treats for me

And why, you ask rea­son­ably, did I need a treat? Because real­ly, a child’s birth­day is on some lev­el a thank-you to the moth­er! Or it should be. So I deter­mined that I would begin writ­ing my next book chap­ter TOMOR­ROW, def­i­nite­ly, and spend the day in Not­ting Hill, bum­ming around, just for me. And it was a good plan.

I had a long talk with Louise on the way about the book she want­ed me to look for at my beloved Books for Cooks, and arrived there on the misty lunchtime day to find it is… closed on Mon­days! How frus­trat­ing. But it did leave me with 45 min­utes or so to bum around Por­to­bel­lo Road and its envi­rons, find­ing The Spice Shop open for lemon grass and some­thing called “lemon salt” which will be very nice in a sim­ple sal­ad dressing.

Then to the gen­er­al­ly unaf­ford­able but GOR­GEOUS Gro­cer on Elgin where every­thing is pack­aged in a way that makes you sit up and beg: I bought, pure­ly on spec, chick­en wings in gar­lic, hon­ey and chili, vac­u­um packed to die for. And I bought a tub of basil may­on­naise, although I could eas­i­ly make it myself, because, you said it, the pack­ag­ing was so appeal­ing. And dear read­ers, in case you think I am not bud­get-con­scious, I saw beet­root pesto, but did not buy it at 6 pounds 50 for a small con­tain­er! Dear me. I can def­i­nite­ly make THAT at home.

Into the Por­to­bel­lo food mar­ket prop­er, and I was com­plete­ly side­tracked by a dis­play of real straw­ber­ries, an aro­ma to die for, red all the way through: although Bel­gian, of course. So I ini­ti­at­ed a dis­cus­sion with the stall own­er about… one’s car­bon foot­print. I am very much of two minds on this sub­ject of sea­son­al­i­ty: of course I enjoy Eng­lish straw­ber­ries in June more than I do any oth­er straw­ber­ries at any oth­er time of year. But if they are so fra­grant and tasty and love­ly from Bel­gium in Novem­ber, and they’re for sale… I don’t know the right thing to do. For cer­tain, and maybe this is some­thing most food writ­ers and chefs don’t have to con­sid­er because they don’t have chil­dren or some­one else is feed­ing them: if my daugh­ter begs for sauteed red pep­pers and aspara­gus, I am hard put to say NO, they’re not in sea­son, when there they are, from Spain or wher­ev­er, right in front of me. It’s hard to say no to a child beg­ging for veg­eta­bles. I sup­pose I could learn.

To salve my con­science, the love­ly pro­duce lady offered, “here’s some love­ly rock­et, grown just this side of Heathrow!” Of course I bought it. It was prob­a­bly flown in from Heathrow.

From there it was onto one of my favorite of Not­ting Hill restau­rants, the brain­child of bril­liant Aus­tralian Simon Tred­way, E & O with my dear friend Jo: we feast­ed on pep­pered tuna with miso aioli (and tiny bit of some­thing I would have iden­ti­fied as swiss chard, but the wait­er said, “we call it a spring green,” leav­ing aside the fact that it’s Novem­ber, speak­ing of sea­son­al­i­ty). The whole thing was obvi­ous­ly rolled in the greens, then fin­ished with a crunchy, paper-thin phyl­lo enve­lope, real­ly only one lay­er, and sliced into thick slices which sim­ply melt­ed in the mouth. With this we had spicy tuna tem­pu­ra maki, ice cold as I believe sushi and sashi­mi should be, the ulti­mate in fresh­ness. Then very sim­ple sig­na­ture prawn chive dumplings with chilli sauce. Heavenly.

You would have thought at this point we had had enough of food, but we head­ed imme­di­ate­ly to Mr Chris­tian’s del­i­catessen where I indulged myself in a real­ly minute slice of pheas­ant pate with a sin­ful block of foie gras run­ning through it: a great can­di­date for my mid­night snack. That plus enor­mous gar­lic-stuffed olives for John’s mar­ti­ni, and we fig­ured we had done Not­ting Hill for the day.

Believe it or not, I was up this morn­ing for a fur­ther jaunt to Shored­itch for lunch with my friend Twig­gy. She and I nev­er seem to see each oth­er often enough, with real life inter­ven­ing far too often, but when we do I am always thrilled. She is any­one’s choice for a pure­ly visu­al lunch date: a chi­na doll of per­fec­tion, and I always feel lucky to be seat­ed oppo­site her and spend a cou­ple of hours enjoy­ing the view! This time was a real adven­ture and we had to be ded­i­cat­ed to our sense of rel­ish­ing the unknown. I had told anoth­er friend this morn­ing that Twig­gy and I were meet­ing at Spi­tal­fields, which although strict­ly speak­ing true, did not real­ly place me at the tube stop that would be expect­ed. There­fore when my oth­er friend said, “It’s walk­ing dis­tance from there,” she was­n’t count­ing on my arriv­ing at Liv­er­pool Sta­tion and being com­plete­ly at sea. Although you all know that my being at sea in terms of direc­tions is entire­ly to be expect­ed, and must be tak­en into account.

Twig­gy and I found each oth­er with­out too much dif­fi­cul­ty and squint­ed at the index card I brought with me. “Did you write down the post­code?” she asked rea­son­ably, and of course I had not, but we had the phone num­ber and Twig­gy’s iPhone and final­ly reached the restau­rant, Rochelle Can­teen. Incom­pre­hen­si­ble direc­tions ensued, only under­lined by the drown­ing traf­fic sounds where we stood. Final­ly we flagged down a taxi (nev­er hard to find when one is with Twig­gy!) and short­ly were deliv­ered to the restau­rant which is ENTIRE­LY UNMARKED. Well, just between you and me it IS marked: it’s the door­way with “BOYS” carved above it, in Arnold Cir­cus at Rochelle Street.

We slipped in, and there was, sure enough, noth­ing more or less than a can­teen: white formi­ca tables, com­mu­ni­ty style, a paper menu. Very lit­tle choice, espe­cial­ly for veg­e­tar­i­an Twig­gy (and there must be a spe­cial degree of dif­fi­cul­ty for veg­e­tar­i­ans who don’t like mush­rooms, as they seem to be the faux-meat of choice in many dish­es). But she eas­i­ly set­tled for a lentil stew with cele­ri­ac, car­rots, cel­ery and a par­tic­u­lar­ly tooth­some goats cheese called Tyms­boro from south-west Eng­land, the whole lot topped with a nice gar­nish of water­cress. Dare I say it? The dish was meaty, sat­is­fy­ing (I nicked a good spoon­ful from her), with a rich though strict­ly veg­e­tar­i­an stock.

And I? I went for some­thing I could nev­er make at home: crab tortelli­ni. Some­day, per­haps the day after I learn to bake, I will make home­made pas­ta. But not today. This arrived as what I realised was a starter por­tion, to my dis­ap­point­ment because I could have eat­en, quite hap­pi­ly, TWICE the three very large tortelli­ni in my dish. Pas­ta per­fect­ly al dente, the crab­meat all white and tast­ing tan­ta­lis­ing­ly of the sea, with a firm bite and total fresh­ness. The crab­meat was flecked with noth­ing more than a lit­tle chopped pars­ley and the sauce a sim­ple but­ter one laced with lemon juice, the whole dish topped with tiny leaves of baby tar­ragon. Could not have been bet­ter. The bread was firm and full of per­son­al­i­ty, and the dish of olives is more than two peo­ple can share, nei­ther of whom is an enor­mous male person.

But more than the food, which is remark­able: the atmos­phere and the clien­tele all made me feel as if I were… back at my writ­ing sem­i­nar in Devon! Many peo­ple with note­books and pens, many peo­ple in groups of three or four talk­ing indus­tri­ous­ly and look­ing as if they alone were peo­pling our BBC screens with well-writ­ten scripts. Inter­est­ing young peo­ple, lots of peo­ple eat­ing alone. Alto­geth­er a place full of ener­gy and dis­tinc­tion and food to match.

Now I have an amaz­ing chick­en dish to tell you about that I invent­ed (ha! one thing our writ­ing tutors insist­ed upon was that noth­ing new is inventable under the sun, fair enough) this evening. But that must wait because elec­tion cov­er­age is begin­ning and I will go turn my atten­tion to it. As a food­ie I can share with you this joke from David Sedaris’ recent col­umn in the New York­er (I’m para­phras­ing, sor­ry). “To those so-called ‘un-decid­ed’ vot­ers I can only say it’s like being asked by a flight atten­dant, “Would you like the chick­en, sir, or the bro­ken glass?” and you ask, “How is the bro­ken glass pre­pared?” It seems clear to me what the choice is, but tomor­row will tell us.