FINAL­LY!

Whew. But WHEW. Last inter­view today for Avery, at the love­ly South Hamp­stead High School, on a per­fect blue-sky day. Ever since our first vis­it there, it’s been one of our favourite school choic­es, and today’s expe­ri­ence only under­scored what a nice place it is. Beau­ti­ful old brick build­ing, sweet-faced help­ful gulls to help us find out way, the won­der­ful­ly exu­ber­ant Head Girl chat­ting with our lit­tle ones as they wait­ed for their appoint­ments, and the effer­ves­cent and charm­ing Deputy Head for Aca­d­e­m­ic Affairs, as always mak­ing us feel wel­come. I real­ly do like the place, and Avery had an excel­lent inter­view with intel­li­gent ques­tions and a per­son who real­ly lis­tened. Dou­ble Whew.

And no, I don’t real­ly nurse secret hopes for her to end up at Mag­dalen Col­lege, Oxford, as this pho­to­graph so evoca­tive­ly illus­trates, but I did want to fol­low up on my plea for infor­ma­tion in my last post: Mag­dalen or Maudlin? Well, thanks to one alert read­er I now know all, or near­ly all. This read­er kind­ly sent me the fol­low­ing comment:

Regard­ing Mag­dalen Oxford, I believe the found­ing statutes in the mid 15th cen­tu­ry gave instruc­tions that the pro­nun­ci­a­tion should be ‘Maudlin’. How­ev­er, the two col­leges in ques­tion — Mag­dalen (Oxford) and Mag­da­lene (Cam­bridge) are both his­tor­i­cal­ly pro­nounced ‘maudlin’. The word maudlin shares the same root as Magdalen(e): (from SOED)

maudlin n. [(O)Fr. Madeleine f. eccl.L Mag­dale­na: see MAG­DALEN. In branch II f. the adj.]
1 = MAG­DALEN 1. MEL16.b A pen­i­tent resem­bling Mary Mag­dalen. Cf. MAG­DALEN 2. EM17.
maudlin a.E16. [f. the n., w. allus. to pic­tures of the Mag­dalen weeping.]
1 Tear­ful and emo­tion­al as a result of drink.

Love­ly! Now we all know. And in my search for even more infor­ma­tion (I did­n’t real­ly find any) I came across an absolute­ly side-split­ting forum for a soci­ety called eGul­let, won­der­ful­ly clever dis­cus­sions about all things food-relat­ed. This dis­cus­sion will real­ly make you laugh, if the way lan­guage sounds hap­pens to make you laugh. Increas­ing­ly hilar­i­ous requests by mem­bers for help on how to pro­nounce var­i­ous culi­nary terms from oth­er lan­guages, but also plen­ty of atten­tion on just plain bof­fo British pro­nun­ci­a­tions. Do click.

Well, yes­ter­day I learned some­thing about myself. When feel­ing rather (can’t help myself) maudlin, sad and point­less, the best thing for me to do is gath­er up a bunch of ingre­di­ents, some instruc­tions from my new favourite cook­ery writer Tamasin Day-Lewis (her Tamas­in’s Kitchen Clas­sics is just mouth-water­ing), and get cook­ing. Tru­ly, I spent the whole day try­ing to change my mood: I tried a game of soli­taire, a spot of email­ing, a look at the pre-Super Tues­day tel­ly cov­er­age, a nice long walk. Noth­ing could break my gloom. But din­ner prep comes to all of us, and armed with Tamas­in’s advice, I entered the kitchen, not feel­ing in much of a mood to be cre­ative, but needs must. And I must tell you: chop­ping and strain­ing, grat­ing and mix­ing, stir­ring and sautee­ing, TOTAL­LY changed my out­look on life! Plus at the end we all had a deli­cious meal to enjoy. But beware: the two side dish­es are NOT for the fat-faint of heart. Two words: goose fat. Two more words: dou­ble cream. Read on… you know you want to.

Roast­ed Pork Ten­der­loin with Mixed Herbs and Pepper
(serves 4 with good side dishes)

1 pork ten­der­loin, any sinews removed
olive oil to fill the cup of your hand
1 tbsp each: Alep­po pep­per flakes, sea salt, fresh chopped rose­mary, fresh chopped thyme, fresh chopped pars­ley, minced garlic

Lay the ten­der­loin on a cut­ting board or a piece of grease­proof paper, and rub all over with the olive oil. Then scat­ter your mixed herbs and what­not on the sur­face, the length of the ten­der­loin, and roll the meat around until you’ve pressed as much as pos­si­ble of the mix­ture into the meat sur­face. Roast at 425 degrees (220-ish cel­sius) for 25 min­utes, if you like the pork pink in the mid­dle, longer for more well-done. Remove to a cut­ting board and let rest for 10 min­utes while you put the fin­ish­ing touch­es on:

Tamas­in’s Pota­toes Lyonnaises
(serves four)

1 lb pota­toes, in their jack­ets, scrubbed
1 large white onion
4 ounces goose fat
sea salt to taste

Boil the pota­toes until just cooked and set aside to cool slight­ly. Then slice the onion very thin and saute it in half the goose fat, till crispy and brown. Set aside in a lit­tle dish, and DO NOT clean the skil­let. Cube the pota­toes into nice shapes (Avery did turn up her pre­sen­ta­tion-obsessed nose at my impre­cise angles) and saute in the oth­er half of the goose fat, in the onion skil­let, turn­ing fre­quent­ly to brown on all sides as much as pos­si­ble. Throw in the onions and toss till mixed. HEAV­EN. Espe­cial­ly with…

Tamas­in’s Spinach Gratin
(serves four)

1 pound (two large bags) baby spinach, washed and chopped (you can do this in batch­es in the Cuisi­nart, but not too fine)
1/2 cup dou­ble cream
1 medi­um egg
sprin­kle black pepper
sprin­kle sea salt
sprin­kle ground nutmeg
1/2 cup grat­ed Pecori­no or Parmesan

Bring a stock­pot of water to boil and JUST cook the spinach, stir­ring thor­ough­ly, just for 30 sec­onds. Then press into a sieve or colan­der and get ALL the water out. Press into a gratin or small-ish bak­ing dish. Whisk togeth­er all the rest of the ingre­di­ents but the cheese and pour over the spinach, lift­ing the spinach light­ly here and there with a fork to mix the creamy bits in. Top with the cheese and bake in a 425 degree oven (with the pork, why not?) for 20 minutes.

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

Now does­n’t that menu just make you want to sit up and beg like a dog? I would have, but hey, it was all in my kitchen, so I did­n’t have to. And I did­n’t even make Avery and John beg.

The beau­ty of this menu bog­gles the imag­i­na­tion on so many lev­els. The pork is lean, inex­pen­sive and the herbs make it ter­ri­bly flavour­some with­out any mess­ing about with but­ter, wine, etc. Plus it cooks itself. The pota­toes are cheap, suc­cu­lent and evil­ly glossy with the goose fat (and how often do you have goose fat, any­way? not often enough to dwell on its doubt­less artery-clog­ging nature). The spinach is vir­tu­ous in its bril­liant green, but lux­u­ri­ous in its coat of creamy cheese.

Tamasin does not chop her spinach, but I do because both Avery and I object to whole cooked spinach leaves on slim­i­ness prin­ci­ples. The key, too, is in tim­ing. Get the pota­toes boiled before you start any­thing else, and assem­ble the spinach. Then put the pork in, start sautee­ing the pota­toes and onions, and ten min­utes before the pork is done, slide the spinach in the very same oven. Its last ten min­utes are while the pork rests. It’s the mat­ter of two min­utes to slice the pork and every­thing else will be ready.

I can­not blither on too much about how much the cosy, fra­grant prep of this din­ner cheered me up, not to men­tion the twin plea­sures of gob­bling it up and hav­ing my fam­i­ly be so hap­py with me! Total­ly changed my out­look on life, and if an activ­i­ty can do that with just four ounces of goose fat, it goes on my list.

So after Avery’s very hap­py time at SHHS, we drove quite the entire width of the city to take her to meet her class at the Ragged School Muse­um, just about as far away from Hamp­stead as you can get and still be in Cen­tral Lon­don. A love­ly Vic­to­ri­an insti­tu­tion, the Ragged School was, and now the muse­um sits to teach our spoilt, indulged 21st cen­tu­ry chil­dren what it was like to go to school only for the lentil stew at noon. Bare­foot, and yes ragged, sad lit­tle crea­tures, lots of pho­tographs lin­ing the walls, and SUCH an atten­tive and enthu­si­as­tic vol­un­teer, a lit­tle old man called Bryn, more than hap­py to show John and me around after we’d found her form and dropped her off. They’re reput­ed to have activ­i­ties dur­ing half-term, so we might have to give that a try.

From there it was across the riv­er for lunch with Vin­cent and Peter, a nev­er-fail pick-me-up should one’s nerves be flag­ging after all these exams and inter­views (I know, I know, I’m not even tak­ing them, or doing any­thing, but you’d be sur­prised how stress­ful just get­ting her there has been).

Because Pete was feel­ing under the weath­er, we met them in their hood, the always-stim­u­lat­ing Bermond­sey. It was our sec­ond vis­it to the delight­ful bistro Vil­lage East, and it did not dis­ap­point. Except for the sti­fling tem­per­a­ture in the din­ing room, it was a won­der­ful lunch. Seared scal­lops and caramelised pork bel­ly, with a car­rot puree, so LIGHT and gor­geous, and then soft­shell crabs tem­pu­ra, with a (I thought) rather watery and mys­te­ri­ous water­mel­on and wasabi sauce. The boys went for enor­mous things like burg­ers (with sauteed foie gras, can you imag­ine? my choice next time), lamb rump, and roast­ed hal­ibut. Oh what a time we had. They are with­out a doubt two of my favorite peo­ple in the world, not the least because they play off each oth­er so nice­ly: Vin­cent extrav­a­gant, author­i­ta­tive, utter­ly at home in the world, and Pete gen­tly mock­ing, wry, wit­ty. I will nev­er for­get the first time I met him and I asked, “So how did you and Vin­cent meet?” and he replied with­out miss­ing a beat, “I sim­ply went into Star­bucks and ordered a tall black Americano.”

I put my con­ver­sa­tion­al foot down and said that we were not going to spend the entire lunch talk­ing about the boys’ iPhones, so they sheep­ish­ly put them aside (not away, to be sure) and we moved on to our usu­al dis­cus­sions of vaca­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties, new recipes, dis­ci­pline for daugh­ters, and this time, how to turn my cook­book from just some­thing I wit­ter on about into REAL­I­TY. Every­one needs a friend like Vin­cent: he is absolute­ly con­vinced that I am bet­ter at every­thing than I real­ly am, bet­ter-look­ing, more tal­ent­ed, more in demand, more… won­der­ful. One has to keep a tight grip on one’s mod­esty and sense of pro­por­tion, because oth­er­wise one could quite eas­i­ly come away from a Vin­cent ses­sion with an enor­mous­ly swelled head and visions of sug­arplums danc­ing through pub­lish­ers’ offices. “You want the audi­ence who are going for ‘aspi­ra­tional’ cook­books, dar­ling,” he avers, and I have to say, “But Vin­cent, dar­ling, no one aspires to be me.” Still, I did feel encour­aged and rather excit­ed at try­ing to make it all happen.

And apro­pos of our upcom­ing trip to Wales, Peter told a hilar­i­ous and com­pli­cat­ed sto­ry about the can­cel­la­tion of some Welsh cul­tur­al min­istry, a so-called “Qua­si-Autonomous Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Organ­i­sa­tion. “And the news­pa­per head­line was,” he fin­ished up, “Last Qan­go in Powys.” See, I’d like to be one of those peo­ple who can think of an appro­pri­ate, rel­e­vant and very fun­ny sto­ry, and tell it accu­rate­ly on the spur of the moment, but I nev­er will be. This is one of the many rea­sons I must keep Pete in my life. Plus he let me nick a cou­ple of his chips. I also asked Vin­cent if I could nick his gherkin, which sound­ed like I meant some­thing else entirely.

Ah, well, it was soon school pick­up time and went to get our Raggedy Lit­tle Girl who was full of excite­ment about the trip. We are all quite drop­ping with exhaus­tion so I fore­see a qui­et evening. Hope yours is, as well…