Timing

The more I cook, the more I realize that roasting a perfect joint or making a divine sauce is far less challenging that the wild logistics of timing. That is what I most admire in restaurants—the chef’s ability to multitask in the midst of mayhem and knives, to pass through unscathed and produce something spectacular. And our eminent chef repeats the process ad infinitum.

The magnitude of this achievement was brought home to me on the night of the party. I had spent all afternoon prepping veg and making sauces, organizing pans and strategizing over delivery. By 6:30 I was feeling positively cavalier, a glass of wine in hand, the beef merrily sizzling in the oven and all the trimmings ready to roll. But then something cracked—as it often does. I put the potatoes on to parboil and the water took far longer than I’d expected. We didn’t have a skillet big enough for the spinach. One of the Yorkshire pudding pans vanished into that gapping void of infuriating, untimely kitchen implement disappearances. With the joint up to its prime temperature and resting, things got really hectic. The carrots seemed to cook instantaneously while the Yorkshire puds threatened not to puff to satisfactory size. And the bloody potatoes hadn’t even gone into the oven yet.

As I stood over the potatoes fuming silently, Mother joined me and peered into the pot. “Oh no,” she commented. And then with unusual efficacy: “why don’t we mash them instead?”

And that, my friends, is why I love home cooking and enviously admire the abilities of the professional chef. Your friends are just gonna suck it up and smile if they were craving roast potatoes, but your customers—they will make that painfully aggrieved face (I’ve seen it many times and made it a few) and demand their money back.

So, with the help of Mother and her friend Steph, we made a beautiful, butter-rich mash. And it all turned out pretty much perfectly, even if the kitchen looked as though it were the front lines of a horrific battle. (“How did you manage to get leek on the ceiling?” Jenna marveled). But the food was good: a perfect joint, cooked to a rosy, rare hue, accompanied by the creamy heat of horseradish. The carrots, glazed in a slightly sweet reduction of chicken stock, butter, and sugar rubbed shoulders with leeks in a light white sauce which I had laced with vermouth, mustard, and lemon. Even the Yorkshire puddings rose admirably to the occasion despite my fears.

Ok, I admit that mashed potatoes felt slightly sacrilegious, and I found myself lamenting the loss of crispy roast spuds amongst the soft leeks and tender carrots, but they did the job alright. And across all of this we drizzled the dark and glossy gravy I had made from wine, stout, beef stock and the pan juices from the roast. It was rich and intoxicating with a minute bitter edge which acted only to accentuate the natural sweetness of the meat.

To finish we had a simple apple crumble and basked in a fog of wine and repletion. The key to a good crumble, I’ve decided, is to ban all attempts to make it a healthy dessert. No whole wheat flour or sugar substitutes as these result in a leaden, unpalatable crust (obviously I’m willing to be proven wrong, dear readers, if you have a stellar recipe). No, it’s all about piling on a mixture of white flour butter and sugar. This time I mixed a cup of slivered almonds into the crumble; they gave a nice, crunchy contrast to the melty fruit beneath.