of pints and oth­er Britishisms

I can’t real­ly blame the British. The entire­ty of mea­sur­ing sys­tems around the world are con­sis­tent only in their incon­sis­ten­cies. I grew up (why, I can’t imag­ine: how many times can the adage have come in handy?) chant­i­ng, “A pin­t’s a pound the world around.” But it isn’t. The British can use, legal­ly, the word pint to refer in fact to 20 flu­id ounces, but ONLY of lager. Oth­er ref­er­ences to pints have to con­form to the 16-ounce vari­ety. And as you know, I fre­quent­ly find the Euro­pean obses­sion with weigh­ing ingre­di­ents to be annoy­ing, but I can see that’s only a mat­ter of famil­iar­i­ty. I’m sure it is more exact to weigh but­ter than to squint at the lit­tle “tbsp” mea­sur­ing lines on the tin­ny paper used to wrap sticks of but­ter in Amer­i­ca. I think I pre­fer the mea­sure­ment “knob” of but­ter to all others.

But today I am real­ly flum­moxed. I have in my hot lit­tle hands the trea­sured recipe for Isles­ford Dock Chow­der, quite sim­ply the best incar­na­tion of clam chow­der on this earth. How­ev­er. Who on EARTH mea­sures bacon in QUARTS? I under­stand that I’ve been giv­en the restau­rant-size recipe, which is actu­al­ly amus­ing and brings back hap­py mem­o­ries of mak­ing vast quan­ti­ties of soup for a home­less men’s shel­ter when we lived here in the 1990s. How much fun I had pro­duc­ing gal­lons of toma­to-fen­nel soup with cheese crou­tons, vichys­soise for 50, creamy car­rot and lentil soup to feed the mass­es. So it’s not the NOTION of the quan­ti­ty that’s both­er­ing me, it’s how on earth you mea­sure a quart of bacon. If a pin­t’s a pound the world around and there are two pints to the quart, and you need two quarts of bacon, then how many Iowa school­child­ren does it take to detas­sel a field of corn? Sor­ry, that’s actu­al­ly a ques­tion on the Grad­u­ate Record Examination.

And anoth­er thing: can any­one tell me why the word “lieu­tenant” is pro­nounced here with a mys­te­ri­ous phan­tom “f” in the mid­dle? “Lef­t­enant?” John reports lis­ten­ing to an inter­view on BBC Radio 4 with an Amer­i­can sol­dier who, halfway through the dis­cus­sion explod­ed: “Stop call­ing me ‘Lef­t­enant,’ it’s LOO­TENANT!” I real­ly don’t understand.

Today will see us reluc­tant­ly vis­it­ing the new West­field Shop­ping Cen­tre at the dread­ed Shep­herd’s Bush round­about, reput­ed­ly the largest shop­ping cen­tre in all of Great Britain, the con­struc­tion site of which was the scene of so many anx­i­ety-mak­ing traf­fic-clogged school runs last sum­mer. My feel­ing is that if we neigh­bor­hood res­i­dents are to be tor­ment­ed with the crowds of peo­ple and cars caused by this mon­stros­i­ty of cap­i­tal­ism, I should at least see what the new Wait­rose cheese room is like. And I’ve heard great things about the fish counter, so tonight could well be my friend Vin­cen­t’s creamy salmon piled with juli­enned veg­eta­bles. It’s a fid­dly, time-con­sum­ing, obses­sive-com­pul­sive dish and there­fore ide­al for a rather grey, frus­trat­ing­ly dull day. I’m giv­ing you Vin­cen­t’s exact phras­ing because I can hear his voice, and it brings him com­fort­ing­ly a lit­tle clos­er to me as I cook.

Vin­cen­t’s Salmon with Cream & Vegetables

Prepa­ra­tion time: 10–15 minutes
Cook­ing Time: 25–30 minutes
Lev­el of Dif­fi­cul­ty: Very Easy
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.

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