“As You Like It” (and we did), plus Maze, oh my

Oh, my film and tele­vi­sion friend Sue took me to the most impres­sive and enjoy­able screen­ing (I’m throw­ing about that cool word) of “As You Like It,” at Baf­ta! I’ve nev­er been to 195 Pic­cadil­ly, home of the British Acad­e­my of Film and Tele­vi­sion Awards, but it’s very swanky, very plushy, all the chairs in the screen­ing room labelled dis­creet­ly in brass with “Endowed by Michael Dou­glas and Cather­ine Zeta-Jones,” or some such lumi­nary’s name. There is a strict house rule that no one makes a sound from the moment the lights go down until the last cred­it rolls, which makes the atmos­phere much more antic­i­pa­to­ry than your ordi­nary the­atre. And the film was love­ly! Great per­for­mances from the gor­geous Bryce Dal­las Howard and David Oyelowo made the entire film worth­while, and Ken­neth Branagh’s direc­tion is fresh and ener­getic. It opened last night in reg­u­lar the­atres and I would say it’s worth an evening. We’re going to take Avery and her friend Jamie to see it tonight, and I think it will be very inter­est­ing to see if 10-year-olds can fol­low a very cheer­ful and cheeky but still Shake­speare­an plot.

Where on earth did the week go? I saw the film on Mon­day night, and now what do I have to show for the fol­low­ing four days? I can’t imag­ine. Well, first paired read­ing on Tues­day morn­ing with my lit­tle Form Three gulls, who have grown quite shock­ing­ly since last July. Enid Bly­ton, Dick King-Smith, all the favorites were trot­ted out in their posh lit­tle accents. I hate to think that this time next year, I will have no rea­son to hang out at King’s Col­lege, where there are tru­ly lit­tle chil­dren. Instead Avery will be the youngest at a new school, sur­round­ed by… teenagers. How did that happen?

We made a ruinous trip to Rid­ers and Squires in South Kens­ing­ton, for new half-chaps and gloves. This world is lit­tered, from sea to shin­ing sea, with rid­ing gloves Avery has left in one barn or anoth­er. It’s like socks in the dry­er. Anna came with us, since the girls were in a state of deliri­ous hap­pi­ness at hav­ing been named “Envi­ron­ment Pre­fects” at school. Now, while you might think that this job would entail encour­ag­ing their school­mates to recy­cle, it seems that it’s actu­al­ly to do with mak­ing the school envi­ron­ment more appeal­ing. So right away, they took bunch­es of flow­ers in the next day. Sure­ly we can’t have signed on for sup­ply­ing the school with flow­ers all year?

And I made a nice trip that after­noon to the near­by Whole Foods, as tan­ta­liz­ing­ly stocked with glo­ri­ous choic­es as ever. I came away with three whole lemon soles, hav­ing watched them be fil­let­ed right before my eyes. Try­ing that process once was enough for me. Leave it to the pro­fes­sion­als, I say. But it was com­plete­ly deli­cious. Be sure to get whole­meal flour (it’s often labelled “for bread­mak­ing”, I like Hov­is). It has much more body, grain and flavour than all-pur­pose flour. Save that for a nice apple cake.

Com­plete­ly Sim­ple Sauteed Lemon Sole 

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And how about anoth­er night of com­plete­ly sim­ple fish, for your Omega‑3 oils?

Salmon with Soy, Gin­ger and Garlic

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In our expe­ri­ence, you need to allow for one fil­let per per­son plus one extra if you’re three. It’s so light and deli­cious that you’ll find each per­son needs one more lit­tle help­ing. With both these dish­es, a gen­er­ous blob of mashed pota­toes and a nice green veg are all you need. Or if you’re Avery, copi­ous num­bers of sliv­ered red pep­pers, sauteed in olive oil.

But real­ly, what did I accom­plish this week? Not much. Avery had her first week­day rid­ing les­son since sum­mer, and the ponies were feel­ing fresh. Lit­tle Ellie was tum­bled off Sey­mour, Brody gave Anna a hard time, and even Amber was a lit­tle frisky for Avery. But the rain that threat­ened the begin­ning of the les­son blew over, thank­ful­ly, so I was left just shiv­er­ing, but not actu­al­ly soak­ing wet.

John and I have been tak­ing long, long morn­ing walks in the park, and I real­ize some­thing odd: you’d think that a sum­mer spent in the coun­try­side of Con­necti­cut would leave you real­ly fit, with plen­ty of exer­cise, but not so. It’s much eas­i­er to stay fit in a city where you’ve got to walk every­where, than in the coun­try where you jump in your car. So my legs are thank­ful it’s autumn.

Well, one thing I did man­age to organ­ise: our Irish hol­i­day in Octo­ber! We’ll be stay­ing in a cas­tle, mind you, lov­ing­ly restored by Irish Land­mark Trust, just out­side Water­ford. I’ve still got to get a hotel for us in Dublin for the first two nights. Has any­one stayed at the Dylan? It sounds fright­ful­ly chic, when I’d real­ly rather a place that was old Irish, cosy and warm. But Dublin seems to run to either thread­bare and smokey-smelling, or fright­ful­ly chic. It sounds like such a great adventure.

Then, with­out a doubt the crown­ing glo­ry of the week was yes­ter­day’s lunch at Maze. We have been intend­ing to go there since we moved to Lon­don, such is the rep­u­ta­tion of the Gor­don Ram­say strong­hold in Grosvenor Square. But as so often hap­pens, it takes some­one else’s moti­va­tion to get the thing done. My barn-moth­er friend Kristin men­tioned at pick­up on Thurs­day that she was going for her birth­day with our mutu­al friend Becky, and did I want to join? Well, I real­ly should have been gro­cery shop­ping, or get­ting up to date on my pho­to albums, or writ­ing the intro­duc­tion to this cook­book I’m work­ing on, but it was the work of a moment to drop all that non­sense. And I’m so glad I did. It was ridicu­lous­ly… over the top.

I thought I’d seen about every­thing as far as pre­cious pre­sen­ta­tion and funky ingre­di­ents go, but this restau­rant is beyond the pale. I have nev­er before need­ed to keep back a copy of the menu as a ref­er­ence guide dur­ing the meal! We began laugh­ing when the first course came (carpac­cio of tuna and sword­fish with lime and cucum­ber mari­nade, soya dress­ing) and nev­er stopped till the last bite. I could have eat­en six help­ings of the tuna dish: lit­tle translu­cent medal­lions the size of pound coins, of each fish, topped with edi­ble flow­ers (the wait­er said, with a sur­pris­ing degree of humour in one so dogged­ly French), “Don’t, of course, eat the flow­ers. They are quite lethal. Just kid­ding.” Then Becky had ordered “Jerusalem arti­choke veloute with braised Gress­ing­ham duck leg,” and was most sur­prised when along came a tiny white bowl with a scat­ter­ing of lit­tle brown objects in the very bot­tom, which was prompt­ly cov­ered by a stream of liq­uid from a gravy boat by the assid­u­ous wait­er. The lit­tle brown objects turned out to be the duck leg, cubed incred­i­bly small, and the liq­uid the soup. Unbe­liev­ably sub­tle and deli­cious flavours, quite inde­scrib­able. Then there was “hon­ey and soy roast­ed quail with Lan­des foie gras and spiced pear chut­ney,” and would you believe Becky does not like foie gras? I felt it was the least I could do to take her por­tion away: every so light­ly sauteed with a crust of minced chives, sea salt and fresh black pep­per, YUM.

Then I had “Roast­ed Orkney sea scal­lops with cured ham and maple syrup, egg and peas.” But this descrip­tion can­not con­vey the minute per­fec­tion of the dish: “egg and peas”? Try one minus­cule quail’s egg, sun­ny side up, and a lash­ing of bright green pea puree. Magical!

We had so much fun. And while it was expen­sive (about 30 pounds a per­son), we all felt that for the ridicu­lous lux­u­ry and the absolute per­fec­tion of every bite, it was worth the mon­ey for a spe­cial occa­sion. And Gor­don was there! He signed copies of his lat­est cook­book, “Fast Food,” for us. Now I must say that even with the celebri­ty glow, and the mem­o­ry of the fab­u­lous lunch, the cook­book itself is… very lazy. Only a celebri­ty chef could get away with such a neb­u­lous con­cept, such for­get­table recipes, and such bad pho­tog­ra­phy. I have to be hon­est. I think I would have been bet­ter off with one of his over-the-top sil­ly cook­books with uncook­able fan­cy food. More like fic­tion than real-life.

What fun. It was one of those after­noons when all was right with the world: good friends, a beau­ti­ful atmos­phere, the ear­ly-autumn leaves of Grosvenor Square just begin­ning to fall out­side the win­dows, per­fect food. Thanks for includ­ing me, girls.