burn­ing down the house

Gee, that phrase takes me back to col­lege, when it must have been the title of some Top Forty clap­trap song that we danced to… an innocu­ous lit­tle asso­ci­a­tion, con­sid­er­ing the hav­oc that such a sit­u­a­tion real­ly entails. But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

So I was on my way to the den­tist the oth­er day, toil­ing up the end­less hill that is the Welling­ton Road, walk­ing the cou­ple of miles or so that Trans­port for Lon­don assured me was the most effi­cient way to get to St John’s Wood (this can­not be so, but I need­ed the exer­cise). As I ran into Panz­er’s Deli (quite the most expen­sive place to buy any­thing, in this most expen­sive of cities, but the fresh dill was cry­ing out to me), some­thing was nag­ging at me, some­thing unnamed, inde­ter­mi­nate, but nag­ging. Had I for­got­ten an appoint­ment, for­got­ten to send Avery’s swim­ming cos­tume to school with her, for­got­ten to call some­one back? I could not get at exact­ly what it was. So I moseyed on over to the incom­pa­ra­ble Kent Butch­ers in the High Street for some new sea­son lamb (wast­ed a bit, mixed with gar­lic and spices for Moroc­can meat­balls, but… it was there). And still that annoy­ing sen­sa­tion of hav­ing left some­thing… undone.

“AAG­GH!” I near­ly screamed as I left the butch­ers. “I left the stove on, under­neath my pot of sim­mer­ing black beans!”

Now, as I learned from every­one I spoke to in the fol­low­ing fif­teen fran­tic min­utes or so, this is a moment we have all expe­ri­enced. I rang John, not at home, not pick­ing up. I rang my next-door neigh­bor Sara in the hope that her nan­ny was home and would be able to find the spare key they have for us. No answer. I skipped up the steps to my den­tist’s office and asked Paula the Irish Recep­tion­ist for a phone book. “I’ve left the stove on under my black beans,” I said in a rush. “A phone book, now? You’re ask­ing for a PHONE book? That’s a blast from the past. I think it might here some­where [drags a chair over to cup­board, stands on tip­toe, feels around on a high shelf]… ah yes, here it ’tis. Wrapped in its plas­tic, still, it is! I always think I’ve left the iron plugged in…” Just give me the phone book, I think. I found the num­ber for our estate agents and rang them in des­per­a­tion. “Paul, do you have a key for our house? I left the stove on under my black beans.” Why did I feel com­pelled to spec­i­fy what I had been cook­ing, to every­one I met? I do not know.

Final­ly Paul the estate agent advised that I call our land­la­dy Joyce, so I hung up sum­mar­i­ly on his tale of once think­ing he’d left the cof­fee mak­er on when he was at an air­port. I rang Joyce. As I apol­o­gized and apol­o­gized, she said, “Not to wor­ry, Kris­ten, for me it’s always the hair straight­en­er I think I’ve left on. I’m out and about and I’ll run over right now.” This seemed so incred­i­bly nice of her, until John point­ed out to me lat­er that while I think of it as my house, in point of fact it’s HER house. Of course she ran over to check. This log­ic did not stop me from tak­ing a nice flat of daf­fodils over to her lat­er, however.

Then I was bun­dled into the den­tist’s chair whilst he chor­tled over once hav­ing thought he left oven turned on, and the hygien­ist remem­bered dri­ving all the way back from Cam­bridge to unplug a curl­ing iron that was already unplugged. My moth­er in law, how­ev­er, wins the prize for retrac­ing her steps once over the four-hour dri­ve to Min­neapo­lis for the cof­fee mak­er that… was already turned off. My phone rang. It was Joyce. “Of course you turned it off, there was no prob­lem. I hope every­thing’s all right at the den­tist…” Then John rang, and I told him an abbre­vi­at­ed tale of the adven­ture, to which he replied, “Well, that’s all right then,” and hung up. My den­tist was amazed. “I’d think he’d be with­in his rights to give you a right wind-up over that one, Kris­ten,” and I explained that when you have been mar­ried as long as we have, you have LONG since learned to restrain your­self from the tempt­ing scold. Why? Because tomor­row, or the day after that, it will be YOUR screwup for which you want a long back­log of hav­ing been tol­er­ant of his screwup. Any mar­ried per­son will know where­of I speak.

Whew. Cri­sis avert­ed. Then the place where I bit my cheek two weeks ago that hurts like hell turned out to be not oral can­cer at all, but, guess what, a place where I bit my cheek. “This is a good day, then,” said the den­tist with British under­state­ment. “Two bad things that did­n’t hap­pen after all, and it’s only noon.” I assured him that I was Scan­di­na­vian and there was plen­ty of time left in the day for some­thing bad to hap­pen. My next-door neigh­bor rang to say she was sor­ry she missed my call, and how awful to think I’d burned down the house when I ALSO had to go to the den­tist. It tells you some­thing about British den­tistry, that every­one I spoke to was at least as sor­ry I was hav­ing my teeth x‑rayed as that I had torched my kitchen.

Long sigh.

Oth­er than that, life has been qui­et. I’ve been plow­ing, as we all must do now and then, through the mounds of paper on my desk. School per­mis­sion slips, untried recipes, reviews of plays I think I want tick­ets to, bits of writ­ing that might turn into a chap­ter or a blog post, thank-you notes I haven’t writ­ten but at least I bought the cards for them. The detri­tus of a very qui­et, pre­dictable life full of pre­dictable details. But punc­tu­at­ed by glo­ri­ous times with friends! This week found me, when not run­ning around after a myth­i­cal fire brigade, at the tow­er­ing Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea with my friend Gigi. She and I feel com­pelled every now and then to bring out our PhDs, dust them off, say some intel­li­gent things about some­thing cul­tur­al, and then retreat to the real pur­pose of the meet­ing: lunch and gos­sip. Gigi is one of those peo­ple whose thoughts spring full-formed, in real sen­tences with punc­tu­a­tion and flair, so that con­ver­sa­tion with her is very enter­tain­ing. We wan­dered through the gallery filled with the cur­rent exhi­bi­tion of Mid­dle East­ern art, talk­ing about veil­ing, try­ing not to look at one par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­agree­able instal­la­tion of pup­pets rep­re­sent­ing Iran­ian pros­ti­tutes, admir­ing some blur­ry and evoca­tive pho­tographs cov­ered in silk.

But the tri­umph of the whole show for me was this room, filled with life-size alu­minum fig­ures of women in full veil­ing, hol­low and haunt­ing. The instal­la­tion had a very Rachel Whiteread feel about it, which of course made me hap­py. I can be made hap­py with almost any art­work that involves abstract­ed objects made out of unex­pect­ed mate­ri­als in mul­ti­ples (it was just that aes­thet­ic that, as you can imag­ine, that made my gallery such a rous­ing finan­cial suc­cess). But trust me, the room is beau­ti­ful. Each fig­ure is bent in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent way, as if lis­ten­ing to a dif­fer­ent prayer, yet there is an anonymi­ty to them all as a group that I’m sure says some­thing about the artist’s atti­tude toward women in Islam. Worth the whole price of admis­sion (which is actu­al­ly free). Go, do. Take an intel­li­gent friend (I’m not sure Gigi’s avail­able, though) and open your mind. It was fun­ny, our com­ing at this show from dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al per­spec­tives: me the uncon­nect­ed Agnos­tic, and she a mul­ti-cul­tur­al Mus­lim. And the next day she sent me our shared horo­scope, which ran some­thing like this. “Try not to spend all your time with peo­ple who think like you do.” It was as if some­one had been fol­low­ing us around the show!

Oh, and such a fun­ny taxi expe­ri­ence yes­ter­day; I keep think­ing I have already writ­ten this down, but I don’t think I have. I flagged one down in Chelsea, and asked the dri­ver, “Would you take me to Whole Foods please?” and he said, “Don’t see any rea­son why not!” so I jumped in and to be friend­ly said, “What a beau­ti­ful day!” and he replied, “Can’t buy weath­er like this. In fact, the only weath­er that’s worth wor­ry­ing about is whether you can get up in the morn­ing or not!” That’s a prop­er Lon­don taxi dri­ver for you.

Last night Vin­cent and Pete came round to sup­per, after a long absence. It was heav­en­ly to hear their knock at the gar­den win­dow, open the door, be crushed in big bear­like cash­mere arms, kiss cold cheeks. And we ATE. Din­ner was, if I do say so myself, sub­lime. I real­ly want you all to go straight to the shops and load up on sweet­corn and rock­et, and make my soup, the only thing I think I’ve ever invent­ed all on my own. I’ll give you the recipe again to save your hav­ing to hunt for it, plus for extra fes­tiv­i­ty last night (I always have to put on a bit of the dog for Vin­cent) I added sauteed scal­lops. I was com­plete­ly hap­py with it, and even Vin­cent who (what­ev­er he said last night!) real­ly does not like soups very much, enjoyed it. We could not have sec­onds because… we ate it all the first time around.

Creamy Sweet­corn and Rock­et Soup with Scallops
(serves 4)

2 tbsps butter
4 cloves gar­lic, sliced
2 shal­lots, sliced
4 ears sweet­corn, ker­nels cut off
3 cups chick­en stock
3 bags (about 6 cups loose­ly packed, or 200 grams total weight)
1/2 cup cream
2 addi­tion­al tbsps butter
1 dozen large scal­lops, sliced in half across the width

Melt but­ter in heavy stock­pot and saute gar­lic and shal­lot just until soft, then add sweet­corn and cov­er with stock. Sim­mer high for about 10 min­utes, then add rock­et and stir just to soft­en. You will be aston­ished at how it sim­ply dis­ap­pears. Blend with hand blender, stir in cream, and pass through a sieve to catch the corn ker­nel­ly bits (or not, if you like more of a potage than a smooth liq­uid). I find that the best way to get soup through a sieve is to put the stock­pot that is your des­ti­na­tion pot into the sink, pour the soup into it through the sieve, and then SHAKE the sieve gen­tly till the solids are left behind. It’s a bit messier than just stir­ring (hence the sink), but it’s much faster.

Just before serv­ing, place shal­low bowls in a warm oven to take the chill off. Melt the addi­tion­al but­ter in a large skil­let and when it’s real­ly hot, add the scal­lops in a sin­gle lay­er. Fry until there is a bit of col­or on the hot side, per­haps 2 min­utes, then care­ful­ly flip over to the oth­er side, rough­ly in the order in which they went in the skil­let. Fry on the sec­ond side until JUST cooked, less than a minute. Take off the heat. Quick­ly ladle soup into each bowl and divide the scal­lops among the bowls. Serve immediately.

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

We sim­ply wolfed it down. I had for­got­ten how sat­is­fy­ing it is to feed Vin­cent and Pete, how enthu­si­as­tic they are, how appre­cia­tive. We talked our heads off: the Saatchi show, Hes­ton Blu­men­thal and the Fat Duck (they will nev­er con­vince me to go! I swear!), Vin­cen­t’s girls’ amaz­ing com­mand of the Ital­ian lan­guage after just months liv­ing there, my cook­book. And we tried a new method of keep­ing Avery hap­py after a series of adult evenings: she repaired upstairs with a piz­za and a movie! It was nice, just once in awhile, to be able to cook two cours­es that she does­n’t like and not wor­ry about her. For the main I served Richard Cor­ri­g­an’s crab tart, and although I’ll nev­er be a pas­try chef and bak­ing always still fills me with a bit of fear, it turned out gor­geous. I added a bit of fresh thyme and cayenne to the pas­try which gave it an extra sort of flair, and may I say as well: buy the fan­ci­est crab­meat you can find, with the biggest chunks, and do NOT flake them as you sprin­kle them into the tart. Com­ing upon a big juicy chunk of claw meat cra­dled in cream and goats cheese was a delight.

Crab Tart with Scal­lions and Goats Cheese
(serves 12)

175 grams plain flour
75 grams corn­flour (corn­starch)
1 tsp salt
120 grams cold butter
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
dash cayenne
2 eggs, beaten
sprin­kles cold water

250 grams white crabmeat
250 grams goats cheese
1 bunch scal­lion, minced
600 ml dou­ble cream
6 eggs, beaten
salt and pepper
1 egg, beaten

Make the pas­try by mix­ing, in a food proces­sor, the flour, corn­flour, salt, but­ter (in lit­tle pieces, grad­u­al­ly), and thyme. Then add eggs and water to make a nice stiff dough and form into a ball. Wrap in cling­film and refrig­er­ate for at least 20 minutes.

Roll out pas­try to be at least 2 inch­es larg­er all round than the tart tin (21 cm diam­e­ter and 3 cm deep). Line the tin gen­tly with the pas­try, drap­ing the extra over the sides (do not trim yet). Line with foil and weight with beans and bake at 160C for 40 min­utes, then take out the foil and beans and check to see if the pas­try is dry. If not, bake again for 5 minutes.

Mean­while, beat the eggs with the cream and sea­son well. Beat the left­over egg and brush the baked pas­try crust with it, all over. Scat­ter the scal­lions and crab­meat over the bot­tom, then pour over the cream and eggs. Bake at 180C for 20 min­utes, then low­er the heat to 160C for anoth­er 40 min­utes. Leave tart to cool to room tem­per­a­ture before serving.

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

I laugh as I read this, “serves 12.” Not if three of your guests are big, hun­gry men who like their crab­meat. We bare­ly had two serv­ings left over with only FOUR of us! These men are Lucul­lan in their appetites and tastes. Make a big nice sal­ad of yet more rock­et, lam­b’s let­tuce and chico­ry, with a good spicy dress­ing, to serve alongside.

We could bare­ly bring our­selves to attack the cheese board, straw­ber­ries and grapes, but we man­aged. A feast, and a wel­come return of old friends.