the love­ly sea­son of Easter

Here I sit on a wet, windy East­er after­noon, rather rev­el­ling for once in the sight of my rain­swept gar­den, enjoy­ing the qui­et of a spring Sunday.

We’ve had unheard-of stretch­es of sun­ny days this love­ly April, arous­ing in the aver­age Lon­don­er the con­flict­ing emo­tions of tremen­dous grat­i­tude and a super­sti­tious fear that sun in Eng­land is lim­it­ed and we may have been using it up with rather too much aban­don.  The Eng­lish are trained to look upon every dry moment with amaze­ment, lest April be all the sum­mer we get and the “real” sum­mer is a washout.

But today, gar­den­ers every­where are cel­e­brat­ing the damp, watch­ing the blue­bells lift their faces to drink.  Just last week, this was the scene in our sun­ny gar­den, such a beau­ti­ful sight that even shy, fright­ened Keechie ven­tured out to smell the blossoms.

Even more so than sun­shine, this East­er sea­son, I have been grate­ful  to be peace­ful­ly at home and NOT con­tem­plat­ing a house move.  Would you believe that in 2008, 2011 and 2013 our East­ers were ALL char­ac­terised by just such an upheaval!  It made me tired last night, just to read about my own life.  I feel very appre­cia­tive to be spend­ing this par­tic­u­lar fes­tive time doing noth­ing more chal­leng­ing than a lit­tle light bell-ring­ing, a lit­tle marathon cook­ing, a lot of egg-dyeing.

Yes, my ring­ing life was adven­tur­ous last week!  After a months-long, £250,000 ren­o­va­tion cam­paign, the love­ly ten bells of All Saints, Ful­ham, reopened for busi­ness on Sat­ur­day.  What a stun­ning tow­er, dat­ing back to 1445.

And we Barnes ringers loy­al­ly crossed the riv­er (I on my trusty bike across Put­ney Bridge) to help inau­gu­rate them in style.  Eddie proud­ly intro­duced us to refur­bished tow­er, and we rang the bells, cast in 1652, and now giv­en brand-new hang­ings and ropes.

Ten bells!  At Barnes, of course, we have eight love­ly bells, and we often ring on only six of them.  Ten bells is an expo­nen­tial­ly more com­plex task.  Just think: you have to be able to keep your place in a sequence of ten “bongs,” and you must cru­cial­ly be able to hold up your bell and wait that extra mil­lisec­ond or two while two bells more than you’re used to have a chance to ring before you.  Trisha and Michael joined in the usu­al cama­raderie of rounds and call changes.

How odd it was to ring with entire­ly brand-new ropes and sal­lies!  Lit­tle bits of hemp, plas­ter, and the dust of the ages flew around our heads.  But we had a beau­ti­ful time, how­ev­er intim­i­dat­ing and chal­leng­ing for me.  And then it was onto the roof to appre­ci­ate the icon­ic view of the Thames.

After that splen­did adven­ture, it was supreme­ly relax­ing the fol­low­ing morn­ing just to ring our famil­iar eight at St Mary’s!  Of course, the pres­ence of a cer­tain mas­cot for Holy Week helped things along immeasurably.

Just look at that blue sky!  Incred­i­bly restorative.

I need­ed all the ener­gy I could get last week, because I had com­mit­ted myself to quite the quixot­ic cook­ing project for my beloved Hand­Picked Nation: how to eat over a kilo of chick­en liv­ers with­out col­laps­ing from iron over­dose?  There was no prob­lem, though.  With a few gifts of divine pate to friends, John and I were per­fect­ly able to plow through the remain­ing quan­ti­ty of liv­ers all on our own.  The best dish, I think, aside from the pate (because pate is always the best dish in the room no mat­ter the oth­er com­peti­tors) was this splen­did yet hum­ble one.

Creamy Sauteed Chick­en Liv­ers and Mush­rooms on Toast

(serves 4)

2 tbsps butter

16 chest­nut mush­rooms, sliced or cut in wedges, as you like

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

1/2 tsp fresh rose­mary leaves, minced

3 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 banana shal­lot, minced

2 tbsps Madeira, Marsala or brandy

1 pound chick­en liv­ers, well-trimmed

1 tbsp dou­ble cream

sea salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

4 pieces high-qual­i­ty whole­meal bread, toasted

fresh snipped chives to garnish

Melt the but­ter in a heavy fry­ing pan, then add the mush­rooms and herbs and saute until the mush­rooms are soft.  Add the gar­lic and shal­lot and saute till they are soft.  Add the wine or brandy and siz­zle for a moment, then add the liv­ers.  Soft­ly saute/poach the liv­ers, turn­ing occa­sion­al­ly, until they are JUST not bloody in the cen­ters.  Take care not to over­cook.  Add the cream at the last minute and sea­son to taste.  Pile on toast slices and sprin­kle with chives.

*********

We could have eat­en so much more of this heav­en­ly lunch than there was!  It was won­der­ful to appre­ci­ate the rich, yet com­plete­ly inex­pen­sive flavours of the liv­ers, such an over­looked ingre­di­ent in mod­ern cooking.

The next day, a sim­ple, warm sort of sal­ad was pos­si­ble with a very few ingredients.

Chick­en Liv­ers and Bacon with Split Red Lentils

(serves 4)

2 tbsps butter

8 chick­en liv­ers, well-trimmed and divid­ed in half

8 slices smoked bacon

(16 cock­tail sticks/toothpicks)

2 cups split red lentils, cooked in chick­en stock

olive oil to sprinkle

juice of 1/2 lemon

fresh black pep­per to taste

hand­ful rocket/arugula

Melt the but­ter in a heavy fry­ing pan and saute the chick­en liv­ers gen­tly until JUST cooked.  Mean­while, cook the bacon until JUST cooked but not crisp.  Cut each bacon slice in half.  Wrap each chick­en liv­er half in half a piece of bacon and secure with a tooth­pick.  Divide the liv­ers and bacon over mounds of the red lentils, then driz­zle over a bit of olive oil and a sprin­kle of lemon juice, then black pep­per.  Gar­nish with the greens.

*******

My dear friend Elspeth was kind enough to test this sal­ad for me, and while we both felt it was very enjoy­able as sim­ple as it was, you could cer­tain­ly gussy it up a bit with some diced red onion or sliced scal­lion, a bit of feta crum­bled over, or a few slices of sauteed hal­lou­mi, even a hand­ful of chopped pars­ley or a bit of basil.

I ran out of liv­ers before I could try my final recipe, tra­di­tion­al Passover chopped liv­er, with plen­ty of schmaltz and chopped hard-boiled eggs.  Can you imag­ine, run­ning through near­ly 3 pounds of chick­en liv­ers?  I can, now, and I can tell you I would start over right now, if I had a tub of them to hand.

As it does every year, the men­tion of Passover makes me think of my dear New York chum Alyssa, and the Passover feasts to which we used to be invit­ed.  To rec­i­p­ro­cate, of course, we invit­ed them to dye eggs with us, and every year it’s a bit of a wrench not to be togeth­er.  But again, Elspeth came to the res­cue and joined us for a fes­tive and sun­ny after­noon.  With four dozen eggs.

What fun we had!  Of course there are only brown eggs here, which means the colours are not quite the vibrant, almost neon colours of Amer­i­can eggs.  But we persevered.

I had bought some­thing called “dye gel” in the bak­ing aisle at the gro­cery store, to sup­ple­ment our plain old food-colour­ing (the whole egg-dye­ing rack­et has not real­ly caught on over here).  It turns out “dye gel” might be just the tick­et to turn your cream-cheese frost­ing a pret­ty colour for your cup­cakes, but it does­n’t work for dye­ing East­er eggs.  Unless you’re Avery, of course, with the imag­i­na­tion of a French Rev­o­lu­tion­ary terrorist.

Who would have dreamed that my lit­tle girl, with the face of an angel, could think of such a thing?  Pre-exam stress might be get­ting to her, just a bit.  Good to let off some steam on an East­er egg.

This morn­ing, of course, brought the East­er bun­ny, while I was out in the rain ring­ing my bells.

Anoth­er fes­tive sea­son has come and gone, leav­ing us to con­tem­plate the return of Avery to school next week (always a wrench) and then the usu­al joys and sor­rows of the Sum­mer Term — the final Lost Prop­er­ty lun­cheon of the year, for one thing, leav­ing me just a term in which to find my replace­ment.  It breaks my heart to think of leav­ing Lost Prop­er­ty behind, but the time is swift­ly approach­ing.  Avery too faces a hur­dle: the first of the tru­ly awe­some A‑level exams which will be her call­ing card to her uni­ver­si­ty choices.

Per­haps we’ll need anoth­er kilo of chick­en liv­ers to get us through.