Back-from-the-pub dinner

 

It's not all cooking from scratch in this house.  Ruby Tandoh writes in her brilliant Eat Up!: "making peace with your appetite is acknowledging that it's not always pretty, and sometimes you will enter a fugue state halfway through a packet of Cadbury Fingers and eat the lot and feel ill, and that's OK.  Not every meal will be in some sunlight-dappled orange grove; sometimes what you need a pasty by the side of the M4, and there's no harm in that."  I completed agree, and what I needed last night was pizza and chips.

Not that it wasn't without some preparation.  I had booked a table to meet friends that day at a pub, my first pub visit for months and months.  We were "booked in" (so strange, these Covid times) from 3pm - 8pm.  Pints of beer were definitely going to be consumed and I anticipated that very particular beery hunger that kicks in after a couple, the slightly hazy walk home, and the fact that the first thing on my mind would be carbs a plenty but certainly not cooking.  I popped to Aldi earlier in the day and grabbed one of my old favourite frozen pizzas (back in my long commuting days, I used to keep these in the fridge for emergencies) and a bag of their really rather good chunky oven chips.  Stowing them in the fridge and congratulating myself on my forethought, I headed out for a deliciously decadent Thursday afternoon in the pub garden.  And it was great to be back sharing beer with friends, if a little chilly.

Back home later, pleasantly merry but definitely feeling that beer-induced nagging in the stomach, we happily popped our pizza and chips in the oven.  When you're a bit tipsy and tired, I'm not sure if there's anything better than some kind of combinations of cheese, bread, potatoes and fat.  Finally devouring our fine feast around 9.30pm, it was not the most complex or mindful meal of the week, but it absolutely just what our appetites called for.

Pink Pickled Eggs

My many pipedreams have included becoming a virtuoso guitar player, a painter, and founder of a horse sanctuary with a community allotment on the side.  However, one that keeps coming back is the hope that I'll concoct a crazily simple food idea that reinvents either an out of fashion, relatively unknown or forgotten food, bring it to a hip new audience, and makes me a ridiculous amount of money.  The key point is that there's some cheap or unloved ingredient out there - perhaps swede, kidneys or the parsons nose - and give it some kind restyle and then a marketing campaign to make it fashionable (parsons nose scratchings, anyone?).  As inspiration I'm thinking of whoever invented vegetable crisps, or the infamous 'Cereal Killer' cafe...give an ingredient a little twist or revamp and people suddenly see it in a new way.  A cynical get-rich-quick scheme, if you will; the kind of thing I'd normally hate but perhaps wouldn't mind if it enabled me to raise the millions I need for the horse sanctuary-allotment project.

Pickled eggs I tell you!  They're the next big thing!  Maybe.

In the days before Covid and whiling away some time in a lovely microbrewery pub in Rye, I was intrigued by a huge jar of pickled eggs behind the bar.  I know pickled eggs are much feared and automatically despised, frequently by those who haven't even tried one.  I'll be honest that up to that day it included myself; in many a pub or chip shop I've gazed intrigued at the dusty lonely jar of brown spheres in their vinegary suspended animation and thought - who eats these??  Even though I know some people swear the best thing is a pickled egg plonked on top of a just opened packet of crisps washed down with a pint I was skeptical - this isn't 1975!  You don't know how long those things have been sitting there...and a creamy egg yolk with...vinegar!??  In any case, all that changed that day in Rye, when I spied these jars and was actually tempted: apparently they had been made locally and weren't picked in the usual brown malt vinegar but swimming in an interesting concoction of red wine vinegar, garlic and herbs.  I tried one and it came halved on a plate surrounded by some of its pickled companions, garlic cloves and onion bits.  I tasted it and was converted!  There is definitely something in that contrast between the slightly rubbery pickled egg white, the soft mildness of the yolk, the spike of the vinegar.  It made an ideal bar snack and a kind of tantalising appetiser with all the little other pickled morsels to eat with it.

A couple of years later and I've made my own jar, after finding a recipe for them in a book by the Queen Of All Things Culinary, Nigella Lawson.  It's an obvious point to those in the know but the exciting thing she made me realise is that the pickled egg is can be made wonderful colours too just by adding certain things to the vinegar.  Nigella adds beetroot into the mix, to which I also added some garlic cloves and sliced onions plus some coriander seeds, bayleaf and whole peppercorns.  I am quite the fan of bright food but surely who can resist that bright yellow yolk set off by its frame of pink?  The slightly sweet red wine vinegar plus the garlic and spices also permeate the egg in a pleasant way that doesn't taste too harsh.

The other brilliant thing about adding other veg in with the eggs is that when you eat one you can have some of the little onion, garlic and beetroot bits alongside which I suppose just makes it feel like more of a little 'fancy tapas' dish than a pub snack.  And that's where my cynical get rich quick brain began kicking in... could I make pickled eggs cool, marketable?  Even my family of fairly unpicky eaters first scoffed at my version, but my Dad at least tried some and admitted it was better than he was expecting.  OK, not exactly a ringing endorsement.  The potential trouble I foresee for my incredibly simplistic and superficial business plan is that eggs are probably too expensive to qualify for my get-rich-quick-and-easy aspirations, plus how much would someone really be willing to pay for a jar of 'Designer Artisan Pickled Eggs'??  Along with the rise of veganism and the results of my admittedly tiny market research (my family), I wonder if I could manage to get people to actually eat enough pickled eggs to make my millions.  In any case, I'm now a devoted fan of the pickled egg and the next time I see that lonely jar in the chippie I'm going in for one of those original vinegary bad boys.  Maybe the fame, fortune and the horse sanctuary allotment will just have to wait until everyone else catches up with my enthusiasm.

And the beet goes on

During this weird Covid year of lockdowns combined with getting overly familiar with ones immediate local environment, I've finally become a veg box devotee, courtesy of a local initiative Florence Road Market.  Feeling all together more settled and rooted in one place than I ever have, I've found the regularity of the weekly veg box a pleasant routine (picking it up provided a mini adventure in leaving the house) as well as adding an element of unpredictability to our week's eating.  Picky eaters might not welcome the randomness of the weekly produce box, but as an ex-vegetarian who has a special place in my heart for all vegetables and fruit, I've enjoyed the weekly surprise of seeing what someone else has selected for us that week.  Or, more truthfully, it's what the seasons have selected for us at any given time.  

I won't bother wasting too many words here on what's already been said by many food campaigners and writers but it goes without saying that your greengrocer and veg market are an excellent guide on what's in season, and that eating seasonally can also lead you to much more delicious vegetable adventures.  The market makes it easy for you: you might visit the market and say "Hmmm, those tomatoes are a more expensive than they were the other month..."  That's probably because it's December.  Or, "Wow, tonnes of huge courgettes and they seem cheaper than the supermarket!"  That's probably because it's July.  Or "I never even knew there were this many varieties of potato!"  That's probably because the local supermarket throws all its buying power into one or two standard varieties, if they even mention varieties at all.  

If you go down to the market you're so much more likely to find treasures that rarely grace the average supermarket shelf: Jerusalem artichokes, a romanesco cauliflower, purple potatoes, rainbow carrots, and more marvellous flavours/varieties of British apple than you ever thought existed.  Florence Road Market is one of those markets specialising particularly in produce from small, local farms and I really do feel like I've appreciated the changing seasons like never before.  Suddenly, when local asparagus appeared last April/May and at an excellent price I bought it repeatedly for weeks (it was worth the smelly wee).  What had previously seemed like a bit of a rarity almost got boring it was so abundant for a short amount of time.  The season ended but I felt I'd had my fill, and was happy to wait another year for the really good stuff.  Besides, you don't need asparagus all year round when you have so much to bring joy to the taste buds in the season after that: fresh peas, strawberries, runner beans, courgettes, tomatoes, cherries... 

Anyway, this is a long winded introduction to a lovely recipe I found in one of my searches for amazing ways with vegetables, as well as constantly looking for ways to obsessively use up any food I buy (I'm the kind of person who scrapes the mould off forgotten condiments at the back of the fridge, shoves black bananas in the freezer for making cake later...on the rare occasion when I have to throw food away I am genuinely LIVID.).  

The Guardian's Tom Hunt specialises in recipes that prevent food waste, and his recipe for beetroot top borani is one I keep going back to, ever since I got a beautiful bunch of beetroot with all the upper leaves still attached to the root.  It is gorgeous lush green veined leaves with vivid purple-red stems and, crucially, this is BONUS FOOD.  If you buy a bunch of fresh beetroot in the supermarket it's likely the leaves will have all been trimmed off but boy, are you missing out!  Borani is an Iranian yoghurt based dip, and this recipe uses a whole bunch of chopped beetroot stems: you wilt the chopped stems in a frying pan then mix them with yoghurt, garlic, lemon and olive oil plus you can add in any spice, nuts or garnish as you feel.  The stems have a similar texture to chard, and they have a juicy, earthy taste which is so delicious against the rich, fresh taste of the garlicky, lemony yoghurt.  It's very moreish and can be served as a dip with bread, or as a side to any grilled meats or various summery dishes.  

It's also really pretty - green and purple are a gaudy match made in heaven and the saucy bits end up a fetching shade of pink.  The camera doesn't do it justice!