Leftovers #197
In about eight hours, I’ll land at Calgary airport, where I’m likely to burst into tears upon meeting my new godson. In the meantime, I’ll be watching the second season of Pachinko, writing a tone of voice document and a content strategy deck, and listening to Rooney like it’s 2003. It’s going to be a week of lounging by a lake with Canadian beers and stealing some solo moments as the kids nap. Then off to Vancouver Island for a surf trip and up to the mountains to meet my friends’ toddler for the first time, and back to Calgary to meet another friend’s brand new baby. A lot of kid time. I’m strapped in.
Arriving in Canada always feels like an exhale. There, I can revel in fresh produce and I’m already thinking about what to cook for everyone when we arrive at the lake. Barbecues by the water mean Dustin’s signature pork chops and potatoes doused in green sauce. Mornings mean breakfast burritos and home fries studded with beetroot. Lunches look like cold noodles and feta salads. Happy hour inevitably looks like glasses of cold Canadian rosé and salty fries. Dinners will involve lime miso vinaigrette drenched salads, salmon rice bowls and batches of beans. Ky makes the smoothies and the coffees, feeding me adaptogens and everything that could hydrate my pint-puckered skin. I provide the food. Dustin mans the barbecue. I’ll hold the baby while Ky swims in the lake or takes a moment to stretch. I’ll sleep in the bunk bed with my favourite toddler. She’ll let me lie on the dock while the kids nap. We all play our roles
Good things to consume (bodily)
A lot of crab was consumed this week. From crab claws and fries at the Old Coastguard in Mousehole, to a perfect crab and courgette salad at St Eia, to a crab, fennel, courgette and green sauce linguine eaten with a bottle of Galoche gamay at home. Crab pasta recipe dropping next week!
A reminder that leftover boiled potatoes can be cubed up, fried in a cast iron pan with a little mix of onion/garlic powder, salt and whatever green vegetables you have in the fridge (runner beans for me). Perfect with soft scrambled eggs showered with pecorino and some hot sauce. If I had it, cheddar soft scramble would have been the play.
On my last evening in Cornwall until September, I gathered a group of wonderful women on the beach for a seafood feast of a barbecue. There were monkfish skewers, big prawns, seared scallops, chargrilled courgettes and corn-on-the-cob, but most crucially, a pot of cooked white rice which I crisped up in lots of salted butter in a cast iron pan. As much as I love a potato, I will only be bringing crispy rice to the bbq from now on.
Good things to cook this weekend
Possibly my favourite Korean meal is bossam – thin slices of pork belly wrapped in shiso/perilla leaves with a little dollop of ssamjang. My mum threw some on the bbq, but I like this recipe (even though it doesn’t give the skin much crunch).
How many ways can you roast a chicken, I know, but slathered in a green anchovy marinade then spatchcocked and roasted over potatoes is a good way to go.
Determined to make this crispy paella with prawns on the barbecue as soon as I return to Cornwall.
I love Cabbages World recipes, especially this Thai steamed fish. I want to drink that sauce.
Will be making sweet potato waffles for the family this weekend for sure – that with sliced avocado, some cottage cheese and a fried egg? Yep.
Ok fine I’ll use up a whole bottle of good olive oil to confit tomatoes with garlic and ginger, then confit some tuna steaks and chuck it into some pasta (but no I won’t be making the pasta from scratch, let’s be real).
Good things to consume (culturally)
Really enjoyed this Middlebrow pod episode with the architecture critic Kate Wagner. I love that she has spent ten years critiquing McMansions on her meme page but admitted she has a certain tenderness for their wildly unnecessary, mix-and-match forms.
I went to see The Odyssey, and I just don’t think Christopher Nolan is the exact director for me (and I was admittedly a few bottles of wine deep at the time of watching). I enjoyed Emily Wilson’s review, titled An Uncomplicated Man on London Review of Books more. I’m not a discerning film critic, but she struck a note that reminded me of my one piece of vocal commentary muttered under my breath about 209358 hours into the film: fucking men.
As in his previous films, Nolan is interested in the discontinuities of space and time, in magic, tricks, craft, technology, rivalry, substitution, masks, miscommunication, what we remember and what we choose to forget. Yet again, survival is portrayed as a kind of triumph. Yet again, there are long, claustrophobic scenes of drowning and near-drowning, and technically impressive episodes in which buildings are engulfed in flames and vehicles explode. Yet again, we watch a male character’s desperate quest to recover and/or avenge a female love object. I had hoped that Nolan’s affinity with these Homeric themes might push him to new creative heights, and enable him to conjure more believable characters. But The Odyssey features his usual combination of grandiosity and superficiality.
My friend Nicole gifted me a brilliant book by Charlie Porter (author of Nova Scotia House) about the impact of fashion during the Bloomsbury Set era. Each chapter revolves around a different member, from sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell to E.M Forster, emphasising the political and cultural significance of clothes and how it has affected us now. In the introduction, he mentions Woolf’s persistent line to friends: ‘Bring no clothes’, as a statement rebelling against the restrictive, anti-feminist fashion of the time. As Porter says, Woolf encouraged guests to simply come as they are.
Went to two separate art shows over the weekend – both curated by New York artist-in-residence at Porthmeor Studios, Chelsea Pettyjohn. I was absolutely obsessed with her solo show and how she displayed all her references; and in her other show, co-curated with another artists, they decided to take over a church and integrate pieces by local artists within a space that is quite possibly the opposite of a white-walled gallery: maximalist, historic, drenched in colour, decorative and ecclesiastical. I loved!!!
