After­noon of the Ark

Good­ness, we’ve been mad, mad, mad. I find myself stay­ing up lat­er and lat­er at night, feed­ing my need for qui­et time at night after all go to sleep to process all that has hap­pened dur­ing the day. John does this in the morn­ing before any­one else wakes up, plow­ing through his blogs and pod­casts, Avery all through the day just retreats to her draw­ings, sto­ries and tram­po­line: and when does Rose­mary recharge her bat­ter­ies? You know what makes her Rose­mary (among many oth­er qual­i­ties)? She gives all day to EVERY­ONE. I don’t know how she does it. She is the per­son who embod­ies that bit of advice every­one gives you about hap­pi­ness: the more you think about oth­er peo­ple the hap­pi­er you are. Rose­mary seems to be proof of that.

My point being, we all have had an awful lot to process, in the way you have when you try to crush a life­time’s friend­ships each sum­mer into six weeks of catchup. Among these was our after­noon with Olimpia and Tony, on the raini­est after­noon of the sum­mer. Seri­ous­ly! As we always do dur­ing rain­storms, John and I both gaze out the var­i­ous win­dows of our grad­u­al­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ing house, say­ing in a desul­to­ry way, “We real­ly should have cleared out the gut­ters yes­ter­day before it start­ed to rain…” And yet the next sun­ny day, we’re out play­ing ten­nis, weed­ing, cook­ing for peo­ple, going to the dump, and not giv­ing anoth­er thought to the gut­ters until… the next rainy day.

So Fri­day found us watch­ing the gut­ters while cook­ing like mad. We opened up the front and back doors in a des­per­ate attempt to get some sort of cross-breeze of humid­i­ty. What a fab­u­lous job the switch of the din­ing room and entry halls have turned out to be. Plen­ty of room, room to stretch out and not think about the late­ness of the hour, or to feel crowd­ed. You can see what I mean!

Sum­mer Sal­ad of Beets, Pota­toes and Eggs
(serves 6)

3 tbsps mayonnaise
6 beets, oven-roast­ed, peeled
12 small pota­toes, steamed in their skins
10 eggs, hard-boiled, peeled
2 heads but­ter let­tuce (in UK called “lit­tle gems), leaves separated
large hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped

dress­ing:
6 tbsps sugar
1/3 cup canola or sun­flower oil
2 tbb­sps blue/black pop­py seeds
2 tbsps Dijon mustard
juice of 1 lemon
plen­ty of fresh-ground black pepper
1 tsp salt

To assem­ble the sal­ad, find a large flat plat­ter and spread the may­on­naise across the bot­tom. This adds a love­ly “up from the bot­tom as well as down from the top” sur­prise fla­vor when you spoon up the sal­ad. Now, build six tow­ers of the beets, sliced, and pota­toes, sliced. Quar­ter the hard-boiled eggs and place them gen­tly around the tow­ers, tak­ing care to keep the quar­ters togeth­er as the white and yolks are very pret­ty kept togeth­er. Sur­round with the but­ter let­tuce leaves and sprin­kle with pars­ley. Just before serv­ing, shake up all dress­ing ingre­di­ents in a tight-cov­ered jar. Driz­zle dress­ing across sal­ad and serve.

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This sal­ad is love­ly! Com­plex, soft, crunchy, with a tangy sur­prise in the dress­ing: the pop­py seeds are an unusu­al tex­ture and sim­ply gor­geous with the mustard.

I served this sal­ad with chick­en breasts baked in our favorite way:

Lil­lian Hell­man Chicken
(serves 6)

6 chick­en breast fil­lets, well-trimmed

mari­nade:
1 1/2 cup each may­on­naise, grat­ed pecori­no cheese
juice of 1 lemon
zest of 1 lemon
2 tsps Pen­zeys Fox Point or Sun­ny Paris Seasoning
plen­ty of fresh-ground black pepper

3 cups home­made bread crumbs

2 cups arugula/rocket

This is a messy job. Place the mari­nade ingre­di­ents in a shal­low bowl, and the bread­crumbs in anoth­er. Line a large cook­ie sheet with foil and smear each chick­en breast, on each side, with the mari­nade, then roll in bread­crumbs. Place in a sin­gle lay­er on the foil-lined tray. Bake at 400F, 200C for 25 min­utes. Sliced thick­ly and serve on the arugu­la on a love­ly platter.

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What a great dish this is: inex­pen­sive, easy, per­fect for a buf­fet of MUCH larg­er num­bers than 6. I have often served this dish to 30+ peo­ple to great suc­cess: every­one loves it! And the aro­ma as it bakes? Don’t ask: it’s just irresistible.

Olimpia and Tony were their usu­al selves, bring­ing wine, a superb new pep­per mill for me, a gor­geous sequined bag for Avery, flow­ers for Rose­mary, and… THANK YOU OLIMPIA, a huge dish of her famous meat­balls and pork ribs in toma­to sauce, redo­lent with basil, superbly gar­licky. Why am I so lucky to have friends who, when I invite them for lunch, BRING FOOD? Or should I be fright­ened, that they’re afraid that unless they do, they won’t get any­thing decent to eat? No, it’s because they adore feed­ing peo­ple, and they count on my and John’s (and my this time, Rose­mary’s and Avery’s) drool­ing inca­pac­i­ty at see­ing their contributions.

We chat­ted mad­ly around the table, hear­ing their sto­ries of Ital­ian adven­tures we should repli­cate (for our 20th anniver­sary in Decem­ber, we hope), Tony’s end­less unbe­liev­able sto­ries about his life as an arson inves­tiga­tive fire­man in the Bronx, Olimpia’s Ital­ian rel­a­tives meet­ing her at the Naples train sta­tion with so many flow­ers that Tony thought the train must hold some major Ital­ian celebri­ty! We ate and ate, bask­ing in the annu­al friend­ship tra­di­tion. Through­out the after­noon, we gazed out the win­dows, say­ing, “I am real­ly glad you’re not on the road right now,” and at one lull in the storms saw Anne, David and Kate across the road ten­ta­tive­ly tak­ing a brief walk up to the lit­tle mini-water­fall aris­ing now from their pond, to trav­el under our road and become our stream and pond…

We closed the after­noon with Avery’s now-famous blue­ber­ry tart: part cooked berries and part fresh, with a gor­geous short­bread crust. Here it is, but you’ll have to vis­it her blog to get the fab­u­lous details. She has real tal­ent with things sweet (not least of all, her own sweet self). Thank you, Olimpia and Tony, for giv­ing us your after­noon… and those meatballs.