of East­er bun­nies and roast­ed rab­bits, bells and boats

Isn’t this a mys­te­ri­ous image?  Every after­noon, slight­ly ear­li­er every day now as the days get longer, this design floats across the wall in our front hall­way, reflect­ed from the stained glass win­dow in the front door.  A lit­tle bit of acci­den­tal mag­ic, every day.

No one appre­ci­ates the spring sun more than Tacy.

Except per­haps for Keechie.

I have a con­fes­sion to make, one which would make my daugh­ter sev­er all ties with me if she knew: I real­ly like exam sea­son, hers, that is.  And since this is our last one, I’ll explain why: she’s home all the time, which as fly­ing-the-nest fast approach­es, is a very lux­u­ri­ous thing.  Although I’m real­ly not meant to dis­tract her, it’s fright­ful­ly easy when she’s sit­ting with her piles of books just to men­tion some­thing I want­ed to ask her, her opin­ion about some­thing, what she’d like for din­ner.  And she’s right there.  Very pleasant.

Mind you, not so much for her.

What she does­n’t know about you-know-what sure­ly can­not be worth know­ing.  There are over 150 events that she’s deter­mined to remem­ber, span­ning the years on the Emer­ald Isle between 1798 and 1921.  And now her father and I are pret­ty close to know­ing them too, absorb­ing them almost acci­den­tal­ly as she works through ideas out loud.  Where she gets the capac­i­ty for com­pil­ing all this infor­ma­tion, the atten­tion span for mem­o­riz­ing it all, not to men­tion the ener­gy for think­ing deeply about it all, I can’t imag­ine.  That part of my brain was tak­en over long, long ago by the con­tents of hun­dreds of pic­ture books, and is now occu­pied with the four­teen dif­fer­ent types of rice in my pantry and what they could be used for.

East­er has come and gone, our last with a kid at home to get an East­er bas­ket, I sup­pose.  All these mile­stones!  She was per­fect­ly hap­py this year to join in.

The rit­u­al was com­fort­ing in its famil­iar­i­ty — I nev­er think we have enough eggs, John thinks we have too many, we always wish we had some white eggs, but we nev­er do.  How to keep the shells from crack­ing?  This year, John insti­tut­ed a nov­el “steam, don’t boil” pol­i­cy, and it was effec­tive.  “What is this weird ‘gloss,’ do you think?” John asks, wav­ing a small plas­tic pack­et we’ve found in the East­er sup­plies John’s moth­er always brings us in the sum­mer.  “Any why would any­one want to tie-dye an egg?”  Food col­or­ing is good, too.

Some of the cre­ations had a dis­tinct­ly intel­lec­tu­al flair.  Green for Ireland!

I’ve spent an inor­di­nate amount of time with Home-Start late­ly, hav­ing vol­un­teered to cater their 20th Anniversary/Easter par­ty last week.  When I was asked to vol­un­teer at the par­ty, to coax the 30 chil­dren and 40 par­ents attend­ing to intro­duce them­selves, play nice­ly, share, it was but the work of a moment to offer to cook the lunch.  Why on earth should Home-Start spend a pen­ny of their tiny bud­get (decreas­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly, no doubt, with an unfa­vor­able — to my inter­ests — Gen­er­al Elec­tion result next month) on rub­bishy brought-in tuna sand­wich­es and crisps, when I could donate the food myself?  I actu­al­ly had fun, cook­ing for 70.  I’ve nev­er cooked so many chick­en wings or dev­illed eggs (from our East­er eggs!) in my life, not to men­tion sand­wich­es.  Don’t these look as good as a sand­wich shop could offer?

The par­ty itself was a delight (once I got over the stress of the sat­nav not get­ting the des­ti­na­tion right and John right­ful­ly annoyed with me for wast­ing his time at the wheel of the car).  I saw lots of chil­dren from a play­group I’d vol­un­teered at years ago, and my, they’ve grown, and thrived, as have their par­ents.  Whole fam­i­lies kept whole because one vol­un­teer spent three hours a week with them, for a year.  What an irre­place­able insti­tu­tion Home-Start is.

We got a huge boost last month when the quite-preg­nant Duchess of Cam­bridge stopped by a chil­dren’s cen­tre to hear what we do.  How cool, to see her sit­ting under one of our logos!  I think she needs a vol­un­teer, don’t you?  It’s stress­ful hav­ing two chil­dren under two, no mat­ter who you are.

Final­ly, in the last few weeks, I’ve had the emo­tion­al where­with­al to start to think of cook­ing some­thing new!  I think the cook­book’s real­i­ty over­whelmed any cre­ative instincts I might have had, for months and months.  But inspired by a vis­it to a phe­nom­e­nal restau­rant, Rab­bit, with my friend Sue, I suc­cumbed to a long temptation.

Rab­bit, Three Ways: Ril­lettes, Loins and Liv­er Parfait

(serves 3 as appe­tiz­ers or a light lunch)

1 rab­bit, joint­ed (I learned how at my butch­ers on the spot)

for the con­fit legs for rillettes:

1 cup white wine

1/s cup goose or duck fat

4 bay leaves

sea salt and fresh black pepper

for the loins:

2 tbsps butter

sea salt and fresh black pepper

for the liv­er parfait:

2 tbsps butter

1/2 small shal­lot, minced

2 tsps brandy

splash Tabas­co

2 tbsps double/heavy cream, or to attain prop­er texture

sea salt and fresh black pepper

For the ril­lettes: In a fry­ing pan, heat the wine and fat togeth­er until fat melts, then add the bay leaves and salt and pep­per.  Place the rab­bit legs in this mix­ture and cook over a very low heat, the liq­uid just sim­mer­ing, for 3 hours.  Remove the legs and allow to cool so you can han­dle them, then shred the meat off the bones and mix with just enough of the hot cook­ing liq­uid to attain a nice juicy tex­ture.  Set aside and sea­son if necessary.

For the loins: Just before you want to eat, melt the but­ter in a fry­ing pan and fry the loins until just cooked, per­haps 4–5 min­utes, turn­ing fre­quent­ly.  Sea­son and set aside to rest for a minute before serving.

For the par­fait: In the fry­ing pan from the loins, melt the addi­tion­al but­ter and add the rab­bit liv­er, sea­son­ing gen­er­ous­ly.  Cook until just pink, per­haps 3 min­utes, turn­ing twice.  Place the liv­er in a small food proces­sor and pour in the cook­ing but­ter.  Add the shal­lot, brandy, Tabas­co and cream and process until very smooth.  Sea­son to taste and serve either at room tem­per­a­ture or chilled.

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This was a stun­ning plat­ter of food.  Del­i­cate, juicy, savoury, and with such delight­ful­ly dif­fer­ent tex­tures in each dish.  My only con­cern was that the rab­bit avail­able here in Lon­don is near­ly exclu­sive­ly farmed rab­bit, which elim­i­nates the main rea­sons to eat rab­bit: it’s a pest, and there are far too many of them, and they’re free (or at least very cheap).  My rab­bit cost £12, about $18, and while that’s not too bad for a meaty meal for three, it’s not a bar­gain by any means.  But deli­cious?   Yes.

And because Avery’s increas­ing­ly inter­est­ed in eat­ing less meat and more veg­eta­bles, last week I exper­i­ment­ed with an old-fash­ioned choice, to won­der­ful­ly tasty results.

Mush­rooms Stroganoff

(serves 4)

2 lbs chest­nut, baby Por­to­bel­lo or white mushrooms

3 tbsps butter

1 white onion, minced

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

sprin­kling of paprika

8 stems fresh thyme, leaves only picked

3 tbsps Madeira or Marsala

1 cup/250 ml sour cream

noo­dles or steamed rice to serve

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Quar­ter or oth­er­wise cut the mush­rooms into bite-size pieces.

Melt the but­ter and add the mush­rooms, onion, gar­lic, papri­ka and thyme.   Saute until the mush­rooms are soft­ened, then add the wine and siz­zle for 30 sec­onds.  Add the sour cream and warm through.  Serve with noo­dles or rice as you like.

Such a treat!  We grilled chick­en breasts and served them in thick-cut slices along­side, but they were cer­tain­ly not nec­es­sary to pro­vide a rich, sat­is­fy­ing, savoury dish.

I’ve need­ed as much ener­gy as pos­si­ble because there’s been a lot of bell-ring­ing.  I wish I could con­vey to you the intense cama­raderie, the com­mu­ni­ty spir­it, the sheer FUN we all have togeth­er.  The sil­ly ring­ing jokes that would­n’t make sense to a nor­mal per­son, the acknowl­edge­ment of the scary­ness of the sport/musical instru­ment we all love so much.

There is also a beau­ti­ful spir­i­tu­al­i­ty ‑whether we’re reli­gious or not — in the church­ly nature of our sur­round­ings: the bap­tismal font at Chiswick, and its mau­solea in our ring­ing cham­ber, the love­ly lead­ed glass win­dows at Barnes, the put­to framed by our ropes.

And on Good Fri­day, I rang for the first time at St Mary the Vir­gin, Mort­lake, just up the street from our house.  What an unex­pect­ed gem, nes­tled just on the High Street.

The door­way of the church — which was moved stone by stone from the banks of the Thames dur­ing flood­ing in Vic­to­ri­an times! — is guard­ed by this solemn fellow.

This love­ly win­dow greet­ed us in the foyer.

We rang half-muf­fled, as befits a funer­al ser­vice.  How warm­ly we vis­i­tors from Barnes were wel­comed!  And we made their five ringers into eight, which is an immense­ly sat­is­fy­ing feel­ing.  It would­n’t have been an octave with­out us.

Our own Sun­day ser­vice ring­ing at St Mary’s, Barnes, was great­ly enhanced by the East­er bun­ny’s deliv­ery of some choice choco­late eggs.  Bell-ring­ing joke alert: “That was a very nice Plain Egg Hunt.”

No East­er would be com­plete with­out a vis­it from Hen­ri­et­ta, the cer­e­mo­ni­al don­key who trav­els in each year from her farm in the coun­try­side, to under­score the com­plete­ly charm­ing and daft approach of the Eng­lish to reli­gious affairs and ani­mals.  Dear Richard the Vic­ar takes his respon­si­bil­i­ties very seriously.

Spring on the Thames, in our part of the world, means The Boat Race, of course, that clas­sic com­pe­ti­tion between Oxford and Cam­bridge.  It’s often the scene of high dra­ma, as in sev­er­al years ago when a man protest­ing the posh­ness of life in gen­er­al dived in, to the con­ster­na­tion and dan­ger of every­one involved.  This year there was no such dra­ma, just the fun of being at Eliz­a­beth’s house on the banks of the riv­er, eat­ing her spe­cial roast­ed baby cour­gettes and but­ter­nut squash, sip­ping Pros­ec­co, feel­ing our spe­cial affin­i­ty this year for Oxford — who won both their men’s and wom­en’s races.

For the first time ever, the women shared the race day with the men, and the same stretch of riv­er.  Fem­i­nism prevailed!

At the end of the day, with the crowds dis­persed and the sun set­ting, the kids went out to sit on the riv­er wall and enjoy a few more momen­t’s respite from their stud­ies.  We grownups watched from the win­dow upstairs, feel­ing a com­bi­na­tion of pride and melan­choly that we’re all too famil­iar with, these days.  How dif­fer­ent life will be in a year’s time for us all.  Scat­tered to the winds, with­out the com­forts of old friends, of home, of tra­di­tions.  I know that new tra­di­tions and cir­cles will be set in place. They always are.  But for that Sat­ur­day after­noon, we rev­elled in the famil­iar, Spring in Lon­don, and all was right with the world.