hair­dress­er to the stars

I am glad to say that after my brief absence from the world of blog­ging, my read­er­ship is back. I was afraid you would all for­get about me while I removed any poten­tial bomb­shells from my innocu­ous lit­tle blog (sad­ly, I could­n’t find any, but I removed lots of oth­er bor­ing stuff for you).

But about my hair­cut. I have to admit to always skimp­ing on get­ting my hair cut. I’ll go any­where that might save mon­ey, because frankly I don’t have very inter­est­ing hair and it’s not real­ly worth get­ting fan­cy over it. But a week or so ago, I had to admire my friend Beck­y’s gor­geous locks, beau­ti­ful­ly cut and styled, so I caved and asked her where she had it done. “Kris­ten, for once you need to go to an expert and get a real­ly good cut, so promise me you’ll call them,” she said earnest­ly, so I did. I had no idea.

At the front desk I realised at once I was in anoth­er world from the usu­al places I turn up when I’m des­per­ate to get my fringe out of my eyes. At those places, the phones are usu­al­ly answered rather spo­rad­i­cal­ly by a young per­son who clear­ly takes the notion of self-expres­sion by hair quite seri­ous­ly: the col­or is near­ly always what you’d be hard pressed to call any­thing kinder than “exper­i­men­tal,” and the cut is gen­er­al­ly a work in progress. And there’s always a sen­sa­tion of peo­ple liv­ing on the mar­gins, eking out a liv­ing, and recov­er­ing from some oth­er expe­ri­ence in their lives. Not at the place Becky sent me to. This salon, Daniel Galvin in George Street, cer­tain­ly has a client list to admire. Every­one under the sun seems to get her or his hair cut there! The staff, my good­ness, every­one looks like a bud­ding super­mod­el, all dressed uni­form­ly in chic black some­thing or oth­ers, and a vast array of com­put­ers behind the recep­tion desk to man­age the place like a well-oiled machine.

And Daniel Galvin him­self was there, very flam­boy­ant and doing the hair of some­one I did­n’t rec­og­nize but who, for some rea­son, attract­ed no few­er than five styl­ists around her at all times. Then, just as I sat down with my wet, unat­trac­tive head in my styl­ist’s chair, on the low­er ground floor of the saloon, I could see a black town car pull up just above my head, and a man who looked as though he might be covert­ly armed stepped out. He looked up and down the pave­ment as if he were sweep­ing the street for ene­mies, and then opened the car door. Out stepped… Nao­mi Camp­bell. She walked quick­ly down the back steps to the pri­vate door just to my right, and swept past me with quite the the­atri­cal air of escap­ing from immi­nent danger.

“Gee, was that Nao­mi Camp­bell?” I asked, and Dean the styl­ist shrugged with world-weary fatigue. “That’s real­ly not so excit­ing. More inter­est­ing peo­ple, peo­ple who’ve actu­al­ly achieved some­thing, have come in here. And you know what? She’d attract a lot less atten­tion if she just walked in the front door like every­one else.” Fair enough. But I was intrigued. Unfor­tu­nate­ly how­ev­er, my hair­cut required that I take my glass­es off, and I would­n’t rec­og­nize my own child with­out my specs. So who knows who else came in and out. In the end, I got a great hair­cut, and my styl­ist turned out to be a food­ie, so we exchanged recipes, dish ideas, impres­sions of Bor­ough Mar­ket and restau­rant reviews with aban­don. What fun. And while it broke the bank some­what, the cut is so expert that I don’t need colour, so I saved mon­ey in the end. Ish.

I spent sim­ply for­ev­er yes­ter­day at the skat­ing rink with my friend Vic­to­ria, while our chil­dren went around and around in glee. She is a com­plex, delight­ful per­son to be around: Ital­ian born, Swiss-edu­cat­ed, with an air of qui­et self-con­fi­dence that I can only admire. And yet she isn’t one bit full of her­self. It’s more a com­plete sense of ease with her­self, and with her approach to the world, that makes her stand out. She speaks Eng­lish with the care­ful per­fec­tion of one to whom lan­guages are not a chal­lenge, but a set of ingre­di­ents among which she can choose, to get just the right dish. Every once in awhile she hes­i­tates, with a gen­tle lit­tle smile of ques­tion­ing on her lips, and says, “Well, as we would say in Italy…” and uses a beau­ti­ful expres­sion that I can just grasp, but it’s a choice she makes, not a fall­back onto a more famil­iar lan­guage. She just knows that some ideas are expressed bet­ter in one lan­guage than in anoth­er. I am fas­ci­nat­ed by peo­ple who have hid­den depths, or if not hid­den, then lay­ers, that take time to uncov­er. I know I myself reveal absolute­ly every­thing about myself, whether my com­pan­ion wants me to or not, with­in about ten min­utes. But Vic­to­ria has a mys­te­ri­ous oth­er­word­ly qual­i­ty about her that means I get to know her slow­ly, but it’s worth it. And a tru­ly empa­thet­ic spir­it. And a great moth­er. So all in all, it made the three hours we spent shiv­er­ing and watch­ing our girls make goo­gly eyes at us to get us to watch, quite a love­ly interlude.

Oh, and we’ve found anoth­er two hous­es that are pos­si­bil­i­ties, but as in every real estate sit­u­a­tion, there’s some­thing deal-break­ing­ly wrong with each one. One is just the right size, on a nice road, con­ve­nient to the schools we’re look­ing at for year after next, but a tru­ly wretched kitchen. And it’s too expen­sive. The oth­er one is tremen­dous­ly afford­able, but in a dici­er neigh­bor­hood, needs exten­sive updat­ing, and has not so much a wretched kitchen as a room crammed with junk that serves as the kitchen, but only because no oth­er room would do it bet­ter. A sim­ply ancient Aga stove, cold as a her­ring’s elbow (as one of my screen­writ­ing class mem­bers penned) and sur­round­ed by oth­er less­er fry as far as appli­ances go. Just awful. But a gor­geous over­grown gar­den. But it feels cot­tagey, and as always hap­pens in these sit­u­a­tions, John seems to get big­ger as the min­utes tick by. By the time we left, he was hunch­ing over as if he’d been tour­ing a Wendy house. What to do? Spend much less mon­ey and always feel that he needs to be six inch­es short­er, or spend more mon­ey and be poor for the fore­see­able future? Nei­ther, prob­a­bly, we’ll just keep looking.

At this stage, though, one of the few real­ly nasty per­son­al­i­ty clash­es we suf­fer as a cou­ple begins to emerge: John could hap­pi­ly look at hous­es in per­pe­tu­ity, stor­ing each detail away in his mem­o­ry for­ev­er, liv­ing with the cer­tain­ty that if we ever do buy a house, the one he REAL­LY want­ed will come on the mar­ket the next day. Where­as I could make do with almost any­thing; I just want to set­tle down. So we exchanged some mild­ly acri­mo­nious remarks and then repaired to the quite splen­did butch­er that popped up out of nowhere just around the cor­ner from house #2. Now, see, that could decide me right there. Butch­er around the cor­ner? I’ll take the house. It’s J. Hunt at 173 Uxbridge Road, staffed by the loveli­est cen­tral-cast­ing British chaps you could ever wish for. “Now what sort of work do you do, my boy?” the chief guy asked John, as we gos­siped about the neigh­bor­hood and our love for Lon­don. “Actu­al­ly, I don’t work right now,” John said sheep­ish­ly. “But he will do, some­day! We can’t afford for him not to,” I said, and the butch­er laughed said, “Oh, you made a mis­take there, my lad, not mar­ry­ing a woman with enough mon­ey to keep you!” I came away with a sim­ply to-die-for rack of pork spareribs, yum yum. But rather than doing the com­pli­cat­ed mari­nade I did last year, I sim­ply roast­ed them with salt and pep­per. So good.

But the week’s best din­ner was prob­a­bly my favorite chick­en dish, the recipe for which I’ve giv­en you before, but ages ago and it’s worth repeat­ing. I swear, some­day I will have lit­tle clever links to the side of my posts with all the recipes lined up and you can just click on them. But until then:

Lil­lian Hell­man’s Chick­en (to be served with Dashiell Ham­mett Spinach, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry) Serves four

2 whole bone­less chick­en breasts, split and fine­ly trimmed
1/2 cup Hell­man’s may­on­naise (get it?)
1/2 cup grat­ed parme­san or pecori­no cheese
juice of 1 lemon
fresh­ly ground black pep­per to taste
1 1/2 cups home­made bread crumbs

Now before you object, there is sim­ply no need for canned bread crumbs to exist. Have you ever won­dered what sort of bread the Pro­gres­so com­pa­ny deems bad or old enough to be pul­ver­ized and put in a can? So march your­self over to your pantry, take out that blue can, and pitch it. Go on, you know I’m right. Then start sav­ing your left­over hot dog buns, that third of a baguette you right­eous­ly did­n’t eat last night, the crusts of the bread you used in your pic­nic lunch. If you just have a bowl on your counter where you can throw these lit­tle left­overs as they appear (don’t cov­er the bowl or the bread will get moldy), then when you are in the mood you can grind them up. Just throw them in your Cuisi­nart and whizz away. The sound of stale bread in a Cuisi­nart, for the first few sec­onds, is a very sat­is­fy­ing, vio­lent rat­tling noise like a car crash where nobody gets hurt.

Mix togeth­er the mayo, cheese, lemon juice and pep­per in a bowl big enough to acco­mo­date a sin­gle chick­en breast. Pour your bread crumbs on a wide plate. Line a cook­ie sheet with alu­minum foil for easy cleanup. Pre­heat your oven to a nice high tem­per­a­ture. My New York oven used to oper­ate at only one tem­per­a­ture, no mat­ter where I set the dial, so all my recipes can sur­vive at 425 degrees.

Smear each chick­en breast gen­er­ous­ly with the gooey mix­ture and then roll equal­ly gen­er­ous­ly in bread crumbs. Lay each on the foil with some space between them. Bake for 30 min­utes, and voila.

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With it you have no choice but to serve the afore-men­tioned Dashiell Ham­mett spinach, so here’s that as well. Of course it’s real­ly by the incom­pa­ra­ble Lau­rie Col­win, but lit­er­ary needs must.

Lau­rie Col­win’s Spinach Casserole
(serves 8)

First of all, a word about the spinach itself. Do not use fresh. In my opin­ion, there is only one pur­pose in life for frozen spinach and this is it. Now, in Amer­i­ca, frozen spinach comes in lit­tle square-ish flat box­es. You need two of these. In Eng­land, how­ev­er, frozen spinach comes in bags, in which you will find intrigu­ing sort of hock­ey-puck shapes. For this, you need about 1 pound.

1 lb frozen spinach
6 tbsps butter
4 tbsps flour
1 medi­um onion, minced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
6 ounces evap­o­rat­ed milk
8 ounces any sharp cheese, like cheddar
sprin­kling of chili flakes (or in Amer­i­ca you can use jalapeno Mon­terey Jack cheese)
1 tbsp cel­ery salt (essen­tial!)
3/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs
3/4 cup grat­ed parmesan

Spray a 9x9 glass dish with non­stick spray. Believe me, you don’t want to skip this step. Then put the spinach in a saucepan, cov­er with water, and boil till cooked, but don’t over­cook. In the mean­time, melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and then add the flour, and let bub­ble for about two min­utes to cook the floury taste away. Add the minced onion and gar­lic and saute till soft, but do not burn the floury but­ter. When your spinach is cooked, drain off the water, but into a mea­sur­ing cup, till you have 1 cup liq­uid. Dis­card the remain­der. Slow­ly add the liq­uid to the onion and gar­lic, and stir till thick. Add the evap­o­rat­ed milk, the cheese, the chili flakes, the cel­ery salt, and stir until cheese is melt­ed. Pour the mix­ture into the glass dish and top first with bread­crumbs and then with cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for half an hour, or until bub­bly and browned on top. Heaven.

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Here’s a bit of wis­dom (gleaned from my clever hair­styl­ist, of all peo­ple). Since you can­not find the cheese you real­ly want for this dish, Mon­terey Jack cheese with jalapeno pep­pers in Lon­don (at least I can’t), the clos­est thing turns out to be… Edam. Sur­pris­ing­ly. Just peel off the red cas­ing and you’re in busi­ness. It’s slight­ly sharp­er, more aged-tast­ing than the Jack, but it’s lovely.

Avery’s had her first for­ay into the land of act­ing! She had her first class at the Sylvia Young The­atre School this after­noon, and loved every minute of it. She report­ed, some­what dis­joint­ed­ly, on an exer­cise involv­ing a mys­te­ri­ous let­ter, and impro­vi­sa­tions there­to, and of her all-Eng­lish class­mates, which I love. I hate turn­ing up for some­thing tru­ly British and then find­ing that it’s full of oth­er Amer­i­cans. Why live in for­eign places if you can’t watch the locals at their own game? So I think act­ing class is a win­ner. Pret­ty soon she can sup­port us, and then the butch­er will be happy.

Then I had a fan­tas­tic long cof­fee break with my friend 6point7, fel­low Matthew Mac­fadyen enthu­si­ast of course. We dished a bit about his lat­est onscreen ven­ture, a ter­ri­bly upset­ting but fan­tas­ti­cal­ly act­ed tel­ly pro­gramme called “Secret Life.” All of us whom adore him, includ­ing the love­ly ladies at dar­cy­li­cious, were wor­ried that it was a rough career move, but the reviews have been uni­ver­sal­ly won­der­ful. Now we can all sit back and wait for his next project, a play called “The Pain and the Itch” that’s come from Step­pen­wolf. It’s in June and I sim­ply can’t wait. 6point7 is a pos­i­tive over­flow­ing font of infor­ma­tion on all things filmic and stage­like, and we talked non­stop for hours, trad­ing opin­ions on var­i­ous British actors, gos­sip­ing about who directs whom, who writes what. I myself would dear­ly love to turn a beloved nov­el into a screen­play and see if I could sell it. It’s “Shine on, Bright and Dan­ger­ous Object,” by the same Lau­rie Col­win who cre­at­ed my spinach recipe. Oh to be that mul­ti-tal­ent­ed! A love­ly sto­ry about grief and loss and reju­ve­na­tion, set in New York. Oh, I know, Matthew could play the lead! Not that I haven’t thought about that before. We’ll see.

Then, in my quest for felt so that Avery can com­plete a gift project for her Grand­pa Jack, I came upon what I can describe only as a knit­ting shop for true believ­ers. The peo­ple at I Knit Lon­don, while not able to sup­ply me with felt, were so kind in their replies to me that I feel duty-bound to pass along the high­est praise. Sure­ly some­one read­ing this blog has been des­per­ate to know where to find yarn, nee­dles and fel­low devo­tees of purl­ing, in Lon­don? Well, now you know. Still have to find felt, though. A trip to John Lewis may be in order.

Well, it’s off to the gro­cery store for me. I’m think­ing red-cooked shrimp…

Szech­wan Red-Cooked Shrimp
(serves four)

3 tbsps peanut oil
1 lb uncooked large shrimp, shells on, heads off (call them prawns in England)
3 bunch­es green onions, sliced thin (white part only)
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1‑inch knob fresh gin­ger, minced
1/2 tbsp coarse sea salt

4 tbsps soy sauce
2 tbsps Japan­ese mirin (rice wine)
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp chili paste or sauce

1 cup bas­mati rice

Arrange your shrimp in a sin­gle lay­er on a plat­ter and scat­ter the gar­lic, gin­ger, green onions and sea salt over them. They can sit there, thaw­ing as mine will have to from the freez­er, while you do every­thing else.

Mix all the rest of the ingre­di­ents except the rice in a bowl and set aside. Put your rice on to sim­mer with a lit­tle under 1 1/2 cups water. Now, in a wok over high heat, heat your peanut oil. It has a very high smok­ing point, so you can get it good and hot. I find the shrimp are more ten­der if they’re cooked hot and short. Throw in the shrimps with their gar­nish, and toss very quick­ly until the shrimp turn pink. Take them out with a slot­ted spoon and place them in the bowl you intend to serve in (no sense mess­ing about with extra bowls!). Pour the liq­uid mix­ture into the wok and bring to a boil, mix­ing in the gar­lic and gin­ger left behind in the wok. Boil high for two min­utes, then throw the shrimp back in and toss for 30 sec­onds. Serve with rice.

Now gath­er up a bunch of paper nap­kins and start pulling their lit­tle legs and shells off. This din­ner is messy, spicy, and glorious.