Basic Vegetable Salad

I've been poorly this week. A nasty cold made me all tired and spacey, so I left most of the cooking up to Pete. And I'm very grateful, too.

The other day I thought I was better, and bought everything I needed to make burgers and a vegetable salad, then collapsed on the sofa and didn't move again for the rest of the day. Conversation that evening went as follows:

Pete: Shall I cook these burgers then?

Bron: OK. But I'll make the salad.

Pete: Don't be silly.

Bron: I will. I'll make the salad.

Pete: We don't even need salad.

Bron: WE DO NEED SALAD. WE'RE GROWN UPS.

Pete: [Looks at Bron]

Bron: Just burgers is fine.

I'm more or less better now. Still a little groggy but basically ok. And now I've made the salad I was going to make. It's my favourite 'basic' salad, as it keeps for a couple of days in the fridge, and you can add any number of optional extras to it to keep it interesting.

Basic:
4 carrots
1 cucumber
3 spring onions

Optional extras (suggestions):
Capers or olives, chopped
Peppers
Crumbled feta
Croutons
Bacon bits
Grated ginger
Chopped fresh coriander
Salad leaves (I like rocket)

Dressing:
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper
crushed clove of garlic

Grate the carrot and cucumber, and finely slice the spring onion. Leave everything in a sieve for half an hour so that the juice can drain out. Mix the dressing up separately, and toss with the salad, along with your extras (strongly recommended)

If you don't add leaves it won't wilt, so it will last a bit longer than other salads. I like to make a big bowl so I can eat it over a few days without too much fuss, even if I'm sick and can't make anything fresh.

Here with feta, green peppers and toasted sesame seeds and coconut

As well as a side to main meals, this is good in a wrap, mixed with cous-cous, or added to some hot chicken stock with a little chilli and some noodles for a very quick soup. Or for proving that you are a damn adult, and can cope with eating your vegetables even if you don't have to and don't want to. It's a matter of pride.

Cream Tea

Enough fuckin around. Let's have a cream tea.

Scones

My recipe for this is fairly old, so it's all in ounces. I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out.

You will need:
8oz self raising flour
2oz butter
2oz sugar
2oz raisins or sultanas
4fl. oz milk

Rub the butter into the flour with your finger tips. Mix in the other dry ingredients, then slowly pour in the milk, mixing as you go. Stop when you've made a soft dough - you may not need all the milk.

Roll out on a floured surface until about 2cm thick, and cut into rounds. I should really have a non-novelty shaped cutter by now, but I don't so there you go. I used a glass instead. Brush the tops with egg wash or milk, and bake on a floured tray at GM7 (220 degrees) for 12-15 minutes.

Now in this instance I bought the clotted cream and jam to go with my scones, but I have made both of the accompaniments before so if you're feeling particularly intrepid you could make the whole affair from scratch. Behold:

Clotted Cream

You will need:
A pot of double cream.

Pour the cream into a heavy saucepan and heat slowly (without boiling) for half an hour. Let it cool in the pan, then stick in the fridge to chill. It'll be ready when a crust forms on the top. Spoon out into a container. The book I got this recipe from told me to 'discard the liquid left underneath the clotted cream', but I found no such liquid. So... keep an eye out for that, I guess?

Jam

You will need:
Equal parts strawberries and jam sugar (sugar with added pectin, available from most supermarkets)

Mash the strawberries and sugar together in a saucepan, then bring to a rapid boil for five minutes. Pour into a sterilised jar to store.

I know using jam sugar is a bit of a cheat, and looked down on by jam connoisseurs as it will often set the jam too firm. I am not a jam connoisseur, so I think I'm ready for this jelly.

Add whatever flavours you like to make it a bit more interesting - I've added crystalized ginger in the past. It can be a bit overwhelming if you bite into a large chunk, but I would still call it a success.

There you have it. Everything you need for a cream tea. A final word on etiquette; there is a long running debate on whether to spread the cream or the jam on first. The correct method is to not give a crusty shit. TTFN.

Grilled Lettuce

Is there a more pointless ingredient than lettuce? That was rhetorical - the answer is no. There is nothing more pointless than lettuce. It is nothing but magnolia walls, daytime TV, Michael Mcintyre flavoured banality. Lettuce is a chef's way of cheating you out of a tasty garnish. Lettuce coasts by and lets everyone else take up the slack. Lettuce should be ashamed of itself.

I am not a fan of lettuce.

On the other hand, if something is seriously reduced in price and not yet entirely inedible, I'm probably going to get it. That's just the way I roll. And that is how it came to pass that I had two little gem lettuces in the fridge, with few ideas about what to do with them. A salad would have been bleak  and disappointing without stronger flavours to go with it, so that was out of the question. I've heard that you can braise them, but I honestly wouldn't have known where to start. But what else can you do?

Griddle them, that's what.

Now, I know I use this griddle pan an awful lot, so I hope I'm not putting off readers who don't have one. A large, heavy frying pan will do just as well, but mine is at the bottom of the cupboard and it's really large and really heavy and I'd have to pull out a load of saucepans before I could even get to it, so I'm griddling instead.

I took one little gem lettuce and washed it without removing the stem, so all the leaves remained attached. After shaking it dry, I cut it in half and lightly brushed it with chilli oil and a sprinkle of salt. I then cooked them on the hot griddle for about 3-5 minutes each side, until the bottom part of the leaves started looking translucent and the outer leaves were nicely charred.

I am happy to say that the lettuce, on this occasion, redeemed itself. The charred bits were particularly delicious, and the whole thing was bitter, tasty and interesting.

These would be excellent served whole as a side to a main instead of a regular, boring, lettuce fucking salad.

Aioli

I've been trying to think what would be the perfect recipe to kick this whole thing off. I've got some biscuits in mind that I want to have a go at making, but since I don't bake that often it might be a bit misleading. I'm still kind of full from Christmas so I don't want to do anything too extravagant, and I definitely don't want to do anything too light and 'healthy' because 1) it's cold outside, I'm not eating a salad, and 2) I don't want to inadvertently encourage people to do the whole January diet thing, as it always creeps me out a bit. I mean, it's fine if you want to, but the idea that you're supposed to is everywhere you look right now, and bollocks if I'm going to contribute to that.

Finally I decided to just write about what I've got in my fridge right now, and right now I'm working my way through a large tupperware tub of aioli.

Aioli (garlic mayonnaise) is something I've only started making recently. I used to be put off by the fact that you can really only make it in quite large batches, and I didn't think I'd use all that much of it. I have now got around that problem by using it on everything. I have it in sandwiches, on toast, as a dip, and over poached eggs. Almost every snack I've had recently features it in some way. It's also great to have with breakfast, partly because the punchy garlic really wakes you up, but mostly because it feels like you're making a liberating anti-social statement. 'Screw you, the world, and deal with my garlic breath for the whole day. Mwahaha'.

You can make this by hand with a whisk, but a food processor is easiest.

You will need:

250ml vegetable oil
250ml olive oil
1 egg
2 - 3 garlic cloves
2 - 3 tbsp cider or white wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to season. You may also like to try adding a little mustard powder, or some chopped herbs.

Blitz the garlic in the food processor until roughly chopped. Add the egg, and blitz until foamy. Add the vinegar, and start up the processor again. As it runs, add the oils in a long thin stream, going especially slowly to start. Once it's all incorporated stop and check for seasoning.

And that's it. As I said before this makes quite a lot, but I've always managed to finish it within two or three weeks, so let's say that's how long it lasts, shall we? I adapted this basic recipe from a Cordon Bleu cooking techniques book, but they use a lot more oil. Since I prefer it a little thicker and richer (and also I was running low on oil) I found that this amount works for me but by all means add more if you want to. Obviously this contains raw egg so avoid it if you don't think you should eat raw egg.

There we have it, the first recipe of the new blog! It tastes good, and it encourages people to avoid you. Symbolic, I guess.