we’re back

Can I just say? Seri­ous­ly. Some­one HIGH UP in charge of the bet­ter­ment of my soul via fear-con­quer­ing was hav­ing a seri­ous laugh yes­ter­day. It’s not enough I con­quer big planes, nice weath­er. Then you got your big planes, bad weath­er. Ratch­et up to tiny plane, nice weath­er. Yes­ter­day we had the whole nine yards. Well, actu­al­ly I take that back, the pilot did not have an actu­al heart attack neces­si­tat­ing my acti­va­tion of the para­chute mech­a­nism. But we were near­ly ground­ed by a freak snow­storm. Please! Don’t wan­na do that. But I did, kick­ing and scream­ing, get on the plane. And we were fine. But note to self: arrange NOT in the future to be the only peo­ple dumb enough to get up to 11,000 feet in a snow­storm so that we were the only peo­ple in the sky report­ing on the weath­er con­di­tions. Either that or arrange not to be lis­ten­ing to all of it on the radar headphones.

Ah, well, this too shall pass, and it did. We got our­selves hap­pi­ly on the Great Big Plane to come from Chica­go to Lon­don, unevent­ful­ly. But seri­ous­ly. Crazy scary.

We’re back from our week in Iowa, where John’s dad’s not well and so we were all hands on deck, or what­ev­er the expres­sion is, when we all step up and play the parts allot­ted to us in fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tions. Let’s see, in our fam­i­ly that meant that John’s mom com­plete­ly threw her­self into enjoy­ing what the kids were doing: Avery, John’s sis­ter’s girls, the grand­kids of John’s par­ents’ best friends. Did they want to go swim­ming at the hotel? Fine, she was there with her cam­era, and will­ing to sham­poo any num­ber of girls’ hair after­ward. Did they want to dye eggs for East­er? Sure, how many dozen? End­less per­mu­ta­tions of mark­ers came forth from her craft box­es, trips to the Hob­by Lob­by for yet more note­books, rib­bons, stick­ers for projects. And John? He wrote let­ters, fixed com­put­ers, filled the cars up with gas, orga­nized paper­work. John’s sis­ter devot­ed her­self to end­less research projects and of course on top of every­thing else she had on her plate, gen­er­ous­ly decid­ed she want­ed Avery to spend the night at the hotel with them, com­plete with a break­fast swim. Her hus­band, eas­i­ly the most orga­nized per­son I have ever met, com­plet­ed a spread­sheet of more phone num­bers and email address­es than I have ever seen. If the num­ber isn’t there, we don’t need it.

And me? I cooked. Not that appetite is always first and fore­most on every­one’s list of con­cerns, but it gen­er­al­ly heads up my list, and so I cooked. A roast chick­en so we could have sand­wich­es and soup. And three vari­a­tions on my cele­ri­ac soup: gar­lic-less for a more del­i­cate con­sti­tu­tion, veg­e­tar­i­an for John’s sis­ter, and one using very fla­vor­ful home­made chick­en stock for… me, who hap­pened to have some on hand. I would say that all these ver­sions are worth­while, but keep in mind that no gar­lic means very sim­ple, veg­etable stock can mean very car­roty (still good, but not as del­i­cate and very orange), and home­made stock means the cele­ri­ac gets lost. Not a bad soup, but not what I would say high­lights the cele­ri­ac fla­vor. All these per­mu­ta­tions are use­ful to know about, I think. But the best ver­sion is with plain old, watery, rather taste­less canned chick­en broth, so use it and be glad there’s a pur­pose in life for a thing in a can.

Oh, and quite a spec­tac­u­lar cook­ing fail­ure. Word to the wise: if you burn the cheese sauce for mac­a­roni and cheese, the fin­ished dish will taste as if you are enjoy­ing it through a Marl­boro fil­ter. Just pitch it and start over. Do not believe the var­i­ous well-mean­ing rel­a­tives who pass through the kitchen, take a bite, and say, “It just tastes like you used smoked ched­dar.” It does­n’t. It’s awful and belongs in the garbage. I hate to screw up! But I took it as a learn­ing point. You have to learn oth­er peo­ple’s stoves, and since John’s mom’s stove nev­er turns on her, and has nev­er before turned on me, I must assume I was real­ly not pay­ing attention.

And while I was not ruin­ing the evening’s meal, I was busy crash­ing John’s moth­er’s car into the post that sep­a­rates the two park­ing spots in their garage. Well, “crash­ing” is exag­ger­at­ing. More like rub­bing up against and then just con­tin­u­ing to do so until all the paint on the post was trans­ferred to the side of the car. As I did this, John’s sis­ter’s fam­i­ly pulled up in their car and every­one just stood, open-mouthed. Now I know where the expres­sion, “It was like watch­ing a train wreck” comes from. No one could look away. Final­ly my broth­er-in-law said, “I don’t think we’re help­ing by just stand­ing here,” and thank­ful­ly hus­tled every­one away. John said, “That’s just what we need­ed, one more thing,” but then he took pity on me and said some­thing like, “It’s just a garage.” The things we have to rise above, when I am around.

But in the end, we also spent a lot of time chat­ting, me get­ting to know my nieces who are dear, intel­li­gent girls (I think Sarah is a great chef in the mak­ing, so I hope I did­n’t inter­rupt her progress with my mis­takes, and Ellen is a ter­rif­ic ath­lete and a real ball of ener­gy), hang­ing out at our friend Stephanie’s barn and watch­ing the kids groom the hors­es, going to the book­store with Stephanie’s won­der­ful mom’s gift cer­tifi­cates for the chil­dren, all of us drink­ing Bloody Marys and “help­ing” John and his moth­er scram­ble three dozen eggs for East­er brunch, hid­ing plas­tic eggs full of all the can­dy Tar­get could offer, on Stephanie and David’s enor­mous tree-filled lot. But it was freez­ing! Lit­er­al­ly, below freez­ing. What was Iowa think­ing? But it meant we had love­ly evenings by the gas fire (the fire­place of which John and I, famous­ly, checked as LUG­GAGE lo these 15 years ago, when we moved back from Lon­don the first time), sip­ping sin­gle malt scotch, rem­i­nisc­ing about our many, many vaca­tions togeth­er, the hun­dreds of times John and his dad have stolen the check from each oth­er at din­ner (“Hey, Dad, there’s a rea­son I have the same name as you: you nev­er know which cred­it card slip you’re sign­ing”), the hun­dreds of books John’s mom and I have rec­om­mend­ed to each oth­er, the hun­dreds of treats they have both arranged for Avery, for all their grandchildren.

One evening I was up after every­one else went to bed (OK, that hap­pens every evening I spend in Iowa), and I wan­dered around through the house, see­ing the Bat­tersea box with caviar on the top that I gave them when we were liv­ing in Moscow, the Russ­ian icon I smug­gled in through Moscow cus­toms, the mer­cury glass flower vas­es John found in Por­to­bel­lo Mar­ket, the bronze archi­tec­tur­al repli­cas John’s mom col­lects and to which we’ve con­tributed the New York land­marks we could see from our first SoHo apart­ment, the enlarged pho­to of lit­tle John as Eey­ore that I gave John’s mom when I unearthed it years ago in her lim­it­less pho­to col­lec­tion. And the lith­o­graph by Mauri­cio Lasan­sky, hang­ing by their front door, the only object that would com­fort month-old Baby Avery when she came to vis­it for her first Christ­mas. “Look,” John’s dad would say, dan­gling her from his out­stretched arm, “She loves this thing. Who says babies don’t under­stand art?” It was­n’t a week lat­er that we found our­selves in the store­room at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, let­ting the tiny baby choose a lith­o­graph for her­self, which has hung over her bed all her life.

Fam­i­ly is excel­lent. It’s fun­ny to me to see us all take our places, the same places we always take, in good times and bad. It gives me a nice sense of con­ti­nu­ity. And now that we’re back home in Lon­don, I know the old places are still there like squares on a chess­board, and every­one knows the rules of where to go. We just have to get all the pieces on the same board at the same time. What a rare treat it was.

But truth be told: Iowa also con­tains some very odd things. I will nev­er for­get being a new girl­friend and turn­ing up in Water­loo to find, of all things, a “Grout Muse­um.” I said in won­der, “Are there enough kinds of grout to jus­ti­fy a muse­um? Or was grout invent­ed here, or some­thing?” Silence pre­vailed. Final­ly some­one said, “Kris­ten, the Grout fam­i­ly endowed the mon­ey for the muse­um. It’s filled with price­less his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments about sci­ence.” Oh.

And get this: hot LEGS. No, not hot wings, which we’ve all had and enjoyed (or not) in our times in places like TGI Fri­days, or Den­nys, or what­ev­er hor­ror the town you’re vis­it­ing con­tains. I myself adore hot wings, any­where, of any descrip­tion. But hot LEGS? This is what dieti­cians wor­ry about when they ana­lyze the diet of the Mid­west of my home­land. If you can get it big­ger, you’ll get it big­ger. So hey: it turns out the lit­tle roundy bit on a chick­en wing? You can super­size that and you get a drum­stick! I hate to say it made me laugh. Prob­a­bly the next time I’m there I’ll have some.

Well, in any case, the hol­i­day is over and real life beck­ons. As in the much-vaunt­ed, looked-for­ward-to, nay hyped open­ing of the new Pri­mark depart­ment store at the cor­ner of Park Street and Oxford Street. Open your mouth wide. Take a deep breath. Now… YAWN. Yep, a big yawn. Hordes of peo­ple, every­one fight­ing over the next sequined or ruched thing made of some not-cot­ton fab­ric. But Avery and I were the only peo­ple who did not exit with a bag filled with mer­chan­dise. We escaped in mor­tal fear.

Tomor­row John comes back from Iowa, and we head imme­di­ate­ly to Birm­ing­ham for the British Show Jump­ing Cham­pi­onships! VIP tick­ets, for my birth­day present, so we must pack tuxe­do, for­mal black dress for me (darn, no one remind­ed me to diet this month), Avery will be a vision in Mor­gane Le Fay.

And before I go, I have to tell you the most suc­cess­ful menu of my week. It involves, strange­ly, one dish being depen­dent on anoth­er. At first I thought this was cheat­ing, that my risot­to would nev­er taste the same for you as it did for me, because you would­n’t have the fresh roast turkey drip­pings I had. But then John’s mom and I real­ized, they can if I tell them to! So here is the per­fect com­fort menu for peo­ple who don’t want any­thing chal­leng­ing, or expen­sive, or with hard to find ingre­di­ents. And it’s DELI­CIOUS. Keep in mind the ingre­di­ent list is for the whole DIN­NER. Take it with you to the supermarket.

Roast Turkey with Mush­room Risot­to and Broccolini
(serves five peo­ple awful­ly hap­py to eat din­ner togeth­er in Iowa)

1 large turkey breast, on the bone (not split, crucially)
6 tbsps butter
4 tbsps olive oil
1/2 tsp each: dried basil, oregano, papri­ka, gar­lic salt
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
4 tbsps minced onion
1 1/2 cup arbo­rio, or risot­to rice
two hand­fuls baby porta­bel­la or but­ton mush­rooms, chopped roughly
1/2 cup white wine
at least 4 cups chick­en broth (canned!)
1 cup fresh grat­ed pecori­no or parme­san cheese
1/2 tbsps fresh thyme leaves (not the stems)
3 bunch­es broc­col­i­ni, trimmed and rinsed
fresh ground pep­per, and salt to taste

So here’s what you do. Two and a half hours before you want to eat, pre­heat your oven to 325 degrees. Spray an oven-safe dish large enough for the turkey breast with non­stick spray. Lay the turkey breast in the dish, sprin­kle with herbs and place 3 tbsps of the but­ter, in pats, along the top of the breast. Roast for two hours.

Mean­while, mince your gar­lic and onion and tear off your thyme leaves. Grate your cheese. Trim your broc­col­i­ni and lay it in a skil­let cov­ered with 2 tbsps of the olive oil, and some salt.

Half an hour before you want to eat, place the remain­ing but­ter and olive oil in a heavy-bot­tomed saucepan. Melt and saute the onion and gar­lic, then toss in the rice and stir till com­plete­ly coat­ed. Add the mush­rooms. Add the white wine and stir over low-medi­um heat till absorbed. Now, add the chick­en stock a bit at a time, maybe half a cup at a time, and stir con­tin­u­ous­ly as you do so, adjust­ing the heat so the liq­uid is absorb­ing steadi­ly but the mix­ture nev­er spits at you. If you have a will­ing and gra­cious moth­er-in-law, she could do this while you do the oth­er bits and pieces.

Ten min­utes before you want to eat, put the heat on under the broc­col­i­ni and stir with tongs, lift­ing up the stalks so they get saut­ed gen­tly on both sides. Mean­while, get the risot­to to the con­sis­ten­cy you want (I like wet but not run­ny), and remove from heat.

HERE’S THE MAG­I­CAL PART. Take the turkey breast out of the oven and drain all the cook­ing liq­uids from the dish into the risot­to. It will be a mix­ture of turkey juices, but­ter and herbs. Sim­ply per­fect, and you can’t get that depth of fla­vor any oth­er way. Stir gen­tly, add the cheese and the thyme leaves and taste for salt and pepper.

Carve your turkey breast and you’re in busi­ness. Enjoy.