kick­ing up one’s heels in Hackney

Well, as I write this I am jug­gling lots of feel­ings: total delight over the suc­cess of the salmon dish (for which I will give you some addi­tion­al bits of advice), lin­ger­ing mem­o­ries of an excel­lent day out with Vin­cent yes­ter­day in East Lon­don, and dis­may at the hud­dled, fever­ish lit­tle girl on my sofa, sur­round­ed by con­cerned cats. She woke up this morn­ing seem­ing quite nor­mal, but then when I kissed her I realised she was quite hot, and then I noticed that her cheeks were too pink and her eyes too bright. So off with the uni­form and on with paja­mas, and I’ve been force-feed­ing her icy apple juice ever since, watch­ing her fall in and out of sleep. Poor dear. It means she miss­es the dread­ed Dance Com­pe­ti­tion at school for which she had Coco and Anna had assid­u­ous­ly pre­pared, as well as a rare Mon­day play­date after school with Anna while I had planned to go see the new Matthew Mac­fadyen film, screen­ing for just two days, in Leices­ter Square with anoth­er fan. I have to admit I was real­ly look­ing for­ward to meet­ing this Eng­lish lady with whom I have been cor­re­spond­ing about our love for Matthew, yes, but most­ly our love for London.

Ah, the best-laid plans. I have been read­ing a very dark but very reward­ing book called “Chas­ing Day­light,” and in it the author says some­thing quite pro­found. I can­not remem­ber the exact words, and just now I can’t find the pas­sage, but the gist is that a good day is a day that goes the way you plan. I think there’s some­thing to that. Because most of us plan a good day, one that includes at least a cou­ple of accom­plish­ments, how­ev­er minor, in which we man­age to appre­ci­ate our fam­i­lies and friends, notice the weath­er and enjoy it for what­ev­er it is, and have some­thing real­ly good to eat, at least once before the day is out. I know a lot of peo­ple have much more elab­o­rate plans for their days, but that’s my typ­i­cal plan. And I think it is very use­ful to realise that it does­n’t take more than that to have a good day. But when things don’t go accord­ing to plan, whether in a big way or a small way, you do notice the felic­i­ty of the planned day, and watch it go by in favor of anoth­er day. And if you can man­age to be tru­ly wise just for a minute, you get to enjoy being with your child when nor­mal­ly she would be almost a whole post­code away at school. So there. (And even now my plan to blog is being replaced by a request for me to read aloud, so I’ll have to pause here…)

All right, now we can focus on salmon, and then on Hack­ney! Here is my bit of wis­dom as far as Vin­cen­t’s total­ly bril­liant recipe goes, and it applies to a lot of oth­er sit­u­a­tions as well. Don’t do a job if you don’t have the right tools for the job. Or at least, you can do it, but you’ll find your­self alone in your kitchen, expect­ing guests, and irra­tional­ly curs­ing prac­ti­cal­ly your best friend for telling you the recipe was easy when it was­n’t. Let me just tell you now, in case you don’t know: juli­en­ning veg­eta­bles with­out a juli­enne blade on your Mag­im­ix is like peel­ing a car­rot with a can­dle. It can be done, but you’ll be want­i­ng to crack your head against the win­dow after about an hour. Then after dis­cov­er­ing that I had no prop­er blade, I hauled my old man­do­line out to see how dull the blades had got (very), and then dis­cov­ered while fid­dling with it that I had bloody cuts and scrapes on all my fin­gers and I had­n’t even touched a VEG­ETABLE yet. A gad­get with blades too dull to work but too sharp to touch on BOTH sides of its evil self is just a recipe for dis­as­ter. I realised I had juli­enned myself.

In the end I got the man­do­line to work, sort of, but while it coop­er­at­ed with my car­rots, it turned its back on the more stub­born fen­nel bulbs and cel­ery stalks so I had to do them by hand. I’m sor­ry: life is too short. That being said, the rest of the recipe was… easy! It’s def­i­nite­ly a keeper.

Vin­cen­t’s Salmon with Cream & Vegetables

Prepa­ra­tion time: 10–15 min­utes (IF you have the right machine!)
Cook­ing Time: 25–30 minutes
Lev­el of Dif­fi­cul­ty: Very Easy (it will be, for you)
Occa­sion: Din­ner Par­ty or Sun­day Lunch

Approx 1 Kilo of Salmon Fil­let in one piece if pos­si­ble — (Enough to
feed 4 gen­er­ous­ly or 6 if you’re hav­ing a starter)
3 Medi­um to large carrots
1 Large fen­nel bulb
1 Medi­um Onion
1 Large Red Pepper
2 Large Cel­ery Stalks
200g Green Veg­eta­bles (Green Beans, Aspara­gus etc.)
3 Tbsp Chopped Flat Leaf Parsley
1 1/2 Tbsp Chopped Dill
1 1/2 Tbsp Chopped Chervil (Not absolute­ly necessary)
Grat­ed Rind of 1 Lemon
Juice of 1 Lemon
400 ml Creme Fraiche
150 ml White Wine (Chardon­nay, Viog­nier, Sauvi­gnion Blanc)

Pre­heat your oven to 200C (Medi­um hot oven). Put the veg­eta­bles through a food proces­sor with a shredding/julienne blade. Trans­fer the grat­ed veg­eta­bles to a mix­ing bowl. Add the grat­ed lemon rind. In a sep­a­rate mix­ing bowl, add the Creme Fraiche, lemon juice, white wine, chopped herbs and mix well. Sea­son this with gen­er­ous amounts of pep­per and some salt. Pour the liq­uid mix­ture over the veg­eta­bles and mix thor­ough­ly. When you’re done, you should have a very wet mix of veg­eta­bles sit­ting in but not cov­ered by liquid.

Par­tial­ly strain and arrange 3/4 of the veg­etable mix­ture even­ly on the bot­tom of a large and flat back­ing pan/tray. Place the salmon fil­let skin-side down on the veg­eta­bles. Sea­son the salmon. Strain and place the remain­der of the veg­eta­bles on the fish. You should have about 1 1/2 cups of liq­uid left in the bot­tom of your mix­ing bowl. Pour that over the salmon.

Bake the salmon for 25–30 min­utes, check­ing half-way and bast­ing the fish with some of the cook­ing liq­uid. When the time is up, check that the fish is cooked. It should be a bit “pink” in the middle.

***************

I actu­al­ly sub­sti­tut­ed a leek for the advised onion, and did­n’t have any chervil but did have lemon thyme. I have to con­fess, being not a very pre­cise cook, that I mixed all the veg­eta­bles, creme fraiche, wine and herbs all togeth­er before read­ing that I should have done them sep­a­rate­ly, and it did­n’t mat­ter. Also, I got involved in my din­ner guests’ con­ver­sa­tion and com­plete­ly for­got to baste the salmon as it baked. At all. It was fine! Every­one tucked in and was hap­py, and ate mam­moth por­tions along with the mashed pota­toes and sauteed aspara­gus. Just delight­ful. With a nice spicy water­cress and rock­et sal­ad, and a cheese­board, and final­ly brown­ies and rasp­ber­ries soaked in Amaret­to, it was a deli­cious din­ner. And we had fun. Sophi­a’s fam­i­ly are always up for a nice gath­er­ing, plus they have a Euro­pean enjoy­ment of the table, and tons of glit­ter­ing and intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion. I am always slight­ly ashamed of my igno­rance, in a pure­ly enjoy­able way, when I ask Claus a ques­tion. Some­thing very basic about an episode in Poland elicit­ed a com­pre­hen­sive and total­ly fas­ci­nat­ing expla­na­tion of issues in Pol­ish his­to­ry over the past 500 years! And of course there was the req­ui­site rehash­ing of par­ent-teacher con­fer­ences, Susan diplo­mat­i­cal­ly occu­py­ing the spot between hot-head­ed me and super-cool Claus. And even the girls liked the salmon. Alto­geth­er a super evening.

And here’s an idea, nicked from my friend Peter: treat the left­over salmon as if it were crab, and make cakes. I mixed up a hand­ful of the salmon with a hand­ful of the left­over mashed pota­toes, added some fresh bread­crumbs and a beat­en egg and made them into nice hock­ey-puck-sized pat­ties, rolled them in more bread­crumbs and fried them in canola oil. Well-drained on paper tow­el and with a nice blob of may­on­naise mixed with chili sauce and lemon juice, they were per­fect for din­ner last night. Avery pre­ferred her left­overs straight from the bak­ing dish, however.

Yes­ter­day while Avery was at the barn (most­ly lead­ing small­er chil­dren around by the lead­line, instead of rid­ing, to her cha­grin), I took a deep breath and drove myself all the way to Vin­cen­t’s house, in Lon­don Bridge. As I dropped Avery at the sta­ble, I realised with a shock that while I had explic­it direc­tions from the Bridge to his house, I did not arm myself with any instruc­tions on how to get from the Bayswa­ter Road to the actu­al riv­er. Oh dear! How­ev­er, I refused to be daunt­ed, put the top down on Emmy, and res­olute­ly set forth. And I did­n’t get lost! Not a sin­gle wrong turn. Now, most of you will ask your­selves why this is cause for cel­e­bra­tion: most peo­ple could not MISS the riv­er. But I could. Thrilling to arrive safely!

I had decid­ed it was time, at least for one day, to scotch my aca­d­e­m­ic look and go for con­tact lens­es! And a lit­tle make­up. Vin­cent has very pre­cise stan­dards of how peo­ple should look (as he has high stan­dards about every­thing), not that they need be beau­ti­ful or fan­cy, but they should be true to them­selves. I did­n’t want to dis­ap­point, and after all that scruti­ny dur­ing the por­trait pho­to shoot, I knew that a lit­tle gussy­ing up would not go amiss. And you know what? It felt good, to make a lit­tle effort. I picked him up and we drove I can­not even begin to remem­ber where, but ulti­mate­ly end­ing up Shored­itch, which I remem­ber from the Christ­mas chil­dren’s song that goes in part, “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clements… when I grow rich, say the bells of Shored­itch…” A real­ly charm­ing part of town, sort of Tribeca-feel­ing. Final­ly we were in Hack­ney, and des­per­ate­ly search­ing among coun­cil hous­ing and ware­hous­es for the restau­rant, Bistrotheque. I think we saw every street in the postal code! But I did­n’t mind, because it was a beau­ti­ful blue sky day, we had a con­vert­ible, and best of all, I was­n’t in charge! Final­ly we ran the place to earth, and hon­est­ly you would nev­er even know it was there. Not marked on the out­side, a total flat-front ware­house, and the restau­rant itself was past an inner court­yard. But once there, as you see, it was gorgeous.

And every­one there (includ­ing the wait­ers) all seemed to have been cast in a play, or a grit­ty BBC dra­ma, or were in the final throes of prepar­ing for their open­ing at what­ev­er gallery will become the next White Cube. Or else they looked famous or as if they were about to become famous. We dis­cussed what makes peo­ple attrac­tive. Not beau­ti­ful, but inter­est­ing. Vin­cent said in his typ­i­cal urbane sot­to voce, “Now, there’s style. That girl is wear­ing a vin­tage Chanel suit with a ripped t‑shirt. She isn’t pret­ty, but…” I agreed and said, “Don’t look now, but behind you is a man with yel­low hair stick­ing straight up, like Wood­stock, and the per­son in sequins oppo­site him is NOT a girl.” And before he could look, the girl in the Chanel suit went over and kissed them both. See? Intrigu­ing! What lux­u­ry to sit in the mut­ed sun­shine of a Lon­don March day with a friend and people-talk.

And the food was fine. To be brave and do some­thing blog­wor­thy (it’s embar­rass­ing how many times I catch myself doing that), I eschewed the very yum­my and rich-look­ing chori­zo with scram­bled eggs that Vin­cent had, and ordered steak tartare and seared red mul­let. The steak tartare was excel­lent, as good as we had in Paris: icy cold, flecked with plen­ty of capers and chopped cor­ni­chons, topped with a per­fect, deep-gold egg yolk (and sur­round­ed, unac­count­ably, by a ring of what turned out to be olive oil, don’t know why, but it was pret­ty). And I dis­cov­ered I don’t much like red mul­let. To my mind there are three kinds of fish: shell­fish, tall fish, and short fish. Tall fish include cod, and now I know red mul­let, and they always seem a bit tough to my taste. Avery and I both are devot­ed, on the oth­er hand, to the queen of short fish, lemon sole. In any case, I’m glad I tried it, and it was beau­ti­ful­ly cooked and lying demure­ly atop a gor­geous crunchy, gar­licky toast­ed slice of baguette and sur­round­ed by sauteed heir­loom tomatoes.

Then Vin­cent ordered a very refresh­ing drink for us, which was one of those Eng­lish tra­di­tions that I’d always read about but nev­er tried: elder­flower presse. And for once enough ice in an Eng­lish bev­er­age! I’d say the bar­tender was cater­ing to ice-hap­py Amer­i­cans but I think actu­al­ly we were the only ones in the room. The drink was long and tall and stuffed with mint and lime, so what­ev­er elder­flower itself tastes like, it did­n’t mat­ter very much.

Through it all we chat­ted and exchanged recipe ideas. He’s try­ing to sell me on the notion of mashed pota­toes with THINGS in them, like Bram­ley apple, or leek and sun­dried toma­to added while boil­ing, then mashed and driz­zled with lemon juice and olive oil. I myself pre­fer pota­toes unadul­ter­at­ed. And we peo­ple-watched. At one point a chap came in in very pointy shoes, dis­tressed jeans, a Fedo­ra and super-dark sun­glass­es, sur­veyed the room and seemed to choose the peo­ple he found most amus­ing, and sat down. Min­utes lat­er he was strid­ing out of the room deep in con­ver­sa­tion on his mobile. One won­ders what script was accept­ed, or what part offered, or what gig dan­gled. I said in my usu­al state of self-absorp­tion, “I won­der what any­one would say about me if any­one I know had a blog,” and he said, very sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly, “That you go through life suck­ing all the mar­row out of it.” Ugly image, but I do like get­ting the most out of a situation.

After lunch we repaired to the car once more and intend­ed to dri­ve Vin­cent to a super­mar­ket, but end­ed up wind­ing our way through parts of Hack­ney that were rather less savory than the Bistrotheque street. “I’m chan­nel­ing… Flat­bush,” I decid­ed. “Or Ben­son­hurst,” Vin­cent agreed, and strange­ly enough we found our­selves final­ly in Blooms­bury and I dropped him at a very dull Sains­burys and col­lect­ed Avery from the stable.

Well, she has perked up, her fever has dropped (accord­ing to assid­u­ous appli­ca­tions by the patient her­self, of the intrigu­ing dig­i­tal ther­mome­ter), and she’s on the phone with my moth­er, talk­ing about their… new kit­ty! Wel­come to the fam­i­ly, Maisy, and how clever of Baby Jane to think of such a per­fect name. We can’t wait to meet her.