Notes on a Scan­dal (and a cau­tion­ary tale about mussels)

It’s so unusu­al for me to find a movie that is meant for adults (not that there’s any­thing wrong with see­ing a good chil­dren’s movie, but still), not a com­e­dy, and not so scary or evil that it gives me bad dreams. I just don’t do scary and evil. I remem­ber last year, to cel­e­brate my birth­day I went to see “The Con­stant Gar­den­er,” because of my devo­tion to Ralph Fiennes, but I did­n’t do my home­work. Sil­ly me, I thought the film might be about… gar­den­ing, not that I gar­den, but at least it would be palat­able, and I could stare at Ralph. But my good­ness, I was scared for weeks afterward.

So yes­ter­day it was such fun to meet up with my gor­geous friend Dalia (always a bit demor­al­is­ing to be with a friend who makes every­one’s head turn, but it’s worth it for her bit­ing wit) and see “Notes on a Scan­dal.” Of course every­one is talk­ing about it. I had not read the book by Zoe Heller, but from the reviews of the book, the screen­play (by the bril­liant Patrick Mar­ber) is spot on, some of it tak­en ver­ba­tim from the nov­el. I don’t think I have ever seen Cate Blanchett in a film before, but the range she dis­plays in this movie is awe-inspir­ing: her voice seems to reach across sev­er­al octaves, her face can go from flow­er­like inno­cence to pure hatred in the blink of an eye, and she per­fect­ly cap­tures the idio­cy, way­ward­ness and pan­ic of this char­ac­ter. And a vir­tu­al cameo from one of my favorite British actress­es, Anne-Marie Duff, right at the end. I adored her, along­side one of Matthew Mac­fadyen’s most won­der­ful per­for­mances, in “The Way We Live Now.” I won­der if she took such a tiny part just to be asso­ci­at­ed with this film. The hus­band, played by Bill Nighy (who seems able to do any­thing, from age­ing rock star to cor­rupt polit­i­can to this adorable vic­tim), remind­ed me of my own hus­band, so good, and with such an evil wife, poor thing.

It did make me laugh that in one of the book reviews, the adul­ter­ous wife was described as “an old­er woman.” Eeek, at 37? This makes my 42nd, tomor­row, seem all the more like the first, or even third, nail in my coffin.

So do go see it. Now, I think I can look for­ward to sev­er­al more films that won’t give me night­mares but will be food for thought: “Becom­ing Jane” and “Venus” at least. I won­der how long we could go, see­ing only British films, or at least about British peo­ple (even if it took Amer­i­cans to make the film). I’m think­ing our time in Amer­i­ca next week will be too tak­en up with real peo­ple to see any onscreen; we’ve added one more longed-for encounter to our list. My dear “oth­er moth­er” Jeanne and her daugh­ter Binky will be com­ing into the city from New Jer­sey to have din­ner with us. We need a qui­et spot for real con­ver­sa­tion, so I’ve got to get crack­ing to find the per­fect spot, prefer­ably in Tribeca, hmmm…

Now, to close today, although this anec­dote will only under­score my iniq­ui­ties as a home cook, I have to tell how it is pos­si­ble to screw up my much-enjoyed sim­ple mus­sel recipe. This screwup is the result of too much prepa­ra­tion and not enough spon­tane­ity, so I will con­fess and share all. I’m going to give you the recipe here again, and then tell you what went wrong, so it does­n’t hap­pen to you, not that you’d be so inept. But I learned some­thing, so that’s always use­ful, and I think some­times you don’t learn with­out mess­ing up, because you pro­ceed in the bliss­ful igno­rance that noth­ing could go wrong. But it can.

Mus­sels with White Wine and Fresh Thyme
(serves one hun­gry hus­band with a wife who does­n’t like mussels)

3 tbsps olive oil
1 lb mus­sels, cleaned
4 cloves gar­lic, chopped fine
3 shal­lots, chopped fine
1 tbsp fresh thyme (chopped with­out stems)
3 tbsps chopped parsley
6 Thai fresh green pep­per­corns, chopped
2 cups white wine
1 cup chick­en stock
2 tbsps butter

Saute gar­lic, shal­lots, thyme and pep­per­corns in olive oil, then add white wine and stock. Bring to a boil, add mus­sels, cov­er and steam for 8 min­utes. Dis­card any that did not open, and lift good mus­sels into a large bowl with slot­ted spoon, bring wine sauce to a boil again and whisk in but­ter. Pour over mus­sels and serve with warm baguette and goats cheese.

**********

OK. The beau­ty of this recipe was that I walked into the house one evening and remem­bered I had a pound of mus­sels giv­en to me by my fish­mon­ger because I had bought so bleep­ing many oys­ters for Christ­mas stew. What to do with them? With unwont­ed spon­tane­ity (I am the least spon­ta­neous per­son on the plan­et), I sim­ply looked in fridge and in my pantry, got an indi­ca­tion online of how long to cook mus­sels, and in ten min­utes flat, had this love­ly dish on the table. Fair enough.

The sec­ond time I made them, I added chili flakes because I had no Thai pep­per­corns. All to the good, a lit­tle bite, very delicious.

How­ev­er.

Last night I had it all planned out: Avery and I would have lemon sole, and John would have the mus­sels, and I would share the broth, dip­ping in a nice baguette. But I was felled by my PLANS. Because it meant that I steamed the mus­sels, and then as I did every­thing else, I let the broth sim­ply sim­mer, think­ing what could it hurt? I lit the can­dles, made the fish, set the table, poured the milk, all the while let­ting the fresh fla­vors of my thyme and pars­ley die a slow, sad death in the liq­uid on the stove. The broth would have been com­plete­ly bland and ugly, but for the SEC­OND screwup, which was far too many chili flakes. Yes, they were red and pret­ty, but we almost could­n’t ingest the broth, and it killed all fla­vor of gar­lic, wine or any­thing else. For­get tast­ing the mus­sels: they total­ly dis­ap­peared. It was like cast­ing me along­side Cate Blanchett and hop­ing that any male in the audi­ence would lis­ten to any­thing I said.

So there you go. The morale of the sto­ry: remem­ber what per­son­al­i­ty each dish has, before you start. Not every­thing is brisket, nor is every­thing mus­sels. I have to learn to lis­ten to what every din­ner requires, and not paint them all with the same brush. Stick with jump­ing in at the last ten min­utes, for a dish that relies on quick inven­tion, and remem­ber that brisket is bet­ter the sec­ond day. I’m sure there’s an enor­mous life les­son in this, and if I fig­ure out what it is, I’ll let you know.