spring­time frolics

Spring has, well, sprung in Ham­mer­smith. Has any­one any idea what this flower is? It struck both John and me as def­i­nite­ly Vic­to­ri­an: some­thing in the com­bi­na­tion of intense­ly sexy col­or and drop­ping shy­ness. So love­ly. And just last week, this plaque to Hen­ry Moore was ded­i­cat­ed, in a stu­dio where he worked from 1924 to 1928. Right here in our neigh­bor­hood, very proud-mak­ing. The years I taught his work in my sculp­ture class­es in New York, and here he had worked just steps from our house, all those years ago. I felt a bit sil­ly walk­ing around in the misty rain yes­ter­day, my hair get­ting pood­lier by the minute, look­ing for the plaque. But there it is.

So we’ve been to “Grease,” sad­ly only the musi­cal and not the love­ly white beach­es sur­round­ed by pud­dles of ouzo and mounds of mous­sa­ka… and the musi­cal was a huge plea­sure! First­ly: a live band, sus­pend­ed high above the stage: is there any­thing more thrilling than live music? I don’t think so, and it was com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed. The dra­ma, the liv­ing peo­ple behind the instru­ments, the thump­ing excite­ment. Glo­ri­ous! And why is the libret­to so uncon­ven­tion­al (“we take the pres­sures and we throw away con­ven­tion­al­i­ty… belongs to yes­ter­day”) and the script so intense­ly 1950s con­ven­tion­al? Avery adores the film AND now the musi­cal but even she in her inno­cence had to ask, “Why does Sandy have to com­plete­ly change her per­son­al­i­ty to get the boy?” But it was near­ly a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion: she under­stood before I did, Sandy changes only her out­ward appear­ance but stays res­olute­ly her­self on the inside… We had a won­der­ful time. Not a sin­gle Amer­i­can in the cast but you won’t know it.

But all this pales in com­par­i­son to the true adven­ture of our lit­tle lives late­ly: sous vide cook­ing. By which I mean: “under vac­u­um,” which in these post-mod­ernist, post decon­struc­tion­ist cook­ing times means “bathing for­ev­er in a bare­ly steam­ing pot of water, in a vac­u­um pack.” I am not mak­ing this up. Let me explain.

John has longed for a vac­u­um pack­er for as long as I’ve longed for a lam­i­na­tor. Clear­ly the long­ings are relat­ed, but I hes­i­tate to query any fur­ther the com­mon denom­i­na­tors there­in. Well, I still have no lam­i­na­tor and nev­er plan to, but we are about to receive our vac­u­um pack­er, via Ama­zon, and God help any meat prod­uct after that. In the mean­time, we acquired a vac­u­um-packed leg of Welsh lamb, and that was THAT. John res­ur­rect­ed from the cel­lar a stock­pot that once had per­haps held a new­born baby, I don’t real­ly remem­ber ever see­ing it before, but it is LARGE. It was but the work of a moment for him to locate a ther­mome­ter, hook it up to a slot­ted spoon sus­pend­ed over the pot, and we spent an entire day get­ting the allot­ted amount of water up to 55–62 degrees Cel­sius. And KEEP­ING it there. “Let’s put it on before we go to ‘Grease,’ ” John said blithe­ly. “Get it up to speed while we’re away. “Are you crazy?” I bleat­ed. “With the cats in the house?” An insid­i­ous pause. “Don’t answer that,” I said hastily.

So it was. The water came up to and main­tained its tem­per­a­ture, and when we arrived back after our musi­cal and sushi, we plopped the leg of lamb into it and went blame­less­ly to bed. The next morn­ing we checked the tem­per­a­ture, com­plete­ly steady and pre­dictable, so I went off to take Avery and her sleep­over date to the skat­ing rink… in short we did NOTH­ING in ser­vice of this piece of meat.

That evening at 6 or so, 20 hours since its immer­sion, the lamb came out of its vac­u­um pack COM­PLETE­LY cooked, falling off the bone. So I smoth­ered it on a mari­nade of gar­lic, rose­mary, lemon juice and olive oil and left it for an hour, where­upon John grilled it for 10 min­utes a side and…

EURE­KA!

Quite sim­ply the most sub­lime, silky, gen­tly ten­der, fla­vor­some piece of lamb we have ever tasted.

You must try it.

While this was all hap­pen­ing, we were vis­it­ed by Roy the Piano Tuner, who (since it is my life) is a man about to cel­e­brate his 50th birth­day at Moro where he’s well-known (as key­board spe­cial­ist to Radio­head he might well be). Roy, in between tak­ing apart my piano before my very eyes and speak­ing quite slight­ing­ly of the piece of wood at the back that appar­ent­ly is the very heart and mind of a piano, asked me if I’d heard of arrope. Have you? I haven’t. It’s a dark, syrupy grape liqueur from, var­i­ous­ly, Spain, Argenti­na and the Canary Islands and he’s con­vinced it’s the next big thing in food. In fact, he said, “I’ve been alive long enough to see the advent of bal­sam­ic vine­gar, and now I’ve lived to see this, the NEW bal­sam­ic vine­gar. How scary is that.” With which tru­ism he trot­ted out some love­ly home­spun music, a few bars of Chopin, a bit of Bach, and then packed up his tools and went away. Avery was com­plete­ly hap­py to find the results of his labors. I myself went back to “Chopin Made Easy” which I’m reduced to in this state of many years sans piano lessons. But the joy I get from the easy ver­sions! As they say, price­less. When arrope makes the big­time, thank Roy, my Piano Tuner. He’s pub­lish­ing his diaries soon (“the num­ber of big stars who hire you under a pseu­do­nym and then turn out to be Annie Lennox…”).

As he packed up, he said mus­ing­ly, “Every­thing about this piano should be wrong. It should be shod­dy, soul­less, emp­ty. But I began to play it, and this piano spoke to me. It has a soul. It is alive. I hate to think what you’d get out of a real­ly sub­lime piano in this space.” The room real­ly is mag­i­cal: all sky­light and kitchen and glass win­dows out to gar­den beyond. Most­ly it’s happy.

Today I braved the con­stant driz­zle and my fam­i­ly’s utter lack of inter­est — not even lack, dis­tinct NEG­A­TIVE inter­est would char­ac­ter­ize it bet­ter, clear­ly I need dif­fer­ent fam­i­ly mem­bers — and went across town and across the riv­er to the South­bank Slow Food Fes­ti­val, a once-a-month farmer’s mar­ket-ish event in the spot in town most sin­gu­lar­ly uncom­fort­able to reach from Ham­mer­smith even IF the entire trans­port sys­tem were not clogged with pro­tes­tors from Sri Lan­ka des­per­ate to reach the Embank­ment. Lest I seem unsup­port­ive of their cause, I must aver that I know noth­ing what­ev­er about it, BUT there were a lot of them at Embank­ment. An unre­lat­ed Eng­lish guy brushed past me at the sta­tion stop, hold­ing his girl­friend’s hand. I heard him say plain­tive­ly, “I mean, let’s be hon­est, no one LIKES geno­cide, fair enough.”

The Slow Food mar­ket was LOVE­LY. Gear your­self up for VERY spicy smoke from the chilli pep­per stand, and go hun­gry. The basic idea of Slow Food (although essen­tial­ly quite polit­i­cal in its orig­i­nal Ital­ian incar­na­tion decades ago) is this: sup­port local, sup­port heir­loom vari­eties, hap­py ani­mal life, arti­san pro­duc­tion of lost skills, and SLOW DOWN to pro­duce, sell, cook and eat. Appre­ci­ate and know where your food comes from, how it’s raised, enjoy know­ing those bits, cook it with respect and eat it slow­ly. This last is a dead fail­ure with my fam­i­ly who seems intent on bridg­ing the gap between food pro­duc­tion time (at my house, an hour and a half or so every evening to pro­duce din­ner) and food con­sump­tion time (aver­age 13 minutes).

I patron­ized Richard Haward, sev­enth-gen­er­a­tion oys­ter­man, pro­vid­ing both native and wild rock (much pre­ferred tiny native) Colch­ester oys­ters, and The Ara­bi­ca Food and Spice Com­pa­ny with their sub­tle spinach hum­mous. Then I brought home sauer­kraut from Sarah Moore Arti­san Cater­ers to serve with our East­er gam­mon joint (pur­chased in lieu of Avery’s uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion at Mr Sten­ton’s butch­er shop in our neigh­bor­hood this afternoon).

Then there is the lus­cious beef brisket from Wood­wards Farm in Hunt­ing­don, which I’m quite sure will end up get­ting the vac­u­um treat­ment lat­er in the week… and scrump­tious smoked mack­er­el pate from The Patch­work Tra­di­tion­al Food Com­pa­ny, start­ed by a lady in Llan­gollen, north­east Wales, with 9 pounds extra in her house­keep­ing mon­ey one week in 1982!

I hap­pi­ly bought but­ter from Moorhayes Farm, sold by Neal’s Yard, the first but­ter I’ve seen labelled with milk fat per­cent­ages (85%, as if I want­ed to know! and salt, 1.5%). This but­ter and cheese is now being sold by Wait­rose and Sains­bury’s, as well as Neal’s Yard: a very encour­ag­ing sign for the future!

Final­ly I suc­cumbed to brie truf­fee, or “truf­fled brie,” quite the most aro­mat­ic and lux­u­ri­ous cheese you can imag­ine, sold by the Fro­magerie in Maryle­bone. I can­not tell you how this aro­ma meets the nos­trils and even taste buds. Sud­den­ly I was vis­it­ed by an intense long­ing for my father-in-law, who not only loved to eat, but loved to graze, to sam­ple, to get away with some­thing, to inves­ti­gate. How I longed for him to be with me, suddenly.

Tonight we were hap­pi­ly fed by friends near­by and all I brought was this cheese, plus a baguette whose end had been cal­lous­ly plun­dered by Avery in her usu­al fit of 4 p.m. star­va­tion. Can I tell you what these dear friends fed us? Six­teen-year-old Lily pro­duced two sub­lime roast chick­ens with tar­ragon, a sal­ad bowl of pea shoots in a mus­tardy vinai­grette, and a DEAD­LY deli­cious dauphi­noise of sweet pota­toes with fresh sage, gar­lic and whip­ping cream. As soon as I make it myself I’ll give you the recipe.

This teenage tri­umph was fol­lowed by pis­ta­chio short­bread and a flour­less choco­late cake. The child is SIX­TEEN! How we ate. If my friends get any bet­ter at feed­ing me, I’ll end up look­ing like the East­er bun­ny myself. Is it too obvi­ous? The beau­ty of a mis­er­ably wet day spent with a load of self-con­scious food pro­duc­ers, fol­lowed by an evening cooked by a child, raised by the right par­ents, but not with a shov­el over the head. Just fed the right food all her life, to lots of nice peo­ple, which makes it eas­i­er to swal­low, one hopes. One would have to ask my daughter.

Now, East­er Eve, I must col­lapse. Hap­py Egg Hunt­ing, every­one… and get thee to the Fes­ti­val! It clos­es Mon­day so… buy a wedge of truf­fle brie and think of me.