some inco­her­ent rav­ings about food

That’s one of Avery’s and my favorite lines from the Lau­rie Col­win book “Fam­i­ly Hap­pi­ness.” Two Euro­pean immi­grants are shar­ing child­hood songs, in Ger­man, and trans­lat­ing them for their fam­i­lies. After one par­tic­u­lar­ly sil­ly song, though, Klaro says, “There is no trans­la­tion for this song. It is mere­ly some inco­her­ent rav­ings about food.”

So I have had a very foody few days, and have been work­ing hard on both my own cook­book and the edit­ing job I’m meant to be doing for Gladys Taber’s work, for her grand­daugh­ter Anne Col­by in Con­necti­cut. I thought that in addi­tion to keep­ing you up to date on how rid­ing is going in Wim­ble­don, and how we spent our week­end, it might be nice to give you a cou­ple of excel­lent recipes that my friend Susan and I have been shar­ing and com­ment­ing on. That’s the beau­ty of food. Some­one invites you for lunch and you love what she serves, so you ask for the recipe. Then you get to nat­ter on in your email exchange about not just the recipe, but what’s hap­pen­ing in Form Four at King’s Col­lege, and what I might say at the Roy­al Acad­e­my where Susan works, when I lec­ture on my sculp­tor. We also get to trade hus­band sto­ries and go off on tan­gents about odd peo­ple we know in com­mon. Then you invite her to din­ner and she likes what you made, and it all gets start­ed again. It’s so much more than just eat­ing. And every time I make this cur­ry dish, or she makes my fried rice, we will tell the peo­ple we’re feed­ing all about each oth­er, and for the moment I’ll be in Susan’s kitchen with her, and she’ll be in mine. I love that about food.

I’m not going to lie to you: both of these recipes require that you like mess­ing about with food. They’re not short­cuts and they’re not labor-free. They also have two oth­er things in com­mon: once you’ve made them, you’ll nev­er want to have the take­away/order-out ver­sions of either of them again. And they’re great for left­overs, which helps with the effort you’re putting in. These are recipes for a day when you have some time ear­ly on, per­haps, and then a chunk of time when you can’t be in the kitchen, and then some time right before you want to eat.

Susan’s Moroc­can Chick­en Curry

2 tbsps olive oil
2 tbsps butter
2 onions, chopped
4 car­rots, chopped or grated
3 bone­less whole chick­en breasts, well trimmed and cut into bite-size chunks
2 apples, coarse­ly chopped
4 oranges, squeezed and pulp includ­ed, but no seeds
1 large chunk of fresh gin­ger, peeled & grated
1 tsp gin­ger powder
4 tbsps sweet cur­ry pow­der, not hot
2 cups chick­en stock
1 cup white wine
2 cups sin­gle cream

In a large, deep saucepan, melt the but­ter with the olive oil. Add the onions, then the car­rots and let them cook/soften a bit (as for a risot­to). Then add the chick­en chunks, stir and brown a bit. Then add the apple, the orange juice, the gin­ger, the cur­ry, the stock and the wine. Sim­mer for about 10 min­utes, then add the cream. In total, for this to be prop­er­ly cooked, it should gen­tly sim­mer for about 45 min­utes. You can then re-heat it before eat­ing, or once cooled, put it away in the fridge until the next day.

This is a very flex­i­ble recipe – you can vary how fine or coarse every­thing gets chopped, and you can vary the fla­vors accord­ing to taste (more orange, spici­er cur­ry, etc.) Some­times I have also used some plain yogurt in addi­tion to cream. Serve with Bas­mati Rice (always steamed in one and a half times the amount of water as rice).

Kris­ten’s Fes­tive Fried Rice

An Unde­ter­mined Amount of Peanut Oil
1 red onion, diced
three cloves gar­lic, diced
1 big chunk gin­ger, peeled and chopped
2 cups of left­over pork, chick­en, beef or prawns, cut in bite-size pieces (more than one of these if you like)

1 cup each: chopped broc­coli, car­rots, red pep­pers, sug­ar snap peas, green beans (diced small)
1 bunch green or “sal­ad” onions, sliced thin
1 hand­ful bean sprouts

three eggs, beat­en thoroughly
dash sesame oil
soy sauce to taste

2 cups bas­mati rice

First, put the rice to cook with three cups water and salt. Then, in a hot wok, cov­er the bot­tom with peanut oil and saute the gar­lic, gin­ger, onion and meat until hot through, and the gar­lic, etc. are nice­ly soft­ened, then remove with a slot­ted spoon to a real­ly big bowl. Then saute the broc­coli, car­rots, pep­per, sug­ar snap peas and green beans until just cooked, and remove also with slot­ted spoon to join the meat. Add more peanut oil to the wok if need­ed, and a dash of sesame oil. Then saute the sal­ad onions till soft, and just briefly toss in the bean sprouts, then remove all to the big bowl. Take this chance to check the rice, which will cook in about 20 min­utes. Fluff it up and keep the lid off to encour­age extra steam to escape and dry the rice up a bit.

Heat the oil again and throw in the eggs, scram­bling very quick­ly and keep­ing them mov­ing con­stant­ly until they are bro­ken up. Now, toss in every­thing from the big bowl, and the rice, and fluff all until hot through.

Serve with plen­ty of soy sauce.

So there you have it! Two real­ly good things to eat. If you leave out the meat from the rice dish, it’s an absolute­ly guilt-free, near­ly fat-free veg­e­tar­i­an option, good for when you’re feel­ing guilty from… all that creamy chick­en curry!

As you can see from the above pho­to, Avery did not ride the wacky Bis­cuit on Thurs­day; instead as a sort of vaca­tion she rode Cook­ie (yes, there’s an after-school-snack theme in the names, I agree). But that sim­ple sen­tence masks the sheer hell­ish annoy­ance that was get­ting to Wim­ble­don on a Thurs­day after­noon after school, when tem­per­a­tures in Lon­don had risen to an unholy 80 degrees with no warn­ing, and half the tube lines shut down because some­thing essen­tial was threat­en­ing to melt. I picked Avery up at school where she began what was to be a recur­ring lament about how tired she was. Not con­ducive to a pleas­ant trip to do some­thing I had absolute­ly no inter­est in to begin with, with sweat pour­ing down our faces as we strug­gled with half of the Lon­don com­muters in exis­tence. Why did every­one want to go to Wim­ble­don? And of course on the way back there was an equal num­ber of peo­ple strug­gling to get to Cen­tral Lon­don. I want­ed to wave my mag­ic wand and tell all the peo­ple on both ends of the mis­er­able jour­ney to stay where they were for heav­en’s sake. One of those days when one’s inter­est in human­i­ty’s con­tin­u­ing wanes.

We got there final­ly and she rode off across the Com­mon, alas with­out me since her usu­al instruc­tor who gives us a ride to the are­na was not there and I did­n’t have the ener­gy to walk the three or so miles to fol­low her. Instead I wan­dered around Bay­ley and Sage spend­ing mon­ey on things like tape­nade, porci­ni-stuffed tortelli­ni and oth­er things you buy when you’re a) killing time and b) starv­ing. The out­door beer gar­den of the Dog and Fox pub adja­cent to the sta­ble filled with unap­peal­ing youngish white Eng­lish­men with pasty faces and bad­ly-cut suits. Ick. The barn staff pre­pared for a “train­ing din­ner” that was to con­sist of any­thing and every­thing thrown on the bar­bie, so I was smoked out from the bench where I had been try­ing to read my tacky tabloid news­pa­per (learn­ing that a sin­gu­lar­ly hideous Picas­so had sold for $52 mil­lion at Sothe­by’s. The sec­ond most pricey paint­ing by that Span­ish lout was “reput­ed” to have been bought by Las Vegas hote­lier Steve Wynn, and I was in the slight­ly cool posi­tion of know­ing that he had bought it, because in the hey­day of my gallery when I sold him an enor­mous Miri­am Schapiro can­vas he indi­cat­ed his ulti­mate goal of pos­sess­ing said Picas­so paint­ing no mat­ter what the cost).

Final­ly Avery returned, and far from hav­ing had a love­ly relax­ing ride on a not-insane pony, she had been forced to con­trol a rabid Cook­ie when she was attacked and bit­ten by an off-lead dog on the trail. Can it nev­er be calm! We sweat­ed our way home on one bus, one train, anoth­er bus. John came out of the house to meet us on the pave­ment and in answer to his cheery cock­tail-in-hand greet­ing, “So how was it?” I mere­ly hand­ed Avery and all her clob­ber to him and said, “Don’t ask, here is your child.” Mean­ing the sweaty, exhaust­ed, filthy, cranky one, as opposed to my child, who is always charming.

So much for the Thurs­day after­noon expe­ri­ence. Once a week, on the week­end, WITH her father, is quite enough barn, I opined.

I’ve gone shop­ping! I bought a tiny lit­tle pair of sort of full­ish shorts, that look like a skirt when they’re on. Dark gray blue, all the rage. And a lit­tle brown peas­an­ty top, and a pair of black “foot­less tights,” which sim­ply scream 1986 to me, but hey, they worked back then and they work now. They will be so cute under a longish tunic that I have been sav­ing for just such a devel­op­ment. I went to the French Con­nec­tion UK, whose acronym in adver­tise­ments always caus­es Avery to screw her eyes shut and say “bad word, bad word.” Avery spent Fri­day night at Anna’s house, in advance of the big birth­day par­ty the next day, so John and I had quite the most divine Indi­an din­ner out EVER. A love­ly, swelle­gant place around the cor­ner called Deya. A lit­tle com­pli­men­ta­ry starter of a teacup-sized por­tion of lentil soup, with a tem­pu­ra mush­room sus­pend­ed over the top from a tooth­pick laid across! Very clever. Then onto a crab fried rice with sweet­corn (no! it was good!), black truf­fles and corian­der, then a chick­en dish that was good but not crazy good, and creamed spinach and saf­fron pota­toes. I asked so many ques­tions of the wait­er that final­ly he and his maitre d’ were hud­dled by the kitchen look­ing at me as if I were Gael Greene come to Lon­don, and after that we got star treat­ment! I must be a famous restau­rant crit­ic in heavy dis­guise! What fun. And so nice to have a Date.

Sat­ur­day we bit the bul­let and assem­bled the sup­ple­men­tary book­shelves from John Lewis. My lack of both man­u­al dex­ter­i­ty and spa­tial rela­tions stunned even my hus­band, who must be used to it by now. But tomor­row I plan to spend the day fill­ing the two in my study and thus emp­ty­ing the last of the hor­rid mov­ing box­es. Then I can hang pic­tures on my wall and be all fin­ished with the “I just arrived” look I’ve got so sick of. Every­thing has to be nice for the Fri­day Form Four cof­fee morn­ing here. I’m quite nervous!