is extreme­ly finicky about fish issues, as mine is. One bone will put her off the entire dish and I can’t say I blame her. Mix the polen­ta and sea­son­ings in a small bag and shake the fil­lets in it till thor­ough­ly coat­ed with the mix­ture. In a heavy, non­stick skil­let, heat the oil till very hot and place the fil­lets in, skin side down. Fry till skin is crisp, about two or three min­utes. Turn over gen­tly and fry for anoth­er minute and serve imme­di­ate­ly with:

Cous­cous with Savoy Cab­bage and Garlic
(serves four)

1 cup couscous
1 1/4 cup hot chick­en stock
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small head, or about 2 cups fine­ly chopped Savoy cabbage
4 cloves gar­lic, minced

Cous­cous makes me laugh because it pre­pares itself right before your eyes. Place the dry cous­cous in a bowl that can accom­mo­date twice its bulk. Add the hot stock and watch. Just a few min­utes and you can fluff it with a fork and stir in the butter.

Heat the olive oil in a skil­let or saucepan and saute the Savoy cab­bage and gar­lic till soft. I know it may look like too much oil, but this is essen­tial­ly the only dress­ing the cous­cous will have. Mix the cab­bage and all the oil with the cous­cous and fluff well. Love­ly and so light.

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Avery did­n’t rave about the cous­cous and cab­bage but she ate it. Her ver­dict was “I’ll eat it if you give it to me, but I prob­a­bly won’t ask for it.” Fair enough.

Lis­ten, we’re dash­ing off to see Ralph Fiennes (one of my orig­i­nal crush­es, but I don’t think he ever knew) in Oedi­pus. Avery keeps scream­ing at me to pro­nounce it with a long “E.” “My act­ing teacher AND my dra­ma coach can’t be wrong!” she says, but I’m stick­ing to my Amer­i­can roots. Ralph won’t mind, and I DO know that’s with a long “A” and no “L.” Good­ness, the­atre is com­pli­cat­ed these days.