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Gaga for Aga
The first one through the door the night of the party is Marc Thuet, one of Canada’s most respected chefs, who’s quickly enlisted to cook alongside my assistant, caterer Heather Baker. (When you have a cooker that runs the length of a two-metre stretch of wall, the proverbial too many cooks doesn’t count.) She insists on having her picture taken as they mould butter into quenelles. While I’m busy stuffing ovens, Zoltan Szabo, our sommelier, arrives with wines from France, Greece, Italy and Canada. If worst comes to worst, we have an awful lot of very good wine to placate people’s palates. The Aga was invented by a blind Nobel Prize-winning Swedish physicist, Dr. Gustaf Dalén, but is a staple in Britain, where the stoves are manufactured. In that spirit, I’d based the menu for my party around English food, mixing the simple and traditional (radishes with butter and salt) with the new British cuisine (slow-braised oxtail), all cooked in, on and around the Aga. For canapés, I chose two pub fare classics: Devils on Horseback – prunes soaked in tea, stuffed with Stilton, wrapped in bacon and served on toast – and a variation on Angels on Horseback – oysters served in the half shell with garlic butter, sherry and bread crumbs. Both dishes spend some quality time in the Aga’s roasting and warming ovens, but the real joy is in making the toast. Agas come with a round hinged basket that the bread snuggles into, placed directly over the 800°F boiling plate. It’s like roasting a marshmallow in a kiln. I leave the plates in the warming oven, the same oven Aga owners have been known to use for drying out damp mittens and sweaters. The other guests begin assembling just as the hors d’oeuvres are coming out. Novelist David Layton sips champagne and chats with LoooLo Textiles designer Joanna Notkin. Layton begs off the Devils on Horseback, citing lactose intolerance; my insistence that his intolerance is psychosomatic persuades him to try one, albeit with the blue cheese removed. Notkin, who leads a double life as a champion oyster shucker, finds the Angels a bit heavy on the garlic; I propose she offset the problem with more champagne. MacIDeas chairman Matthew Bassett and actress Jennifer Podemski discuss show business and bespoke tailoring. I won’t name names, but at some point I overhear a conversation involving the words “Oprah” and “The Secret.” I want the first sit-down course – radishes with butter and salt – to not involve the oven. Held by the stems and dipped in butter and salt, the radishes act like a palate cleanser and an aperitif. Roast Quail with Radish Leaf Salad is next. Heartened by the triumph of the chicken, I put a dab of butter in the cavity, and into the roasting oven it goes. In keeping with the ancient British mode of dining, I encourage everyone to eat the dish – salad, meat and all – with their hands. (Every kitchen party needs finger food.) Then it’s on to the evening’s main course. The Twist in the Tail is a recipe developed by Heston Blumenthal, the pioneering British chef whose restaurant The Fat Duck is considered one of the best in the world. It is an elaborate and laborious dish featuring oxtail that I started preparing three days earlier, moving the tails from the roasting oven to the simmering oven off and on for the past two days. While the guests are unanimous in their praise, I confide to chef Thuet, “The meat isn’t as tender as I’d like.” “You should have left it overnight in the warming oven,” he counsels, and he’s right. I’d removed the tails the night before, causing the meat to seize up from the shock. It takes courage and faith to learn to trust the Aga. Well lubricated and in high spirits, we move on to dessert, a Bakewell Tart recipe courtesy of Jamie Oliver, recreated this evening by Heather. She finds it nerve-wracking that she can’t adjust the baking oven’s temperature, but when she pulls the tart from the oven, it’s a triumph, lightly browned and gorgeous. Like I said, trust. It is possible that with some iSi siphons, extruders and a laser or two, I could make fancier, possibly even better food. But there’s a quality to the evening, brought about by the Aga’s honest simplicity, that no amount of fancy gadgetry can match. And, naturally, all of the dishes are served in bowls – round ones. By the end of the night, with the food and the wine long finished and the guests spilling out into cabs, only the Aga keeps working, silently radiating its comforting warmth. Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net |
