a star is boiled

Guess what? It’s the 600th post for “Kris­ten in Lon­don,” and very pos­si­bly the last before my new look is unveiled, so Hap­py Birth­day to us!

My house right now is filled top to bot­tom with a band of men installing my new secu­ri­ty sys­tem. Because we have been bur­gled twice in less than a year, our insur­ance com­pa­ny is under­stand­ably a bit peev­ed with us. How did such unde­mand­ing cus­tomers of 25 years, dwellers in count­less apart­ments in New York and Lon­don sud­den­ly become so very… expen­sive? So they are insist­ing on an alarm sys­tem, before they agree to cov­er any more of our home invasions.

An atavis­tic instinct in me is enor­mous­ly sat­is­fied by the notion that some evil neigh­bor, hav­ing preyed on us twice before, is now look­ing with con­ster­na­tion from across the street, watch­ing us become alarmed.

And it IS alarming.

Because these fel­lows are full of gris­ly tales from their native land, one from South Africa and the oth­er the East End of Lon­don, where one appar­ent­ly does not leave expans­es of glass uncov­ered by met­al bars, or doors with few­er than two sol­id locks at all times.

“This, madam, is your Pan­ic But­ton. Sim­ply press this red but­ton if you hear bro­ken glass or oth­er signs of an intrud­er, and a loud scream­ing, pierc­ing sound will…”

“OK, OK, I get it!” I say.

Actu­al­ly I think hav­ing an alarm set while I’m in the house would make me even more jumpy than just THINK­ING I hear some­body. We’ve all done that: lain awake absolute­ly sure we’ve heard some­body com­ing in, but know­ing it’s not true. The idea of hav­ing sci­en­tif­ic, Pan­ic-But­ton-deserv­ing proof of it is rather too close to the food chain for me.

So, the best thing for me to do in the face of such dra­ma was to cook a live crab, and learn to take him apart.

This is because, dear read­ers, my aspi­ra­tions for break­ing into the British food world are com­ing true! I have won a place on a TEL­LY con­test, called “Britain’s Best Dish,” to be broad­cast on ITV late in June! The dish I’m putting for­ward? “Creamy Sweet­corn and Rock­et Soup with Fresh White Crab­meat,” so nat­u­ral­ly I had to learn to cook and pre­pare a real, live crab. As I’ll do on tele­vi­sion, for real, on June 11.

Here’s what hap­pened. My dear friend Susan received an email invi­ta­tion to join the con­test, and while she had no inter­est in doing so, she for­ward­ed the invi­ta­tion to me, and on a sort of whim, I entered my dar­ling soup recipe. Because, I’m loath to boast, but I will, I think it’s a superb soup AND I invent­ed it. As far as I can see, from assid­u­ous googling and cook­book trawl­ing, no one else has thought to cook sweet­corn and rock­et in chick­en broth and add cream and crab.

So the first thing that hap­pened was some­one emailed me back and asked that I sub­mit the whole recipe with com­plete instruc­tions, amounts, pro­ce­dure, etc., along with some bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion about me. The Amer­i­can, that is, I thought, and there goes my place on a pro­gramme about Britain’s Best Dish. But no, it was fine! The next thing I knew, my phone rang. Now, I am well-known to my near­est and dear­est for hat­ing speak­ing on a mobile phone. I don’t like the feel of it, the tin­ny sound, or the ten­den­cy it has to ring when I’ve just sat down in a den­tist’s chair or ordered my main course. But I answered.

“This is Daniel from ITV and Britain’s Best Dish, is that Kristen?”

Gulp. “Yes.”

“We here at the stu­dio are hold­ing our Lon­don and South­east Region­al Audi­tions next Sat­ur­day and won­der if you could bring in a bit of your love­ly-sound­ing sweet­corn soup for our producers?”

Gulp. “Yes.”

And from this scin­til­lat­ing exchange, my career in tele­vi­sion was born. That grey and cold, spit­ty Sat­ur­day, John and Avery drove me to Lon­don Stu­dios on the South­bank, where­upon Avery checked my make­up, applied a lit­tle extra of her favorite Ben­e­fit “Get Even” for my com­plex­ion, and a touch of lip gloss. “There, now you’re ready.” I marched into the build­ing, got my name tag (com­plete with hideous pho­to in which I look like a dis­em­bod­ied head) and wait­ed. And wait­ed. Then the lit­tle group of us wait­ing there, eye­ing each oth­er and our car­ry­ing bags curi­ous­ly, were escort­ed up to anoth­er wait­ing room filled with food smells!

A very large man was unpack­ing a com­plex-look­ing ter­rine with a lay­er of quail’s eggs inside it and a lat­tice pas­try top, a ner­vous-look­ing lady with red cheeks was ladling out a soup stud­ded with what looked like sliced hot dogs, and a very skin­ny young men tend­ing two lit­tle chil­dren sliced up a choco­late dessert of some kind, with glace cher­ries on top. Oth­er hap­less peo­ple who must already have sub­mit­ted their dish­es leafed in a desul­to­ry way through tabloid news­pa­pers all scream­ing about the election.

When my turn came, I ladled my beau­ti­ful bright-green soup into a white bowl pro­vid­ed by the stu­dio, and went to face my pro­duc­ers. And they were adorable! Love­ly young men in their 30s, very com­pe­tent­ly ask­ing me about my chick­en stock, my opin­ion of British pro­duce (bet­ter than Amer­i­can, I had to say, espe­cial­ly chick­ens, and rock­et), what I was doing liv­ing here, how often I cook… it was great fun! I had expect­ed to feel ner­vous, but hon­est­ly, when I’m talk­ing about some­thing com­plete­ly nat­ur­al and dear to my heart, what was there to be ner­vous about?

And they liked the soup!

“Now, your recipe sug­gests scal­lops or crab as an option­al addi­tion,” one man said, lick­ing his spoon. “Tell me about that.”

“Well, for a par­ty I have served it with sauteed scal­lops, but I did­n’t think they’d trav­el well, so I did­n’t bring them today,” I said, “and crab meat always sound­ed like a nat­ur­al, with sweet­corn, sort of a chow­dery touch.”

“Exact­ly,” said the sec­ond young man, “I won­der if you’d be will­ing to con­sid­er that, should you get to the next round?”

“Sure!” I chirped, and they had anoth­er sip, shook my hand and said they’d be in touch.

Well, that lit­tle encounter com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared from my life in the face of my trip to Indi­anapo­lis down mem­o­ry lane, and oth­er than men­tion­ing it to my moth­er on the way in from the air­port when I arrived, I nev­er gave it anoth­er thought.

Until I got home, to a mes­sage on my mobile phone, left behind in favor of an Amer­i­can one. “Kris­ten, this is Daniel again from Britain’s Best Dish, and I won­der if you’d call me so we could speak about your recipe.” That seemed like good news! It seemed hard to believe he’d want me to call him so he could tell me my stock was too salty. It had to be good news.

And it was! I’m part of the London/Southeast Region­al heats. I’ll com­pete against anoth­er per­son cook­ing a starter, and the judges will decide between us. Then after all the region­al con­tes­tants have cooked and their shows have aired, the judges will choose a num­ber of us for the next round. So it could be awhile, after film­ing on June 11, before I know any more, but watch this space! I’ll tell you when to flick on your tel­ly to ITV to watch me prepare:

Fresh-Cooked Devon Brown Crab
(serves 1 as a starter sal­ad, or 2 gar­nish­es for soup)

1 large LIVE Devon brown crab
1 carrot
2 stalks celery
large hand­ful flat-leaf parsley
2 tbsps sea salt
cold water to cover
dash white wine

Leav­ing Mr Crab to the side for a moment, thrash­ing about on your coun­ter­top, place all the oth­er ingre­di­ents for his cook­ing water in a large stock­pot and bring to the boil. When the water is vig­or­ous­ly boil­ing, low­er the crab in care­ful­ly and place a lid on the stock­pot. This lid may need to be moved a bit to one side if the water begins to boil over. Watch the pot care­ful­ly to make sure Mr Crab does not flick the lid off. Boil for 15 min­utes, then remove the crab to a plate to cool.

When the crab is cooled so that you can han­dle it, pull off the tail flap at the back, then remove all the legs and claws by twist­ing away from the body. Place the claws under a clean tow­el and tap with a ham­mer until the claws are bro­ken enough to remove the large chunk of meat inside each.

Each large chunk of claw meat will have a cen­tral piece of car­ti­lage run­ning through, so feel­ing care­ful­ly along this car­ti­lage, remove the crab­meat in as large pieces as pos­si­ble and set aside. Check care­ful­ly for bits of shell and discard.

The chunks of white meat should be place in the cen­ter of your bowl of soup in as pret­ty a pile as pos­si­ble. Or you can mix a bit of may­on­naise with them and sprin­kle with chives for a per­fect crab salad.

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For the pur­pos­es of this recipe, and because I do not like brown crab­meat, dis­card the rest of the crab or find a love­ly friend who does like brown meat and give it to her. Or, my fish­mon­ger says the brown crab­meat makes a love­ly stock if you boil it and the crab shells in a lit­tle water. I tried boil­ing just the shells and the result­ing liq­uid was awful: watery, dull, unpalatable.

So there you go, com­plete­ly fresh crab. It is head and shoul­ders above any­thing you’ll buy already prepared.

I must learn to do this per­fect­ly, at least two more times, before the tele­vi­sion day. When I did it the first time, I did not cov­er the crab before I hit it with the ham­mer, and the shells dis­in­te­grat­ed like porce­lain, shoot­ing all over the kitchen. This to the trun­cat­ed delight of my tab­by, who thought each shard might con­tain food for her. Just shell. I’d rather not have shell shoot­ing all over the stu­dio, however!

Well, oth­er than my bur­geon­ing TV star­dom, life has been fair­ly qui­et. Avery is gear­ing up for a week of unmit­i­gat­ed study revi­sion (well, prob­a­bly not unmit­i­gat­ed) begin­ning tomor­row. They all have the week off to look over their work from the year, and the week after is noth­ing but exams. I remem­ber this from last June: every day they are tuck­ered out, and irri­ta­ble, and they just get more so as the week goes on. Many yum­my lit­tle snacks are required to bring them from their gloom. It IS hard, six or so hours of exams all day long, for five days in a row. I actu­al­ly think next week will be delight­ful, just hav­ing her at home sit­ting qui­et­ly with all her books and papers. I’m sure we’ll find some­thing adven­tur­ous to do to break up the monotony.

Last night was swim­ming pool duty, which I always enjoy. Our school owns a share in a gor­geous, old-fash­ioned, glass-ceilinged swim­ming pool just adja­cent to the school grounds, and it’s a beau­ti­ful­ly evoca­tive place to spend a cou­ple of hours. I arrive with Avery and all her swim­ming gear, punch in the secu­ri­ty code, pull back the gates, run with my set of jin­gling keys to find the box con­tain­ing the sign-in book, the mon­ey to pay the pret­ty young life­guards (school seniors), and a bunch of pur­chasable swim caps for those hap­less souls who have for­got­ten theirs. Then I sit in the slight­ly humid air with my mys­tery and a bot­tle of water, perus­ing the mem­ber­ship cards as peo­ple come in to swim, pet­ting some­body’s lit­tle fuzzy ter­ri­er left behind in the lob­by while her own­er swims, chat­ting with the girls as they come out wring­ing their wet hair and com­par­ing home­work assign­ments. Cozy.

And home for one of my favorite din­ners, in fact one we all love because it’s messy and sil­ly, and I’m hap­py because it uses all sorts of bits and pieces from the fridge! Keep all your parts of pep­pers, mush­rooms, onion, and such through the week, roast a duck or a pork ten­der­loin, or a chick­en, ANY­THING real­ly! And roll them up.

Every­thing on a Pancake
(serves 4)

enough roast meat (chick­en, pork, duck, lamb) for 4: left­overs are good too!
4–6 Chi­nese pan­cakes per person
veg­eta­bles sliced long and thin: pep­pers, cucum­bers, spring onions, mush­rooms, car­rots, etc.
green leaves to tuck in: spinach, cilantro, parsley
chopped nuts: pinenuts, cashews, peanuts, macadamia, hazel­nuts, etc.
sauces: plum sauce, mus­tard, chilli sauce, satay, etc.

Now just start rolling up, with what­ev­er you like inside, and make sure you have plen­ty of napkins!

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Well, it’s Fri­day, so it must be ice skat­ing tonight, and then we have to whisk her away to see “The Fan­ta­sticks,” that glo­ri­ous­ly roman­tic musi­cal that ran for­ev­er and a day in Green­wich Vil­lage (we saw it as new­ly­weds!), and is now in revival here with my super-crush Edward Pether­bridge… I’ll let you know.