Cinque Chunky

Now I’m just being annoy­ing­ly clever: I want­ed to give you a heads-up that I will desire, here, to tell you about BOTH our new car (!!) and my new soup. And so I shall.

As you will remem­ber, we were cal­lous­ly bur­gled last sum­mer, the most shat­ter­ing part of which expe­ri­ence was the bur­glar’s evil dis­cov­ery of my car key, in my plun­dered hand­bag, which they prompt­ly walked out­side with and pressed the “where is my car key,” and sad­ly our Mini Coop­er was only too quick to respond, so… off they went, in our dar­ling lit­tle car. How sad we have been. With it, of course, went my trea­sured Purdey woollen car rug that count­less lit­tle girls wrapped around them­selves on chilly school runs and trips to the coun­try. And two, TWO mind you, of TWELVE of my cas­sette tapes of Agatha Christie’s “The 4:50 From Padding­ton.” So I can lis­ten to the begin­ning and the end of this clas­sic sto­ry, but the mid­dle? Lost in the mists of thiev­ery. And Avery’s horse rid­ing hel­met and gloves (com­plete with name tapes labo­ri­ous­ly sewn on by yours tru­ly), and… and…

Not includ­ed in this deba­cle, how­ev­er, was John’s stal­wart Swaine and Adeney umbrel­la, giv­en him by his dar­ling father near­ly 20 years ago. Now, drum­roll… pre­pare your­selves for a sto­ry. Sev­er­al days ago, John turned to me with a strick­en face and asked, “Where’s my spe­cial umbrel­la?” “Don’t know, when did you have it last?” And we both had the same thought: it was in the car, when it was stolen. No, no, no! Say it was­n’t so. We swal­lowed our sad­ness, John said deter­mined­ly, “You know, to keep an umbrel­la for so many years was pret­ty amaz­ing…” Sadness.

Then a day or so lat­er, I woke up at my usu­al sloth­ful hour to find John in his study, hav­ing walked Avery to school. And more than that… “You would­n’t believe what hap­pened to me this morn­ing,” he said glee­ful­ly. “I had a dream, a sort of fast-for­ward zip­ping through Shep­herd’s Bush Mar­ket, where we went to that green­gro­cers’ where we got such good sweet­corn, and those tiny shal­lots…” “Yes, yes, what then?” I asked breath­less­ly. “Well, in my dream, I sud­den­ly remem­bered putting my spe­cial umbrel­la down, hook­ing it over the sweet­corn shelf while I picked out some ears. So after I dropped Avery off at school, I went by, and start­ed to ask, ‘Did you hap­pen to find…’ and the guy brings out… my UMBRELLA.”

How weird is that?

So we did not lose every­thing in the car rob­bery that we thought we lost. And now, or at least in 10 days’ time, we will have a new car! A Fiat Cinque­cen­to, a con­vert­ible of course! In a sort of sil­very grey, with a lighter top. Avery took one look, before we even test-drove it, and said, “We’ll call him Min­now.“ So Min­now has been bought and paid for with our insur­ance mon­ey, and will be deliv­ered to the deal­er next week­end. John has been slav­ing away since our pur­chase, reg­is­ter­ing it, order­ing insur­ance (huge­ly low­er than a Mini!), and rejoic­ing over the extreme­ly envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly nature of its emis­sions: the same as a Prius! And… it’s even small­er than a Mini. This for my 6’2” hus­band makes us all laugh.

The rest of the week has been spent at Avery’s school, if I’m hon­est. Or at least, doing things relat­ed to her school. I had no idea what I was tak­ing on with being head of Lost Prop­er­ty. The paper­work, the phone calls, the emails, the actu­al­ly being AT school tend­ing to the room, and then, there’s the seat I now occu­py on the Par­ents’ group at school, which requires atten­dance at meet­ings, and hand-hold­ing at school events where a parental pres­ence is deemed desir­able. Heav­ens. And today was the Pre­view for Mon­day’s sale of Lost Prop­er­ty items, plus my indoc­tri­na­tion of all my inno­cent new recruits into their responsibilities.

The micro den­im shorts! The Aber­crom­bie faux-fur trimmed gilets! The end­less piles of PE kit (“this smells slight­ly,” a girl offered shy­ly when she tried on a shirt, which made me laugh since we vol­un­teer in that lit­tle room sur­round­ed by such smelly items every day!), the wet tow­els and swim­ming cos­tumes, the pen­cil cas­es and cal­cu­la­tors and today? An asth­ma inhaler. I ask you!

We had so much fun get­ting every­thing ready today. I was slight­ly aghast at being in charge of it all. To be truth­ful, my Achilles heel in any sit­u­a­tion is my dis­com­fort at telling any­one what to do. I came to rec­og­nize, as a pro­fes­sor, that this was my weak­ness. And as an employ­er, and tru­ly, as a moth­er: I’m fine when peo­ple reg­u­late them­selves and behave per­fect­ly, but hand me a prob­lem case, some­one who needs cor­rect­ing, and I’m a fish out of water. Luck­i­ly, I got a child who needs very lit­tle cor­rect­ing, and thank good­ness, the same held true for Lost Prop­er­ty. Every­one was far more capa­ble of attack­ing the work at hand than I was, and as such, I sim­ply answered ques­tions, moved around racks of cloth­ing, addressed girls’ claims to cer­tain items I was sure did not belong to them…

At any rate, we had a very busy week at school. And through it all, I cooked many a delight­ful din­ner: grilled lam­b­chops, chick­en stir-fried with red chill­is, red pep­pers and peanuts, grilled salmon, creamy red pep­per soup, lasagna with five cheeses (mas­car­pone, ricot­ta, moz­zarel­la, ched­dar and parme­san). But the tri­umph of the week? A soup inspired by the glo­ri­ous sand­wich con­cern Pret a Manger, and my ver­sion turned out at least as delicious.

Sag Aloo Soup
(serves more than four)

4 medi­um pota­toes of any vari­ety, peeled and cut in cubes of 1/2 inch)
3 cups chick­en stock
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 medi­um white onion, minced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 stalks cel­ery, minced
1 tbsp ground cumin
2 tsps ground turmeric
chilli pow­der to taste
sea salt and pep­per to taste
1 soup-size tin toma­toes, chopped
2 cups loose­ly packed spinach, then sliced into ribbons
1/2 cup fat-free yogurt

Put pota­to cubes into a saucepan with chick­en stock and bring to a high sim­mer. Cook until soft and near­ly falling apart, per­haps 30 min­utes. Mean­while, saute the onion, gar­lic, cel­ery, cumin, turmer­ic and chilli pow­der in the oil and but­ter until the cel­ery is very soft. Sea­son to taste, keep­ing in mind that the chick­en stock will con­tain salt as well. Throw the veg­etable mix­ture into the pota­toes and chick­en stock and add toma­toes and turn the heat to VERY low. Go take a show­er or check your email. Cook the soup until it is very thick and the pota­toes are REAL­LY falling apart. Stir thor­ough­ly and add the spinach and yogurt just before serving.

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You will sit up and beg like a dog for more of this “soup.” I say this in invert­ed com­mas because it is so very thick. It is a stew, real­ly. The name derives from the Indi­an for “spinach and pota­to,” but it is also the spice com­bi­na­tion that gives the soup its charm. And any left­overs, the fol­low­ing day, on steamed bas­mati rice… ooh… it makes me hun­gry just to think of it. And I’m full of grilled salmon.

And my first food-writ­ing piece has appeared in print! At least, rumor has it, although it’s not avail­able yet in the UK. It’s called “The Recipe File,” in the new­ly-launched Vin­tage Mag­a­zine, and I could­n’t be more thrilled. The edi­tor-in-chief is ring­ing me up next week to talk about my con­tri­bu­tion to Issue 2, so I am real­ly on a cloud. I can’t wait to see a copy, which she’s send­ing me in the old-fash­ioned post. I’ll report when I get it!

Tomor­row will find us tak­ing Avery to her first act­ing les­son of the fall, then onto a friend’s to spend the night while we go out for sushi and to see a play in Soho. I, who am almost entire­ly actor-dri­ven in my the­atre excur­sions, am extreme­ly excit­ed to see John Simms in “Speak­ing in Tongues.” While he is not exact­ly crush mate­r­i­al (and I’m wait­ing for a new crush to come along), he’s deeply inter­est­ing, intense and moody. I think that live on stage, he could be quite com­pelling. Get your­self a bowl of Sag Aloo Soup, a DVD of his tour de force “State of Play,” and set­tle in for the weekend.