july 2023
in which i said "i don't know" and then did something about it
Greetings and salutations! This is very late, I know, but I think the best thing to do is simply move on from that. If you’ve read this newsletter before you’ll know I had multiple deadlines in July and so the odds of the July newsletter publishing in actual July were always slim to none. If you thought better of me, well, you’ve learned something about both of us, haven’t you.
I had a really good July! It was intense and demanding work-wise but I also managed to have some fun! I gave blood for the first time! I saw the Barbie Movie! I saw Asteroid City again (twice!). I saw a film from 1973 called Psychomania, which was about a frog god cult and motorcycle gangs and it was deliriously bonkers! I ate some amazing food! I cooked some amazing food (more on that later). I signed up for French cooking school!
In the very first edition of this newsletter, I talked about how much I loved cooking but how I wasn’t actually very good at it because I didn’t learn the rules before I broke them – I deviated from recipes and substituted ingredients and lost track of time and overcooked things. Since then, I’ve been trying much harder to follow recipes and be really intentional in everything I’ve made and you know what? It turns out if you do that, you get really good, really consistent results.
Here's a thing I learned recently about Michelin starred restaurants – those stars are awarded not just because the food is inventive and delicious and uses the best possible ingredients, but because it is consistent. The reason most restaurants lose a star is because the food is no longer consistent – to earn a star, multiple inspectors visit a restaurant multiple times and it’s only if the results are consistently exceptional that a star is awarded. You have to be able to make the same good, high-quality, inventive things every time to get one.
And I want to be someone who delivers consistently good, high-quality, inventive things made with the best possible ingredients, whether that’s books or food or anything else.
So, I signed up for French cooking classes in the hope I can get proper technical skills from an actual professional. I also bought some proper cook books too; Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, and Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I figure the way to become better is to learn from the best.
And in the spirit of trying to be the best I can be, I also signed up for a photography course. Taking photos is another thing I really love, but as with cooking, it’s not something I have a great technical understanding of. I bought my camera, a Nikon D3200, with my first ever advance back in 2013, and I have taken some great photos with it, but I’m at a stage when point-and-shoot is something I should maybe move on from. So, come autumn, I am going back to school a little to learn some things.
I like learning a lot. I hope there’s always something I want to learn.
Projects I’ve been working on: I handed in the first draft of a book, and also the edits of a different book! I did it! Kind of! I had to ask for an extension on the third project, but I think that was the best thing to do, because now I have some breathing room to focus very hard on it. The weather is hampering the vibe though – the story is set in an unnaturally hot summer, and we are having an unseasonably wet one.
A weird thing happened though. I met a friend for drinks and we were talking about writing and she asked me if I thought I’d ever write a second world fantasy again, and I said no, I didn’t think I would. Two days later I woke up at 5am with an idea for a second world fantasy. By 7am, I had a two-thousand-word synopsis. And now I have five thousand words of a story that I DO NOT have time for. Go figure. I’m pretending to myself it’s my warm up exercise before I get down to editing. I’m pretending that that’s all it is, because I still have another contracted book to write this year, and two projects to edit, and two more to begin. And two short stories I want to write. I don’t have time for this.
This is fine.
In News two of my books are going to be assigned reading next year. Leicestershire Creative Library Service have chosen HER DARK WINGS to be in their 9 for 9 campaign next year, and Beaumont School have picked HOLD BACK THE TIDE as their Whole School Read for school year 23/24. This is really joyful for me, as it was school libraries and librarians that really fostered and encouraged my love of reading; I don’t think I’d be where I was today if it hadn’t been for libraries and librarians making books accessible and available to me and I love the idea it might come full circle and some reader out there might find something they need in one of my books.
Personal News-wise, I kind of already told you all the big stuff, which I see now was foolish. Mainly I have been honoring my promise to myself to stay engaged with culture and keep my creative well topped up with films and books and exhibitions and plays and maybe that’s why I had a consuming new idea. Maybe I did this to myself by filling myself right up until something new flowed out of me. What a fool.
I have Read an absolute TON of books though. Anthony Bourdain’s KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL, which made me develop a crush on him. I didn’t want to develop a crush on him because he is, of course, dead, and it feels futile to have a crush on the dead because the best bit about having a crush is the infinitesimal, however-impossible possibility they might somehow, some day, like you back, and of course that cannot happen if the crush is deceased. I did it anyway though, and started watching PARTS UNKNOWN and so the crush is cemented and I have to let it run its course. I also read MY FRIEND ANNA, Rachel DeLoache William’s first-hand account of her experience with Anna Delvey, and Emily Henry’s YOU AND ME ON VACATION. Then I read Emma Cline’s THE GUEST, Heather Parry’s THIS IS MY BODY, GIVEN FOR YOU, Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finley Boyle’s MAD HONEY, and finally Dizz Tate’s BRUTES.
I finished Succession and maintain I could have fixed Kendall Roy. He just needs someone who loves him best of all. I still haven’t watched season two of THE BEAR, because I am horribly aware that once I do then I won’t have it to look forward to, but I think maybe it might be tomorrow (Sunday 6th August), when I get home from cat sitting my friend’s cats. I think sitting on the sofa with hot chocolate and good pasta in the fridge waiting for me is exactly when to watch it, just before the week begins anew.
I have made so much food! I made French lentils from scratch and ate them with a fried duck egg! I roasted chickpeas with tagine spices and served them on Greek yoghurt with pan-fried salmon! I made Madeleines for the first ever time and got humps! The humps are very important and I got them, because I followed the instructions exactly.
Except I didn’t.
I substituted 23g of plain flour for cornflour to make them lighter, and added 2g of baking powder too, which is not the Julia Child way, but she also suggested using vanilla flavouring and I only had lemon zest to hand. BUT I did the research! I don’t like using self-raising flour in cakes because Nigella says that the baking powder in self-raising flour expires faster than the flour, so unless you use it up fast, it stops being potent likely before the best before date. So, she uses a mix of plain flour with baking powder for her cakes. And I know from experience that subbing a little plain flour for cornflour makes a lighter bake, which is what you want in a Madeleine. So I did the research and learned the science and then I made the changes and look. It worked.
But the recipe I want to share this month is tarte á la tomate et á la moutarde (tomato and mustard tart). I made the pastry myself and used Michel Roux’s rough puff pastry recipe, but exactly halved as I did not need over a kilo of pastry - I didn’t actually need all of the halved pastry, some is in the freezer.
To make the tart, you will need:
Two tablespoons of Dijon mustard
Two tablespoons of wholegrain mustard
One tablespoon of double cream
300g of nice tomatoes, sliced.
Enough rough puff pastry to line a 9-inch round baking tray.
One tablespoon of olive oil
Salt, cracked black pepper
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Grease the baking tray and spread the rough puff pastry in a pie pan and prick the bottom with a fork. Place the pan in the oven and cook for eight to ten minutes.
While it’s baking, slice the tomatoes into slices around 5mm thick.
In a bowl, mix two tablespoons of Dijon mustard, two tablespoons of wholegrain mustard and one tablespoon of double cream.
Remove the crust from the oven and lower the oven to 180°C.
Allow the pie crust to cool for ten minutes, then spread the mustard/cream mix over the base evenly, and top with the slices of tomatoes. Season with salt and black pepper and drizzle with olive oil.
Bake for 25-30 minutes.
Allow to cool slightly before serving with green salad and very cold white wine, if you drink wine.
And so, to the Magic. In the last month I’ve been thinking a lot about the magic of saying “I don’t know”, and all the power that gives you. It doesn’t feel like it at first, because I think we’re taught that saying “I don’t know” means we’re giving something of ourselves away, and saying that we’re ignorant, or uninformed, or foolish and we don’t want people to think of us like that. We don’t want to be vulnerable because of the gaps in our knowledge.
There have been so many times when I have pretended to know or understand something because I guess I didn’t want to lose face, and in doing that I think I missed the opportunity to learn something. I wonder how many times I’ve stolen chances from myself, chances of getting to know someone better, or letting someone talk about something they love, or of just learning a new thing, because I have been afraid of admitting it wasn’t something I knew and being thought badly of because of it. And there is SO MUCH I don’t know and I shouldn’t be ashamed of that, because every thing I don’t know is a chance to learn and understand it, and I should take those chances. It has taken me this long in my life to admit I need help learning things and that is something to be excited about. No more faking it. Now it’s OK if I don’t know, so long as I am open to learning.
So this month, I want you to think about what you don’t know, what you wished you knew, and whether there is a way you can let yourself be vulnerable enough to admit that, and maybe even try to change it. Can you open yourself up to the possibility of saying “I don’t know” and being willing to do the work to get to the place of knowing?
There is a magic in admitting you still have the capacity to be curious. There is a magic inherent in curiosity. In wanting to know how things work and being open to learning about them. But to do that, you have to be willing to admit that you don’t know. And, more crucially, that you want to.
It grows because you tend it x
p.s. paid subscriber posts will be back from next Sunday!