The Complex Salad

In 2008, my first proper boyfriend took me for a truly memorable meal. Tootsies in Oxford. I still can’t understand why Tootsies closed down. They must have had a food hygiene rating of at least three stars. Although, saying that, my solid local Indian had four stars in their heyday and were closed down a few weeks ago for what the local media sensationally labelled ‘a beetle problem’. My favourite Indian these days is Boris Johnson’s local. Yeah, go on, unfriend me already. They do fantastic shashlik. #shashliksB4politiks

Better than Tootsies.

Notwithstanding what sealed the demise of Tootsies’, they served me one of the greatest meals a (then) jaded (then) vegetarian could have hoped for: a roasted butternut squash salad with grilled goats cheese. You can get something similar these days in Prezzo (the Arosto salad), but I always tend to ruin it by ordering fries and tipping them over the plate. You might frown but the fries actually improve the dish. And I guess that’s how I knew Tootsies’ salad won. I left those fries in their tiny tin container. 

Can scratch these two off the baby names list, then. 

I have made a few attempts at recreating this salad in the intervening seven years, but never before as successfully as this evening. I think it’s because I thought I’d be blogging it (you do tend to get that idea when your left hand is permanent with-camera). Blogging your nosh really ups your game. 

Brother's gift to me from Madrid. Super good.

I was cooking for my family tonight, since it’s a few days before I’m back into the uni groove, where my diet is predominantly bagel. So I figured I might as well go for vitamin gold while semester two scurvy is but a beige term away. 

I’ve called this a ‘complex’ salad. If this dish were an architectural feature, I wouldn’t quite put it in Bernini Baldacchino territory. It’s more of a friendly Roman arch than a forbidding, Gothic pointy one. More of a soft, cosy, coffered ceiling than the humbling, neck-craning Cappella Sistina. Knock the finials and crockets off Notre Dame, and we’re about there. What I'm trying to say is that this salad is just complex enough.

Pool of oil in the well of the squash. A vegetarian's basting juices/ambrosia, lemme tell you.

I got a rating of 9.5/10 from the fam. I think my brother brought the average down because he had a pre-dinner KitKat Chunky. He was carb-loading after his first day on the ‘Cycle to Work’ scheme. I don’t think he appreciated the meal as much as he ought because he essentially ‘chased’ (club-speak?) this salad after ‘necking’ the confectionary. He’s also really competitive when it comes to cooking with goats cheese. He fancies himself another connoisseur of the complex salad and as a result won't give me the credit I deserve. Maybe he can be a guest poster on the blog and we can put it to a public vote.

Voila!

The bitz:

[Rocket, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, roasted butternut squash, olive-oil toasted crostini, grilled goats cheese, toasted pine nuts, balsamic caramelised onions, salt, pepper, plate.]

(Marinating) Tofu

The bits.

Now I don’t want to get first-world-problem-sy on y’all, but I cannot lie: I hate marinating my own tofu. Whole Foods do it perfectly well. It’s not so much the time consumption—I like nothing better than having an excuse to bumble about in the kitchen with a podcast on [today alone I’ve consumed the first Reith Lecture from 2014, Public Philosopher, In Our Time on ‘Greek Myth’ and Freakonomics on Why We Shouldn’t Tip]. Oh no, a far more sinister reason underwrites my dislike for this task. Let's just say that concocting this marinade really reminded me of something.

Stirring to the sounds of 'Why Democracy?' by Michael Sandel

When I was about eight, there was a day when I really didn’t want to go to school. Like, really didn’t want to. I had the passion of one thousand fat kids trying to get out of their annual cross-country. Although unimpressed in hindsight at my capacity for slackness, I prefer to think of the story I am about to tell as revealing something actually quite impressive, nay amazing, about my mind. 

That morning in the winter of 1997, before either parent had stirred, the young me was furtively stirring up a hand-crafted emetic. That is, an aide vomi. 

I recall plundering my parents’ spice rack for the bulk of the emetic (you'll recall if you're a follower of the blog that most of my parents' spices are normally a good decade past their use-by date, so I was  technically already at an emetic advantage). Chilli power, ground cumin, and garlic salt were the first into the glass. But what really tipped it over the edge (and what makes writing about this now bring on the first churns of fresh emesis) was that the main ingredient was Horlicks. And as Aristotle once observed, sometimes the mere imagination of something is enough to incite bodily change. Needless to say, if the thought of a garlic-salt-laden malt brew doesn’t cause in you some serious twinges, well…you’ve gone wrong. 

Cutting into the curd

Now, as a child who rarely got ill, when my father saw me heaving greenly into the toilet, there was little else required to secure my absence. Was it worth it? No. I remember the next day my then-bestie, Sophie, told me they had played Bingo in French where someone had won a Crunchie. That could’ve (not saying would’ve) been me. 

So it was with slightly greened-over gusto that I prepared today’s tofu marinade. Largely comprised of soy sauce and tahini, I was aiming for an umami arpeggio in the mouth. 

Drizzleshot

I dashed a small quantity of dark soy into a bowl, followed by a spoonful of tahini, some salt, finished with a little sprinkle of paprika and chilli powder. It had the consistency of motor oil, so I added a small quantity of water. I tasted it on my little finger, admittedly nervous of my own concoction (once bitten twice shy and all that). Thankfully it was in no way redolent of that antique bulimic brew. 

Quick drizzle of my favourite citrus fruit

The tofu itself required ‘draining’. [I realise this blogpost is full of disgusting imagery, I’ve actually lost my appetite to eat this afternoon.] All you need do is squash the bean-curd brick between sheets (and sheets, and sheets) of kitchen roll. When it no longer oozes a pellucid water, you’re ready to marinate. 

My favourite kind of cubism

Since the tofu is still marinating, I am writing this without having sampled my work. I plan to bake the tofu in the oven this evening, serving it tossed over a salad of sautéd but still-crunchy bean sprouts, toasted sesame seeds and yet more soy sauce. 

That is, when I’ve got my appetite back. My stomach currently still feels like it’s in 1997.

Challah

The first time I made challah was about four years ago when I bought my first (and last) bread encyclopaedia. Poring over it like bread pornography, I lingered, fingered and hungered upon the challah much longer than the other breads—it was the most glorious centrefold: gorgeous, golden and gagging to be covered in my (sesame) seed. 

Pre-batch in buttered bowl (autographed).

Challah is a Jewish leavened bread, normally wheeled out on the Sabbath, or any Jewish holiday for that matter. It is normally plaited and stuccoed with poppy or sesame seeds. For my part, I would have preferred a poppy seed crust, but the sale of poppy seeds was outlawed at my local Sainsburys (and presumably nationwide) about ten years ago when it transpired that some bloke was making industrial quantities of opium in his attic. I always imagined him as this millennium’s answer to Baudelaire. Still, this was suburbia, not fin de siècle Paris. Plus anybody who has actually read Baudelaire’s Artificial Paradises knows that opium isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Not cool, guyz.

Big dough baby.

I digress. This bread took a good portion of my day to create, requiring two hour-long proves and two rather long kneading sessions. All the same, if you’ve got a dissertation plan to procrastinate over, it’s the ideal diversion, and if done well, might even be rewarding [spoiler alert: it was]. So I got to work preparing the dough from strong white bread flour, dried active yeast, caster sugar, warm water, three eggs (challah’s not-so-secret ingredient) and a not-insignificant quantity of salt. 

Back to dissertation planning during the premiere prove.

After the first prove

Knocking it back. Felt good. Grrr-fist.

When I first made challah those years ago, I never actually got to eat any of it. I handed the bounteous batch to my then neighbour. But right now, as I write, I am chowing down with body-shaking joy my first slice of challah. The crust is perfectly situated between crunchy and crumbly; the texture of the dough is light, bouncy, white and naughty. The sesame seeds of the crust have given it a delicious, but still delicate, toasted flavour. I’ve no idea what Jewish people traditionally eat with (or on) this bread, but I have slathered it in salted butter with fat, British abandon. I fancy it would go really well dunked into tomato soup. If you were here, I’d offer you a slice. 

After second prove: looking like bubblicious cake mixture

A batch divided.

Four sausage-like strands

Some magic weaving later... Voila! Plait! (First attempt not photographable)

Egg-washed and ready for 40 mins at 200 deg.

OK, OK. I know it's not quite the same as the picture I first saw in my bread encyclopaedia. But come on, it's hardly fair to be compared to a centrefold, is it? How would you like it?

Still, don't know about you, but I can still get my rocks off to these photos.

Gleaming, if seedy, batch.

Baked to perfection. WAY better than Kingsmill.

Nommy.

Until next time. 

Crumbly.

I’m big on baking. From clove-spiced cookies, through churros, to challenging Challah bread*, I have at the very least some acquaintance with the earliest entries in the alphabetical cookbook. So continuing along the theme of ‘C’, I decided I would have a crack at a crumble. 

Now, I hadn’t made a crumble since I was a boy (girl). But even then my ingredients were home-sourced. Just as I had done for a Year 4 Home Economics lesson (all girls private schools like to get you baking skilfully long before calorie concerns become a ‘thing’), I made the trip to my grandfather’s orchard in leafy Maidenhead and pulled from his tree some large, and largely un-worm-infested, cooking apples. 

"Incredibly wasteful peeling technique", Mark, Peep Show (Xmas Special, 2003)

It’s fair to say that I had plucked a quantity sufficient to tackle the Industrial Pudding Challenge round on Masterchef, or, to keep this massively contemporary, enough to make 24 mini crumbles on a Bake Off ‘technical’. Of the 50 apples I’d procured, I ended up only needing 15, which I peeled and sliced before popping into a shallowly watered and sugared saucepan for softening and sweetening up. That process took only 3.5 minutes. Just so you know, the bulk of the softening and sweetening occurs during the bake itself, which can take as long as half an hour. 

Pan of Action

Like any experimental write-up, I suppose I should acknowledge what I could have done differently. So here goes. I wish I had had some on-hand cinnamon to give this dessert an autumnal streak. Unfortunately the only spices I could find in my cupboard were some Schwartz pots from the last millennium. And after an un-live-down-able incident that I can only describe as Fish Cake Gate 2007, I wasn’t confident about experimenting with any ageing gustatory accessories. And neither, I was vociferously reminded, were my target audience. If it's not already clear, Fish Cake Gate refers to something that was designed to be a sweet dish. Namely, a Victoria sponge. 

OK, not thousands of years old, but these spices pre-date even my 'rebel' phase. Is it wrong that I put these back in the cupboard? 

I recently got my nails done and given their length, the creation of the crumble topping was a little fraught. Butter and sugar got up to no good behind and between my talons, but with some experienced thumb-and-palm-oriented movements, my crumble topping was hand-milled to perfection. 

Crummy

I’ll be honest, there’s a reason why they task Year 4 Home Economics students [children? pupils?] with an apple crumble and not the Accursed Challah* (which I think you find on your 'Unseen' Paper for Home Economics A-level). A crumble has at most three actual processes, none of them requiring skill (adult supervision quite another matter, however—watching the eight-year-old me struggle with a heavy colander of freshly-boiled apple quarters could, and did, invite some intervention). 

Anyway, cue photos. Maybe for the next blog I will re-attempt a Challah. Oh I bet you can’t wait. 

Poured into Pyrex

Sprinkling on gold dust

Patting down the gold dust with a spoon (will live to regret not creating a more mountainous crumble landscape)

Bae in the oven

Fin.

*If you were wondering throughout, "What's a Challah?" Look no further:

An aspirational baked-good. [Not own work.]

Pizza(zz)

Stage 2: After hours and hours of proving, dough is ready for rolling and tomato-ing

Stage 1: Don retro apron

Stage 3: Pinch a crust area around pizza or a 'dough moat', if you will

Stage 5: (omitted stage 4 involved vegetables) Take out of oven and pop fresh spinach atop

Stage 6: serving suggestion, namely, eat whole without slicing

Mon Premier Boeuf Brûlé

It's fair to say that I'm really romping through my meats. Since deserting my vegetarian post but a few weeks ago, I have been on a carnivorous crusade, beginning with chicken, through bacon, even having a je-ne-sais-quoi stop-off at Peperami. Today's meat mission was straightforward but admittedly daunting. Daunting because, well, any meat which needs to be restrained by vacuum-pack, lest you should baulk at purchasing it in a puddle of its own blood, means business. And while business may traditionally take a rest on the Sabbath, today was Steak Sunday and my experience floodgates were well and truly open.

Some knowing people in my life were in disagreement about which cut of beef to lose my virginity to (recall the choice between the strawberry and banana condom? No?) A Classicist-turned-Commis-Chef made a persuasive case for the rib-eye, while My Northern Friend made an uncharacteristically restrained case for the fillet. I purchased both, taking a typically vegetarian disinterest to the difference, and a positively cavalier eeny-meeny-miny-moe approach to choosing between them.

The fated rib-eye

Meatslab

As hap would have it, rib-eye prevailed and I proceeded to free it from its sanguine vacuum. It had a network of fat traversing the cross-section, and it was, at 0.3kg, quite a beefy portion [tautology alert]. A quick Google told me that I had to let my meat reach thermal equilibrium with the room, which Cedric and I duly waited out in a tranquil embrace.

Waiting for Godot (too right I name my beef)

Now, as a thoroughgoing meat-n00b, lacking all meat common-sense, I knew the cooking of this thing would test me. It was at least a short test, with Google (again -- this time as a noun) telling me that for a medium-rare steak, three minutes of hot-skillet action on each side was all it would take. Surely I had six minutes of competence left in me to complete the mission?

I tossed a spoonful of butter into an iron frying pan (my true skillet dreams persist, vainly) and I watched nervously as my pan began to smoke, quite menacingly, like a brooding Heathcliff. I lobbed the rib-eye forth and heard a snare-like sizzle.

Action shot

Three minutes seems like an eternity when you don't know what you're doing. It's like forgetting your lines in GCSE drama and being entirely without crutch or prompt when no inspiration comes. I flipped the steak over, feeling unfathomably out-of-my-depth when pandemonium struck. In that ham-fisted flip, my pan burst into flames, which, while strangely exhilarating to this self-confessed adrenaline-phobe, was so-not-in-the-script-don't-the-fuck-do-that-again-you-stupendous-moron. My confidence plummeted. Why hadn't I just gone up to Gaucho in London, where the use of fire, if employed at all, is intentional and controlled?

I feebly blew/sighed on the pan and impatiently kept the steak sizzling in the incendiary smog for two more minutes. My hopes for medium-rare were extinguished with the blaze. My premier boeuf would be brûlé.

With the fire alarm bleating, I poured myself a glass of Cabernet Sauvingon and removed the rib-eye from its Le Creuset crematorium. Gospel has it that you should let meat rest, and after the unpremeditated flambé, I needed to sit down and think about what I'd done. Meanwhile, the pre-fabricated peppercorn sauce (fanx Sainsbury's) was heating up on the stove and, when I finally re-entered the theatre of conflict, I spooned it over the steak and carried it to the dining table. There was a ceremonious trial-by-ordeal aftermath calmness in the air, or maybe it was the red on my yet-empty stomach.

Unironically well-done

The steak, overall, was a delight. The accidental burning had given it a deeply flavourful, crisped edge, and, for the most part, the centre was rosy and moist. I found the unctuous texture of the fat a little unpalatable, and I suspected that the meat's soulmate was not Sainsbury's factory-farmed peppercorn sauce. For my first time, however, I was making all the right noises. It was a simple, robust and moreish plate of food.

So, despite bearing all the hallmarks of a botch job par excellence, I managed to serve an edible (fat maybe excepted) hunk of meat, which I chowed down with audible, and authentic, gusto. Nevertheless, I'm really looking forward to having a steak cooked properly.

A table for two at Gaucho, please.

Champagne, Chocolate and Chicken: the Three Cs of Epicureanism

Just as I've long suspected, there's something of the female about me. While I may oftentimes subvert the stereotypes of my gender by ordering a pint instead of Pino Grigio (and, let's be honest, by studying Philosophy instead of English Literature), the hallmarks of a female (a homely, cat-whispering one at that) are all-too present. The way I chose to spend my Friday night is possibly the greatest warning that this here human contains oestrogen. 

It was a white-hot day in late July, and the clock at Reading station helped me to infer that my train was running pretty fucking late. So into Reading town I strode (I lie, I was tired, it was an amble at best) and, though belied by my gait, I was on a mission: a tripartite, and unintentionally-alliterative, mission of champagne, chocolate and chicken. Like the Five Pillars of Islam, these are the Three Cs of my own kind of Epicureanism. 

Now, I'm not shy of the term "high roller": anybody who has seen me undertake the eight-course door-to-door dining experience down the Strand (yeah, it's a thing) will testify, but there was something decidedly un-Champagne-y [awkward] about the circumstances I was in, y'know, student penury with, as always, absolutely nothing to celebrate. I did still have a taste for sparkling though, and my normal Boots Meal Deal beverage of San Pellegrino now seemed laughably ordinaire. I grabbed a middling £12 bottle of Prosecco, an appropriate price-point for She Who Dines Alone. Good. Now to source the protein aspect of my triadic desiderata: da cluckster. 

I very recently fell off the vegetarian wagon [or, as vegetarians like to see it, a ship of Titanic stature whose journey is an endless moral odyssey] and, given that my mouth had not partaken of any flesh for two damned [literally, I can tell you] decades, I needed an entry-level, min-shock meat to prevent potential vomming. A Nicely-Treated-and-Better-Fed-than-Thou chicken set me back £8, which made me wonder what I'd be worth bent over and stuffed into cellophane, given that I'm scarcely free range [I lack range] and am far from organic [I test cosmetics on myself with total, daily, self-abusive abandon]. So, chicken in the bag, and with the voice of a thousand outraged salad-fanciers in my ears, I set off to locate some weather-appropriate chocolates. 

I've long been a fan of Hotel Chocolat, but admittedly I've always felt ambivalent about the price-point. BUT, arguably-piss-taking prices aside, Hotel Chocolat is some of the best high-street nosh you're going to find outside of the Continent (and yes I do realise that my personal god Roger Federer is Lindt's International Ambassador, but hasn't Feds already given me enough pleasure across the last ten years*?) It was Hotel Chocolat's time. [N.B. French-sounding name aside, Hot' Choc' are in fact a British brand, so yes, actually, I have *totally* eschewed the Continent -- Schopenhauer and Marx excepted.]

Bottom-right choc: lemon truffle (see Platonic Forms)

I bagged myself a fruity selection, not under any false pretences of health, but because this selection boasted two whole lemon truffles, instantiating therein the Form of Fruit Chocolate. You'll have to take my word for it and get yourself a box -- £13 for an "H" box is just about on the cusp of reasonable for my money. 

I won't dwell on how I actually got home, but when I finally fucking did, I whacked the oven on (190), freed my chicken from its body-bag, and laid it down into a Pyrex coffin. Being a meat n00b, I wasn't really sure of any spiritual/seasoning rituals, so I lovingly stabbed the bird in its breasts, drizzled it in olive oil and threw sea salt at it like Pollock's last foray. I decided to go for a half-hour jog in the meantime, while Cedric kept guard of the oven door [appreciate it, Ced].

The ever-attendant Ced.

75 minutes later, the chicken and I were two hot messes (no prizes for guessing who was hotter), and it was time to carve. I was fairly sure that my chosen-utensil (an ancient bread knife) was inappropriate for creating perfect slices, and, well, yeah, I was right. But in those moments of bungled, flesh-mangling, frankly car-crash slicing, I no longer felt like such a woman. In this expression of species dominance, I felt a pang of the Neanderthal (all of whom were men**) and the poetic tradition of Ubi Sunt take over me . . .  My hand-knife-meat coordination left everything to be desired, but, notwithstanding, this bird smelt great (J'Adore par Dior, mais oui). If I hadn't been dining alone (well, I lie, Cedric clearly fancied himself a worthy dinner date), I would have tasked my companion with the role of carver, to retain a modicum of the chicken's dignity/aesthetic value. It was also pretty good eatin' -- in death, the chicken begged to be shared, like a good little utilitarian. All the best utilitarians are dead anyway, and being a Kantian, tearing at the flesh of a utilitarian is some of the best fun you can have without taking your clothes off . . . at least that's what Panic! at the Disco taught me in 2005. 

Hello Boys

The eating of meat should be a shared experience. And while I admit I achieved a moment of shared transcendence with Cedric [I now totally get why he goes all hyper for his Christmas partridge], I admit I am looking forward to similar experiences in the future with beings of my own kind. Epicurus always said that pleasure is less about what you're eating and more about with whom you are eating. May that pro-social recommendation resonate. 

So, let us come together in a modern ritual, where the tribal and sanguinary marry to make men of us all. 

Consummatum Est (it is now)

Cedric: a very satisfied dinner date.

*Can we still not mention the 2008 Wimbledon final? Thx.

** Source: Trip to the Natural History Museum (2009).