Dart­moor, redux

I real­ized that I left you all with the impres­sion that our Devon sojourn was occu­pied mere­ly with sit­ting around read­ing Daphne Du Mau­ri­er books (check), eat­ing (check) and otters (check). But even more over­whelm­ing, per­haps, was Avery’s first expe­ri­ence with wild ponies.

Wild, you ask? What does this mean?

Wild means, you’re on the qui­et road between Sir Fran­cis Drake’s beloved home Buck­land Abbey (gor­geous, as you see above, Avery pos­ing reluc­tant­ly, “Drake the Musi­cal” already occu­py­ing far too much of her time) and the hor­rid post­war town of Ply­mouth. You’re ask­ing idly, “Where do you think we ought to pull off in order to find these wild…” “PONIES!” Avery says with awe, point­ing. “PONIES?” we all ask, in dis­be­lief. There was no hunt­ing and find­ing to be done. There were sim­ply ponies, shag­gy, fat, friend­ly and love­ly, approach­ing us from all direc­tions. Dear read­ers, we were naughty and brought them count­less car­rots in the pock­ets of our Bar­bour coats. Our law-abid­ing daugh­ter was shiv­er­ing in her Welling­tons not with cold, but with fear that some park atten­dant would find us and arrest us. “Maybe we’re not sup­posed to feed them…” she moaned in inde­ci­sion. More and more of the crea­tures fol­lowed us about. “You can’t tell me we’re the first peo­ple who’ve fed them,” I argued. “They’re very assertive!”

Sure enough, a park atten­dant did approach us to ask what we were doing. “Pet­ting the ponies and giv­ing them a car­rot or two,” John said blithe­ly, his pock­ets weight­ed down with treats. “Oh, well, that’s all right, then, as long as you’re expe­ri­enced around hors­es. They can be quite pushy!”

Impos­si­bly mag­i­cal to find these gor­geous ani­mals qui­et­ly eat­ing grass, just behind a shrub, or walk­ing along a path in twos and threes, run­ning to us as we approached. My favorite, I admit, was this white love­ly, a bit shy at first, but very hap­py to accept car­rot pieces after a moment or two. Avery was speech­less with delight at the crea­tures’ sim­ply appear­ing to us. How on earth do they sur­vive in win­ter, we wondered?

These days, in the wild with ponies and car­rots, seem a mil­lion years ago now, hav­ing set­tled into two weeks of the long win­ter term of school. Keep­ing Avery’s nose to the homework/musical/riding/skating grind­stone seems one long utter­ance of “Are you ready to…” But life is in the con­trasts, is it not?

Speak­ing of which, our house­hold of three has been reduced, for the next four days, to just two (and any num­ber of cats, of course). John flew off this after­noon for his Dublin adven­ture, and so it’s just Avery and me. We feel quite bereft, hap­py as we are togeth­er, as if a limb were miss­ing. John brings such a feel­ing of secu­ri­ty, joy, con­fi­dence and ener­gy, sad­ly appre­ci­at­ed only too lit­tle until he’s gone. We shall not take him for grant­ed any­more, once he’s home! To offer you all a bit of secu­ri­ty, I shall post an old favorite recipe, one I would back against any­thing more expen­sive, more sophis­ti­cat­ed, more intri­cate. Roast your­self a chick­en, enjoy it for din­ner, then plunge all the car­cass into a huge pot of water, sim­mer it for two hours with some car­rots and onions. Strain it, leave it in the fridge overnight and next morn­ing, scrape off the fat lay­er. Then…

Creamy Red Pep­per Soup
(serves 4)

3 tbsps butter
6 red pep­pers, cut up roughly
1 white onion, quartered
4 cloves gar­lic, cut up roughly
a good dol­lop Marsala or brandy
chick­en stock to cov­er vegetables
2 tsps dried thyme, or 1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
1/2 cup sin­gle cream or creme fraiche

Melt but­ter in a heavy saucepan and saute pep­pers, onion and gar­lic until slight­ly soft­ened. Add Marsala and sim­mer high till alco­hol is reduced by half. Add chick­en stock to cov­er veg­eta­bles, and sprin­kle in thyme. Sim­mer high until red pep­pers are soft, per­haps 20 min­utes. Blend with a hand blender, then push through a sieve into a clean pan. When ready to serve, heat again and whisk in cream.

*****************

This is the best soup I have ever made, and pos­si­bly the best THING I have ever made. I have served it to dozens and dozens of peo­ple, and every­one: chil­dren, babies, old peo­ple, veg­e­tar­i­ans (if you make it with veg­etable stock), EVERY­ONE sim­ply sighs with delight.

So tonight we had this soup, for com­fort with no John (who rang to tell us he was at a per­for­mance of Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons!). With a nice fil­let of beef in a mush­room sauce, some mashed pota­toes, and a pile of green beans, you can con­vince your­self that all is right with the world. If only you had a wild pony in your gar­den, says Avery. Fair enough.