what to cook, and a new crush!

How do you get three peo­ple to eat a pound of spinach? Mix it with a ton of cheese, throw in a gen­er­ous sprin­kling of gar­lic and you’re pret­ty much there. The only rule is that the cheese must be a melt­ing kind, not a crum­bling kind, although in a pinch I have to say I think most cheeses will melt. Last night’s ver­sion used up the tail end of a Gruyere from our din­ner with Vin­cent, and a large wedge of a Dutch Gou­da from a won­der­ful cheese importer called UnieKaas, love­ly and tart. And keep the name of the recipe simple.

Cheesy Spinach
(serves 4)

1 pound baby spinach, washed and spun dry (many bags of spinach are already thus)
2 tbsps butter
2 tsps flour
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1/2 cup light cream or evap­o­rat­ed milk, per­haps a lit­tle more
1 cup grat­ed cheese (Edam, Mon­terey Jack, Gou­da, Gruyere, etc.)
cel­ery salt to taste

Run the spinach in batch­es through the food proces­sor until chopped fine, but not mushy. Set aside.

Melt the but­ter in a large skil­let and gen­tly fry the flour until bub­bly. Add gar­lic and gen­tly fry until soft­ened. Don’t wor­ry if the floury but­ter sticks to the skil­let because you can scrape it off when you add the cream. Do so and stir until mixed. The cream will be absorbed right away, but do not fret. The tex­ture of this dish all amal­ga­mates grad­u­al­ly when the liq­uid from the spinach is released.

Add the cheese and the spinach to the skil­let and begin gen­tly stir­ring over low heat. Sea­son with cel­ery salt to your taste and stir gen­tly until the mix­ture turns bright creamy green and the spinach is soft­ly cooked.

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Here is my dilem­ma: my daugh­ter and I have incred­i­bly high salt tol­er­ance, but my hus­band does not. We all love the cel­ery fla­vor impart­ed by cel­ery salt. How to get enough cel­ery fla­vor with­out get­ting too much salt? It is tricky. I may try cel­ery leaves next time.

This dish will make any­one, even chil­dren, sit up and beg. It’s an inven­tion of mine that skips the typ­i­cal bak­ing step advised by many cheesy spinach recipes, and as a result I think more of the iron must be retained. With a huge pile of sim­ply grilled baby lamb chops, or a slight­ly pink grilled pork ten­der­loin, or a roast chick­en, you’re good for din­ner. If, how­ev­er, you feel the need for a tru­ly deca­dent pota­to dish, here’s the one for you.

Alig­ot Gratin
(serves 6)

1 3/4 pounds bak­ing potatoes
3 tbsps unsalt­ed but­ter, room temperature
4 gar­lic cloves, minced
3/4 cup milk
1 pounds fresh moz­zarel­la, chopped fine
1/4 cup grat­ed Pecori­no cheese

(option­al topping)
2/3 cup chilled heavy cream
2 tbsps drained bot­tled horseradish

Peel and boil pota­toes until cooked through and soft, about 40 min­utes. Drain and mash with but­ter, gar­lic, milk and moz­zarel­la over a low heat until the moz­zarel­la melts into long elas­tic strands.

Either divide the alig­ot into six but­tered 1‑cup gratin dish­es, or one large 6‑cup gratin dish. Top with grat­ed Pecori­no. Bake at 350F (180 C) for 20 min­utes, or add option­al top­ping by whip­ping the heavy cream, mix­ing it with horse­rad­ish and spread­ing over the alig­ot. Put under a broil­er until gold­en, about 4 minutes.

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Because I was feed­ing a child who I guessed would not like horse­rad­ish, I left the top­ping out, but I can imag­ine that with the top­ping the dish would be even more inter­est­ing, and the per­fect foil for beef.

Well, let’s see, there was an adven­ture at Lost Prop­er­ty last week, involv­ing an unusu­al bit of inven­to­ry. I let myself into the chilly room piled high with the usu­al unnamed gym kit, unnamed lacrosse sticks, swim­ming cos­tumes, school diaries, geol­o­gy text­books and the like, only to find, lined up demure­ly on a shelf… not one, not two, not three or four, but FIVE good-sized foil-wrapped choco­late fish. Hmmm. As each girl came in look­ing for the stuff she had left ran­dom­ly all through­out the school, I asked, “Did you hap­pen to lose a choco­late fish?” The ques­tion was guar­an­teed to raise a smile! Would you turn in five choco­late fish to Lost Prop­er­ty if you found them? That takes real hon­esty. The week after next will fea­ture the sale of unnamed Lost Prop­er­ty, which promis­es to be the social event of the term. Whether or not the fish are on offer remains to be seen.

Over the week­end I met up with my dear friend Jo for a spot of shop­ping in Isling­ton. I know the pow­ers that be are try­ing to squeeze out the small mer­chants of the back streets, in favor of more reli­able (but much more bor­ing) chains, but there are still intrigu­ing bits and pieces to be had. I found a porce­lain dish with a her­ring on the lid, near­ly an exact repli­ca to one giv­en me by my friend Cyn­thia many, many years ago who suf­fered a fatal blow dur­ing one of our moves. So hap­py to have a Mr Her­ring back on the desk, hold­ing paper clips! And a love­ly sil­ver brooch with a pony on it, for Avery. We had a cred­it crunch lunch at a crazy serves-every­thing vague­ly Euro­pean bistro and talked our heads off, then walked her to the Almei­da in time for her to catch the mati­nee of Duet for One with Juli­et Steven­son (she lat­er report­ed that it’s a tremen­dous pro­duc­tion), and I made my way home, in my usu­al glow of post-Jo opti­mism. She is a lady to whom life has not always been kind or easy, and yet there is an irre­press­ible joy in her eyes and lilt in her voice that makes her a most inspir­ing and jol­ly com­pan­ion. How I wish she lived in Lon­don and our get-togeth­ers could be commonplace…

Oh, oh! I have a tick­et, just for me, to see James McAvoy in Three Days of Rain! A week from today. Although my crush on dear James has abat­ed some­what, I have nev­er seen him live and feel this could be very excit­ing. It’s an Amer­i­can play so we’ll see what sort of accent he man­ages. John flat­ly refused to go, even though it’s about archi­tec­ture; he’s feel­ing cred­it crunchy and as such not in the mood to accom­pa­ny me to a crush­fest. It’s a good thing I’m very secure and won’t feel a fool all by myself. I will remem­ber to report, so that you may go by your­self if it’s worthwhile.

Last night found us at school to sup­port one of Avery’s class­mates in quite a spec­tac­u­lar dance show, not some­thing I would nor­mal­ly attend being the com­pleat Philis­tine when it comes to dance, but Avery real­ly want­ed to be there for her chum, so off we went. Why does even a dance per­for­mance that my child is not IN make me want to cry? It’s in part the inno­cence of these girls, their ener­gy and shiny hair and sweet smiles, and also a nos­tal­gia for what John and I termed the Lost Com­mod­i­ty: youth! Avery’s maths teacher came out for a much-antic­i­pat­ed turn as a tap dancer! Just priceless.

Today I’ve been wrestling all day with my recipe file, espe­cial­ly the ancient and hilar­i­ous recipes that I inher­it­ed from my dad’s moth­er. I think I’ll get a chap­ter of my cook­book out of these file cards, detail­ing recipes like Veal Scalop­pi­ni cooked in, I’m not mak­ing this up, Sprite. And a shrimp dish whose last instruc­tion is “Try this by your swim­ming pool.” I haven’t the slight­est idea what that even means. How about “Tuna Glop”? I know it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble that “glop” means some­thing deli­cious in the orig­i­nal Swedish, but I’m afraid it’s got hot tuna writ­ten all over it. Then there’s a recipe from my Aunt Andrine termed suc­cinct­ly “Rocks,” which looks to be a type of very heavy cook­ie. The last instruc­tion on that card is “Drop on a tin.” And dump in the garbage, pre­sum­ably. It is a lot of fun. But even a lot of fun makes for an exhaust­ing day, and my head is spin­ning. Writ­ing class beck­ons on Fri­day, so I’ve sent my piece off to my long-suf­fer­ing class­mates and now must decide what to cook for them when they come. I have about a thou­sand recipes on my desk for things involv­ing a can of mush­room soup, so I know what’s on my gro­cery list. Yum yum.

And, final­ly, it’s offi­cial, I have a new crush! Are you all famil­iar with the Irish musi­cian Damien Rice? He is divine. Bro­ken-heart­ed, sex­i­ly unshaven, and even respectably aged, born in 1973. I dis­cussed this last bit with Avery who agreed with me that there is some­thing wrong with peo­ple hav­ing been born in the 1980s. “They’re too old to be chil­dren, but too young to be tru­ly adult,” she opined, and I had to probe. “What makes some­one tru­ly adult?” I won­dered. “Is it Dad­dy trav­el­ing all over the world and mak­ing deci­sions that cost or made peo­ple gatril­lions of dol­lars when he was 22?” “No,” she said, “that’s not grownup.” “Is it me writ­ing a 400-page paper when I was 26?” Appar­ent­ly not. A thorny prob­lem to mull over, nib­bling on an after-school snack for some days to come.

But I digress. My point is, you must lis­ten to Damien Rice and join me in crush world. It’s not that he’s hand­some, exact­ly, but his face is appro­pri­ate­ly mourn­ful and there is just noth­ing as won­der­ful as that Irish accent. I have high hopes that we’ll get Avery off to Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Dublin, in about 6 years and when we vis­it, the accents will be all around.