With the National
Society of Newspaper Columnists annual conference finishing on Sunday morning
30th June, I had three days to fill in before returning to New York
on the 3rd July. Although totally unplanned, I had a few ideas:
·
Stay on at
Hartford, see the sights and do some writing
·
Go back to
New York City early – there was still plenty to see
·
Visit
Boston and generally have a look around the New England region
On Saturday afternoon
I asked Suzette if there was any chance of us catching up before I headed back
to Australia on July 10th. To my unexpected delight, Suzette invited
me to stay with her and her family for a few days immediately following the
conference.
Sunday morning I had
breakfast with the effervescent Joani from Chicago, who also invited me to come
and stay with her if I possibly could before heading home.
Suzette and conference
coordinator extraordinaire, Luenna and I motored out of Hartford just after
10.30am Sunday morning. We stopped for a quick lunch before Luenna dropped us
at Suzette’s lovely home in Milton before heading off to catch her flight from
Boston.
Suzette’s daughter
Star and husband Joe plus their two beautiful daughters, Bella and Lulu arrived
later in the afternoon. That evening Suzette and I drove down to Cape Cod to
spend the next three nights along with Star, Bella, Lulu and Suzette’s husband,
David, at their summer home near Falmouth.
Cape Cod is the
easternmost tip of the New England state of Massachusetts, jutting out into the
Atlantic Ocean and includes the large islands of Martha’s Vineyard and
Nantucket.
Settled by English
colonists in 1660, the town of Falmouth is now a popular summer destination
about 124km south of Boston.
After the sensory
overload of New York and the action-packed NSNC Conference at Hartford, the
tranquillity of Suzette and David’s beautiful Cape Cod home was a welcome
relief. It was great just to talk with Suzette that evening and swap our life
stories.
The next morning I
joined Suzette, Bella and Lulu on a walk with Mojo the dog – Suzette’s adorable
sixteen year old beagle/cocker spaniel cross before spending a pleasant couple
of hours writing… that’s one of the best things about staying with a fellow
writer – you don’t have to explain yourself or feel guilty for not talking for
an hour or so.
Later we took the
girls for a walk to one of the nearby beaches; Suzette pointed out Bourne Pond
along the way and explained the joys of “clamming”. A favourite summer pastime
for many residents and visitors to Cape Cod, clamming involves wading around in
knee-deep water with a clam rake and floating bucket. Once you’ve raked up your
quota of fresh clams, you can return to the kitchen and cook them up in
innumerable ways – from simply fresh; steamed; stuffed; fried; grilled or
cooked up in a chowder (a thick soup or seafood stew).
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| Bourne Pond |
Like me, Suzette loves
to cook and her kitchen at her summer home certainly reflects this. I offered to
cook a traditional Australian roast lamb dinner for Suzette’s family while I
was staying with them as a way of saying thank you.
A trip to the
supermarket that afternoon saw me amassing most of the ingredients I required:
potato, sweet potato; butternut pumpkin; onions; tomatoes; green beans and
sugar snap peas; mint; rosemary; sage; basil; garlic and lemons. Finding the
lamb took a little hunting. A second trip to Falmouth the following day and I
managed to get two fresh, butterflied (boned-out) legs of American lamb.
Growing up on my parent’s
sheep station, lamb but more often, mutton was a staple food; we ate it twice a
day, seven days a week. Every Sunday without fail my mother roasted to perfection, a delicious
leg of mutton for midday dinner.
The key to a good
roast is to take your time and cook it slowly. Inserting slices of garlic and
sprigs of rosemary into little pockets I’d cut into the lamb, then squeezing
generous quantities of fresh lemon juice all over, I placed the meat into the
oven to roast at 150°C for about three hours… then headed outside
for a hit of tennis with Suzette and David.
With Suzette kindly
offering to be my sous chef for the afternoon, together we prepared the
vegetables. The secret to great roast vegetables is to par-boil them first in
salted water for a few minutes before transferring them to an oven dish,
smearing them in butter and popping them into the oven for a couple of hours.
Saving the salted vegetable water to make the gravy with later.
I also made a tomato
pie – a simple dish of chopped fresh tomatoes and onions mixed together with
some finely chopped fresh basil with slices of bread torn up over the top and
baked for an hour or so. With steamed fresh beans and sugar snap peas as our
greens of choice, the feast was completed with homemade gravy and fresh mint
sauce.
I may have introduced
Suzette, David, Star, Bella and Lulu to the joys of rural Australian-style lamb
roast dinner but Suzette and David introduced me to the epicurean delights of
the fresh lobster roll.
Our second trip into
Falmouth to find the elusive legs of lamb had us stopping by a local café for
lunch. There I was introduced to what I suspect could be America’s greatest
ever sandwich creation and certainly a noble contribution to world cuisine… the
lobster roll.
The freshest and most
lightly toasted hotdog roll, generously buttered and then stuffed full with
great chunks of fresh Maine lobster and mayonnaise; this culinary masterpiece is
enjoyed all up and down the New England coastline.
My time with Suzette
and her family passed all too quickly and I felt as though I had made lifelong
friends. Somewhat reluctantly at 6.30am on Wednesday 3rd July, I
caught the bus from Falmouth back to New York…
 |
| With our matching Macbook computers and mutual love of cooking, Suzette and I were clearly destined to meet. |
