a num­ber of firsts

It’s true, what they say about rid­ing a bike!  I final­ly bit the bul­let last week and jumped on my new bike for my first for­ays into Lon­don traffic.

We’re liv­ing JUST that too far away from the places we want to be to rely on walk­ing every­where, so it was but the work of a moment to pop into a Chiswick cycle shop and get… a cycle.  That’s what they call it in Eng­land, “cycling,” and one “cycles” rather than “rides one’s bike.”  And I’ve dis­cov­ered a flaw in my per­son­al­i­ty that I nev­er focused on until now.  I DAYDREAM.

Day­dream­ing is a nec­es­sary skill when one lives in an urban envi­ron­ment and spends a lot of time on pub­lic trans­port, or in the pas­sen­ger seat of a car.  I can’t read in the car because I get car­sick, and some­times even the clos­est of hus­bands and wives sim­ply can’t chat ANOTH­ER MINUTE.  So my mind wan­ders to pos­si­ble blog post top­ics, gro­cery lists, a new way to crisp chick­en skin.

When on a bicy­cle, how­ev­er, there can be no such laps­es!  I find myself sev­er­al hun­dred yards from the last place I remem­ber pay­ing atten­tion, and I’ve no idea what’s hap­pened in the inter­im.  And since, as Avery points out to me, the bicy­cle is not a horse and there­fore can’t make judg­ments about safe­ty, I could eas­i­ly cause myself griev­ous bod­i­ly harm, not to men­tion to inno­cent pedes­tri­ans.  No more gro­cery lists while cycling.

Last week I had a lunch date with my chum Antonel­la on the oth­er side of the riv­er, to deliv­er our ver­dict on the new posh fish and chip joint — we’re the first of all our friends to go! — in Shep­herds Bush, Ker­bish­er and Malt.   So I hopped on my bike, strapped on my hel­met, firm­ly ban­ished ALL non-trans­port-relat­ed thoughts from my mind, and ped­aled off.   Think­ing of noth­ing, I promise you, but pedaling.

The ver­dict?  Very fresh high-qual­i­ty had­dock, a choice of bat­tered, grilled or with Mat­zoh crumbs.  Ter­ri­ble limp chips, but it was only their sec­ond day in busi­ness so one hopes that will improve.  Nice light lemon may­on­naise and real­ly shock­ing­ly deli­cious, unrub­bery baby cala­mari.  Not “crispy” as adver­tised, but again, that could improve.  The fish was nice­ly crunchy, so obvi­ous­ly they know how.

Now, Antonel­la is Ital­ian and not at all shy about express­ing her­self, which makes her the ide­al com­pan­ion for any sort of lark, includ­ing com­plain­ing about our per­fect fam­i­lies.  “Last night I made a chilli con carne for my chil­dren, when I could have sim­ply giv­en them some­thing ready-made.  But no, we cook fresh food for our chil­dren.  And all they do was to com­plain that I had used the wrong sort of beans, and had prob­a­bly not made enough rice!  Aggh!”  This last with a per­fect Ital­ian deri­sive snort.  I had to counter with a tale of my own, from last week when I spent the evening receiv­ing swim­mers at Avery’s school pool. (One must do this once a term in order to have the priv­i­lege of using the pool.)

Now, a less vig­i­lant, not to say obses­sive food-pro­vid­ing par­ent might just tell her fam­i­ly to order a piz­za.  But no.  I set a bone­less chick­en mar­i­nat­ing in lemon, gar­lic, rose­mary and olive oil for John to pop in the oven.  I made aspara­gus soup with home­made chick­en stock.  I steamed tiny arti­chokes and made a dress­ing for them.  And, piece de resis­tance, I set out some Marks & Spencer pota­to ros­ti to be baked.

“Ugh, there is a vein in my chick­en,” Avery said imme­di­ate­ly, “look.  Right there.”  “Well, it WAS a liv­ing thing, so some evi­dence of that is only to be expect­ed,” I returned, where­upon John jumped onto the band­wag­on say­ing he thought the soup was a lit­tle “stocky,” as in tast­ing too strong­ly of stock, and that while he was at it, he’d like me to know the arti­chokes were slight­ly… tired.

In short, the only accept­able part of the meal was the M&S pota­toes.  From a plas­tic bag.  In the freez­er sec­tion.  “You said you want feed­back!” they moan in self-pity.  “Not that much,” I growl.

Antonel­la under­stood per­fect­ly.  “This after we have slaved to pro­vide them with home-cooked food.  I tell them some­time I will sim­ply slap them up the side of their heads, Ital­ian-style.  They will not be expect­ing it.”

(The arti­chokes WERE a lit­tle tired, to be honest.)

From lunch we repaired to her gor­geous, serene house — she has an Aga! — for me to try on the jumpers she is knit­ting for me!  Anoth­er first: I have nev­er had a piece of cloth­ing made for me, just me.  We actu­al­ly went togeth­er to choose the wool, and looked through pat­tern books and Antonel­la’s own col­lec­tion of jumpers, for me to choose what style, what sleeve length, how wide the cables would be, whether the waist should nip in a bit.  To me, being able to knit a jumper from scratch is akin to being able to fly a plane or per­form an appen­dec­to­my.  I just can’t imag­ine.  It will be magical.

On Fri­day night I felt I owed it to us to pro­duce decent arti­chokes, and since then I have heard from sev­er­al food­ie friends that they have nev­er pre­pared one.  So I shall tell you how, because they are so good, and so good for you: anti-tox­ins, so you can have a Scotch with them and it can­cels every­thing out.

With a ser­rat­ed knife (it’s faster), cut off the top of each arti­choke about an inch down.  Cut off the stem to leave about an inch.  Pull off the low­est dry leaves and dis­card, stop­ping when you get to nice, fresh, tight leaves.  With scis­sors, snip off the top 1/2 inch or so of every sin­gle leaf.  Place arti­chokes stem-down in a saucepan in which they will fit tight­ly so they don’t roll around, and for which you have a lid.  Pour water into the bot­tom of the saucepan and steam the arti­chokes for about 35 min­utes or until leaves pull out eas­i­ly.  Check the pan fre­quent­ly as I don’t think I have EVER steamed arti­chokes with­out burn­ing the pan dry at least once.  It can be hard to clean.

When the arti­chokes are cooked and can be han­dled, serve them with a bowl for the dis­card­ed leaves, and with either melt­ed but­ter or a mus­tardy vinai­grette.  To eat them, pull off each leaf, dip into what­ev­er, and scrape the meat off with your teeth, just at the end where the leaf was attached.  When you run out of leaves, you’ll be down to the “choke,” a thistly nasty thing at the cen­ter of the arti­choke.  Cut this off with a knife and you’re left with the meaty heart. which is heav­en­ly dipped into the but­ter or dress­ing and eat­en luxuriously.

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And on Sat­ur­day, anoth­er first!  My maid­en voy­age into bell-ring­ing, which is not to say “cam­panol­o­gy” yet because what I actu­al­ly did was too basic to implied I was study­ing anything.

I arrived at our local church.  My heart pound­ing a bit, I walked in at the hour appoint­ed for “learn­ers,“ to find my teacher Arnold ready for me.  A ret­i­cent, dig­ni­fied gen­tle­man about 6’4”, he took me on a tour of the clock room (where the clock repos­es, not sur­pris­ing­ly) and the bell-cham­ber, and showed me how to “mute my clap­per,” a skill I’m sure John wish­es HE had for me, at times.  All it requires is a bit of inner tube, tied around the bel­l’s tongue to hold it in place.

The rea­son you mute a bell clap­per for learn­ers is to pro­tect the neigh­bors from the clang­ing, repet­i­tive, annoy­ing sounds a bell would make as I pulled end­less­ly over and over!  Just think: these bells are over 500 years old.  Parts of the church are that old as well, but oth­er parts were burned by an arson­ist in the 1990s and have been restored.  There are still black streaks in the ancient wind­ing stone stair­case, where the flames licked.  “This stair­well was like a chim­ney,” Arnold explained.

I will have to learn in such tiny, tiny incre­ments.  The rope, for exam­ple, has two impor­tant parts: the low­er bit, the tail, which you pull to bring the bell from where it’s rest­ing to the up posi­tion, and then the mid­dle bit, the sal­ly, which you pull to bring the bell back down.  Or some­thing like that.  And for the whole of my first les­son, I nev­er even got to touch the sal­ly.  Arnold pulled the sal­ly, since the begin­ning can han­dle only the tail to start with.  A whole hour of just pulling the tail!  That’s called the “back stroke” and it is much hard­er than it looks, with about a hun­dred instruc­tions to remem­ber for each go at pulling.

It may be sev­er­al weeks before I’m allowed to touch the sally.

It’s a bit daunt­ing, and a bit dis­cour­ag­ing to be hon­est.  But as Lord Peter Wim­sey would say, “Faint heart nev­er won so much as a bowl of cab­bages,” so I shall per­se­vere.  Look at my book.

And some­day, just think: these pages will make sense to me.

After my hour’s prac­tice, dur­ing which Arnold told me sev­er­al times to stop frown­ing, to relax and not to pull so hard, the real ringers turned up and could not have been more friend­ly.  There are two 12-year-old girls!  One was assigned to stand with me for a bit and “explain any­thing that needs explain­ing,” which she did with impos­si­ble poise.  There is a spe­cial brand of sup­port­ive­ness among bell­ringers, I find, dif­fer­ent from the atti­tude of any oth­er peo­ple I’ve ever met.  John puts it down to the nat­ur­al incli­na­tion of peo­ple with crazy, weirdo enthu­si­asms to stick together.

Then it was home to pre­pare for anoth­er first: our first din­ner par­ty in the new house!  Oh, we’ve had the odd sleep­over girl to be fed, but this was a real par­ty with sev­er­al cours­es and new friends, our love­ly next-door neigh­bors James and Susan.  He is a mas­sive­ly enthu­si­as­tic gar­den­er, which I could tell by hear­ing his rake and clip­pers over the fence as the weeks have gone by, but then, too, these appeared last week over the fence.

And when they arrived, they were bear­ing not only the usu­al gifts of cham­pagne and a bou­quet of flow­ers, but the best gift of all: a con­tain­er of James’s “just-picked at half past six” ROCKET!

Well!  You know how I am about rock­et.  How on earth did James guess?  He could­n’t stop smil­ing with gen­er­ous hap­pi­ness at my glee.  So pep­pery, so crunchy, sim­ply puts super­mar­ket rock­et to shame.  Gorgeous.

John grilled an enor­mous pile of lamb chops, mar­i­nat­ed in rose­mary and gar­lic, and I gave them Avery’s spe­cial­ly-request­ed risot­to with spring beans, inspired by her long-ago cook­ery course at Jamie Oliv­er’s.  Just look how pret­ty the greens were.

We had a love­ly time.  James and Susan are the eas­i­est pos­si­ble con­ver­sa­tion­al­ists, full of anec­dotes about their six grown chil­dren and sev­er­al grand­chil­dren, and advice about liv­ing “on the right side of the riv­er,” with some neigh­bor­hood gos­sip thrown in, and a flat­ter­ing, if bemused inter­est in my bellringing.

Avery and her two friends deigned to appear in time to eat, and the risot­to did go down a treat.

Risot­to with Broad Beans, Peas and Mint

(serves 8 with leftovers)

3 tbsps butter

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

2 small shal­lots, minced

600 grams/20 ounces arbo­rio rice

950ml/4 cups chick­en stock (approx­i­mate­ly)

2 cups broad beans, shucked

1 cup lit­tle green peas

1 bunch spring onions

hand­ful fresh mint

hand­ful fresh grat­ed Parmesan

fresh black pep­per and sea salt to taste

dash cream, if desired

Melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan which has a lid.  Saute the gar­lic and shal­lots briefly, then add the rice and stir to make sure all the grains are coat­ed with but­ter.  Add stock to cov­er the rice and stir, watch­ing the liq­uid become absorbed by the rice.  Con­tin­ue to add stock, stir­ring all the while, until the rice is al dente, that is until it yield gen­tly to the teeth but is not yet too soft.  Add the beans, peas, spring onions and mint and stir thor­ough­ly, heat­ing the veg­eta­bles through.  Add the cheese and sea­son to taste.  Add the cream if you like, and serve hot.

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Very pop­u­lar!  While every­thing cooked, James took John on a hor­ti­cul­tur­al tour of our love­ly gar­den, show­ing off its delights we would nev­er have noticed on our own.  “This is pos­si­bly the largest bay tree in Great Britain,” he explained, “and while it’s not in your gar­den, its leaves are, so help yourself!”

And a black cher­ry tree!  “I hope you’ll get some before the mourn­ing doves do…”

And fresh thyme!  Sev­er­al sprigs of it have gone into our chick­en casse­role this evening.

A love­ly evening.  It felt so good to be sit­ting around the can­dlelit table, wel­com­ing new friends.  I knew it would hap­pen, but I did­n’t know how hap­py it would make me.  I sat up late into the night after the sleep­over girls had final­ly suc­cumbed, and thought about friend­ship and the fun­ny, love­ly forms it takes.  Hand­fuls of fresh rocket.

And final­ly, my first exper­i­ments with what I think will be an absolute sta­ple in our house: aranci­ni!  Fried balls of left­over risot­to, if you please.

Aranci­ni

(1 ball per person)

Take your left­over risot­to from the fridge about an hour before you want to eat, and spread it in a lay­er on a cook­ie sheet or bak­ing dish.  The idea is to take the chill off so that the fried ball will not be cold on the inside, nor will you have to burn the crumbs in order to get the inner bites warm.

Place Japan­ese panko bread­crumbs in a shal­low dish.

Heat what­ev­er quan­ti­ty of taste­less oil you feel com­fort­able with in a uten­sil you like.  Since I was­n’t sure how my Aga would like get­ting oil to fry­ing tem­per­a­ture, I took John’s advice and used a small saucepan so as not to tax the heat­ing capa­bil­i­ties of my pre­cious stove.  My saucepan could accom­mo­date one aran­ci­no at a time, which is fine because then each one can rest on paper tow­el until they are all fried.

Now with clean hands, roll a good por­tion of risot­to into a ball about the size of lime, or if you’re feel­ing as if you’d like them more fork than fin­ger food, a lemon.  Roll in bread­crumbs till com­plete­ly coat­ed.  When a pinch of bread­crumbs in the oil fries instant­ly, the oil is ready.  Care­ful­ly place each ball in the hot oil and let cook until brown, turn­ing fre­quent­ly.  The idea is to get the inside warmed through — of course you can’t tell, but you can imag­ine — with­out over-brown­ing the out­side.  When you are hap­py with the col­oration of your aran­ci­no, take it out and place it gen­tly on a few fold­ed paper towels.

Repeat this process with all your risot­to.  Then TUCK IN.

These lit­tle babies are heav­en­ly!  Creamy and savoury inside, with love­ly crisp peas and broad beans, and crunchy on the out­side so that bit­ing into them is a taste and tex­ture sensation.

Since telling some friends about these con­tra­dic­to­ry delights — so rich and yet they’re just left­overs! — I have heard some inter­est­ing things.  Aranci­ni are the South­ern Ital­ian word for them, where in Rome they are called sup­pli.  And my friends Mary and Rebec­ca tell me what when you tuck a piece of moz­zarel­la or fonti­na inside them, they are called sup­pli al tele­fono, because the melt­ed cheese stretch­es like a tele­phone wire!  And then you can serve them in a pool of gar­licky, toma­to sauce and you have basi­cal­ly re-invent­ed the wheel.

Now I’m going to rest on my lau­rels.  For the fore­see­able future, I’m not going to do any new things.  I’m just going to emp­ty my mind, take a deep breath, and ped­al off some of that rice.