last adven­tures of the year

There is a point, at least for me, dur­ing every hol­i­day sea­son when all the prepa­ra­tion, the wish­ing and hop­ing, antic­i­pa­tion, and even the very real enjoy­ment of the excit­ing days and evenings begin to give way to a wish to sim­pli­fy my life!  To clear away the trees, the dec­o­ra­tions, the burnt-down can­dles, the nee­dles EVERY­WHERE, and put every­thing care­ful­ly away for next year.  The sil­ver bells get wrapped in tis­sue paper and packed away…

The frag­ile orna­ments go in their own tis­sue paper, the more robust things like tiny pairs of skates and ponies and fairies dressed in hol­i­day clothes are placed care­ful­ly on just a bed of tis­sue paper, to spend the next 11 months dis­cussing how they hate hang­ing from hooks.  The lights are wound up around John’s arm and packed away with the stock­ings and the tree skirt…

But before I can rest and enjoy my clean, post-hol­i­day house, I must tell you a bit of our adven­tures and share a cou­ple of recipes that will put you right back in the cook­ing mood, ready to pitch the last crust of pump­kin pie and start fresh.  So off we go.

Our wed­ding anniver­sary takes place on Decem­ber 30, which is always a bit of an awk­ward day because Christ­mas is still fresh in our minds (espe­cial­ly when we cel­e­brat­ed it a day late to begin with!), and New Year’s is loom­ing.  Of course in our ear­ly days we gave a great deal of thought to the per­fect, secret gift for each oth­er: cuf­flinks with Avery’s ini­tials for John, tiny gold ear­rings for me with five dia­monds in each, for our 10th anniver­sary.  Then, some­where along the line, we took up a tra­di­tion of wak­ing up on the day, say­ing, “Hap­py Anniver­sary” to each oth­er in the warmest of tones, and… for­get­ting about it for the duration!

This year our anniver­sary was marked main­ly by The Snow­ball Fight of the Cen­tu­ry.  I wish I could tell you it was fought between equals, but… alas… Avery’s father can nev­er find any­one his own size to pick on.

He began in fine pater­nal pro­tec­tive style, say­ing as she raised the first snow­ball, “Don’t start some­thing you can’t fin­ish.”  And from there it degen­er­at­ed into total aban­don.  She’s on the ground at his feet?  Check, cue for smash­ing the snow in her hair.  A big blue saucer sled appears?  Fine, he uses it to throw even greater quan­ti­ties of snow in her face.  Does she give up?  No way.  Not this girl.

Tena­cious is the word.

Anne and David looked on in what I think was the silence of sheer hor­ror, as their adored tod­dler daugh­ter Kate played at their feet.  Will the day come when Dave beats up his lit­tle girl in a freez­ing mis­sile bat­tle?  Time will tell.

Home we came under a per­fect blue sky, to put Avery in a nice warm bath with a cup of hot choco­late.  She stayed in that bath for about three hours.  Ful­ly deserved.   Mean­while, John’s mom and I con­coct­ed a real­ly deli­cious, exot­ic, sort of essen­tial­ly anti-Christ­mas anniver­sary dish.  Not a clove, pota­to or pump­kin in sight.  Pure Asia.

Sweet and Spicy Anniver­sary Shrimp

(serves 4)

2 dozen large shrimp, shells on, heads off

3 tbsps toast­ed sesame oil

4 tbsps soy sauce

chilli sauce (to taste, depend­ing how hot it is and hot you want your sauce)

juice of 1 lime, plus zest

2 tbsps hoisin (plum) sauce

2 tbsps Japan­ese mirin (rice wine)

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 tsp pow­dered ginger

bas­mati rice to steam and serve with shrimp

Cut up the back of each shrimp till you get to the tail, then set all the shrimp into a large shal­low bowl.

Mix all the oth­er ingre­di­ents but the rice and pour over shrimp.  Mix them with your hands, push­ing the mari­nade into the backs of the shrimp.  leave to mar­i­nate as long as you like (we had about an hour).

Heat a large fry­ing pan till very hot indeed, and pour in the shrimp, stand­ing back as it spits!  Stir fry the shrimp until just cooked, per­haps 2–3 min­utes total depend­ing on the size of the shrimp.  Serve with steamed rice and plen­ty of napkins.

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This dish is the per­fect “Christ­mas is over” dish!  Savory and unusu­al, exot­ic and fun to peel, you’ll love these shrimp.

The next day I spent in the kitchen with my intre­pid com­pan­ion John’s mom, prepar­ing one of my favorite dish­es of all time (and now a firm favorite of our tra­di­tion­al New Year’s Eve guests, Anne and David — and unbe­liev­ably Kate as well!).  It was the sort of day I dream of when I’m just slog­ging through a day of work and domes­tic­i­ty in Lon­don: look­ing at out our snowy farm­land, the red barns against the white, watch­ing the birds on John’s feed­ers, and tak­ing in a whole slate of soap operas as the day winds on. Cozy!

Cas­soulet

(serves at least 12)

for the con­fit:
4 duck legs
coarse sea salt
4 fat gar­lic cloves, fine­ly chopped
4 bay leaves, bro­ken in half
1 cup white wine

for the cas­soulet:
4 Toulouse sausages (or mild Ital­ian in the US)
350g/12oz bel­ly pork, skinned and diced (just plain bacon if you’re in the US)
350g/12oz lamb neck fil­let or rolled breast, diced (shoul­der chops will work)
1 large onion, chopped roughly
2 large car­rots, chopped roughly
2 cel­ery sticks, chopped roughly
400g/14oz can chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp toma­to purée
2 heaped tbsp fresh flat leaf pars­ley, chopped
1 heaped tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
sea salt and pepper
290ml/½ pint dry white wine
2 cans hari­cot or can­nellini beans, drained and rinsed
850ml/1½pt chick­en stock

for the topping:
1 large day-old baguette (or 1 cup fresh home­made breadcrumbs)
2 fat gar­lic cloves, halved
4 tbsp butter
2 heaped tbsp fresh flat leaf pars­ley, chopped
1 heaped tbsp fresh thyme, chopped

Place the duck legs skin side down in a skil­let with a lid, sprin­kle with the salt, gar­lic and bay leaves and pour the white wine around. Place the lid on top and cook at the tini­est sim­mer pos­si­ble, for two hours. Of course, for real con­fit you’d pour the winey fat over the duck and pre­serve it, but no need for that step here, as you’ll be using the duck straightaway.

Mean­while, place the sausages in a 220C/425F oven and bake for 20 min­utes. Set aside to cool.

In a large stove­top– and oven­proof dish that will hold all the ingre­di­ents, place the bel­ly pork and heat gen­tly until fat begins to be released, then raise heat and cook, stir­ring occa­sion­ally, until all the fat has been released and the pork is crisp, but not dry. Lift the pork onto a plate with a slot­ted spoon, leav­ing all the fat behind.

Add the lamb to the pork fat and cook until col­ored on all sides, then lift out with slot­ted spoon and set aside with the pork.

Add the diced veg­eta­bles to the pork fat and cook till soft. Tip the ingre­di­ents from the plate back into the dish. Add the toma­toes, toma­to purée and herbs, then sea­son with sea salt and pep­per to taste.

Add the wine, hari­cot beans and chick­en stock to the dish and bring to the boil. Stir, then low­er the heat so the liq­uid is just sim­mer­ing. Keep the mix­ture in the same dish to cook or trans­fer it to an earth­en­ware dish.

When the duck has cooked for two hours, remove it from the wine and fat and cool to han­dle. Remove the skin from the duck, then tuck the duck legs into the cassoulet.

Peel off the sausage skins, slice the sausage­meat thick­ly on the diag­o­nal and add to the dish.

Cov­er the dish and bake for 1 hour, stir­ring once. Stir, then cook uncov­ered for a fur­ther 1–1½ hours, stir­ring halfway, until the meat is real­ly ten­der and the sauce is thick­ened. Take the dish out of the oven and remove the duck legs. Strip the meat from the bones (it will fall off eas­ily) and return the meat to the dish. Stir and add a lit­tle water, if nec­es­sary. Sea­son if nec­es­sary, then return to the oven and bake for anoth­er 15 min­utes until all the meat and beans are very tender.

For the top­ping, cut the crusts off the baguette, tear the bread into pieces and put in a food proces­sor. Add the gar­lic and chop into coarse crumbs (you should have about a cup of gar­licky bread crumbs).

Heat the but­ter in a large fry­ing pan until siz­zling, then stir fry the bread­crumbs and gar­lic over a mod­er­ate to high heat for 7–8 min­utes until crisp and gold­en. Remove from the heat, toss in the herbs and stir to mix, then sea­son well with salt and pepper.

Ladle the cas­soulet in gen­er­ous serv­ings into warm bowls, sprin­kle on a bit of top­ping, and serve.

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Don’t be intim­i­dat­ed by the seem­ing­ly end­less list of ingre­di­ents!  It’s just an assem­bly job, and if you have plen­ty of time and some­one — like John’s mom — to chat with as you cook, it makes for a delight­ful day.  And with a sal­ad and some baguette bites, you have a MAG­NIF­I­CENT sup­per.  It’s rich, each bite is slight­ly dif­fer­ent from the last, it’s com­plex and gar­licky and sus­tain­ing.  Just right to get your New Year start­ed on a deli­cious note.  I did­n’t take a pho­to because it’s not a pret­ty dish, it’s a peas­ant dish.  But the table looked lovely.

And to have our dear, beloved neigh­bors with us that evening, enjoy­ing Kate’s grow­ing con­ver­sa­tion­al skills, lis­ten­ing to Avery’s tales of her Russ­ian adven­tures, sip­ping hot cups of tea after din­ner and just relax­ing, was the sort of treat we dream of and all too rarely get to enjoy.

And we need­ed our ener­gy, because that after­noon, Jill and Joel arrived to drop off Jane and Mol­ly so they could attend their beloved (well, Joel’s beloved) Phish con­cert!  The next 24 hours went by in a blur of Jane’s ener­gy, Mol­ly’s sud­den abil­i­ty to say what­ev­er comes to mind (most­ly “what is THIS?” when she sees a new thing), and feed­ing the two insa­tiable chil­dren.  “Break­fast for din­ner” was the request­ed menu, so we tucked into pan­cakes with my friend Judy’s home­made plum pre­serves, sausages and bacon.  Sto­ry after sto­ry (John read­ing to Mol­ly, I to Jane) and then a rather wel­come bed­time.  How embar­rass­ing that two small chil­dren could drain four adults of all ener­gy!  I count­ed Avery as an adult for the dura­tion, and her enter­tain­ing skills were more than up to the task.

The next day brought adven­tures on the swingsets across the road, and a frisky game of “Fox and Geese” sug­gest­ed by John’s mom.

Once we’d fed the girls a quite amaz­ing piz­za from our local pizze­ria and Mol­ly had enjoyed a nap, their par­ents arrived and took them home, full of the sto­ries of their sleep­over date.  And just in time because as they pulled away, anoth­er car pulled up con­tain­ing Jes­si­ca, anoth­er of the kit­tens of the sum­mer!  Here for a play­date with Jessamy.

Yes, that’s right, a kit­ty play­date.  Jes­si­ca came accom­pa­nied by her two par­ents, which means that for the dura­tion of their time togeth­er that cold after­noon, there were two cats sur­round­ed by six adults, all of us total­ly trans­fixed by the sight of the two fur­ry sis­ters, try­ing to get to know each oth­er again.  We are all fools, but it was great fun.

And how our entire hol­i­day was dom­i­nat­ed by The Puz­zle That Ate Christ­mas!  It was my bright idea to order a per­son­al­ized puz­zle from Went­worth, a great com­pa­ny in Eng­land (there must be some­thing sim­i­lar here?) who will take your favorite and cre­ate a gor­geous wood­en puz­zle from it.  But beware: these puz­zles are men­ac­ing­ly dif­fi­cult!  John’s mom, Avery and I spent end­less infu­ri­at­ing hours on it.  But here ’tis.  Well worth the torment!

I think, though, that my entire fam­i­ly would agree on the most won­der­ful moment of the Christ­mas sea­son.  Remem­ber how I told you I was plan­ning presents that would be want­ed only by the peo­ple who would receive them?  Well, no gift fit this descrip­tion bet­ter than what Avery found in the mail­box, two days ago.

Are you among the lucky folks who know the satir­i­cal song­writ­ing of Tom Lehrer?  He is a singer-pianist-per­former who is also real­ly a Har­vard math­e­mati­cian, and his songs, most­ly from the 1960s, have been part of my per­son­al lore since child­hood, because my par­ents were mas­sive fans.  “Poi­son­ing Pigeons in the Park,” “The Vat­i­can Rag,” all his oth­er wicked­ly clever works are with­out peer in the song­writ­ing world.  He actu­al­ly stopped per­form­ing and went back to teach­ing math because he got tired of repeat­ing all his own songs!

Our fam­i­ly’s favorite, prob­a­bly, is “The Ele­ments,” in which he lists in per­fect rhyming order all the ele­ments of the chem­i­cal table, end­ing with “These are all the ones from which the news has come to Haaaaar-vard, and there may be many oth­ers but they haven’t been dis-caaaaahvered.”

It sounds crazy.  Prob­a­bly he is.

But one day Avery recit­ed this song in her chem­istry class to the avowed amaze­ment of her teacher, who men­tioned it in her report card.  So I, stealth­ily, put it in an enve­lope and sent it off to Pro­fes­sor Lehrer with a note from me explain­ing Avery’s addic­tion to his music and ask­ing him to sign it and send it back.  And this is what came in the mail, that frosty late after­noon of the New Year.

She is, need­less to say, in a state of com­plete amaze­ment.  He WROTE TO HER.  “Dear Avery.”  How cool is that?

My Christ­mas was com­plete, at that moment.

And so we slide gen­tly into 2011, ready for what­ev­er adven­tures our busy Lon­don life will con­tain.  But to sus­tain us will be mem­o­ries of our hap­py, crazy, busy, can­dlelit, deli­cious, love-filled hol­i­day of 2010.

And of warm fires burn­ing, a kit­ty sleeping.