birth­day week, with a twist of citizenship

What a whirl­wind last week was!  The sort of week that makes me look for­ward to Feb­ru­ary every year.

Birth­days are a love­ly way to take stock of the past year.  John and I began the week at quite pos­si­bly the most won­der­ful sushi lunch we’ve ever had, at a tiny restau­rant in Maryle­bone called Din­ings (for rea­sons that escape me).   Full dis­clo­sure: this was a pricey lunch, def­i­nite­ly only for a spe­cial occa­sion, but oh, the food!  Their sig­na­ture dish­es, “Tar-tar chips,” are lit­tle bite-sized help­ings of the fresh­est fish you can imag­ine — salmon, yel­low­tail, bel­ly tuna — on tiny, crisp pota­to tacos.

These lit­tle gifts are just addic­tive!  Soft, soft fish with sub­tle and excit­ing sauces, in this crunchy, del­i­cate pil­low.  Oh!  So won­der­ful.  They were fol­lowed by inven­tive­ly plat­ed offer­ings of seared tuna with tata­ki sauce, beau­ti­ful fil­lets of sea bream with truf­fles and caviar.  It was no sur­prise to learn that the cre­ators of the restau­rant are for­mer chefs at Nobu, but I think their work is even more inven­tive.  What a joy.  And the staff sent over a lit­tle birth­day gift of truf­fle ice cream — and not choco­late truf­fles, but mush­room truffles!

We ate and ate, watch­ing the rainy Mon­day elapse through the tiny restau­ran­t’s win­dows, dis­cussing the past year, tri­umphs and dis­ap­point­ments, and goals and hopes for the com­ing year.  What a delight.

Mon­day evening brought ring­ing prac­tice as usu­al, an hour ear­li­er for me because I have been get­ting some indi­vid­ual tuition from my new Tow­er Cap­tain.  He is a con­sum­mate teacher, much the same as my ear­ly teach­ers Andrew and Trisha — end­less­ly patient, full of humour, and best of all, with a total under­stand­ing of my gen­er­al fear.  “You must learn to let the bell do what comes nat­u­ral­ly.  You can’t stop it doing what it wants to do, or you can, but then you’ll be led by fear.  Come to a total under­stand­ing of the whole capac­i­ty of the bell, then work togeth­er with it.”  And at the end of my prac­tice, every­one gath­ered to do some­thing absolute­ly mad called “Fir­ing,” which involves break­ing one of the car­di­nal rules of bell-ring­ing — nev­er, EVER ring at the same time as anoth­er ringer!  Just watch this and listen.

It was so cool!  I can’t con­vey how dif­fi­cult this is to do — you can hear that we don’t do it per­fect­ly, part­ly due to the extreme dif­fi­cul­ty of over­com­ing that basic rule — don’t ring at the same time as some­one else!  Try­ing all to ring at the VERY same time was an incred­i­ble chal­lenge.  And all for my birth­day!  We rang 51 times, for me.  You can see how much I enjoyed it, and my Tow­er Cap­tain was hap­py to make me happy.

Tues­day, as if we need­ed any more excite­ment, was the day we became British Cit­i­zens!  The day was not with­out its dra­ma.  We arrived at Chelsea Town Hall, armed with our Invi­ta­tion Let­ters and our Amer­i­can pass­ports, to be received and asked to take a seat.

We did this, wait­ing for the cer­e­mo­ny to begin, only to get an alarmed phone from our gov­ern­ment liai­son ask­ing where we were!  It turns out we went to the wrong Town Hall, and were in the process of miss­ing our cer­e­mo­ny!  After a moment of awful dis­ap­point­ment, a won­der­ful civ­il ser­vant called Summ­ra came for­ward reassuringly.

“We’ll just give you a pri­vate cer­e­mo­ny here, and then you can pop in a taxi and run to Kens­ing­ton to get your certificates.”

And with just a few tears (“help your­self to a tis­sue, lots of peo­ple get emo­tion­al”), we said our vows under the benev­o­lent gaze of a very out­dat­ed por­trait of the Queen, raised our hands, and were wel­comed into the Unit­ed King­dom.  “With these vows we pledge our loy­al­ty to the Sov­er­eign Lady…”

And then off in a rush to make the tail-end of the pub­lic cer­e­mo­ny, to shake the hand of the Alder­woman (upon hear­ing my accent she imme­di­ate­ly said, “What on earth is hap­pen­ing with this chap Trump?”), and to receive our certificates.

The whole process was sur­pris­ing­ly emo­tion­al, and I spent the rest of the day feel­ing unac­count­ably seri­ous.  It is a bit of a big deal to promise loy­al­ty to a new coun­try.  Of course my over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tion imme­di­ate­ly went into over­drive, com­ing up with sce­nar­ios in which my dual loy­al­ties would come into con­flict.  John just shook his head.

My beloved Sue — one of the very best peo­ple I know to help one cel­e­brate — came to bring birth­day presents and on the spur of the moment, to be our wit­ness­es to our pass­port appli­ca­tions.  And just look what she gave me.

This is a copy of my dear cook­book, with mes­sages from all my friends who were present at the book launch on my birth­day last year, tucked inside the book with a rib­bon.  Can you imag­ine the thought­ful­ness of such a gift?  She went secret­ly all around the par­ty, ask­ing guests to write mes­sages to me, and then gath­ered them all up to save for me, one year on.  So touch­ing, such a per­fect gift.  And such hap­py memories.

Wednes­day evening brought a very unusu­al event for me — drinks out!  My dear friend Eliz­a­beth made the jour­ney to our gor­geous neigh­bor­hood on a clear, cold night, and we met at the near­by Mon­dri­an bar, on the twelfth floor of the super-cool hotel.  Sur­round­ed by beau­ti­ful hip­sters, we chat­ted the evening away, per­verse­ly enjoy­ing the din of chat­ter and a live band, shout­ing at each oth­er over our cock­tails.  What a dra­mat­ic, extrav­a­gant setting!

Eliz­a­beth came home with me to a can­dlelit apart­ment (thank you, John), and a gor­geous crab and goat cheese tart.  Real­ly one of my very favorite dish­es from the cook­book, and one I cook far too sel­dom.  We feast­ed on the tart and an every­thing-sal­ad, cau­li­flower, kale, beets, rock­et, peanuts, water­cress — and lit­tle after-din­ner choco­late mints.  How heav­en­ly to share such a fes­tive evening with a dear friend, and a very thought­ful husband.

Thurs­day brought me togeth­er with anoth­er love­ly friend, this time Beth who jour­neyed in from the coun­try­side to meet for lunch at Kulu-kulu, one of the very best con­vey­or-belt sushi restau­rants in Lon­don, in beau­ti­ful South Kens­ing­ton.  We ate our­selves sil­ly (oh, their aubergine teriya­ki is just divine), and then hit a cou­ple of won­der­ful book­shops and sta­tion­er’s shops, stock­ing up is as our wont when we are togeth­er.  Beth is an end­less source of lit­er­ary sug­ges­tions, and our after­noons togeth­er always result in an addi­tion to my to-be-read stack.

And because no Birth­day Week would be com­plete with­out a new and deli­cious recipe.  Would you believe I’ve actu­al­ly invent­ed near­ly 40 new recipes since the cook­book was pub­lished?  Well on my way to Vol­ume II, I’d say!  This week’s dis­cov­ery was inspired by the won­der­ful British chef Rick Stein’s lat­est food pro­gramme in Shang­hai.  Appar­ent­ly that city is famous for its red-cooked pork bel­ly, a glis­ten­ing dish of stun­ning sim­plic­i­ty and rich­ness.  “Red-cooked,” in Chi­nese cook­ing, means noth­ing more or less than a dish con­tain­ing soy sauce.  After a bit of research (this is a won­der­ful web­site for Chi­nese inspi­ra­tion!) and exper­i­men­ta­tion, this was the result.

Shang­hai Pork Belly

(serves 4)

700g/1.5 pounds slab pork belly

2 tbsps peanut oil

1 tbsp rock sug­ar (or the least processed sug­ar you can find)

4 tbsps Chi­nese cook­ing wine or mirin (Japan­ese cook­ing wine)

3 tbsps dark soy sauce

2 tbsps light soy sauce

juice of 1/2 lime

water

1 1/2 tbsps cornflour/cornstarch

With a very sharp knife, cut the pork bel­ly into 1‑inch cubes.  Bring a pot of water to a boil and place the pork bel­ly in it, then cook for three min­utes.  Pour the pork and water through a sieve and dry the pot.  Place the oil and sug­ar in the pot and cook for a minute until sug­ar is melt­ed.  Add the pork and, over high heat, brown it all over, stir­ring well.  Add the wine, soy sauces and lime juice, then pour over water until the pork is just cov­ered — about 3 cups of water, depend­ing on the depth of your pot.

Bring to a sim­mer and cov­er tight­ly, and leave to cook at a sim­mer for at least an hour, at which point the pork will be very ten­der.  Take the pork out with a slot­ted spoon and set aside.  Mix the corn­flour with a bit of water to make a paste (it’s called a “slur­ry” in cook­ing cir­cles) and pour the slur­ry into the sauce left behind in the pot.  Stir with a whisk to incor­po­rate the slur­ry, and boil until the sauce reduces to the con­sis­ten­cy you want.  This took about 30 min­utes, for me, so be patient.

Add the pork to the sauce and warm it through.  Serve with steamed or fried rice, and a pile of col­or­ful stir-fried vegetables.

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Good lord, this is deli­cious, far out of pro­por­tion to its sim­plic­i­ty.  The com­plex­i­ty of the flavours is down to the qual­i­ty of the pork, so shop care­ful­ly.  When I make it next, I might exper­i­ment with a bit of gin­ger and gar­lic, per­haps even some spring onions.  But for the first time, the sim­plest route led to absolute­ly spec­tac­u­lar results.

With this I served a real mish­mash of a side dish, inspired by a recent Smit­ten Kitchen post.  I am adding “cau­li­flower rice” to every­thing under the sun these days, so I could­n’t imag­ine Smit­ten’s dish would­n’t be improved by some, as well as addi­tion­al spices, and I think it was won­der­ful.  Let those onions get BROWN!  Don’t be shy.

Crunchy Fried Rice, Lentils and Cauliflower

(serves 4)

1 cup bas­mati rice

1 cup red lentils

1/2 head cau­li­flower, bro­ken into florets

1/4 cup olive oil

2 white onions, sliced thin

3 fur­ther tbsps olive oil

2 tsps ground cumin

2 tsps ground coriander

2 tsps ground turmeric

fresh black pepper

sea salt to taste

juice of 2 limes

flat-leaf pars­ley, rough­ly chopped

This dish is an excel­lent use of left­over steamed rice, so why not make extra rice next time?  It will save you a step here.  But if you don’t have any left­over rice, sim­ply steam a cup and set it aside in a large bowl.

In a large pot of water, place the lentils and bring them to a boil.  Cook until al dente, and drain into a colan­der and pour into the bowl of rice.

Pulse the cau­li­flower in a food proces­sor until the con­sis­ten­cy of rice.  Add to rice and lentils.

In a heavy-bot­tomed pot, heat the olive oil and cook the sliced onions until they are tru­ly brown.  Be firm and let them get brown!  Crunchy and dark is what you’re after.  Best to have a lid on the pot as you do this, stir­ring occasionally.

Remove the onions from the pot and add them to the rice and lentils.  Add the spices, pep­per and salt, and lime juice to this mix­ture and stir thor­ough­ly.  To the pot in which the onions were cooked, add the fur­ther olive oil.  Turn the heat up high and when the oil is hot, pour the rice and lentil mix­ture in.  Cov­er tight­ly and cook over medi­um heat for about 20 min­utes, resist­ing the temp­ta­tion to stir.  You should smell a toasty rice smell, but not burned.

Serve gar­nished with parsley.

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Noth­ing makes a love­ly birth­day week nicer than sit­ting around a din­ing table with plates of deli­cious food before me.  And the week­end brought this card from Avery, on this first birth­day we’ve spent apart.

I would­n’t have thought that a birth­day could rival last year’s, with the appear­ance of “Tonight at 7.30.”  But it’s been a deli­cious, hap­py year, and the next one  — in our new home, in my new ring­ing cham­ber, with occa­sion­al vis­its to Oxford — looks very promising.