A slice of life

Right, it’s a first. Walk­ing Avery’s friend Emi­ly home last night, we encoun­tered a lady with some­thing on a lead, actu­al­ly har­nessed, and it was a giant white bun­ny. I asked the lady, “Is this…?” and she said proud­ly, “Yes, it’s the East­er bun­ny. I bring her out at night so she isn’t over­whelmed by atten­tion. But pet her, she’s very friend­ly.” I thought the girls would jump out of their skin. And Emi­ly hap­pened to be car­ry­ing a wick­er bas­ket (why? no idea) so she put it down on the pave­ment and right on cue, the bun­ny jumped into it and set­tled right down, nos­ing around, no doubt look­ing for the Cad­bury Creme Eggs that were the only props miss­ing from the scene. Long, white ears of impos­si­ble soft­ness, actu­al hop­ping, and then sit­ting on its heels and stroking its face with its lit­tle hands. Both girls (and I, to be hon­est) suf­fer now from seri­ous bun­ny envy. They imme­di­ate­ly went into a cam­paign to con­vince John that we need a bun­ny. “The lady says she has two cats and they ALL GET ALONG!” Appar­ent­ly bun­nies are eas­i­ly trained to a kit­tylit­ta tray, so the objec­tions are dwin­dling. John’s tak­ing a sim­ple line. “No.” Watch this space.

I have a new favorite book. It’s out of print, but rel­a­tive­ly easy to find, as I stum­bled upon it out in Lin­colnshire last week. “A Slice of Life,” a title of which I am mas­sive­ly envi­ous (why did­n’t I think of that for my book?), it’s a com­pi­la­tion by Ital­ian-Amer­i­can writer Bon­nie Mar­ran­ca of a huge num­ber of essays on food. Some are writ­ten by food­ie peo­ple, but some by fic­tion writ­ers, anthro­pol­o­gists, his­to­ri­ans. There’s the irre­place­able Michael Pol­lan on food ethics and what con­sti­tutes “nat­ur­al”, and Adam Gop­nik (he of “Through the Chil­dren’s Gate”, a book about New York post-Sep­tem­ber 11 that nev­er fails to make me cry) on the cri­sis of French cui­sine in the world of expand­ing fast food. There’s Fred­er­ick Kauf­man, amaz­ing­ly the dad of one of Avery’s old school chums, writ­ing about cul­ture of diet­ing (enough to send you straight to the gro­cery store to avoid these traps). And a sear­ing­ly painful essay about a con­cen­tra­tion camp book of “imag­ined recipes” by Cara de Sil­va, recip­i­ent of her ances­tor’s writ­ings. I can­not imag­ine. Then Rachel Lau­dan writes about how sil­ly it is to com­plain about “fast food,” when the mech­a­nisms of pro­duc­ing food fast feed the ENTIRE world.

I could go on and on. I won’t. But there are dozens of var­ied, pas­sion­ate, artic­u­late, move-you-to-tears essays about… food. It’s what I always say: ask peo­ple about pol­i­tics and they will stay silent as the grave. Ask about their fam­i­lies, and they say smil­ing, “We all love each oth­er.” But ask them about food and… you get pol­i­tics, fam­i­ly, his­to­ry, tragedy, tra­di­tion. You get every­thing. Trust me.

I’m work­ing on an essay about rock­et. Do you call it arugu­la, or roquette? No mat­ter, I have some­thing for every­one. And no doubt, for some­one, a tear­ful mem­o­ry of Grand­ma will result, or a recipe from one’s favorite restau­rant where one cel­e­brat­ed one’s 19th wed­ding anniver­sary. And had a wicked fight. And… You see what I mean.

As far as sim­ple recipes go, and in the inter­est of slight­ly nar­row­ing our girths, this month, I offer:

Grilled Salmon with Pancetta and Peppers
(serves 4)

4 fil­lets (about half a side) salmon
1 tsp Fox Point seasoning
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup diced pancetta
4 red, orange or yel­low pep­pers, sliced lengthways
4 hand­fuls rock­et leaves or mixed leaf salad

dress­ing:
3 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp bal­sam­ic vinegar
juice of half lemon
1 tsp pre­pared horseradish
1/2 tsp mustard
salt and pepper

Rinse and pat dry the salmon and lay it on a large plat­ter. Mix the Fox Point with the olive oil and smear it over the fish. Leave to take the refrig­er­a­tor chill off.

Fry the pancetta in a heavy skil­let until crisp and brown and then lift out of the remain­ing fat onto a paper tow­el to drain. Fry the pep­per strips in the pancetta fat and then lift them out and set aside. Place a hand­ful of sal­ad leaves on each per­son­’s plate.

Grill the salmon skin side down for four min­utes, then turn and grill for a fur­ther four min­utes, then peel off skin and dis­card. Divide even­ly among the four plates and scat­ter the pancetta and pep­pers around the fish. Driz­zle with dress­ing. Voila.

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This is per­fect diet food in my opin­ion, because it has the sat­is­fy­ing salty fat of the pancetta, only you leave the fat behind, and the pep­pers take on that love­ly fla­vor as well. The fish is robust and beau­ti­ful, the sal­ad wilts nice­ly, and the dress­ing is light. You will love it.

Of course I ruined the diet by hav­ing cheesy spinach on the side, but in the Kris­ten vol­ume of diet­ing, the cheese is can­celled out by the love­li­ness of feed­ing peo­ple entire bags of spinach at one sitting.

Here’s some­thing that will make you laugh. I told John yes­ter­day, “I got tick­ets for us to ‘Grease,’ and Avery goes for free!” He stopped dead in his tracks. “We’re going to Greece? Hmmm.” As if I would make inter­na­tion­al trav­el plans with­out con­sult­ing him, not to men­tion that the Nasty Immi­gra­tion Dudes still have our pass­ports so we’re stuck here. Then our local lit­tle cafe own­er asked if we had plans for the break, and I stu­pid­ly said again, “We’re going to see ‘Grease’ tomor­row night,” and sure enough, “Oh, lucky you, for how long?” So yes­ter­day evening we rent­ed “Grease” and Avery and Emi­ly watched and my God, I felt old. To have been her age when it first came out! Just awful. Stockard Chan­ning has not changed appre­cia­bly, but it was shock­ing to look her up after­ward and find that she was a mar­gin­al­ly believ­able 18-year-old at age 34. I can’t even get away with being 44 when I AM 44. Sigh. More salmon, please, hold the cheesy spinach.

Today I’m drag­ging Avery to the opti­cian (bet­ter than the ortho­don­tist, but that’s com­ing too), and then she’s spend­ing the night with Emi­ly, so I’m cast­ing about for some­thing to cook that she does­n’t like. I’d like to say it’s aware­ness of cred­it crunch that keeps us from going OUT to din­ner when she’s away, but truth be told, I nev­er want to go out to din­ner. Lunch yes, but din­ner belongs at home. What to make? I’m lean­ing toward shell-on king prawns mar­i­nat­ed in lime zest and gar­lic, then grilled on a skew­er, with their heads turned into a nice rich stock with a lit­tle white wine, reduced into a glaze to pour over the prawns. Cous­cous or can­nelli­ni beans on the side, some ten­der­stem broc­col­i­ni. If the prawn dish turns out well, I’ll give you the recipe tomorrow.

In the mean­time, chew on this: we’re actu­al­ly reduced, or ele­vat­ed depend­ing on your point of view, to inves­ti­gat­ing pos­si­ble Ital­ian cit­i­zen­ship to ensure we can stay here. You would be aston­ished, at least we have been, at how hard the British gov­ern­ment is mak­ing it for us to be legal immi­grants. With John’s job in dicey ter­ri­to­ry due to this awful econ­o­my, our visas are hang­ing in the bal­ance and we are turn­ing over every stone in our vicin­i­ty to stay. I hate to whinge, but it would seem log­i­cal to let peo­ple stay who are buy­ing things, pay­ing rent and tax­es, not using the NHS or the state school sys­tem. But no, they’d real­ly rather we left.

So John’s deep into birth, immi­gra­tion, mar­riage, mil­i­tary, every record you can imag­ine on his moth­er’s side to make us Ital­ian. Would­n’t it be odd to become Ital­ian in order to become British? Avery imme­di­ate­ly averred that she would much rather learn Ital­ian than French, so there’s some­thing to cel­e­brate. John’s hav­ing so much fun find­ing his grand­par­ents’ cen­sus records from the 1920s (I know my father has great­ly rel­ished find­ing sim­i­lar evi­dence from his side of the fam­i­ly, all online!). Get this: John’s grand­fa­ther actu­al­ly emi­grat­ed to Amer­i­ca in order to fight in the First World War, on the Amer­i­can side. With­out even hav­ing cit­i­zen­ship. That’s patri­o­tism for you.

It’s a mark of how impor­tant Avery’s edu­ca­tion has become to all of us. I imag­ine that with­out her in her mag­i­cal school, so hap­py and blos­som­ing, it would be much eas­i­er to jump ship (one hopes not lit­er­al­ly) and swim home. After all, there’s Red Gate Farm there for the enjoy­ing, and fam­i­ly and friends. But we do adore it here and we hate to be defeat­ed. So prob­a­bly I should be scrap­ping my prawn menu and whip­ping up some can­nel­loni with a ragu sauce and a frit­ta­ta. We’ll see.