half-term
I’m busy in the kitchen this sunny London morning, preparing for a little dinner party tonight — my father’s first cousin is visiting! — at which I’ll serve the nation’s favorite dish. Curry! Next week will see Hindus celebrating Diwali, the festival of lights, and for that reason all the telly chefs seem to be coming forward with their various versions of the classic Indian treat. What Americans may find funny is that British “curry” often does not feature… curry powder! Curry powder itself is, of course, an amalgam of many spices including turmeric, coriander, cumin and cinnamon. British curries, including the one I’m making tonight, feature a paste of lemon grass, chilli, ginger, garlic and oil. I’ll start with that and then add spices as I go along.
If you can imagine, Avery is on school holiday this week and next! How on earth, we might well be tempted to ask, can a school system be ready for a holiday just six weeks after the beginning of term? Until I became the mother of essentially a British teenager you could never have convinced me that anyone could need a break in October. But we all do! This particular year, when Avery and her mates are buckling down to what are called GCSEs (the first really important exams that will occur next year, after which children can legally leave school). Homework levels have spiked and there is real pressure to produce serious work in several languages, three sciences and (toughest of all, to my mind) mathematics that I can no longer even pretend to understand.
Added to this onslaught of work are the rehearsals for “Sweet Charity,” the musical Avery will be in next month. As the days grow shorter and colder, Avery seems to come home later and later, laden with books and files, starving to death, and with a huge workload before we can hope to sit down to dinner. It was a nice break last week to head over to Kingston to hear the Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes talk about his career, the stratospheric success of DA, his future plans — a series about the Titanic next year!
He was simply adorable! For all the accusations that he is a snob, that “Downton Abbey” is a snobbish programme, I have to admit that I love it all. I do think it’s a funny contradiction, Americans’ attitude toward anything resembling the British aristocracy. We may well have fled England ourselves all those years ago seeking greater equality and freedom, but we love nothing more than Hello! magazine, the Royal Wedding, and anyone addressed as Countess or Lady. So I enjoyed greatly sitting on the dusty floor of the Rose Theatre in the round, and listening to the plummy tones of Mr Fellowes describing his life as a drama student, some 40 years ago. “We found ourselves between the brilliance of John Cleese and Monty Python before us, and Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry who came after us. In short, we were the bread between the jam, as it were.”
“Acting is like playing tennis,” he pontificated. “You should always pursue each activity with people who are better at it than YOU.”
Oh, speaking of tennis, we have had to admit that very shortly, the courts will be too damp, leafy and dangerous for us to play. And so we have taken up a new and totally crazy sport: SQUASH. One lesson at the Barnes Squash Club has convinced at least John that we should pursue this, so I’m going along with it.
I can understand that if I am going to continue to cook for us, we have to find ever more clever ways of burning off all the calories. But I have to admit I think I’ll always feel more comfortable with the sort of squash that takes butter and sage and gets pureed with a hand blender.
Roasted Butternut Squash Soup
(serves 4)
1 large butternut squash
2 tbsps butter
6 leaves fresh sage
500 ml/2 cups chicken stock
drizzle single cream
Cut the squash in half lengthwise and dot with butter and sage leaves. Roast at 220C/425F for about half an hour or until fully cooked and soft. Scoop squash into a saucepan and cover with chicken stock. Simmer for five minutes, then puree with hand blender. Pour into warm bowls and drizzle with cream.
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One of the biggest treats of this autumn has been our trip to Borough Market. It’s the way John gets me to accompany him on his real-estate forays into the East-ish End of London: the lure of every delicious foodstuff you can dream up, under one corrugated metal roof, high above our heads. Stalls of pumpkins (speaking of squash!)…
And figs, a display of which would bring my mother in law to tears.
But perhaps my favorite stall of all is Gastronomica, that famed Italian seller of all things charcuterie (what’s Italian for “charcuterie,” anyway?), dairy, cheese… and the best butter on the face of the earth.
I brought home a head of cauliflower to roast whole, and WHAT a good idea that was. Simply drizzled with lots of olive oil and sprinkled with a good sea salt, roasted in a hot oven for 30 minutes.
Fortified by my cauliflower, I’ve been a good girl and done my “pool duty” at Avery’s school, a termly obligation which entails picking up the keys to the fabulous old structure at a house nearby, cycling through the autumn leaves over to school, opening up the box with its money to pay the lifeguard, asking members to sign in, then breathing in the steamy air for an hour and a half while swimmers trundle up and down. One man came in from the chilly outside to greet me and the lifeguard, who pummeled him with questions about the football match going on: Wales — vs- France. “I can’t believe you’re rooting for Wales, sir,” said the lifeguard. “Well, normally of course I wouldn’t. But they’re playing FRANCE.” The lesser of two evils, to the English mindset.
On Sunday we all awoke to a foggy day which I spent making every mistake in bellringing that it is possible to make. I led with the treble very badly, finally learning to follow the tenor. It’s a nice lesson in life: to be the leader, sometimes it’s necessary only to follow who seems to be last. Then it was onto Chiswick where when asked to “ring down” the treble bell, I accidentally pulled it down in two strokes. Was there ever a scarier moment? “You got away with that because it was the treble, a tiny bell,” Matt said. “If you’d had a heavy bell you’d be missing a hand right now.”
And this is my new hobby. How do I get myself into these situations?
The only way to recover was with a lovely plate of lemon sole, sauteed in olive oil and topped with a dusting of crispy Fox Point breadcrumbs. Terribly successful to taste, but not pretty enough to photograph. On the other hand, the side dish of julienned beetroot, shaped into a cake and fried in duck fat, was beautiful, with its dollop of sour cream.
It turns out that while julienned potatoes will form a cake, beetroot will not. And beetroot with duck fat is simply gilding the lily, as it were. Cooking is not always successful if you make experiments.
Avery’s been experimenting this break, but not with beetroot. First she spent a day in Tottenham with her fashion designer mentor Stephane St Jaymes, the brilliant man who offered her a “Take Your Daughter To Work” day last spring. I love the outfit she chose for her day with him this week.
I dropped her off at a photographer’s house yesterday so she could be part of a shoot called “hair before and after,” and look what came home!
So tomorrow, with her new haircut and ready for an adventure, we are off on the Eurostar to Paris for an early celebration of Avery’s birthday. More from there!
Oh — we play squash (very very occasionally, and very badly…)!! Enjoy — I personally find it to be the best workout of any sport I have ever played. If you take Julian Fellowes’ advice and play with someone who is better than you, you may (as I did once) literally collapse on the ground afterwards, unable to move. And that’s when I was in good shape. Try to go watch a professional match if you haven’t ever — these guys (and girls) are superhuman. Oh, and love the hair — so stylish!!
Work, the whole squash thing is more John than me, but we have another lesson coming up on Monday and we’ll see how I do. There is JUST no way we can continue to cook and eat and not do something strenuous if we want to remain in any kind of shape at all! Will definitely look for a professional match!
I like the sound of a half-term break. My oldest son attends a rigorous high school and plays on a sports team. At about this point in the semester, I feel we could all use a few days off. He is the one doing all the work but I take on the stress of it. Of course, I imagine half-term wreaks havoc for working parents of younger children.
Avery looks beautiful with her haircut–positively Twiggyesque!
Now we’re ending the break, Min, I’m ready for her to go back to school!
Howdy! I’m at work surfing around your blog from my new apple iphone! Just wanted to say I love reading your blog and look forward to all your posts! Carry on the excellent work!