Hermer - An American Girl in London: 120 Nourishing Recipes for Your Family from a Californian Expat

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2017 by Marissa Hermer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Photographs by Helen Cathcart

Prop stylist: Linda Berlin

Food stylist & food writer: Dara Sutin

Assistant: Sophie Mackinnon

Book design by Rae Ann Spitzenberger

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

ISBN 9781623368159 hardcover
ISBN 9781623368166 e-book

We inspire health, healing, happiness, and love in the world.

Starting with you.

RodaleWellness.com

To my children, who make me feel like the luckiest mummy in the world.

To my husband, for being my safety net and my trampoline.

Writing this book has been a nearly impossible task. I clearly wasnt thinking at all. I just said, Yes, Ill do it (simultaneously believing I am invincible and can do anythingand also knowing that Im not and I cant). I thought, It cant be that hard to write a cookbook. Well, it is. It is really hard to write a book. It also doesnt help that Im not a writer or a chef (and perhaps I drank the truth serum this morning!), but I am a home cook and wrote this during the kids naptimes and on Saturday mornings when my husband took the munchkins to the park and when Ive just forced myself to squeeze out any last focus that I have and write about food and family and love.

Growing up in Southern California, I was raised on avocados from my grandmothers tree. Our fish came from the fishermen on the docks in Newport Beach, and we picked the vegetables for our salads from the garden behind our house. I remember husking ears of corn on our patio in the summer and hauling huge watermelons from the dirt to the kitchen table for slippery seed-spitting contests. In autumn, our backyard was crawling with pumpkinsnot the perfectly orange variety from the supermarket, but the warty, characterful kindand the first sign of Christmas was when navel oranges popped up at our local farmers market. My dad would bring a big red wagon to the citrus stalls and stock up on bags of oranges for juicingand for my mothers Christmas morning mimosas.

I moved to New York City as an adult, and what I lost in locally grown produce and In-N-Out Burgers, I gained in experiencing a truly gastronomic-obsessed culture. Of course there are great restaurants in Orange County, but New York City is foodieism gone wildand I dove right in. I became enchanted with Asian flavours, which I never had growing up in a beach town. I fell in love with American diner food and discovered dangerously addictive food trucks. With such a wide variety of quality ingredients and inspiring meals at my feet, cooking and eating became a daily adventure, and I was hooked.

When work took me to London 10 years ago, I packed my bags with a warning from my father ringing in my ears. He was sure I would hate England. If I wanted my peas mushy, I would chew them myself, he said. Plus, there would be no avocados. Who could live with that?

He was wrong, of course. I loved Britain, with its warm pub culture and stellar Indian food, and to compound my appreciation of the UK, I met my husband-to-be shortly after moving (at a dinner party, of course). Matt is the restaurateur behind Londons Bumpkin restaurants, and while seated next to him for the first time, I ordered from the vegetarian menu. He looked with disgust at my plate of zucchini and goat cheese tart. Are you a vegetarian? he asked in horror. No, but sometimes I like eating meat-free, I replied. He couldnt understand this but let it pass, and we fell in love anyway. Clearly this man was a meat-and-potatoes Brit. I had my work cut out for me if I was ever going to cook for him.

Now, a decade, a British passport for my dual nationality, a marriage, and three children later, I still havent found avocados that compare to those from my grandmothers tree. (Thankfully there are summers in Newport Beach, where I overdose on the green stuff, and it seems to carry me through the rest of the year.) A traditional Sunday roast has replaced my California Sunday beach BBQ, and British sticky toffee pudding has elbowed out the ultra-American smores. I learned how to cook the perfect roast potatoes for my potato-obsessed husband, and a great Irish stew to warm up the winter months. But as I made London my home, I also didnt want to lose my own Americana roots, and so I started incorporating little California twists into our family meals. We use sourdough bread for the traditional British Bread and Butter Pudding (giving it a sour-sweet flavour). I make loaded Sweet Potato Shepherds Pie and our Bumpkin restaurant twist on eggs Benedict for when Matt wants a cooked breakfast: Eggs Montagu with cashew butter sauce and steamed spinach on a quinoa pancake. Our home kitchen may not delight traditionalists, but its perfect for those who want to explore a culinary match made in transatlantic heaven. Ive also taken huge delight in introducing my husband and our friends to some of my favourite Americana dishes from my childhoodDads Porridge, my godmothers Classic Apple Pie, and Zucchini Feta Muffins (or as Ive learned to call them, corguettes).

As Matt and I have grown our family and expanded our restaurant business, Ive had to think about my home cooking in a new way. Are my menus wholesome enough to grow my littles into bigs? Which recipes can I manage with my working mum schedule? And will my family actually eat the dishes I prepare? The front door is more of a revolving door of children for playdates and friends for supper, and my perspective in the kitchen has evolved to suit our lifestyle. Ive discovered that a snack-stocked pantry is essential, and that children will eat anything if it is called a pancake (even quinoa!). I know that soups and smoothies are perfect for getting kiddies to eat vegetables, and that if I have muffins and breads made for breakfast, I can shove one in my breakfast-hating husbands hand for him to fuel the start of his day.