In my family, a Sunday roast is a happier alternative to mushy verbal outpourings. And, goodness knows, we all need a bit of kindness on a plate these days
Remember the saffron and garlic mousse with mussels? If you read this column last month, you’ll know that in the final days of 2022, I went to Henry Harris’s new restaurant, Bouchon Racine, hoping these never-to-be-forgotten wobbly pyramids, for which I’d often longed since he closed his old place eight years ago, might be on the menu. In fact, they weren’t. But, as you’ll also know, any sense of disappointment on my part was fleeting: a pin prick that lasted only as long as it took to order my (delicious) rabbit in mustard sauce.
I try not to abuse the very small amount of power that comes with writing a column like this, but when Harris emailed me after that one appeared, joking about how he’d better get practising, saffron mousse-wise, I was shameless. I wrote back, telling him the date on which I’d booked another table (bagging one, incidentally, isn’t easy these days; his restaurant, above a pub in Clerkenwell, is now more popular than Harry Styles). No pressure, I said, but if your moulds and bain-maries happen to be handy … I mean, come on! As Nancy Friday and many other heroines of the 1970s taught us, sometimes a girl must ask for what she wants.
