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