Birthday Treat

Steve’s birthday is four days before mine, so we get a whole week to celebrate and last week we went to Kent and East Sussex.

When travelling, the road is wider than it is long.  Not only are there all of the new places to discover and experiences to have, but also the rich inner stirrings of memories, associations, feelings and new connections being made.  I feel steeped in the experiences of those six days.  Here are some of the things we did:  camped (Steve’s first time!), visted a medieval castle with a moat; saw Marc Chagall’s stained glass windows in a little church in Kent; bought a fish poacher (our very own!); had a guided tour of Farley Farmhouse, the home of photographer/model/gourmet cook Lee Miller and her artist-curator husband Roland Penrose, by their son Antony and grand-daughter Eliza; bought my wedding dress; toured the site of the Battle of Hastings (1066); visited Sissinghurst Gardens; found the grave of E. Nesbit, one of my favourite writers; fell in love (me) with a spiral staircase in a Modernist building; watched the lights of Brighton Pier come on at sunset and took no fewer than 500 photos between the two of us.

One of our very special birthday treats was a night in the luxurious 4-star Spa Hotel in Royal Tunbridge Wells, an elegant 18th century mansion dating back to 1766.  The prefix “Royal” dates to 1909, when King Edward VII granted the town its official “Royal” title to celebrate its popularity over the years amongst members of the royal family. Indeed, Queen Victoria had stayed at the Spa Hotel three times.  Royal Tunbridge Wells is one of only two towns in England to have been granted this (the other being Royal Leamington Spa).  The Spa Hotel today looks just as it did in the postcard (sans Edwardian croquet players).

Steve had made the booking as a surprise and there was a bottle of champagne and a bowl of fresh fruit waiting when we checked into our room.  We had eaten very well the previous few days between restaurants and gourmet meals on our camping stove, but this night’s meal took the cake.  We ate in the Chandelier Restaurant in the hotel that night.  We dressed up for dinner and had a laugh with all of the waiting staff from the bread boy to the wine waiter (who admitted he was afraid of the scary Italian maître d’).  We ordered Chateaubriand which we have both always wanted to try, but hadn’t yet.

Ali, who carved the steak at our table and served the vegetables, went and asked the chef why it was called Chateaubriand and gave us a handwritten explanation.  The Chateaubriand steak is a recipe for a particular thick cut from the tenderloin, which, according to Larousse Gastronomique, was created by personal chef, Montmireil, for Vicomte François-René de Chateaubriand, (1768–1848), the author and diplomat who served Napoleon as an ambassador and Louis XVIII as Secretary of State for two years. This dish is usually only offered as a serving for two, as there is only enough meat in the center of the average fillet for two portions.  It was exquisite.  Steve likes his meat medium-rare and I like mine medium.  The chef managed to cook this big hunk of beef medium on one side and medium-rare on the other.  All of the vegetables were cooked to perfection and the jus had the perfect soupçon of Madeira.

Steve had also scheduled me in for a spa treatment on the afternoon that we left.  It was a lovely, pampering finish to our birthday week away.

The heart of our home

Steve and I each have our studio/work spaces on opposite ends of our home.  The kitchen is right in the centre, at the heart of our home.  It’s our shared studio where we make creations from food, sometimes separately, sometimes together.  I keep my laptop in the bookcase and do an awful lot of my blogging at the kitchen table. The night before our housewarming party a couple of weeks ago was the big test for using it as a shared space.

The menu for the party all began (and originally ended) with Posh Nibbles, eg  olives, sea salt & balsamic vinegar crisps, homemade gougeres and cheese straws, garlic & herb roulade, Carr’s water biscuits.

It was Steve who said ‘Let’s make a poached salmon’ and the whole concept was instantly elevated to a new level.  The final menu became:

Poached salmon in aspic
Pork, juniper and pistachio terrine
Aubergine purée with pomegranate and almonds
Roasted spelt, red pepper and pistachio salad
Tuscan potato salad
Beetroot and goat’s cheese tart
Leek and gruyere tart
Meringues, fresh berries and cream
Tarte aux abricots
Frosted brownie

While Steve poached the salmon and made the terrine, I made the brownie, apricot tart and roasted the vegetables for the tarts and salads.  It was good fun. Our kitchen is very spacious and we can clear the table for an additional work surface.  At about 9 o’ clock, we went out to the White Horse, our local, for a takeaway stone baked pizza.  We amused a couple of our friends when we said we’d been cooking all evening and had come out for some dinner.

Here’s some of the party food, followed by a the recipe for the star of the show.

The poached salmon was quite impressive to behold and, according to Steve, relatively simple to prepare.  Our fishmonger, Fishes, in Exeter lent us a salmon poacher and serving platter.

Poached Salmon in Aspic

• A 6-7 lb. salmon, gutted
• One bottle of white wine – Chardonnay or Burgundy
• Fish stock, about 2 litres
• An onion, sliced
• Two egg whites
• Gelatine, one packet
• Cucumber, sliced thin
• Fresh curly parsley
• Cherry tomatoes
• Peeled, cooked shrimp
• 1-2 lemons, sliced thin

Place the salmon in the poaching pan, scatter with sliced onion and pour over the bottle of wine and fish stock.  Add enough cold water to just cover the fish.  Bring the liquid to the boil. Boil for two minutes and then turn off the heat.  Leave the fish, covered for a few hours to cook through. Let the fish cool in the liquid.

Drain the fish and remove the scales and skin using the side of a knife blade.

Strain the poaching liquid into a saucepan, using a chinois or a colander lined with cheese cloth.  As the stock will be made into aspic, you should clarify it so it is beautifully clear and sparkling.  This is accomplished by beating egg whites into the cold stock, then heating it to just below the simmer for 15 minutes.  The egg-white globules dispersed into the stock act as a magnet for all its minute cloudy particles.  These gradually rise to the surface, leaving a crystal clear liquid below them.

Aspic (or meat jelly) is made by adding unflavored gelatine to clarified stock in the following proportion:  1 envelope of gelatine for 2 cups of liquid.  Sprinkle the gelatine over the hot stock and stir to dissolve.

To decorate the salmon, Steve sliced the cucumber into transparent slices using a mandoline.  Then he brushed on a layer of aspic and arranged the cucumber slices into an overlapping fishscale pattern, finishing with a final coating of aspic.  Then the salmon was chilled overnight in the fridge.  We had to remove the head and tail to make it fit, but these were cleverly ‘re-attached’ the following day by concealing the join with a layer of cucumber slices and brushing with a final coating of aspic.

The salmon was garnished with parlsey, tomatoes, lemon slices and cold shrimp.

To accompany the salmon, I made a Lemon Tartare Sauce and a Creme fraîche and Dill Sauce.

The star of the party

Neither of us got the chance to sample all of the food on the night of the party because we were pre-occupied with showing our guests around the flat and making sure they had everything they possibly desired. But we had really good leftovers for a couple of days.

A good thing to do with leftover salmon is to make an Alfredo Sauce with some lemon juice and capers, stir in chunks of salmon and serve over tagliatelle.  I will post a couple of other recipes sometime later on.  The beetroot and goat’s cheese tart and the frosted brownie were particularly fine.

On the back burner

We had roast chicken for Sunday lunch and guess what that means, ladies and gentlemen?  Chicken stock.  Yup, the simmering carcass has been perfuming the house all evening.  After another hour, I’ll strain out the bones, add leftover roast potatoes, onions and mushrooms, some haricots verts, a bit of pepper and salt and . . . .  Voila! Chicken soup.

One of the loveliest things about soup (besides eating it) is the process of making it.  Putting everything into a pot and leaving it to simmer for a few hours, stirring it occasionally, sipping the broth, adding a pinch of this and a splash of that, nibbling a vegetable to gauge its doneness.  Is it soup yet?  Not quite .  .  .  .  aah, yes.  Now, it’s time to make a batch of cornbread or crisp up a baguette, ladle it into bowls, pour a glass of wine.  The soups that I love to make are not fast food.  The long, slow making of it nourishes the soul as well as the body.

At times, within my artist-self, I still get caught up in doing rather than being.  Focussing on the goal and not the process. Forgetting that the essence of being an artist is who I am and how I encounter the world, not what I make.   I must admit to feeling slightly lax as an artist these past few months.  Production- wise anyway.

But cut myself a break!  I have moved a couple of times since last October and haven’t had a dedicated studio space for the past nine months.  Since April, Steve and I have been busy, busy, busy as bees setting up home in our flat.   I brought my batterie de cuisine and a couple of pieces of furniture and Steve has been living on his boat for the past three years.  We’ve pretty much set home up from scratch.  Yet there have been shimmerings in the back of my mind of “Why haven’t you  .  .  . You should be .  .  .  Look at what s/he’s done  .  .  . “

But creating a home is like making a work of art.  Steve and I both adhere to the maxim of William Morris – “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” and it truly has grown into an oasis, a peaceful and beautiful retreat from the world.   We’re having a housewarming party this weekend to celebrate our home and it will be the first of many welcomings and gatherings of friends.

And a few days ago I found a box in my studio with some pieces, ideas, beginnings of artwork.  These also have been on the back burner, simmering and bubbling away.  Now that I have the vessel – my studio and time, I can assemble all of the components and see how these beginnings and glimmerings will transform into finished pieces.

Over the past few months, I’ve held them in my mind’s eye, mentally adding ingredients gleaned from here and there.  Precious Metal Clay, gold size and bronze powder, new fonts, feathers and some sheer packaging material from an Argos box – perhaps an inner layer for a transparent quilt?

Ingredients

The nicest time

A couple of weekends ago, we had our first houseguests.  My third cousin Courtney (whom I’d never met) and her friend Natalie.  Two of my mother’s sisters, my Aunts Ruth and Iris had six children each and I have countless 2nd and 3rd cousins, mostly on the East coast of the US.

We met them at Salisbury train station (thanks to Facebook I positively ID’d Courtney as the train pulled into the station).  We went to Stonehenge and Avebury and out for a pub lunch on a beautiful, hot summer afternoon.

Stonehenge

Natalie and Courtney

One of the great things about having visitors is the opportunity to explore and discover new things in our own backyard.  The next day, Natalie and Courtney had been online and suggested an outing to the coast via Dartmoor.   First stop was a walk across Dartmoor to Jay’s Grave.

There are many variations on the tale of Jay’s Grave, but the story at the heart of it remains the same. Kitty Jay was a 19th century farm worker who became pregnant and hung herself when her lover disowned her. In those days suicides were buried at crossroads in order to confuse their spirits, so that they couldn’t find their way back to haunt the living. The twist to this legend is that even now, fresh flowers appear on Jays’ Grave every morning, but no one knows who leaves them, even though rumours say they’re left by pixies.  For lots more on Jay’s Grave and all things Dartmoor, visit Tim Sandles’ Legendary Dartmoor.

Jay’s Grave

Along the path to Jay’s Grave, we came across a huge oak chair.

It was built n 2006 by Dartmoor sculptor and woodworker Henry Bruce.  Only locally sourced, hand hewn green oak was used for the 6 metre high chair which was jointed using the old, traditional mortise and tenon joints. The location was chosen because it provided a spot where people could stop and stare at the wide-spreading moorland landscape below.  As with most works of art there is an underlying message and in this case it is one of ambiguity, that being the unattainable. The sculpture can be recognised as a chair but because of its size it is impossible to sit upon it – I want doesn’t get.

But that didn’t stop us from trying -

My little compact camera really washes out the sky when I shoot landscapes.  Here’s a great one Steve took with his Fuji bridge camera.

After Dartmoor, we went to Blackpool Sands, a pebble beach in a lovely bay capped on both ends by a rocky promontory.  After a pretty good lunch of hamburgers and fries in the Venus Cafe, we walked on the beach and scrambled across to the rockpools.  I’d forgotten how much I love to be near the ocean and had the nicest time contemplating the sea and sky, walking along the shoreline and sifting through the pebbles for treasures.

Us

I filled my pockets with stones and feathers .  .  .  .

Solitude

Nesting

Relationships are all about compromise, right?  After several months of commuting 180 miles between the Westcountry and the Midlands, Steve and I have decided to find a place together.  No better way to put compromise to the test than negotiating where to live.

Steve has been living in Birmingham (population 1,000,000) for the past 30 years and is used to being able to walk outside and find The Guardian, a cup of Joe and pretty much whatever the heck he wants on his doorstep.  After 11 years of living in farm cottages and converted barns (population 1-2 adults, some spiders, the occasional bat or wren, mice 2-3, cat 1, mice 0), where my next door neighbours lived a ½-mile away and the nearest shop was 15 minutes away, I’ve gotten used to peace and quiet and wide open spaces.

So, we decided to look for somewhere in between a secluded abode and a city centre.  We thought long and hard for about 5 minutes about me moving up to the Midlands, then we started to have a look around Devon.  We’ve settled on the ‘fairly small’ market town of Moretonhampstead (population 1700).  It lies on the edge of Dartmoor and is notable for having the longest one-word name of any place in England.  It also has all of the earmarks of civilisation:  two tearooms, butcher/baker/delicatessen, four pubs, library, hospital, gym, newsagent, Co-op market, cafe, craft shop and an antiquarian bookseller.

Moretonhampstead: the Big Smoke

We’re in a penthouse apartment on the top floor of an Edwardian house with views overlooking the higgledy-piggledy rooftops of Moreton and out to the the hills and fields of Dartmoor and up to the endless, ever-changing sky.  Last weekend was moving weekend.  Boxes are all unpacked and we have a trip to IKEA planned soon.  The phone/broadband won’t be connected for another fortnight at least, so I am snatching computer time at the library when I can.

We can see the new next door neighbours from our living room, a pair of jackdaws who are also just moving into a terraced chimney.

Building a nest

Coming home

Wine Enemy #1

“You’re under arrest for serving Chardonnay with asparagus”

Many people consider asparagus wine’s worst enemy. It’s a fact that asparagus, a member of the lily family, contains the sulfurous amino acid methionine. This compound, together with the plant’s intense grassy flavor, can make many wines taste dank, vegetal, or just plain weird.

“Asparagus makes everything you drink with it taste green,” said Sid Goldstein, author of The Wine Lover’s Cookbook. “The worst white wine with asparagus is Chardonnay, which not only tastes vegetal, but also exaggeratedly oaky.”  His solution?  Steam the asparagus until almost done, then grill it and serve it with Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio. The grilling process takes the bitter edge off the greenness of the asparagus. Then you can create a harmonious balance by serving it with a wine that also has light green flavors.  Another solution is to use seasonings and sauces to bridge the flavors of the asparagus and the wine, e.g. hollandaise or mayonnaise.

Steve and I cooked a spring lunch last Sunday with asparagus as an appetizer.  Asparagus isn’t in season in the UK for another 3 to 4 weeks,  but we found some from Spain – a bit closer to home than Peru! We decided that the best thing to do was grill the asparagus and serve it with a creamy dressing.  I made mayonnaise and let Steve have his way with the asparagus.

As Julia Child says, “You should be able to make mayonnaise by hand as part of your general mastery of the egg yolk.  It is certainly far from difficult once you understand  the process, and after you have done it a few times, you should easily and confidently be able to whip together a quart of sauce in less than 10 minutes”.

POINTS TO REMEMBER when making mayonnaise by hand:

Temperature – Mayonnaise is easiest to make when all ingredients are at normal room temperature.  Warm the mixing bowl in hot water, then dry it to take the chill off the egg yolks.  Heat the oil to tepid if it is cold.

Egg Yolks – Always beat the egg yolks for a minute or two before adding anything to them.  As soon as they are thick and sticky, they are ready to absorb the oil.

Adding the oil – The oil must be added very slowly at first, in droplets, until the emulsion process begins and the sauce thickens into a heavy cream.  After this, the oil may be incorporated more rapidly.

A note on oil – I use 3 parts sunflower oil to 1 part olive oil.  This keeps the mayonnaise light, but imparts a depth of flavour from the olive oil.

Mayonnaise aux Fines Herbes

• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon dry or prepared mustard
• ¾ cup sunflower oil
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 2 tablespoons boiling water
• 3 to 4 tablespoons of fresh, minced green herbs, such as chives, tarragon, basil or parsley

I used an electric mixer on a moderately fast speed.

Beat the egg yolks in a warm bowl for 1 to 2 minutes until they are thick and sticky.  Add the lemon juice, salt and mustard.  Beat for 30 seconds more.

Add the oil drop by drop, either with a teaspoon or rest the lip of the measuring cup on the edge of the bowl.  Stop pouring and continue beating every 10 secoonds or so, to be sure the egg yolks are absorbing the oil.  After 1/3 to 1/2 cup of oil has been incorporated, the sauce will thicken into a very heavy cream and the crisis os over.  Then beat in the remaining oil by 1 to 2 tablespoon dollops, blending thoroughly after each addition.

If the sauce becomes too thick and stiff, beat in drops of lemon juice to thin it out.  Then continue with the oil.

Beat the boiling water into the sauce.  This is anti-curdling insurance.  Season to taste with more lemon juice, salt, pepper and mustard as needed.

Blanch the herbs for 1 minute in boiling water.  Drain, run cold water over them and pat dry with a towel.  This makes the herbs look greener and they will not turn sour in the mayonnaise.  Stir them into the finished mayonnaise.

Grilled Asparagus

• 1 bunch of tender apsaragus
• Olive oil
• Lemon zest

Trim the stalks and steam the asparagus for about 8 to 10 minutes.  Brush with olive oil and grill for about 2 minutes, turning them once.  Remove to a serving dish, annoint with unsalted butter and sprinkle with fresh lemon zest.  Serve immediately with mayonnaise and a chilled Pinot Grigio.