Ode to the Buttery

I love cooking. I love recipes. We collect cookbooks, husband and I. He likes cooking too, and baking, as do our children, often quite adventurously. During lockdown we established a rota whereby everyone in the household cooked at least once a week. Who did not cook, cleared up. Some of us cooks made more of a mess than others, but I shall not name names. (Okay, one was me.) 

Recipes galore

Now here we are in Cambridge, empty-nesting in our airy Clare Hall flat with its small but perfectly formed kitchen. The cookware is shiny and new, the stainless-steel serving spoons hang from a snazzy utensil tree, there is a dishwasher, a kettle, a French press and a teapot, we have six plates, four very large wineglasses, an oval dining table, and comfortable chairs. All the appurtenances required for the preparation and serving of delectable meals.

However, we don't. Not this year.

Part of the reason is practicality. The kitchen is, as mentioned, small. It is pleasant to look at and to make toast in, less so really to cook in. The largest saucepan holds enough pasta to serve one of us. "May we have a bigger pot?" I asked the people who provide such things, and a new one promptly arrived. Its sides were taller, but its base narrower than our current one, so that its capacity was exactly the same. (What would Piaget say?) If water splashes onto the swish glass cooktop, the electrics short out. Our fridge is old-style British, fitting under the counter, and not terribly cold; the milk keeps going off. The dishwasher does not quite live up to its name; it offers more of a strip-tease than the full monty of washing. We finish the job by hand, so to speak. Cooking and cleaning up are time-consuming activities, and both husband and I have a lot of work to do this year. We are eager to get on with it. 

I am not complaining, though. We have the Buttery.

It took us a couple of weeks to discover the Buttery, but once we did, we became converts. It is a marvel. Talented chefs prepare meals for us every weekday. Today for lunch I had minestrone soup, chipotle chicken with quinoa, and lemon poppy-seed cake for dessert. Yesterday the main was lamb pilaf with pearl barley, or a vegetarian option with butternut squash. Service is cafeteria-style, lunch and dinner, bar Wednesdays, when there is Formal Hall: a four-course evening meal with table service and wine. You have to dress up. So far husband and I have attended three of these events and I have now worn all my dresses.  

Lunch with a divinity scholar

The Buttery, with Richard presiding

The Buttery is as different from the dormitory dining hall of my undergraduate days as it is possible to get within the genre. The main difference, I suppose, is that not only students but staff eat here. The college president, who is a professor of architecture, attends meals most days. Other distinguished fellows (in the academic rather than the gender sense) from numerous departments dot the tables. You can't serve them the slop that I was given as a student back in the day at Berkeley. They would not return. And the college wants them to return, because its raison d'être is the intellectual richness created by the members' presence. In the past week we have dined with--to name only a few--an expert on the history of terrorism, a scholar of English and Roman law, a former director of the British Museum, an advisor to a previous Parliament on science and technology, a neuroscientist, an engineer-turned-venture capitalist (he was nice! really!), a materials scientist, and a groundskeeper. To call the conversations scintillating would be an understatement. And all I have to do to join them is a) not cook, and b) walk about fifty yards from my front door. That's the other and better reason to abandon recipes for a year. 

We dine at home occasionally, of course, especially at weekends, on cheese and crackers and sliced tomatoes, or a quick omelette and salad. Nothing that requires a cookbook or makes a big mess. Recently our delightful neighbors in the next flat expanded our horizons and took us to visit nearby Selwyn College. Another buttery! More choices! We continued our tour and eventually this evening settled on Darwin College, whose buttery served a lovely filet of trout smothered in a piquant tomato salsa. Darwin's dining hall also has the advantage of a distant river view (and stays open later than Clare Hall's).

But we did not know anyone there. Husband and I talked to each other (always a delight of course:)--and to daughter, who called us mid-meal--but we did not find our peeps. 

We are Clare Hallers now. 

I look forward to lunch tomorrow. Who knows what they'll serve or who we will meet. (Actually I can find out what they'll serve--there's a weekly menu posted online--but I prefer to be surprised.) 

I still love reading the recipe inserts that arrive with our Saturday Guardian and Sunday Observer (especially Nigel Slater). When I finish, I add them to the stack on the bookshelf, ready to bring back to Toronto, where I will use them---next year.