sea­son of secrets

It’s to the point now, in my life, where I don’t feel I can say any­thing to any­one!  I am car­ry­ing around many, many secrets.  I’ll tell you why.

This Christ­mas I decid­ed not to do ran­dom presents.  I real­ly put my chin in my hands and thought about what made every­body tick and tried to think of a thing each per­son would REAL­LY like, would smile when open­ing.  A lot of my presents this year have no intrin­sic val­ue at all, only val­ue to the peo­ple who are about to receive them.  So if any pack­ages get mis­ad­dressed, I’m in trouble!

It’s been a lot of fun.  There have been secret emails with peo­ple I’ve nev­er met, meet­ings with peo­ple I’d nev­er met before and prob­a­bly will nev­er meet again, who can do things, make things, trans­form things into just the right presents for the peo­ple I love.  As always with Christ­mas, it’s fun to have a cou­ple of presents that aren’t even THINGS at all, but expe­ri­ences, or sen­sa­tions.  One present might not come off, because I am count­ing on the kind­ness of one stranger, so my fin­gers are crossed that the hol­i­day spir­it will move that per­son, just enough.

So between orga­niz­ing all my crazy gifts, and look­ing through last year’s Christ­mas cards to make sure I don’t leave any­one out this year, and clean­ing up after the drat­ted cat who seems to think the tree skirt is anoth­er lit­ter­box — grrrrr — I’m busy.  Not too busy, how­ev­er, to have two mag­nif­i­cent lunch­es out with girl­friends, which as you all know is just about my favorite thing.  Gos­sip, com­mis­er­a­tion, advice, laugh­ing a lit­tle too loud for the com­fort of the wait­staff… that’s glorious.

Tues­day saw me with my beau­ti­ful friend Dalia at Essen­za, in Kens­ing­ton Park Road in Not­ting Hill.  I always love a lit­tle trip to Not­ting Hill, imag­in­ing its chic and expen­sive real estate in the depths of neglect, only 30–40 years ago.  Essen­za is an unas­sum­ing lit­tle spot, you’d pass by it if you weren’t look­ing for it, tucked away on a qui­et lit­tle street next door to a dar­ling nurs­ery school, so I got to see lots of cute lit­tle Eng­lish ankle-biters as I strolled by.  Overheard:

small boy, tug­ging at his moth­er’s hand: “Mum­my, you know Dad­dy loves you, don’t you?  You know he does!”

Mum­my: “Dar­ling, Mum­my’s very, very cross with Dad­dy right now, we’re hav­ing a mas­sive row, so let’s just get you to school.”

Ouch!  I want­ed to stay and hear the rest.  Some­how, spo­ken in such a beau­ti­ful accent, the words lost their men­ace.  How bad could a “mas­sive row” be, when she sound­ed like Princess Diana?  Like my plumber today, Irish Pete.  He sat back on his heels and told me how angry he was about the increase in uni­ver­si­ty fees, but all I could think was, “Did that rhyme?  I think that rhymed.”  All Irish sen­tences rhyme, I think.  I could have lis­tened to him read the phone book.

But back to Essen­za.  Dalia had told me the food was to die for, com­plete­ly authen­tic, and since this obser­va­tion came on the heels of her week in Venice and mine in Flo­rence, we were ready to be impressed.  We decid­ed to skip the main cours­es and share three starters, a very good idea.  And oh my, the creami­ness of the moz­zarel­la di bufala, the sort of tex­ture where you tear it gen­tly with your fork, creamy milk mix­ing with the olive oil on the plate.  With a real live toma­to!  Not a hard, taste­less thing, but a juicy, red fruit.  “Where on earth did you find this toma­to in Decem­ber?” I wailed to the wait­er who smiled and said, “That I can­not tell you, it is my secret.”  Scat­tered with rock­et, a sal­ad to kill for, as my dar­ling father-in-law used to say.  Nev­er to die for, oh no.  To kill for.

And then cala­mari and gam­beri frit­ti, fried squid and prawns, in a gor­geous bat­ter, with a sweet chilli sauce.  And king scal­lops with shaved cour­gette and roast­ed red pep­per, per­fect­ly cooked… heavenly!

Halfway through lunch Dalia said with clenched jaw, “Don’t look around, don’t pay any atten­tion, but Sien­na Miller just walked in.”  With a dog, mind you.  And they let her.  And dear read­ers, she is stun­ning.  Dalia claims the dog was pret­ti­er, but I don’t believe her, we’re both cat peo­ple.  So it was fun to have a celebri­ty sighting!

And the very next day I was lucky enough to be with my friend Susan at Peter­sham Nurs­eries Cafe, in Rich­mond.  Ah, Peter­sham Nurs­eries, I’ve been once before, to the fan­cy room where every­thing is too expen­sive but you don’t care because it’s so exquis­ite.  This time, we repaired to what I can only call “the soup room,” because that’s what there was.  Actu­al­ly it was fun­ny, and good that I am a good sport about odd ser­vice, because the chalk­board menu said, “pota­to and leek soup, or polen­ta with meat­balls, or ham and moz­zarel­la.”  So I said to Susan, “I don’t real­ly like polen­ta, do you mind shar­ing the ham and moz­zarel­la instead?”  She did­n’t mind, so we ordered, and when it came it was… polen­ta.  With ham.

“Excuse me, but we did­n’t order the polen­ta, just the ham and mozzarella.”

Love­ly wait lady: “Yes, the polen­ta with the ham.”

“No, we did­n’t want the polen­ta, and any­way, does­n’t it come with meat­balls?” point­ing at the menu board.

“Ah… [long pause], I can see that that might be mis­lead­ing [def­i­nite­ly!].  Try the polen­ta any­way and if you do not like it, we will replace it.”

And it turns out that I just don’t like BAD polen­ta!  I def­i­nite­ly don’t like the run­ny kind, pre­tend­ing to be mashed pota­toes.  But this was the stiff kind, and quite but­tery and deli­cious.  I don’t think I’d order it again in my low-carb mode, but I was glad I tried it.  And so was the wait lady!  So pleased that I was pleased.

As usu­al, Susan and I talked over and over each oth­er, about child-rais­ing (“always take cred­it for the good stuff they do, and none of the blame for the bad stuff,” we agree was our mot­to), child psy­chol­o­gy (did you know that aggres­sion and depres­sion stem often from the same set of feel­ings, in chil­dren?  I did­n’t, but it makes sense), our girls’ love­ly school and how much we love Lost Prop­er­ty.  In short, the com­pa­ny of a girl­friend.  I don’t know what I would do with­out mine.

Tonight we are off to be cooked for by friends, an occa­sion that does­n’t come along ter­ri­bly often.  I am sor­ry to say that my obses­sion with cook­ing makes peo­ple afraid to cook for me.  I tell them all, but they don’t believe me: I like oth­er peo­ple’s cook­ing at least as well as my own, and it’s such a delight to sit down and be giv­en some­thing to eat that I did­n’t slave over myself!  And tomor­row is the lun­cheon for school vol­un­teers, which is always love­ly because it’s a great group of peo­ple.  Don’t you find that peo­ple who are will­ing to do thank­less tasks for noth­ing are nice to be around?

As for my own cook­ing, my only exper­i­ment this week was a chick­en casse­role.  Now, I offer you this recipe with the pro­vi­so that you must cook it only if you like the con­cept of a casse­role.  I myself was raised on the con­cept: a meat, a starch, and some sort of lubri­cat­ing liq­uid (usu­al­ly out of a Camp­bel­l’s soup can), mixed in a dish and baked for half an hour.  Din­ner done.  For my moth­er, this basic con­cept kept us all alive for many years.  Camp­bel­l’s used to make a soup called, believe it or not, “Noo­dles and Ground Beef.”  They real­ly called it a “soup,” even though it came rush­ing in a sol­id lump from the can just like cran­ber­ry jel­ly.  I can’t imag­ine they make it any­more.  But my moth­er bought it by the gross, and I mean GROSS.  She then mixed it with more ground beef and noo­dles, I guess, and bob’s your uncle, din­ner was on the table.

Since I am mar­ried to a fel­low Mid­west­ern child of the 1970s, we under­stand casseroles.  There’s some­thing beau­ti­ful about every­thing being mushed up togeth­er.  My daugh­ter, raised in the 21st cen­tu­ry on all home­made, all the time?  Not so much on the casseroles, I can tell you.  She favors dis­crete items of food, eas­i­ly dis­tin­guished from each oth­er.  Fair enough.

But if you fan­cy a casse­role, I can tell you this one ticks all the box­es: creamy, savoury, inex­pen­sive AND I added a veg­etable to it, so you don’t even need a side dish.  Go on, you know you want to.

Chick­en Casse­role with But­ter­nut Squash and Fried Sage

(serves 4)

four chick­en breast fillets

Fox Point Seasoning

1 tbsp olive oil

2 cups bas­mati rice

1 but­ter­nut squash

smear of butter

3 cups home­made cream of mush­room soup (Camp­bel­l’s if you must!)

1 tbsp butter

8 sage leaves

It’s an assem­bly job.  Sprin­kle the chick­en fil­lets with the Fox Point Sea­son­ing (or just salt and pep­per if you can’t get it) and the oil.  Set aside.

Steam the bas­mati rice, and mean­while, cut the but­ter­nut squash in half length­wise, scoop out the seeds and smear each half with but­ter.  Bake at 425F/220C while the rice steams, and a bit longer, about 35 min­utes total.

Turn off the heat under the rice and let it steam on its own for five min­utes or so: this will lessen the amount that sticks to the pan.  Mean­while, heat a fry­ing pan and place the chick­en breasts in it, oil side down.  Cook until browned, then turn and brown on the oth­er side.  The chick­en will still be uncooked inside, and that’s fine.  Set aside.

Place the steamed rice into — you guessed it — a casse­role dish!  Lay the chick­en breasts on top, pour the soup over.  Cut the but­ter­nut squash into bite-size pieces and drop them into the casserole.

Bake in the same hot oven, 425F/220C, for about 35 min­utes, turn­ing the chick­en over once and stir­ring the rice-soup mix­ture.  Just before you take it out of the oven, melt the remain­ing but­ter in the fry­ing pan from the chick­en and fry the sage leaves gen­tly, just till crisp.  Crum­ble them on top of the casse­role and serve.

This is a love­ly, com­fort­ing, old-fash­ioned dish.  Any­one can afford it, no one will be intim­i­dat­ed by the process, every­one will like it.  Even Avery ate it per­fect­ly hap­pi­ly, allow­ing that she could see, “it’s the kind of thing you’ll like if you like that kind of thing.”

I can­not offer you a pho­to of this dish because there is no way to make a casse­role look pret­ty.  It’s why all those old-fash­ioned cook­books from the 1970s make food look so awful.  Because they were ALL casseroles.

Time for me to make sure no one’s been look­ing at my email or open­ing pack­ages addressed to me, or nos­ing around in parcels in my shoe clos­et.  Don’t any­one try to rat­tle me: I can keep all these secrets, at least for anoth­er cou­ple of weeks…