a new roof

Eight days.  It has tak­en eight days to move every­thing of our lives that can be moved, from one house to anoth­er (yes, the famous Table That Ate Man­hat­tan came along!).

Eight days ago we woke up in our old house to wel­come — if that’s the word — a team of four hardy chaps who, over the course of the next three days, car­ried every sin­gle item we own out, into a wait­ing truck, then drove across a bridge (not our pret­ty green one; it is adver­tised as “weak” and can­not accom­mo­date such weight, a wor­ry­ing thought) and up our dri­ve­way, car­ried every item into the house and fol­lowed our har­ried and chaot­ic instruc­tions as to where things should go.

Lucky Avery and the cats, who were occu­pied at school and ken­nel life respec­tive­ly.  Each after­noon John brought Avery over to the new house to see our progress, and then we went rather reluc­tant­ly back “home” to order a piz­za, eat it off the plates I had mirac­u­lous­ly remem­bered to keep out of the movers’ hands, and go to sleep, wish­ing we could just be in the new house and turn our backs on the old life.

Which, on Thurs­day night, we did!  We all felt in a hol­i­day spir­it, Avery hav­ing no school for Good Fri­day, no pres­sure to do home­work that would­n’t be due until Tues­day, and a gor­geous evening to enjoy in our garden.

We woke up in the morn­ing to a tru­ly British sight, just across the road: a crick­et match!  There are two boys’ schools over there (clever plan­ning on our part, I think), and the time-hon­oured rit­u­al was strange­ly comforting.

And of course, being us, a wel­come brunch guest — my beloved friend Sam — that first morn­ing, and I suc­cess­ful­ly cooked a nice egg-and-bacon break­fast on my beloved Aga, which it turns out is not only an awful­ly won­der­ful hob and oven for cook­ing food, but also a handy very hot sur­face for dry­ing a bed­cov­er, because it’s sim­ply ON all the time.

Fri­day was spent in the mad­den­ing way we’ve spent end­less days: car­ry­ing frag­ile objects, mov­ing fur­ni­ture, grab­bing steak knives, par­ing knives, penknives, any­thing remote­ly sharp to open a seem­ing­ly bot­tom­less array of brown box­es.  Avery and I worked on alpha­bet­iz­ing her books, which fin­ished days lat­er proved an extreme­ly sat­is­fy­ing sight!

That evening I tried my first Aga-roast­ed chick­en and I can now report to you, dear read­ers, that you will nev­er eat a more ten­der, more fla­vor­ful, juici­er bird in your life.  And here is the first of many recipes so you — if you’re lucky enough to have a land­lord who bought an Aga — and enjoy the mag­ic too.

Aga-roast­ed Chick­en with Gar­lic and Goats Cheese

(serves 4 eas­i­ly with lots of leftovers)

1 large roast­ing chicken

2 large knobs goats cheese

splash white wine

splash chick­en stock

sea salt and black pepper

4 heads gar­lic, tops sliced off

sprin­kle olive oil

Place the chick­en in a large roast­ing tin.  Loosen the skin over the chick­en’s breast and stuff one knob of goats cheese under each breast, push­ing it down toward the wings as far as it can go.  Pour over the wine and stock and sprin­kle the salt and pep­per over top of the chick­en.  Arrange the heads of gar­lic around the chick­en and sprin­kle them with olive oil.

Place the roast­ing tin into the Aga’s “hot oven” (mine is a steady 220C/450F) for half an hour.  Then move the tin to the “slow” oven (mine is just about 100C/200F) and roast, cov­ered with alu­mini­um foil, for a fur­ther 1 1/2 hours till the juices run clear.  Pour the roast­ing juices into a gravy sep­a­ra­tor and serve the chick­en in thick slices, with the juices poured over and the heads of gar­lic squeezed out.

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This was sim­ply the King of Roast Chick­ens.  Incred­i­bly soft and fla­vor­ful, and each bite, com­bined with bites of but­tery, soft gar­lic, was heavenly.

Then, most inter­est­ing­ly, on John’s advice we piled all the bones and the left­over cook­ing fat and juices into an oven-proof saucepan, threw in the emp­ty gar­lic heads and cov­ered it all with water, adding quite a bit of salt.  And this mix­ture sat in the “low oven” ALL NIGHT and all the next day!  The smell of it, when I came into the kitchen next morn­ing, was unbe­liev­able and even stronger when I opened the oven door.  Rich, rich, rich!  It has since been made into red pep­per soup which I think will be our sup­per tonight.

Sat­ur­day was more of the same: unpack­ing, car­ry­ing things up and down the stairs, grad­u­al­ly turn­ing the mess into actu­al rooms.  Major excite­ment: the four cats came home, two at a time in our con­vert­ible, yowl­ing all the way across the bridge, telling me every­thing they’d done and said since Mon­day.  And after a brief explo­ration of their new sur­round­ings, they found var­i­ous places to relax.

And John cut the grass!  It’s the first time he’s been in charge of a lawn­mow­er since we lived in New Jer­sey 20 years ago.  Amaz­ing scent of course!

We took a brief break in the dubi­ous fes­tiv­i­ties and head­ed over to our local farmer’s mar­ket where we wan­dered in ecsta­sy — cam­era­less! — and each of us indulged in quite pos­si­bly the most out­ra­geous­ly delec­table sand­wich ever: a grilled pork burg­er from Barn Bacon in Not­ting­hamshire, but not just ANY burg­er: it was topped with sharp ched­dar cheese AND a fried egg and was served on a floury whole wheat bun.  Every Sat­ur­day lunch?  Very possibly.

The after­noon brought Avery’s school chum Dan­ni for a spot of East­er egg-dye­ing, using the impos­si­bly clever lit­tle tablets from Rus­sia I found last week!

Mean­while I con­coct­ed my sec­ond glo­ri­ous Aga supper.

Slow-cooked Moroc­can meatballs

(serves 6)

1 kg/2 lbs lean lamb mince

1 cup Panko (Japan­ese) breadcrumbs

1/2 cup milk

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 tsp ground cumin

sea salt and black pepper

sauce:

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tsps ras el hanout seasoning

2 tsps Baharat seasoning

1 tsp ground cumin

2 tsps ground turmeric

dash chilli powder

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

1/2 white onion, minced

4 soup-size tins whole peeled tomatoes

For the meat­balls, sim­ply mix all the ingre­di­ents togeth­er thor­ough­ly and set aside.  To make the sauce, heat the olive oil in a very large, shal­low oven­proof dish and add all the spices, gar­lic and onions.  Fry gen­tly for 1 minute.  Add toma­toes, squeez­ing them into bits as you put them in the cook­ing dish.  Stir well and sim­mer for 15 min­utes on the hob/stovetop.

Make the meat­balls by gen­tly rolling a golf-ball-sized chunk of the meat mix­ture in your hands — it will be a rather wet, frag­ile meat­ball.  Drop each gen­tly into the sim­mer­ing sauce.  Cook for five min­utes on a gen­tle sim­mer, then care­ful­ly turn each meat­ball over.

Place the cook­ing dish into the “slow oven” and sim­mer for at least 1 1/2 hours, but as long as you like, with­in reason!

Again: the watch­word here is “ten­der.”  Melt­ing­ly so, and the com­bi­na­tion of that irre­sistible tex­ture and the exot­ic, warm­ing spices is sim­ply a joy.  Avery and Dan­ni ate like lit­tle wolves, as the first storm of our stay here bat­tered the glass roof of the kitchen.

East­er Sun­day Avery was vis­it­ed by the bun­ny, of course, who left can­dy, and a lit­tle friend.

And we took the day off, watch­ing tel­ly and cook­ing an Aga-roast­ed leg of lamb with rose­mary, gar­lic and lemon… I won’t bore you… TEN­DER.  There, I’ve said it.

Mon­day was a Bank Hol­i­day here, which in Mov­ing Lan­guage means “an extra day to unpack box­es.”  And my dear friend Mark arrived to do his usu­al — third time! — mag­ic in hang­ing all the art and fam­i­ly pho­tographs.  Now we are feel­ing quite homey and cozy, one step clos­er to being set­tled.  The expe­ri­ence of see­ing every­thing you own pass before your eyes, leav­ing one home where you’ve been hap­py, and reap­pear­ing in anoth­er home that’s still a mys­tery… it’s all emo­tion­al­ly exhaust­ing.  Not to men­tion the sheer WORK of it all!

We’ve all had our cranky, impa­tient, bossy, resent­ful, tired-out moments.  But tru­ly, going through a move also brings us clos­er togeth­er, appre­ci­at­ing how lucky we are to HAVE all these belong­ings, after all!  No more whinge­ing about how much trou­ble they are to unpack.

Tomor­row… the book­shelves.  If we’re all alive to tell the tale once that task is over, I will let you know.  For now, a deep breath as I approach… a BOX.