a kalei­descope of a weekend

Like French women who can tell if a bot­tle of cognac has been opened in the next room (so my favorite nov­el­ist Lau­rie Col­win tells us), I can tell if a cucum­ber has been sliced three sto­ries down in my own house. And not, obvi­ous­ly, because I sliced it, but don’t you notice that food prepa­ra­tion aro­mas trav­el in unpre­dictable and pleas­ing ways through­out your house? They do in mine. Slow-cooked lamb with lentils and rose­mary halfway to the laun­dry room, cin­na­mon from the three-berry crum­ble lin­ger­ing on the land­ing out­side my bed­room, crunchy cucum­bers at the door to the guest room!

The guest room! Which my dear friend Char­lie will occu­py this Thurs­day and Fri­day, to my intense joy. He was part of my group of best chums in Devon last Octo­ber, and while we’ve enjoyed our email and phone rela­tion­ship, and the fan­tas­tic day out at Taste of Lon­don last sum­mer, what I think real­ly MAKES a friend­ship is hav­ing a per­son to stay over, with you, at home. You get to know the per­son: tea or cof­fee? Dress­ing gown or paja­mas first thing in the morn­ing? Does he like cats? What cock­tail is his pre­ferred tip­ple? These mys­ter­ies and more will be revealed. I am plan­ning a feast for Thurs­day evening, but as with all my plans, they are sub­ject to change in the mid­dle of each night between now and then, and each ten­nis game, and each oth­er moment when what pass­es for my mind is not oth­er­wise occu­pied. Scal­lops baked with a dux­elles (a sauteed mush­room and madeira con­coc­tion) and gooey cheese top­ping? Or the decep­tive­ly sim­ple mush­room soup, also with madeira, and creme fraiche with fresh thyme?

And to fol­low? I am favor­ing a super-ten­der pork ten­der­loin, grilled expert­ly by John, hav­ing been mar­i­nat­ed (the ten­der­loin, not John, just to clar­i­fy) in some herbs sym­pa­thet­ic to those in the starter course… and John’s favorite slaw of cele­ri­ac, red and Savoy cab­bages, with a dress­ing of sharp Dijon mus­tard, fro­mage frais, pop­py seeds and lemon juice… At this point Avery wails, “And what can I eat, any­way?” Fair enough. Not scal­lops or slaw, for sure. But chopped spinach sauteed with gar­lic and Gruyere? Now you’re talking.

But first I have to digest the last 24 hours of stu­pen­dous food that’s passed my palate. I should space our eat­ing-out adven­tures a lit­tle far­ther apart, real­ly, than great-din­ner-great-lunch. It’s a bit of a waste, real­ly. Nev­er­the­less, so it was. John and I had tick­ets to see John Simms (I’m sor­ry, but that’s how I saw it) onstage and all I can say is, the reviews were split. It must be point­ed out that the play in ques­tion, “Speak­ing in Tongues,” was on the sec­ond night of PRE­VIEWS, so what­ev­er kinks there were may be worked out. But when the main objec­tions to the play are as per­va­sive as John’s were (let’s see, cast­ing, stag­ing, dia­logue, plot were among the ele­ments he did­n’t like), no amount of tin­ker­ing is going to help.

John Simms, can we just spec­i­fy, was won­der­ful. We agreed on that. But John has laid down the law that he no longer wants to be tak­en to plays where we’ve gone mere­ly to watch the actor. He wants to see the play, as well. Fair enough. There were prob­lems to be sure. Simul­ta­ne­ous speak­ing of dia­logue by all four actors, though not EXACT­LY togeth­er, is bad. A bad idea, can­not be enact­ed well. It’s just mas­sive­ly irri­tat­ing. All you can hear are the dis­so­nances, and the “him” rather than “her”. I argued in my best PhD style that the dis­so­nance was delib­er­ate, to show how all the four char­ac­ters were unique and yet inter­change­able. I was met with resistance.

The plot unfold­ed in a way that I thought was very clever, not chrono­log­i­cal, but out of sequence and illu­mi­nat­ing as such. “Oh, THAT’S what hap­pened to her!” John found it pre­cious, and since he did­n’t care about the char­ac­ters, he did­n’t care what hap­pened to them. Ah me.

So I was not fla­vor of the month last night, based on the play. I was, how­ev­er, pop­u­lar as ever for sug­gest­ing Kulu-Kulu for sushi before. I had rushed there by bus down Pic­cadil­ly, after leav­ing Avery with friends in Kens­ing­ton for the evening (“we’re walk­ing Bon­nie to a Dog Par­ty,” my friend assured me, “while we wait for Lille to return from bal­let,” so I left them to it, dragged by the tiny pug). The traf­fic! Sim­ply LAGGED but I did­n’t mind, part­ly because I could feast my eyes on the gor­geous scenery of Hatchard’s, Fort­num and Mason, the Meri­di­en Hotel, the Park Lane Hotel (home of Lord Peter Wim­sey, after all). Any­one who’s begun to take liv­ing in Lon­don for grant­ed must sim­ply jump on the Num­ber 9 bus and ride along to Pic­cadil­ly Cir­cus. I just adore it, and I had my Julia Child mem­oir to enter­tain me as well.

Can I just inter­rupt myself and say (as I watch the BBC) that I love liv­ing in a coun­try where the Pres­i­dent of anoth­er coun­try is fea­tured PROMI­NENT­LY on the night­ly news just because he appeared on five talk shows that morn­ing? My own beloved Unit­ed States night­ly news can­not be both­ered, much of the time, to pay atten­tion to the Pres­i­dent of any oth­er coun­try at all, unless it’s to scare peo­ple to death occa­sion­al­ly with vague threats about Iran or North Korea. But here, the news cov­er­age actu­al­ly delves in depth, on a dai­ly basis, into what is hap­pen­ing around the world. I do admire that.

But more about eat­ing. We dived into salmon with cucum­ber and daikon, tuna with spicy spring onions, cut rolls of all these com­bi­na­tions, and final­ly my favorite veg­etable dish of all time, freez­ing cold packed-tight slices of steamed spinach cov­ered with a spicy peanut sauce, sprin­kled with sesame seeds. I’m SURE I could fig­ure out how to make this, don’t you think? I’ll look into it.

From there was the play. Enough said. Then we awoke this morn­ing to go slight­ly sep­a­rate ways: John to col­lect Avery from Kens­ing­ton, me to the kitchen to make her lunch for the rid­ing day, and to con­coct tonight’s din­ner, which had to cook all day by itself, as we were away from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The result was a deli­cious but unpre­sentable dish which met with mod­i­fied rap­ture. I will tin­ker with the recipe, but the basics were a leg of lamb, perched on a bed of red lentils and fresh rose­mary, sur­round­ed by sliced car­rots and my friend Jo’s parsnips (thanks, Jo!), onion quar­ters, and the whole splashed with white wine and chick­en stock. The ver­dict was that the lamb was per­fect, cooked tight­ly cov­ered at 110C all that time. But the veg­eta­bles were a mushy, slight­ly baby-food-ish con­sis­ten­cy. Nurs­ery food, invalid food (if one were a very lucky baby or invalid). I’ll tin­ker with it, as I say.

Into the oven it all went, and off we went to meet Avery at her fourth annu­al Horse­man’s Sun­day. Now, when we first moved here we were com­plete­ly bemused by the rit­u­al of peo­ple — chil­dren and adults alike — being will­ing to orga­nize rid­ing their hors­es up to the fore­court of a CHURCH to have them blessed by the local priest. Sounds odd, does it? Sad­ly, it sounds nor­mal to us now. They all gath­ered and were stepped on, slob­bered on, Avery strug­gled with her stir­rups, Mr Nye of the sta­ble (all his 84 years) ordered the girls to have their hair plait­ed, dogs were con­stant­ly under­foot being trod­den on. Off we all went to the church, hymns were sung, ser­mons read, cham­pagne drunk, cakes from local schools sold to sup­port the church. Tru­ly an Eng­lish phenomenon!

We cal­lous­ly aban­doned the rit­u­al for lunch with our friends Ed and Twig­gy at Angelus, one of my most favorite restau­rants in the world (infre­quent­ly as we go out, we go there more often than you’d think). And Ed and Twig­gy nev­er fail to delight. I hope I nev­er know them long enough that they lose their new­ly­wed splen­dor, although it’s been years now. They sim­ply bask in each oth­er’s pres­ence, and bring their love of life, adven­ture and friend­ship to every time we’re lucky enough to meet. They are ded­i­cat­ed veg­e­tar­i­ans, how­ev­er, and as such had to avert their eyes from the piece de resis­tance of our lunch: creme brulee de foie gras. Creamy, unc­tu­ous­ly smooth, topped with an impos­si­ble-sound­ing crunch of demer­ara sug­ar and black sesame seeds. It is the PER­FECT DISH OF ALL TIME. As John’s dad would have said, “It’s a dish to kill for.” Unless one hap­pens to eschew all ani­mal prod­ucts, that is.

Twig­gy had a gor­geous sal­ad of sliced figs with hazel­nuts and a gen­er­ous flour­ish of mixed baby greens, Ed brave­ly ordered Eggs Flo­ren­tine even though they weren’t on the menu and… lo, there they were. For my main course I had the most melt­ing­ly ten­der lemon sole meu­niere, fil­let­ed per­fect­ly and then put togeth­er, the two halves, as a real fish. Quite, quite stun­ning. With capers and tiny brown pot­ted shrimps. MY! John had beef cheeks with mous­se­line of pota­to… how we dined. Through it all, as we ate out­side, Avery and her friends dashed to and fro, jump­ing off hors­es in the mews to bring ear­rings to be tak­en care of, lunch detri­tus to take home, and just to offer a wave and a grin. “Stop grow­ing!” Twig­gy ordered stern­ly. “Right now.”

Final­ly, how­ev­er, we had to depart for the Gymkhana and take our leave of our pals. We made our way to the ring in Hyde Park and watched as the chil­dren jumped, can­tered, obeyed the shout­ed orders of the var­i­ous semi-adults in charge. As always in these sit­u­a­tions, I sim­ply sus­pend judg­ment and throw my con­fi­dence, unde­served­ly placed as it may be (but it nev­er is unde­served) behind the pow­ers that be of the Horse World. I alter­nate­ly sneezed and coughed, hav­ing for­got­ten my anti­his­t­a­mine. “Who’s ten years old here?” bel­lowed Mr Nye in his Bar­bour and tweeds. “Here is your rosette. Do not let me see it in the dust, young lady. And say “thank you, MR NYE, if you please.”

Home final­ly with filthy, exhaust­ed, dying-of-thirst Avery to throw her into a bath­tub and escape to the ten­nis court. An hour of get­ting-bet­ter-every-day ten­nis. Not good yet, mind you, on my side, but get­ting more deserv­ing of John every time we play, which is near­ly every day! Have to do some­thing to work off all that foie gras, after all.

Tomor­row will bring Avery’s dread­ed ortho­don­tist appoint­ment. We have mutu­al­ly agreed among the three of us that if action is advised this time, a sec­ond opin­ion will be sought. I opt for non-inter­ven­tion in all med­ical sit­u­a­tions, so clear­ly I need help in decid­ing. Poor dear. She’ll be con­soled by miss­ing BOTH net­ball and lacrosse, and the dubi­ous joys of see­ing me at… Lost Prop­er­ty upon her return to school. It’s the sale tomor­row, and the soul quakes.