Oedi­pus and salt­pe­tre (plus the Chick­en Couple)

I’ll begin with my poul­try romance. I did­n’t bring them togeth­er in the hopes of cre­at­ing a culi­nary cos­tume dra­ma, obvi­ous­ly, but some things just have their own ener­gy. I want­ed to buy just one whole chick­en, in my love­ly local Shep­herd’s Bush Mar­ket, plus a whole breast on the bone, to joint up and cook for us and Avery’s swim­ming chum Emi­ly (who is an occa­sion­al dilet­tante veg­e­tar­i­an and I had been advised was on a car­niver­ous day). But the butch­er said, “Cheap­er for you to take the whole two birds, my love,” so I did. I don’t mind joint­ing the odd chick­en or two, plus get­ting the back­bones and such for stock. But when I brought these two home and lay them on my cut­ting board… well, the chem­istry leaps right through the ethernet.

And they made a love­ly baked chick­en dish as WELL as a damn good stock.

Chick­en aside, two words: Ralph Fiennes. I know he is a rat of the first order, when it comes to love affairs. First it was Alex Kingston who he famous­ly left for the youth-chal­lenged but still love­ly Francesca Annis. Far be it from me to say that there isn’t some­thing in an old­er woman to charm a younger man. I have seen it hap­pen. But then (we knew it would hap­pen) he left Francesca for… I do not know. Some­one very young, I fear, which means that in addi­tion to being a ser­i­al phi­lan­der­er, he’s incon­sis­tent as well.

Nev­er mind. We saw “Oedi­pus” at the Nation­al on Fri­day and gasp, gasp. We took Avery because I felt that if the Nation­al said “twelve and over” they knew where­of they spoke, but I was a bit ner­vous nonethe­less, a feel­ing that was under­scored when we reached our seats and craned our necks to see the rest of the audi­ence and she was, in fact, the ONLY child. Only. But in fact she was riv­et­ed from start to fin­ish. Fiennes at times over­reached the emo­tion need­ed to con­vey his mis­ery, con­fu­sion, hys­te­ria, I felt. He could have been con­sid­er­ably more restrained and yet have stim­u­lat­ed much the same feel­ings in the audi­ence. But it was an intense, over­whelm­ing the­atri­cal expe­ri­ence, shored up by a busi­ness-suit­ed Greek cho­rus, a fab­u­lous Clare Hig­gins as Jocas­ta, and the appear­ance at the ulti­mate moment of four small chil­dren as his off­spring. A jar­ring and fright­en­ing expe­ri­ence for the actors, I would have thought. “That was beau­ti­ful,” Avery said as soon as the bows were tak­en. It was.

In the morn­ing I stepped up to my culi­nary plate and faced up to 45 grams of… salt­pe­tre. Have you ever heard of it? It’s quite famous, or infa­mous, as a sub­stance that has been admin­is­tered to sex offend­ers in prison to damp­en their sex dri­ve. So nat­u­ral­ly it was but the work of a moment for me to pro­cure some from my local butch­er to mar­i­nate my sil­ver­side of beef.

I am not mak­ing this up.

It’s also a mas­sive­ly unsta­ble ingre­di­ent in explo­sives, it turns out. So why did I want 45 grams of this sub­stance? Because it’s the essen­tial com­po­nent in pro­duc­ing top-qual­i­ty “Spiced Beef,” a la Richard Cor­ri­g­an (one of my favorite chef-writ­ers) by way of Row­ley Leigh of Cafe Anglais, in a recipe in the week­end’s FT. I am not exact­ly sure what role the salt­pe­tre plays in the 10-day mar­i­na­tion of my price­less cut of beef, but like a good girl I went straight to Mr Sten­ton. As I sidled up to the butch­er counter, tell­tale pink pages of the Finan­cial Times in my hand, he said, “This looks dan­ger­ous.” Then he explained the his­to­ry of salt­pe­tre and the IRA, and said, “Give me two days. I’ve got to get onto Boots with my butcher’s license, and then you can come col­lect it.”

So I did. And I mixed it with a ver­i­ta­ble moun­tain of Mal­don salt, and pound­ed-up pep­per­corn, juniper berry and whole all­spice. Rubbed it all over the beef, wrapped it in plas­tic, and there he repos­es in my fridge, to be mas­saged every day or so until it’s time to roast it, VERY slow­ly, place it under a plate on which are piled four tins of toma­toes, and then slice it VERY thin. Serve it with Orlan­do’s straw pota­toes in goose fat, I’m think­ing. So if you can prof­fer your heart sur­geon’s cer­tifi­cate of good health, I’ll invite you over for the fin­ished prod­uct, ten days from now.

Tomor­row beck­ons an unbe­liev­able culi­nary adven­ture for me. Would you believe I have lived for 43 years with nev­er hav­ing had the first cook­ing les­son of any kind, at all? As much as I love the field, and activ­i­ty, it seems very sil­ly that I’ve come this far with­out any pro­fes­sion­al help. Well, that ends tomor­row morn­ing when a cer­tain “Kitchen Queen” arrives in my kitchen with two pas­ta mak­ers to help me make: focac­cia, fresh ravi­o­li with four dif­fer­ent fill­ings (among them pump­kin and sage, crab, lob­ster with mas­car­pone and Avery’s request: spinach, ricot­ta and pro­sciut­to). Plus a win­ter fruits tart. I am ter­ri­bly, ter­ri­bly excit­ed. Reports to follow.

We are get­ting excit­ed, on this side of the Atlantic, for our trip “home” for Christ­mas in Con­necti­cut. Added to our hol­i­day plans is a long-planned trip to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., for a hard-won behind-the-scenes tour of pri­vate bits of the White House. John’s mom feels very strong­ly that Avery needs a shoring up of her Amer­i­can roots, and that the best way to accom­plish this (or at least one way) is a vis­it to the nation’s cap­i­tal. This should be a thrill. Avery’s first response to this news was to con­ju­gate the word “Oba­ma” into full-on Latin, so that “I Oba­ma, You Oba­ma, We Oba­ma,” and so on. And they say Latin is a dead lan­guage. But since our tour is orga­nized by a major Repub­li­can much beloved by all of us, we’ll wait for the Oba­ma chant till Jan­u­ary 21st. D.C., here we come.