Hobson Who?

My friend the dauntingly good cook Elizabeth was coming for dinner. The dish was sausages and lentils. The butcher thought either the mild Italian or the Farmer’s would work. When faced with the dilemma of either or, if the subject is jewelry, desserts or sausages the answer is to have both.

I cooked the plump pairs for about 15 minutes, set them aside and sauteed an onion and some garlic until the onion softened. In went a handful of sliced mushrooms. When they were done I tossed in about half a cup of lentils and covered it all with boiling water, put the lid on and left them to cook. When the lentils were nearly done I added splash of red wine and nestled the sausages in to warm up.

Served with a salad of peppers and asparagus on a bed of boston lettuce, this was intended to feed the two of us, but the sausage twins were too much for both of us. The remainder made a fantastic soup base. I cut the leftover sausages into coins and tossed them and the lentils into a pot in which I had cooked carrots, celery and quartered new red potatoes. In went four cups of chicken stock. The result? Happiness by the spoonful.

The Farmer’s sausage were definitely the better match for the lentils, but do I regret my indecision? Not a whit - and that guy Hobson? He’s never coming to my place for dinner.

Energetic Victorians

Auguste Welby Pugin, the name may not ring any bells, but he is largely responsible for the most famous clock tower in the world and most of the fittings of the English Houses of Parliament. He designed and built dozens of churches, influenced the course of architecture throughout the British empire, helped establish the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and laid the foundation for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts & Crafts Movement - all before he was 40. 

He finds a worthy biographer in Rosemary Hill. God’s Architect, Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain is magnificent in the depth of its scholarship and the breadth of context the author provides. Hill sees her subject with sympathetic clarity and tells his story with gentle humour.

The White Garden

Just wanted to give a nod to this mystery by Stephanie Barron while Canadian gardens are white with snow. The garden of the title is among Vita Sackville-West’s creations at Sissinghurst. The premise is that Virginia Woolf did not immediately walk into the River Ouse with stones in her pockets after she left her suicide note on the mantel at Monk’s House. The historic fact that her body wasn’t discovered for two weeks gives some heft to this otherwise lightweight bit of entertainment as our heroine pursues the why of the suicides of both Virginia and her grandfather, who worked as a gardener as Sissinghurst as a young man.      

Poster Child for an Improvised Life

When I was a teenager one of the most popular bits of poster wisdom was, “If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it doesn’t it never was.” Today the vox populi likes to quote, to the point of chanting, Eleanor Roosevelt, exhorting us all to “Do one thing everyday that scares you.”

I have had a nomadic life thrust upon me, I who treasure my nest am without a garden, sleep where unfamiliar things go bump in the night, and cautiously try to find my way around other people’s kitchens. Scary. 

Attempting new recipes in unknown territory didn’t seem like a good idea, so when I promised to make lunch yesterday I decided to improvise on a Nigel Slater dish I’d made a couple of times before, the caveats being I was doing it from memory and couldn’t get all the original ingredients . . .

Here’s how it went. I sauteed separately a diced onion (should have been a couple of shallots, I think), three slices finely chopped bacon (should have been pancetta, I think), and a cup of sliced mushrooms. I grated six ounces of emmenthal (should have been gruyere, I think). I mixed the shredded cheese with the sauteed onion, a little of the bacon and a couple of tablespoons of finely chopped parsley. I cooked four pork loin steaks two minutes each side, layered on the mushrooms and then the cheese mixture, which should have been stuffing, and briefly grilled them (they weren’t thick enough to stuff). I deglazed the saute pan with sherry and made a warm salad dressing with the remaining bacon, olive oil and white balsamic vinegar. I cheated with some prepared microwaved mash potatoes, which were decidedly gluey, but at least they looked the part.

Letting go of people is hard. Letting go of dreams is even harder. It’s downright scary. The challenge of the nomadic life is not knowing what ingredients will be to hand, and not mourning for too long what is left behind.

In Praise of Late Bloomers

Mary Wesley’s novels are a mercurial mix of abandon, wit and cruel darkness. Many people, including her biographer, Patrick Marnham think her middle works, like The Camomile Lawn are her best, but my favorite is her first, Jumping the Queue. 

Most of the “post Jumping” books feature the beautiful, independent and unconventional Calypso. Having now read Wesley’s biography, Wild Mary, it seems to me that Calypso is Mary Wesley as she wished she had been, while Matilda, the heroine of Jumping the Queue is Mary to the bone, not just the stylish frock.

Wesley is credited with revealing to the younger generation that Larkin was wrong, sex didn’t begin in 1963. Long before Mary had three sons by three different fathers, and she probably couldn’t have told you how many lovers, two husbands, both of whom she respected, one of whom she loved. She converted to Catholicism and remained partial to the Latin rites while never shedding her liberal attitudes to sex or her scorn for hypocrisy. In old age she found herself impoverished and alone. Then, in a two week span, she sold two of her novels. She was 70. It’s a riotous, sometimes infuriating story, well told. 

I am writing this in England in mid-winter where crocus and daffodils are courageously reaching for the weak sun. They and Mary Wesley remind us we can’t always choose where and when we bloom, we can only seek to grow.

P.S. Podcast Bonus - Hear Mary

Here’s a link to the BBC Radio 4 website, Desert Island Discs Archive 1988-1991 for April 22, 1990, featuring Mary Wesley, wonderfully honest, indisputably brave.

The Most Important Meal, Or When Will it Be Morning?

Matthew Arnold of darkling plain fame used the term “touchstones” for moments of excellence in literature. I have touchstone moments in books, movies and life, ones that ring viscerally true. One is in Casablanca. Ilsa in a state of emotional exhaustion tells Rick that he’ll have to do the thinking for both of them. Our situations aren’t quite comparable. No Nazis around (that I know of) and happily I have a valid passport, but I have wished for someone to spell me with my emotional knapsack. I miss my dad. 

He gave me my first cooking lesson. Breakfast, and not just any breakfast, the full English: eggs cooked in the fat from the bacon, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms and a “fried slice”. Such is this meal’s fame that in Amsterdam pubs feel it's important not only to offer an English breakfast but to publicize that it is “cooked by an Englishman”. One pub felt it necessary to underscore this point with a supplementary sign guaranteeing an “Englishman on Duty”.

Well, in that case, fire up the toaster! In one of several pieces that are honestly unfinished, dishonestly “in progress”, I have a character who breakfasts himself out of depression. He eats breakfast three times a day until he’s ready to start again. I remember being 17 and heartbroken over a story I’d written. I’d got a great mark on it, but as I told my dad, “I put everything I know in that story.” I was written out. Dad removed his pipe long enough to growl, “Sandra, it’s not just the bad things in life that repeat themselves.”

I clutch that touchstone in the dark hours. It gets me through until it’s time for breakfast. 

Canadian, eh?

Canadians like to imagine we are hardy survivors, who according to Pierre Berton know how to make love in canoes. In fact most of us live in urban centres clustered along the 49th parallel and don’t know our J stroke from a J cloth. 

It is my long held belief that camping is simply housework in the worst possible circumstances. My lack of wood lore made me as uncomfortable as a rainy night in a pup tent when I came to resume work on a mystery set in northern Ontario circa 1960. This is how I came to read Cache Lake Country, Life in the North Woods by John J. Rowlands, illustrated by Henry B. Kane.

Originally published in 1947, the language is self-consciously quaint (animals are critters and aboriginals of few words) and yet it still feels artless because it has the random flow of a diary with no thought to segues. Rowlands takes us thorough a year month by month, sharing his observations of flora and fauna and giving advice on how to stay warm, fed and dry. 

He explains how to make moccasins, how to purify murky water and provides several recipes including one for salting blueberries. He tells you which species of woods are best for various paddling conditions: spruce for flat water, maple or ash for rapids. The optimum rate for sustained travel is 25 strokes per minute. But before you fall into the temptation of double entendre, this is a chaste and manly book. The only women folk are aunts and sisters who live at a distance and send useful packages of tinned goods.  

Daube-be-daube-be-daube

I am currently cooking in a cramped, ill-equipped kitchen with a fridge that rumbles like a Panzer division. I was trying to think of something I could make Marion for dinner that wouldn’t leave me exhausted and frustrated.

Then I remembered a dream I had many years ago. My friend Carolyn and I had been discussing dreams —  in the Jungian sense, not the stars in our eyes sense. Virginia Woolf appeared to me wearing one of her magnificent brocade robes and said, “bear but a touch of my hand and you will be upheld in more than this.” If you recognize this is what the Ghost of Christmas Past says to Scrooge, Mr. Freud will give you a cigar. 

Quick, To the Lighthouse! The answer to the dinner question was obvious: a daube. The kitchen was not a room Virginia made her own. In fact, she didn’t spend a lot of time eating, poor thing. Leonard would spend hours trying to spoon consomme into her while reassuring her that what she’d written that day was the best thing she had ever done. 

Despite her obvious tragic aspect, it’s hard not to smile at “The beef, bay leaf and wine — all must be done to a turn.” She makes those of us who’ve cooked and eaten this dish (but not the bay leaf) squirm a little more on her behalf by adding that it will be ruined if it has to be kept warm.

This is sloooow cooking. For 12-24 hours, marinate four pounds of stew beef in 750 mls of red wine with a chopped onion or two, carrots and celery with a bouquet garni of herbes de provence, orange peel, a couple of crushed cloves of garlic, whole cloves, peppercorns and of course, a great big bay leaf. Normally you would tie these up in a piece of cheese cloth. I didn’t have any, so I used a tea bell. Stir occasionally.

Remove the beef, reserving the wine mixture. Pat the beef dry and brown it in olive oil in batches until you’ve done it all. Mix a tablespoon of tomato paste into a half cup of stock and use this to deglaze the pan you browned the beef in. Bring the wine mixture to a boil, then simmer for five minutes. Put the beef, wine and stock mixture, and a handful of niçoise olives in a Dutch oven, cover and cook in a 300 degree oven for at least two hours. Stir in a couple of tablespoons of orange juice. Cook for another half hour.

I served my daube with polenta, but mashed potatoes or, if you are feeling truly decadent, a gratin would be wonderful. Yes, Virginia the leftovers are great.

Neglected Master of a Neglected Art

It would do my heart good to think I helped someone enjoy poetry, so I must tell you about Samuel Menashe’s New and Selected Poems. They are vivid and accessible, they crystalize observations with poignant clarity: weeping windows, impudent sparrows darting among the pigeons. Though one of the best in the collection is about life as felt, rather than seen:

Now

There is never an end to loss, or hope

I give up the ghost for which I grope

Over and over again saying Amen

To all that does or does not happen —

The eternal event is now, not when

Alone on the Vine

Today we are united in the conviction that we are the odd one out. In my own case, I can’t help feeling that my pleasure in composting, of seeing winter flowers and the detritus of dinner being turned to the good makes me marginal. Then there is my love of arcane cooking methods and of making things that can be readily bought - canned tomatoes and fruit preserves, which brings me to grape jelly. 

Every fall at Brock the air in residence would be filled with the smell of Concord grapes and accompanying clouds of fruit flies. When I first met them I thought these were good-for-nothing grapes. In Ontario they seldom ripen fully and so have a gelatinous centre. They have big seeds and lots of them. As students we bought them by the basketful and ate them wishing they were white and seedless.

If Concords were soldiers, they’d be infantry. If they were shoes they’d be sensible. In the years since I first met them a lot of the Niagara Peninsula’s Concord vines have been decapitated and grafted with fancy-dancy European wine producing cultivars, a Frankenstein story with a happy ending. 

My neighbors Bev and Frank re-introduced me to the Concord. Her mum still runs the family farm on Lake Erie. I am the lucky recipient of their autumn surfeit. The plentiful seeds that make it a grape best eaten out of doors are full of pectin, which is what makes jam and jellies set. To make grape jelly, as with so many things in the kitchen, you need more time than skill. 

Put two or three small plates in the fridge. Warm four cups of sugar in a 250 degree oven. Take four pounds of grapes, washed and stemmed and bring them to a boil with a little water.  Add the warm sugar a little at a time, stirring to fully dissolve it before adding more until it’s all incorporated. Reduce to a simmer, cover and let it cook for about half an hour. Drain in a strainer lined with cheese cloth and let it stand for at least three hours or overnight. Measure the resulting syrup. You want to know how much you have in excess of four cups, so you have a general idea how much to reduce it by. When you have reduced it to approximately the desired amount you can begin to test for jell point. 

The easiest way to do this is with a thermometer. Naturally, I don’t do that. I like to test for jell point by putting a few drops of the jelly syrup on one of the chilled plates. Draw your finger through the syrup. If the halves remain separate, you’re at jell point and can proceed to bottling. The grape mash, of course, goes into the compost. There, now you’re one of me.

Clear Sighted Mollie

I so enjoyed Mollie Panter-Downes Minnie’s Room, that I borrowed the copy of Good Evening, Mrs. Craven, her wartime stories, which I had given to Naomi before she had time to read it. Bad form, I know.

It’s easy when you read a lot of history to feel condescendingly towards the people who lived it. Our 20/20 hindsight must surely be superior. Panter-Downes is fully aware of the social revolution the war is fueling and in no doubt that there will be no going back. That wiped the smug smile off my face and replaced it with one of pure delight. 

Panter-Downes can break your heart with one carefully placed word, as you will see if you read It’s the Reaction. None of these stories take an obvious turn; each explores the human condition with subtlety and compassion: envy, sibling rivalry, the romanticization of war, the strain and difficulty of getting through life with generosity and grace. There are many novels that accomplish far less than these 21 graceful stories. 

Of Mothers and Invention

I am not a professional chef. I am an ambitious amateur, whose reach oft exceeds her grasp. At a loss for what to make for dinner, I thought about things I’ve enjoyed recently. I thought about what was in the fridge. Laughably, I thought about what might be quick. The result was an improvisation I’m calling Prosciutto Two Ways.

The chef at Vertical Restaurant makes prosciutto and melon a feast for the eyes. The melon is cut in ribbons and interleaved with the prosciutto to form a rose garnished with fresh mint. Not for one moment did I think I was capable of fabricating faux flora out of cantaloupe, but I had an idea: weave the ingredients as you would the lattice on top of a cherry pie. “It would have worked if it hadn’t been for the--” as the designer of the Titanic said. 

A peeler produced slices that were too thin. With a knife the slices were too thick. I didn't have a mandolin. Where are those K-tel slicer-dicer guys when you need them? The result was disappointing visually, but it tasted fine. I have learned since that the chef uses a salami slicer.

Next I shredded prosciutto and sauteed it in olive oil with garlic, removed the prosciutto and reserved the flavored oil. I parboiled broccoli florets, drained them and tossed them with the reserved oil, then on to a cookie sheet where I topped them with slices of bocconcini and put them under the grill. I then cooked pasta and tossed it in a red sauce, which I topped with the grilled broccoli and cheese, then garnished it all with the frizzled prosciutto. Wheeew. I think I was trying too hard, as the contortionist said to the fireman. But I’d do it all again. No, I wouldn’t. I’d use asparagus . . .

Minnie’s Room

Persephone is Demeter’s daughter and the unwilling wife of Hades, who by allowing her to return to her mother once a year provides us with spring; and whose return to her husband is signaled by autumn. Thus Persephone Books restores neglected works, mostly by women of the last century to their place in the sun. As objects each one is a work of art with end papers inspired by period wallpapers with matching bookmarks.

Number 34 in the Persephone catalogue is Minnie’s Room a collection of the post-war stories of Mollie Panter-Downes. Each one delivers insight - not with a bang or a whimper. Pain is endured with gentle humour. In The Exiles, Colonel and Mrs Stanbury are relocating to South Africa where their money will go farther. Mrs Stanbury thinks of her husband, “Maybe he was too old to adapt himself to the changes - or they were too old, as she loyally, not entirely truthfully, put it for she was a gentle soul.”

In these stories we are shown the world in a grain of sand. In the title story a room is a castle. In What are the Wild Waves Saying? a girl discovers an adult  truth in a glance. In I’ll Blow Your House Down a widow finds solace in an ugly dog whose less appealing owners buy her marital home. Panter-Downes' characters live ordinary lives, endure, persevere, compromise, and affirm love with the touch of the hand on the way to the unknown.

Gazpacho is Not the Only Soup, with apologies to Jeanette Winterson

With tomatoes ripening on the vine a young girl’s thoughts naturally turn to gazpacho, but with some leftover roast my soupish thoughts wandered further east. Vietnamese food is a fragrant study in contrasts. 

This soup starts with a combination of chicken and beef broth and oyster sauce infused with ginger, anise, cloves, cinnamon and fennel seeds. Rice noodles are soaked for about 20 minutes in cold water before they are boiled for two minutes. The broth is strained to remove the aromatics; the noodles are portioned into serving bowls, in goes the broth, some bean sprouts, slices of beef, all topped with chopped scallion greens and fresh basil and coriander. This is not a first date soup as there will be a lot of unseemly slurping. Light, but satisfying, it’s more a friendly, I’ve-seen-you-first-thing-in-the-morning kind of soup.

The long and the short of it

Autobiographies fascinate me, so it’s hardly surprising that I’m a sucker for a novel that assumes this form. I’ve read a lot of them: William Boyd’s The New Confessions, Anthony Burgess’ Earthly Powers, Mordecai Richler’s Barney’s Version, and of course the granddaddy of them all Tristam Shandy, but Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger is a revelation.

Taut throughout where these others occasionally lapse into turgid detail, Claudia Hampton tells us the history of everything including herself from her hospital deathbed. She makes no excuses, pushes away all sentimental comforts and exposes wounds as keen during her last days as when they were inflicted decades before. She isn’t always likeable and she sometimes gets things wrong. In short she is fully human. I imagine her remembering some deliciously barbed comment she made, and demanding with Leigh Hunt that 

“Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in!”

I don’t read a lot in translation, but the TLS recommended Javier Marias’ collection of short stories While the Women Are Sleeping, and because it specifically mentioned a couple ghost stories I had to give it a try. An Epigram of Fealty, while not specifically ghostly reminded me of M.R. James, as did The Resignation Letter of Senor de Santiesteban. But while the subject matter varied among these stories, the writing style did not, which may be a fault of the translation. Or not. I don’t know. It’s not without interest, but was for me more like a jar of something I wouldn’t really want to eat I’d pick up to examine out of curiosity, rather than an inviting dish.