In Which We Are Monarchists (and lots of photos of Strawberries)

THE VERY SHORT LIST OF THINGS THAT MAKE ME GO "RAH, AMERICA" OR AT LEAST FEEL A SMALL SPARK OF PATRIOTISM

1. The movie National Treasure starring Nicholas Cage and Diane Kruger

2. The movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets 
starring Nicholas Cage and Diane Kruger

3. Paintings by Albert Bierstadt or various of the Hudson River School

4. The music of Aaron Copeland

5. Acadia National Park

6. Eating lobster

You've probably guessed by this point, dear reader, that the 4th of July is not really a day upon which I or my sainted mother dress up in our best red white and blue and run around with sparklers* singing God Bless America. We don't do bald eagles. We don't do tailgating. We don't do hamburgers and steaks on the grill, Nascar, stars and stripes forever, baseball and crackerjack, ice cream sundaes, and we DEFINITELY don't do beaches and suntan lotion and coolers full of beer and potato chips. (If there is a hell, its a crowded beach on a 95 degree day with only one public bathroom, a book you thought you would like but you hate by page 3, and tuna fish sandwiches that contain celery.) 

We're just . . . we're just PILLS, you guys. 

*I would run around with sparklers, actually, any day of the week, but I'm a pyromaniac and have been forbidden from having, holding, or running around with sparklers or flame in general for the rest of time. 

Anyway. I decided that this year I would express our relative antipathy towards all things AH-MUHR-ICA (and our greater than average predilection for all things British) through culinary means. I could channel a bit of political frustration, try a few recipes, and Mum would get to sample the results. 

Hence. 

A MONARCHICAL WEEKEND THAT JUST HAPPENED TO FALL ON THE FOURTH OF JULY AND WAS FILLED WITH THE MOST BRITISH FOOD I COULD THINK OF

Victoria Sponge

Sausages and Mash

Carrot Slaw with Mustard and Dill Dressing

Eton Mess

Strawberries and Cream

All of this, it should be noted, was eaten in the (newly renovated! gorgeous! clean and organised!) library with a framed photo of Her Majesty in pride of place. The one nod to America we did make was by watching Jaws which: a) is a truly awesome movie, b) that scene when the dead fisherman comes out the bottom of the boat into Richard Dreyfus' face STILL scares the crap out of me, c) you can't do a proper Massachusetts accent unless you grew up here, Hollywood needs to figure that out already and stop making actors try because it's just painful, d) Mum totally forgot that Robert Shaw gets eaten which is kind of huge overarching plot point and so that was fun when I was all "yeah but remember when he's halfway in Jaws' mouth?" and Mum is all "wait he dies?" and I'm all "WHAT DO YOU MEAN WAIT HE DIES OF COURSE HE DIES HE'S ROBERT SHAW IN JAWS YOU KNEW HE WAS GOING TO DIE FROM THE BEGINNING" and she was all "well I forgot."

VICTORIA SPONGE

The recipe for this came, OF COURSE, from Nigella. 1. After the birthday cake drama of last week, I've sort of been sleeping with Nigella's books under my pillow. 2. If I'm going to bother having an All Britain Baking Weekend, I'm damn well going to use British cooks and British cookbooks. It would be silly to do otherwise. 

The traditional Victoria Sponge is, duh, sponge cake, with jam and whipped cream between the layers, and dusted with powdered sugar. If you are a Wikipedia junkie like me, here is the entry and it's requisite esoteric facts. Nigella's recipe is blissfully easy, a one-mixmaster beauty, and it's possible to make the batter, throw it in the oven, run upstairs and take your third shower of the day because it's 80 MILLION DEGREES OUTSIDE and be back downstairs in time for it to be golden and done in the pans. 

Luckily, the cats don't care that when you pull the cake out of the oven
the only items of clothing on your body are oven mitts.

Now. A note on the filling. Under "normal Victoria Sponge" circumstances, I would have OF COURSE used whipped cream. (I consider "normal Victoria Sponge" circumstances to be a large garden and/or tea party where there are at least 8 people in attendance, and nobody has any stupid dietary restrictions like "I'll just have a sliver oh no that's too much" or "Just give me the top half of that slice, the bit without the whipped cream." Under these circumstances it would be totally acceptable to used whipped cream because the majority of the cake would be eaten in a short period of time, and therefore the whipped cream would not do what whipped cream does best, unattended, in hot weather: dissolve into cream-laced-water and turn your cake into a sodden mess.) However, this cake was going to the library, and that meant that it had to be able to sit in the break room, outside the fridge, for a good few hours, without dying. SO. 

What looks like whipped cream but is not whipped cream and will hold up like a CHAMPION? Why, Boiled Frosting of course! Now, there may be a few out there who have just fainted out of sheer horror. I'll give you a moment to collect yourselves . . . But under the circumstances it seemed like the best possible option. I needed something fluffy, sweet, and light. Something that would PAIR with the jam and cake rather than OVERWHELM them (like a buttercream for example). Something that would be able to hold up an entire 9-inch-diameter sponge cake for longer than 10 minutes. Granted, the sweetness was a source of concern for a while; it's a lot sweeter than whipped cream, even sweetened whipped cream, and I ended up holding back a bit on the sugar, and using jam that had only fruit juice in it, hoping that it would all balance out in the end.

So. Victoria Sponge! Super easy, super fun, super pretty, SUPER BRITISH.

ps OF COURSE the jam was Strawberry. I mean. Do you have to ask?


And now some pictures of potatoes:

SAUSAGES AND MASH

Sausages and mash was the first thing that came to mind when I was figuring out what to make. But I decided to go all Heston Blumenthal and do DECONSTRUCTED Sausages and Mash. No, not to the extent that I filled freeze-dried potato skins with pork-infused air or anything, but to the extent that what I made was not a mound of mashed potatoes with a mound of sausages on top. What I made was Oven-Roasted Potatoes with lots of rosemary, olive oil, and sea salt, Grilled Onions, and Grilled Veggie Sausage.The result was less stodgy, much more fragrant, and allowed me to break in my brand-spanking new Grill Pan.

The Carrot Slaw, incidentally, was going to be something completely different. It was going to be a Watercress and Sugar Snap Pea Salad with Lemon Olive Oil dressing, but when it came time to make it, Mum was all "what about those carrots you made a few days ago those were delicious" and I was all "what you mean that desperate five minute empty fridge salad I made for you when I realised all we had in the crisper was half a bag of julienned carrots and a lot of mustard?" and she was all "yeah I loved that" and I was all " . . . well . . . ok then."

And now for Pudding . . . 

Here's another Wikipedia entry for you: ETON MESS.

The making of this was rendered entirely possible and entirely delicious by the farmstand up the road which, as of this weekend, has THE BEST WILD STRAWBERRIES ON THE EAST COAST. I'm not kidding.

Eton Mess is Meringue, Whipped Cream, and (traditionally) Strawberries.

I'm beginning to understand why it's lasted as long as it has.

Meringues, incidentally, SUPER EASY AND SUPER FUN TO MAKE.

I will be doing a lot of them this summer. They are so light and fluffy and really require minimal work. You can even watch the World Cup at the same time as you are beating the egg whites. 

 Plus it's SO MUCH FUN to make little poofy cloud mounds on a baking sheet.

I was worried that I'd burnt them initially. They went brown a lot faster than I was expecting, and I had a small panic attack that I'd burnt them and (again) wasted a ton of eggs. 

However, I am incredibly happy to report that they were NOT burnt, and indeed remained gooey and marshmallowy on the inside, which is exactly what a good meringue is supposed to be. 

So I didn't have to sleep in the barn. Which was nice. 

The assembly might be the best part, actually. It's literally one, two, three, and done. I'm SO going to use this for dinner parties later this month, and just have a trey of meringues and a bowl of whipped cream and a bowl of strawberries and let everyone do it themselves. It's so much fun that way. 

A Monday-morning conversation between me and the woman who runs the farmstand up the road: 

Woman: Oh, hi, it's you again!

Me: Hi, yeah, I came for more strawberries.

Woman: You got a pint on Saturday, right? 

Me: Yeah. 

Woman:  . . . 

And thus begins, dear reader, what I am henceforth calling "The Summer of Wild Strawberries" or "The Summer Where Beetle Dies (Happily) of Strawberries." 

There are worse ways to go.