back with a flourish

I'm just happy to have the blog back. Some of you (the hundreds who emailed me, perhaps, among them?) may have noticed my hiatus these last few days. Let me explain.

A new reader to the blog, who happened upon it through an entirely accidental group of keywords in a search engine, expressed in no uncertain terms that there was FAR too much transparency, I think they call it, in my use of, say, real people. Real places, real whatever. So I have spent a laborious several days excising REALNESS from many stories and situations that, frankly, most of you never paid any attention to anyway. The scenarios in question were the least interesting of any I submit for your perusal on this blog, and so while it was very boring to do all the stuff I had to do to Change The Names To Protect The Innocent, it also makes almost no difference to the fascination quotient of the blog itself. I actually had some fun making up names, so there you go, lemons into lemonade. WHEW.

So I'm back! All search engines are GO. We're in business.

Most importantly, I must address the long-delayed (OK, three days) publication of my recipe for a new and extremely green soup. The beauty of this soup is that you can clear your conscience of that full, unopened bag of spinach you bought a week ago and still... haven't used. It's not fresh enough for salad, or even for pasta, but soup? Heck yes.

Spinach and Leek Soup
(serves six-ish for a starter)

4 tbsps butter
5 leeks, white parts only, sliced, washed and drained
1/2 white onion, chopped roughly
4 cloves garlic
at least 5 cups chicken stock
1 large bag or large bunch spinach leaves, carefully washed
1 cup light cream
salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and sweat leeks, onion and garlic till soft. Pour over chicken stock to cover, generously, and simmer for 45 minutes. Add spinach and stir carefully till softened, then whizz with a hand blender till completely pureed. Add cream and season to taste.

John suggests perhaps a drizzle of cream at the end to garnish. You could serve with crispy toast and goats cheese, but we were pretty happy standing up around the stove drinking it out of a ladle.

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More later, but right now I must continue watching coverage of Boris Yeltsin's funeral. It is bringing back such strong memories of our time living in Russia in the early 90s when Yeltsin was the sweetest thing you could imagine, or at least so we thought, and we were all running around with breathless interpreters, discovering Russian artists and privatising the government willy-nilly. Much has been revealed to be foolish or at least quixotic about our actions, but we were young and it all sounded like a good idea back then. What riches, in memory.