Dinner party from Fifties Hotel Dining Room chapter (part 1)

Cream of Celery Soup

Sole Veronique

Peach Melba

Sunday morning, and a sweet smell of alcohol hung heavily over the flat. And for once, it had nothing to do with weekend depravities, but instead was due to the white wine syrup in which four silkily depilated peach halves were sousing themselves silly. Meanwhile, next to them on the hob, a head of celery and two chopped onions were sweating gently away (think a spot of badminton on the back lawn before G&T time).

I had got up early (say, around eleven), donned my kimono and set about blanching the fruit briefly to aid with peeling, praising myself on my providence in having purchased an extra peach, since one of them seemed quite reluctant to give way to steam or knife (Cook’s Note 1: never count on your ingredients all behaving as you have been led to believe they will. The first peach fairly slipped out of its skin, so smooth and flawless and perfectly blushed pink; the second was sulky and uncooperative, and after a minute or two’s hacking was looking like a bloodbath in a barber’s shop; but luckily I had a magic third one up my sleeve, and I smiled the smile of the wise as I fished it from the boiling water and had my way with it). This done, the peaches were halved and lain in a warm bath of wine and sugar, there to poach for ten minutes and to be left alone to cool.

The soup veg duly softened, and in I went with the celery salt from a pretty glass jar, chopped potato and 1 litre of stock made from last Sunday’s chicken (sorry, but I’m allowed to be smug in my own kitchen and my own blog!). It all boiled away obligingly for about half an hour, then was liquidized and then… What fastidiousness, my lord… Sieved in batches and with endless patience, until all the roughage had been eliminated, and all that was left was a pale pistachio green liquor, almost worryingly thin to my eye. I admit to a coarse palate when it comes to soup. It’s not something I make as a matter of course, and when I do it’s the thick vegetable fill-your-boots-type soups of my motherland you can stand a spoon in. I’d decided to make this recipe because the idea of celery soup sounded so utterly farfetched, and possibly insipid, and I wanted to make things interesting and a touch exotic for myself. I left it at that for the time being, reheating and adding the cream and some white pepper (yes, the spice rack has been stocked! Also from a pretty glass jar, which pleases me more than I can reasonably explain. Am I just ever so slightly a packaging tart...?) just before serving.

I had had a disaster the day before, arriving at the fish counter at Wholefoods Kensington, fully expecting six beautiful scallops in their shells to be sitting there with my name on them, only to discover the fishmonger on Friday duty had omitted to specify “shelled.” So the cornerstone of my evening, those adorable little Coquilles St-Jacques a la Parisienne, with their white ruff of mashed potato and unctuous béchamel centre, was off the menu! It was 5pm on Saturday, and I made one desperate call to Chalmers & Gray, but to no avail. I was, of course, devastated, but you might be pleased to hear I didn’t let myself down by throwing a frop or panicking. Oh no, I gave every impression of being a seasoned and unflappable hostess, and not to be blown off course by this calamity, scanned the counter for an alternative, deciding on Sole Veronique instead.

So the following day there I was, with four delicate sole fillets in one hand, and two spiny fish skeletons in the other. Again, I praised myself for my presence of mind, and for remembering, on spec and without a shopping list (I’m not particularly neurotic on the whole, but for some reason I can’t seem to go out for a bulb of garlic without writing it down on a piece of paper, lest I forget when I reach the greengrocer’s and come back with an aubergine instead), to buy the mushrooms and shallots for the fish stock, and the double cream and the seedless grapes for the sauce. Then I looked at the recipe and realised I had omitted to get the one thing I couldn’t easily find within an easy radius of home: dry vermouth. I checked the drinks cabinet, utterly pointlessly, since I am not a drinker of martinis. Then I texted my downstairs neighbour, who was also one of my dinner guests this evening, asking her to pick up a bottle of said spirit at Oddbin’s in Covent Garden, only to be informed that it is not open on Sundays (!). So I fretted, and I fropped, and I panicked.

Then I got dressed and walked to all the corner shops and Costcutters within spitting distance of home. I can report that anyone seeking Vodka or Whisky in the vicinity of Bethnal Green tube will find themselves spoilt for choice, but that won't come as a surprise to any of my friends... Finally, and forced to think laterally, I pointed to a high shelf and asked for a lonely bottle of Pernod to be brought down. It was caked in dust, but it had the requisite aniseed kick about it. I walked home weaving great skeins of comfort around the words necessity and invention.