some­thing old, some­thing new

Right now the “some­thing old” seems to be ME. The Cough That Ate Ham­mer­smith has ren­dered me help­less­ly worn out, this first week back in the sad­dle. Actu­al­ly I will not feel prop­er­ly back in any sad­dle until Avery returns to school, which hap­pens tomor­row. Then nor­mal life will resume. Last week was remark­able for pre­cise­ly noth­ing: unpack­ing, tak­ing down the TWO Christ­mas trees (two trees seemed like such a good idea when they were new and fresh, not so very when they show­ered nee­dles every­where and refused bel­liger­ent­ly to fit into the plas­tic wrap with which we tried to haul them out the front door). Then we spent some time set­tling our Christ­mas belong­ings here at home, tak­ing naps at odd times of the day, shop­ping with friends (West­field Shop­ping Cen­tre is actu­al­ly quite bear­able on a week­day in Jan­u­ary with girl­friends, as opposed to a Sat­ur­day before Christ­mas with a cranky hus­band), and writ­ing class on Fri­day. I came away from the ses­sion with more sug­ges­tions than I can rea­son­ably get my mind around, at least until my child is gain­ful­ly employed away from home, tomorrow.

Just a week ago found us at Red Gate Farm clos­ing up the house for the win­ter, help­ing Rol­lie store fire­wood in the shed, going sled­ding with Alyssa and her fam­i­ly, Jane and her dad (Jill stayed cozi­ly at home drink­ing tea and rock­ing baby Mol­ly), com­ing home to lunch around the din­ing room table. Is there any­thing more heart­warm­ing and savoury than toma­toey, gar­licky brisket on a cold, snowy day?

Slow-Braised Brisket
(serves about 8)

1 brisket (corned beef)
4 cloves gar­lic, sliced
2 white onions, sliced
1 large can peeled plum tomatoes
1 bot­tle beer
1/2 cup dark molasses or treacle

Now, here’s the dif­fi­cult part. Put every­thing in a heavy stock­pot, crush­ing the toma­toes in your hand as they go into the pot. Cov­er it and put on a very gen­tle sim­mer. DO NOTH­ING for at least 3 hours. Seri­ous­ly. That’s it. Serve with noo­dles or mashed pota­toes, and a nice skil­let full of shred­ded Savoy cab­bage, sauteed in olive oil and gar­lic, sea­soned well.

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Not to be missed. Now here is an intrigu­ing ques­tion, how­ev­er. How is brisket dif­fer­ent from corned beef? It turns out that brisket is a cut, a part of the ani­mal, while “corned” is a process of cur­ing, usu­al­ly in salt. So while I bought a brisket, my brisket had been corned (but was still raw), and when I cooked it with my toma­toey method, I called the fin­ished prod­uct “brisket.” Are you thor­ough­ly con­fused? Do not despair. All briskets (whether corned or un-corned, flat cut or point cut) have one thing in com­mon: they are a tough, cheap cut of meat and as such need to be catered to, but ONLY in terms of cook­ing time, not the effort involved. Just keep your brisket on a low, friend­ly heat with a lid on the pot to keep the sauce from reduc­ing, cook it a long, gen­tle time, and you’re in busi­ness. It is melt­ing­ly ten­der and a real crowd-pleaser.

Sad­ly, at the same lunch I learned a hard les­son about my starter, the love­ly Christ­mas oys­ter stew about which I raved before. Two lessons, actu­al­ly. Nev­er ever let it freeze, and after that, nev­er ever EVER let it boil. Because mine did, and I’ll apol­o­gize here on my pub­lic forum (since one is nev­er meant to apol­o­gize at the time of eat­ing, at one’s own table) for the grainy, sep­a­rat­ed nature of the soup. The fla­vor was still ambrosial, but once the freez­ing or boil­ing (or, dash it all, both) process­es have had their way with the broth, it will nev­er be creamy and per­fect again. I’ll admit it, I took my oys­ter stew for grant­ed and did­n’t cod­dle it. I went sled­ding, cal­lous­ly, and left it on a hot stove to suf­fer as it might. Nev­er again.

From that day, so peace­ful and pleas­ant and leisured (Alyssa and her fam­i­ly kind­ly helped to denude our love­ly tree of its orna­ments, leav­ing just the lights to com­fort us over the end of the hol­i­day), life got put on fast-for­ward. We were up at the crack of dawn, actu­al­ly in the dark, to jump in the car and dri­ve to Beck­y’s house in Green­wich, there to leave the car and be dri­ven by my saint­ly friend to the Stam­ford train sta­tion, there to jump on the slow train to Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

John’s mom had pulled every favor she ever had with her good friend Jane, a behind-the-scenes Repub­li­can par­ty faith­ful, to get us a pri­vate tour of, if you can believe it, BOTH the West Wing of the White House AND the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. It was tru­ly stun­ning to poke our heads into the Oval Office and the Roo­sevelt Room and the Press Room, to sit in the very seats occu­pied by the Jus­tices of the Supreme Court at the State of the Union Address. One pre­vail­ing theme hov­ered over our entire tour: every­thing was so much small­er in per­son that it looks on tel­ly! I think cam­eras must do a sort of panoram­ic sweep of these rooms, mak­ing them look impos­ing and intim­i­dat­ing, because to the naked eye they are quite cozy and inti­mate. But mas­sive­ly impres­sive. All of Wash­ing­ton was over­laid with a sense of antic­i­pa­tion: giant scaf­fold­ing projects in front of the Capi­tol Build­ing and the White House, ready for the inau­gu­ra­tion on the 20th.

And we WALKED. From the Capi­tol to the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al, imag­in­ing all that square footage FILLED with peo­ple in a cou­ple of weeks. Our tour guide for the House said wry­ly, “Let’s hope for sun­shine, because there are no umbrel­las allowed in the public.”

The most touch­ing thing, and per­haps the most unex­pect­ed, about both our tour guides and all the staffers we saw run­ning around with IDs and clip­boards was their extreme YOUTH. One exam­ple in par­tic­u­lar put our age into per­spec­tive. When the House tour guide was walk­ing through the under­ground tun­nel with us from one build­ing through to the Capi­tol, I asked where he’d gone to school. “Wabash,” he said, smil­ing, and I said “My gosh, we went to DePauw! Old rivals, right?” and he said, “Oh, my mom went to DePauw. Maybe you knew her, class of 1980… well, 1980 some­thing.” For heav­en’s sake, when did we get to be peo­ple who might know some­one’s MOTHER?

It was an over­whelm­ing­ly Amer­i­can series of days, more flags than you’ve ever seen in one place wav­ing proud­ly, lots of uni­formed and oth­er types of offi­cials, all hav­ing sworn one oath or anoth­er of loy­al­ty and ser­vice. And din­ner! We went both nights to the Old Ebbitt Grill, a bas­tion of good old-fash­ioned Amer­i­can food bought by local pro­duc­ers. Buf­fa­lo wings with cel­ery and blue cheese dress­ing! The best cala­mari this side of Roc in Tribeca, and best of all, a dozen oys­ters on the half shell to share with John. Loud voic­es, boys chat­ting up girls over a beer, dark shin­ing wood, jol­ly barman.

And the lux­u­ry of spend­ing time with John’s mom, hav­ing her all to our­selves. She and Avery were room­mates in a room adjoin­ing ours and we sim­ply hung out each evening after we’d walked our­selves into a state of col­lapse. All too soon it was time to catch our train back to Con­necti­cut, sad­ly leav­ing Non­na to her air­plane flight lat­er in the afternoon.

We spent the Mon­day (good­ness, only a week ago!) pack­ing up, fly­ing out, and here we are. Await­ing what­ev­er adven­tures 2009 will bring: Lost Prop­er­ty, get­ting bet­ter at ten­nis, work­ing on my book, find­ing some­where to vol­un­teer, learn­ing to dri­ve (ouch). Hap­py New Year, every­one! Next post: a savoury pas­try shell flavoured with fresh thyme and filled with crab­meat, goats cheese, scal­lions, cream. Recipe to fol­low, as soon as I’ve paid my dues at the skat­ing rink…