here comes the sun, finally

Final­ly it has stopped rain­ing! It was three sol­id days (no top down on a cer­tain Cinque­cen­to con­vert­ible, no ten­nis games, umbrel­las lost all over the city, hair smelling like wet dog, soak­ing ankles) and every­one was get­ting cranky. Then sud­den­ly today was the quin­tes­sen­tial gor­geous autumn day, air­plane trails through the sky, chang­ing leaves falling onto the ten­nis court. It is very much the same land­scape as per­vad­ed those mag­i­cal days our writ­ing crew spent a year ago in Devon: the same quar­ter moon, glow­ing yel­low-white, is sus­pend­ed in the sky tonight and it brings back mar­vel­lous, intense mem­o­ries of cre­ativ­i­ty, friend­ship, and ter­ri­ble food!

The sun is more than due. Two days ago, a third of the way to tak­ing Avery to her “Drake” rehearsal, the traf­fic sim­ply stopped mov­ing. “Might as well walk, you two,” John said, and he was right. So out into the slight sprin­kle we climbed, walk­ing across the glo­ri­ous Ham­mer­smith Bridge to the tune of Avery’s enthu­si­as­tic descrip­tion of “Fash­ions I Have Worn Since Birth,” which was enter­tain­ing enough to get us through the jour­ney. Sure, she’s had some doozies, like spats in kinder­garten? Odd, true. But yes­ter­day’s black dou­ble-breast­ed jack­et and pur­ple hat were mem­o­rable in a good way.

Today, we picked her up at school with her friend Nel­lie to take them both to Drake, got them safe­ly deliv­ered, were run­ning errands hap­pi­ly when Nel­lie’s moth­er rang me in what I can describe only as Grim Pan­ic. “Did you get the girls to Drake? All of them? How about the Ger­man exchange stu­dent?” Holy Moses, no. There’s mater­nal pan­ic for you. “It was mere­ly a case of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion,” Avery assured us at din­ner sev­er­al hours lat­er. “The girl knew she was meant to stay at school, and so did Nel­lie, but her moth­er did­n’t, so it was a bit of a wor­ry.” A bit? You think?

“Drake” with all its atten­dant dra­mas, dis­ap­point­ments and access to the gor­geous grounds of Avery’s broth­er school has been a lot of fun, even from the out­side look­ing in. I find that’s more and more of life in this par­tic­u­lar stage: look­ing in on the Avery Show, fer­ry­ing her to events and prac­tices, lis­ten­ing to her accounts of what is hap­pen­ing behind the scenes. Mean­while, I’m busy at least in my mind, plan­ning what’s next.

For one thing, I think I am putting aside my “book” for the time being. I enjoy writ­ing this blog so much, and I live each day for what­ev­er cook­ing odyssey awaits at din­ner time (or even lunch!). But I’ve been dis­sat­is­fied with my efforts on the “book” since last spring, and I’ve had advice from sev­er­al sources either to 1) go at it non-stop with all my ener­gy, or to 2) put it aside, if not per­ma­nent­ly, at least for the fore­see­able future. It’s too soul-destroy­ing to look at its dor­mant pages on my desk (the desk in my head) every day and not to do any­thing pos­i­tive with it.

So… there are options. Mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers. A cook­ery course to teach here, out of my kitchen? That’s loom­ing espe­cial­ly attrac­tive­ly, I have to admit. My mind swirls at night with course ideas: five things to do with chick­en? How to turn any veg­etable into the per­fect soup? Piz­zas? Side dish­es, food for dif­fer­ent moods (light, com­fort­ing, exot­ic, veg­e­tar­i­an). My work is cut out: come up with work­able ideas and bud­gets, find clients, adver­tise, make up sched­ules. I’m not 100% sure I am ready to do this, or qual­i­fied, but I’m ready to think about it. It would cer­tain­ly give me some­thing to blog about, and maybe an idea behind a col­umn? I’ve got to dig in.

And for the course on side dish­es, I offer:

Home­made Chana Masala (chick­peas with tomato)
(serves at least 6 as a gen­er­ous side dish)

4 tbsps olive oil
1 medi­um red onion, fine­ly diced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 heap­ing tsp each: Baharat, ground cumin, turmer­ic, madras cur­ry powder
scant 1/2 tsp cayenne
2 cans chick­peas, drained
1 soup-can chopped tomatoes
juice 1 lime/lemon
fresh ground pepper
salt to taste
2 cups spinach, chopped roughly
1 tbsp butter
1/3 cup fro­mage frais, or plain fat-free yoghurt
hand­ful corian­der leaves, chopped

Saute the onions, gar­lic and spices in the oil till onions are soft. Turn off heat and add chick­peas, stir thor­ough­ly till mixed, then cook over medi­um heat for a cou­ple of min­utes, then add toma­toes, lime juice and sea­son­ing. Cook over very low heat, stir­ring occa­sion­al­ly, for at least half an hour. Short­ly before serv­ing, fold in chopped spinach and stir thor­ough­ly, then add but­ter and fro­mage frais and stir well, bub­bling the mix­ture for a bit. Sprin­kle with chopped corian­der leaves at serving.

**********

This dish fills the house with exot­ic, warm, gar­licky aro­mas that will bring your fam­i­ly into the kitchen ask­ing, “Can we have din­ner ear­ly?” It’s the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to fish (we ate piles of it with grilled salmon the oth­er night) and also, believe it or not, burg­ers. Last night was an exper­i­ment with a mix­ture of minced organ­ic buf­fa­lo (bison, it goes by in Amer­i­ca, not the same thing but close enough when you’re eat­ing it) and organ­ic veni­son. I promise you, you will nev­er buy beef again once you’ve had this mixture.

Gourmet Mag­a­zine is dead! Was my blog post the death knell? My Octo­ber issue arrived today, the Novem­ber issue to be the LAST PRINT ISSUE EVER. This mag­a­zine has been going strong since 1941, but it took more than the Nazis, or the Cold War, fake but­ter or Al-Qae­da to kill it. It took the internet.

I am very sad. Com­ing so close on the heels of the last episode of “Guid­ing Light”, one of my Christ­mas and sum­mer­time Amer­i­can treats (even old­er than Gourmet, going on radio for 75 years!), it seems the land­scape of pop­u­lar cul­ture is chang­ing. I hate to think it’s all what I see out in the real world today: peo­ple with mobile phones in one hand, while they adjust their iPods with the oth­er! You could hon­est­ly run these peo­ple down, even with a tiny Cinque­cen­to, and they’d be crushed with­out even notic­ing, I hate to say. Unless you inter­rupt­ed their playlist or cut off their voice­mail while they were in the mid­dle of some­one telling them what they should be Tweet­ing about. Hon­est­ly, I get more cur­mud­geon­ly by the day. Only blog­ging should be sal­vaged from the mod­ern tech­no­log­i­cal world. Oh, well, and email.

This week­end, how­ev­er, will bring the Lon­don Restau­rant Fes­ti­val, and I think we’ll take advan­tage of the Sun­day com­bi­na­tion of the Tate exhi­bi­tion of Turn­er, and a two-course lunch in the muse­um’s fan­cy restau­rant. To think that until this week, a bud­ding cook­ery writer could look for­ward to sub­mit­ting a sto­ry about the Fes­ti­val to Gourmet. We’ve got to think of a sub­sti­tute: a won­der­ful source of inspi­ra­tion, encour­age­ment, research, life-enhanc­ing sto­ries, all about food. If I find one, I’ll let you know.