spring­time energy

How is it pos­si­ble that anoth­er month has sped by?  Spring has sprung here in Lon­don, remind­ing me that I’m the only per­son I know who prefers win­ter!  I love short, cosy days, warm, wool­ly jumpers, cold winds and hot com­fort food.  So I’m always a bit sad­dened when the days get longer and warmer, lead­ing to that Lon­don sum­mer that here in our neigh­bor­hood sim­ply means the arrival of every tourist under the sun, to our sidewalks.

Ah well, the nice thing about gen­tler weath­er is the ease of tak­ing long, long walks.  And the beau­ty of liv­ing in this vibrant, end­less­ly sur­pris­ing city is that walk in a new direc­tion (avoid­ing said tourists!) brought us last week to a com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed and charm­ing new neigh­bor­hood called “Low­er Marsh.”  Book­shops, one-off bars and cof­fee shops, a knit­ting shop!  But best of all is Green­smiths, a beau­ti­ful and inspir­ing lit­tle gro­cery store that some­how man­ages to pro­vide absolute­ly every­thing any­one would want to buy, except fresh fish.

A fab­u­lous butch­er counter!

Don’t see what you want?  Just ask!  Bone-in‑, skin-on chick­en thighs for last night’s din­ner par­ty?  No prob­lem, they’re in “the back.”  Unrolled brisket for John’s mag­i­cal home­made pas­tra­mi?  No prob­lem, it will be wait­ing for us on Fri­day when we need it.  I look for­ward to eat­ing my way through this gor­geous glass case.

What veg­etable to have with that pork bel­ly tonight?  Just feast your eyes on Green­smith’s veg­etable stand.

The offer­ings are end­less: a jar of Greek pre­served lemons, a choco­late pud­ding to take when we vis­it Avery, a spe­cial wedge of Delice de Bour­gogne (one of those incred­i­bly rich triple creme French cheeses), house­made hum­mous rich with lemon and gar­lic.  I plan to spend all my mon­ey there, until fur­ther notice.

Going even far­ther from home was a wel­come trip to vis­it love­ly Nora and her beau­ti­ful boys, on the occa­sion of their Aun­tie Cather­ine’s lat­est Mary Pop­pins vis­it from Amer­i­ca.  Otis, the eldest of the three, was more than hap­py to roll up his sleeves and make savoury Chick­en Tonkat­su with me.

“I like play­ing with the glue stuff, Kris­ten,” he said proud­ly, refer­ring to the eggy, mus­tardy, gar­licky mess that we squish the chick­en in.  “But the crunchy bits are fun too.”  He and Artie both had been thrilled at the chance to reduce a Ziplock bag full of corn­flakes to a nice, fine crumb.  What fun!

The sea­son­ably warm weath­er made for a gor­geous day for my dear friend Claire to bring the boys to Bank­side for a walk along the Thames.  Who needs toys, or elec­tron­ic devices, or even friends, when you can stroll, head down, find­ing trea­sures of sea glass, shoe soles, zip-ties, bot­tle tops, flat rocks to skip.  And oh no!  Wet shoes!

Warm, melt­ing goat’s cheese and soft bites of aubergine, atop a spicy bed of bul­gur and rock­et.  Yum!  The best kind of vis­i­tor is Cather­ine — always up for an adven­ture, and with a nov­el­ist’s nat­ur­al curios­i­ty and appre­ci­a­tion of strange things like bell­ring­ing.  And lat­er in the month we popped back to the Flat­iron at night for an emer­gency din­ner out, and found the delight­ful Edu, serv­ing the most awe­some­ly rich and messy burg­ers ever.  We will be back!

One of my favorite friends from col­lege, Jeff, appeared from his home of Dal­las, Texas, ready for a blowout Chi­nese lunch at our old stomp­ing grounds, Man­darin Kitchen, in Queensway.  Oh, the end­less Fri­day after­noons I spent at the dis­mal, under­ground, stinky, loud skat­ing rink across the road, watch­ing Avery go round and round, hug­ging myself in the freez­ing air, just wait­ing for it to be over.  The week­ly reward was crispy duck and deep-fried soft-shell crabs at the Man­darin.  Noth­ing had changed and our wait­er even remem­bered us!  We were joined by fel­low DePauwite Michelle and her fam­i­ly — our con­ver­sa­tion cov­ered every pos­si­ble sub­ject, as the savoury dish­es appeared one after anoth­er (dou­ble orders of soft-shell crabs an absolute neces­si­ty).  What fun.

We all agreed we had­n’t changed A BIT in the past 30 years.  Not a BIT.

Don’t we all have friends who bring out our best — our best sto­ries, our best, most opti­mistic view of the future?  For me, one of those is Bren­na, a sim­ply bril­liant artist who entered my life exact­ly 25 years ago in my first year teach­ing art his­to­ry in New York.  All these years lat­er, we are sim­ply thrilled to see each oth­er, and for her to bring her friend Noah with her.  Over din­ner, they were excit­ed to hear about Pot­ters’ Fields, John’s beloved if end­less­ly chal­leng­ing build­ing project at Tow­er Bridge.

It’s not just vis­i­tors from Amer­i­ca who’ve been grac­ing our table, though.  Last week­end saw my daz­zling friend Dalia turn up with her love Mark, for our first din­ner as a four­some.  Nor­mal­ly we meet for lunch over sushi or tapas and sim­ply gos­sip the after­noon away.  It was love­ly to have the boys with us, and there was absolute­ly noth­ing wrong with the creamy, lux­u­ri­ous crab tart.

And dessert?  Of course nor­mal­ly I don’t do them, part­ly because I don’t have a sweet tooth and part­ly because (maybe as a result of a lack of inter­est?) I’m not much good at pro­duc­ing them.  This is all in my past, how­ev­er, as my friend Sarah intro­duced me to sim­ply the best cake recipe in the entire world, gleaned from her favorite Red Hook bak­ery, “Baked.”  You MUST make this cake.

I won’t use the word we’re all think­ing of, obvi­ous­ly, but this cake real­ly is.  Sticky, juicy, “not dry.”  Deli­cious, in oth­er words.  I made this cake in a Bundt pan, for old-fash­ioned fun, but you could use two ordi­nary cake tins and pile them on top of anoth­er with glaze in the mid­dle, or with whipped cream, or you could use a 9x13 inch pan and cut the cake in squares to serve.

Cit­rus Olive Oil Cake

(serves about 16)

3 cups/330g plain flour

1 tbsp bak­ing powder

1/2 tsp salt

4 large eggs, separated

1 1/2 cups/330g gran­u­lat­ed sugar

1 cup/245g plain yogurt

3/4 cup/170ml extra vir­gin olive oil

fresh­ly grat­ed zest of 3 oranges or lemons

1 1/2 tsps vanil­la extract or the con­tents of one vanil­la pod

2 cups/110g confectioners/icing sugar

juice of 3 oranges or lemons

Set your oven to 350F/180C.

But­ter your cake pan and dust with flour.

In a large bowl, whisk togeth­er the flour, bak­ing pow­der, and salt.

In a stand­ing mix­er or with a hand mix­er, beat the egg yolks until they are pale and light, then add the sug­ar and mix well.  Add the yogurt and olive oil and mix until thor­ough­ly com­bined.  Add the orange zest and vanil­la and mix until just incor­po­rat­ed.  Add the flour mix­ture to the wet ingre­di­ents in two parts, beat­ing until just com­bined (this will take about 10 sec­onds).  Scrape down the bowl and beat again for five seconds.

In anoth­er large bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.  Scoop half the egg whites into the bat­ter.  Using a rub­ber spat­u­la, fold them gen­tly togeth­er.  After about 30 sec­onds of fold­ing, add the sec­ond half of the egg whites and again, gen­tly fold until they are com­bined.  Do not rush the fold­ing process.

Pour the bat­ter into the pre­pared tin/s and bake for 40–50 min­utes, rotat­ing the cake halfway through.  The cake is done when it is stiff to the touch in the mid­dle, or a small knife insert­ed comes out clean.

While the cake cools, mix the con­fec­tion­ers sug­ar and juice.  If the glaze is too liq­uidy, add more sug­ar.  If it is too thick, add more juice.  The glaze should rest on top of the cake, not sink in com­plete­ly.  Pour the glaze over the cake.  If using a Bundt pan, unmold the cake first onto a serv­ing plate and allow the glaze to run over the sides.

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How good is this cake?  A gift to the door­men down­stairs (tra­di­tion­al by now!) result­ed in a spon­ta­neous hug and kiss from Atil­la, and a request for the recipe from Andras, and sim­ple eye-rolling delight from Tyrone and Paul.  It’s just that good.  I decid­ed to make it lemo­ny instead of orange in anoth­er incar­na­tion, and that was won­der­ful, too.

Last week saw the tables turned and Avery was our host­ess, on a quick and mirac­u­lous­ly delight­ful vis­it to Oxford.  The event was a “For­mal Din­ner,” for which Avery donned her spe­cial puffy black gown and escort­ed us to the Har­ry Pot­ter­ish din­ing hall.  First, though, was the fun of check­ing into the beau­ti­ful Ran­dolph Hotel and hear­ing a soft knock on the door to find her in the hall, hun­gry, tired and ready to tuck into the choco­late cake I’d brought to cel­e­brate our Feb­ru­ary birth­days.  It was so sim­ply won­der­ful to sit with her, sip­ping cock­tails and lis­ten­ing to her describe her exhaust­ing life, as the spring rain fell out­side.  Oh, the work she is doing!

On our way out of the hotel, which is under­go­ing some end­less ren­o­va­tions, we found this sign, a bright joke in our uncer­tain polit­i­cal times.

The din­ner itself was just what we expect­ed — ter­ri­bly impres­sive archi­tec­ture, gowns, and awful food.  What a bizarre, old-fash­ioned tra­di­tion it is to have the Mas­ter rap on the head table with a gav­el or dead bird or some­thing, and total silence reigns as every­one gets to their feet.  Long prayers  in Latin (“When you hear the first ‘amen,’ don’t be fooled,” Avery warned us.  “There will be more.”)  So long!  And then after we’d all tucked into the rather pecu­liar jam­my, wob­bly pud­ding, there was anoth­er peremp­to­ry “rap” on the table and every­one stood again, and remained stand­ing until the final mem­ber of the high table had left the din­ing hall.  Oxford has its own way of doing absolute­ly every­thing, and it’s end­less­ly fascinating.

After din­ner we popped rev­er­en­tial­ly into the chapel with its soar­ing ceil­ings, pan­elling, stained-glass.

Tired, tired Avery led us through the wet evening, past the ghost­ly night­time Rad­cliffe Camera…

… through Uni­v’s drip­py, dra­mat­ic quad…

She was hap­py to come back to our room with us for a brief rest under the beau­ti­ful bed­cov­ers, and a bit of screen time with her father.

We walked her back to her lodg­ings rather far out of town, hap­py to accom­pa­ny her, but gen­er­al­ly reas­sured that the walk is safe on her own.  A hap­py byprod­uct of the longer days — some­day soon it won’t be pitch dark every time she walks home.

In the late morn­ing we took her a big bag of treats — Parme­san cheese, Par­ma ham, fruit and bis­cuits and juice.  Hav­ing stocked her fridge and pantry, washed all the dish­es in the kitchen sink and insist­ing that she retrieve from her room one of her Christ­mas tea tow­els to sup­ple­ment the com­mon stock of tow­els I was itch­ing to take home to boil, we repaired to the love­ly Quod in town for a sump­tu­ous lunch, and thence to the brand-new and total­ly charm­ing Jeri­cho Cof­fee Traders for a rich cap­puc­ci­no.  Such a delight just to get to sit next to her and look at her, to be hon­est.  It does­n’t take much to make me happy.

It was back home for us, then, filled with the mem­o­ries of all we’d seen and done in that remark­able city, but most­ly reliv­ing all our con­ver­sa­tions with Avery and look­ing for­ward so much to the end of term and her arrival home.

Social work pro­ceeds apace, with each week tak­ing on its own rhythm of my three dif­fer­ent jobs.  Of course Home-Start is heav­en­ly, with a small girl and even small­er sib­lings to play with.

“Here is some­thing you can help me with,” I say to the lit­tle girl.  “I know there is a dif­fer­ence between jump­ing and hop­ping, but what is it?”

 “Oh, that’s easy.  Jump­ing is two feet, and hop­ping is one.”

Those after­noons are warm, cosy, filled with con­stant con­ver­sa­tion about Bar­bi­es, Lego, puz­zles, pic­ture books, and a tru­ly creepy doll called “Bet­ty Spaghet­ti,” who unac­count­ably has rain­bow-col­ored rub­ber hair, and comes TOTAL­LY apart.  Legs, arms, head, tor­so.  See­ing her in parts on the sit­ting-room floor always gives me pause, but my lit­tle client is unper­turbed.  “She does­n’t even need glue.  You just snap her back togeth­er, like THIS.”

Thurs­day after­noons take on a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent and much more chaot­ic qual­i­ty, at my after-school group of 25 or so chil­dren between 4 and 11, boys and girls.  Last week was my maid­en voy­age teach­ing a small group of them to cook!  Here’s how it was described on the week’s activ­i­ty sheet, a phrase that made my Face­book friends laugh.

“How do you cook 8 chil­dren, in a pot or the oven?”  We made piz­za, which was a huge suc­cess.  Crusts ready to bake, then using my hand blender to puree tinned toma­toes with fresh basil and gar­lic pow­der, then reduce piz­za moz­zarel­la to shreds with my box grater (“watch your fin­gers, kids!”), then tear­ing more basil leaves into rib­bons, then assem­bling the whole thing amid hilar­i­ty and mess, final­ly bak­ing and eat­ing.  They are just love­ly lit­tle nip­pers, hard to keep in line but lots of fun.  Tomor­row will be short­bread — half choco­late, half lemon.

Fri­day morn­ings are the most chaot­ic of all — the Baby Bank giv­ing away baby clothes, and a play­group of large­ly refugee fam­i­lies with lots of tiny chil­dren, all speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages.  I was pounced on imme­di­ate­ly by my boss Kather­ine.  “Kris­ten, you speak French, don’t you?”  Well, I do, sort of, but speak­ing “when is your baby due, and what sort of clothes would you like to have for him?” French in response to a very Ghan­ian-accent­ed lady’s ques­tions was a chal­lenge!  From there I went to teach­ing the mums and kids to sing “Frere Jacques” in rounds, a total suc­cess and heart­warm­ing joy.

All this activ­i­ty requires sus­te­nance, of course, and I must tell you that I have come up with a new and excit­ing main dish.  As you know, “Cot­tage Pie” con­tains beef, and “Shep­herd’s Pie” is made with lamb.  After see­ing “Mary Berry’s Every­day” tel­ly pro­gramme last week, it was clear that veni­son could be pressed into ser­vice.  I call this:

Deer­stalk­er Pie

(serves at least 10)

6 large potatoes

1 tbsp olive oil

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 white onion, minced

3 stalks cel­ery, minced

3 medi­um car­rots, minced

8 large mush­rooms, minced

1 1/2 pounds diced veni­son (with some fat), ready to mince

1/2 cup white wine

1/2 cup whole milk

1 large can peeled plum tomatoes

pinch ground nutmeg

1/2 cup grat­ed parme­san or Romano

fresh black pep­per and sea salt to taste

3 tbsps butter

1 cup/225ml hot milk

hand­ful grat­ed Parmesan

Peel the pota­toes and put them in a large saucepan, cov­ered with water, and bring to a boil.  Boil for about 45 min­utes or until com­plete­ly soft.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan with a heavy bot­tom and add the veg­eta­bles, cook until soft­ened.  Add meat.  Cook until just cooked through, stir­ring fre­quent­ly to break up the meat.  Add the white wine and turn up the heat.  Stir and cook for five min­utes.  Add the milk, still with heat high.  Stir and cook for five min­utes.  Add the toma­toes, break­ing them up with your hands as you do so.  Turn down the heat and cook for at least 1 hour, stir­ring occa­sion­al­ly.  Short­ly before serv­ing, add nut­meg and cheese and stir thor­ough­ly.  Sea­son to taste.

Mean­while, once pota­toes are cooked thor­ough­ly, drain them and mash them with the but­ter and hot milk.

Spread the sauce in a but­tered serv­ing dish.  Spread the mashed pota­toes over the top and scat­ter the Parme­san over the sur­face.  Bake at 350F/180C for about 45 min­utes or until nice and bubbly.

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I watched Mary make her pie, and I loved the idea of veni­son, but I had to admit, read­ing her recipe, that I don’t like to cook with red wine (or drink it either), nor did I want beef stock or rose­mary.  At that point I decid­ed that I want­ed my own, com­fort­ing Bolog­nese recipe as my base, with veni­son sub­sti­tut­ed for my tra­di­tion­al chick­en.  That is the recipe I have giv­en you above.  It was a sheer DELIGHT.  Make it!

Of course, life would­n’t be mine with­out the joys and sor­rows of ringing.

Hap­pi­ly, for the last few weeks, it’s all been a joy.  A mind-bog­gling­ly dif­fi­cult Quar­ter Peal, a first for me, “inside on an affect­ed bell” to Plain Bob Dou­bles!  Don’t wor­ry, I don’t expect you to under­stand.  But you’ll be hap­py for me.  Fifty-two min­utes of sheer fear and dra­ma, then it was over, a success!

For me, the great­est joy of ring­ing isn’t even relat­ed to a bell.  It’s the delight­ful­ly eccen­tric, sup­port­ive, intense­ly intel­li­gent and friend­ly PEO­PLE.  Just look at these faces, so pleased for me, and for us as a team.  A fur­ther tri­umph came just this last Sun­day at the divine­ly dra­mat­ic St James Gar­lick­hythe, home of the Queen’s Jubilee Bells.

On that morn­ing, I suc­cess­ful­ly “Tre­ble Bobbed” to a method called Cam­bridge, which again I would nev­er expect any­one to under­stand, but the upshot is that if I can man­age to ring that reli­ably, I will be an expo­nen­tial­ly more use­ful mem­ber of any ring­ing band.  Sweaty and shaky, I felt quite thrilled, and as if I had turned a real cor­ner.  It’s impor­tant, in a life full of chal­lenges, ups and downs, to take stock of these moments when per­se­ver­ance pays off, and one feels the thrill of a job well done.

So there you have it — a busy month of all the usu­al and some unusu­al, as we draw our way towards spring in London.