so, today children, i am here to talk to you about two very much maligned kitchen entities that i personally refuse to be without. oil, and salt. now, those of you in the know are aware that i take a very self-reflexive stance on food and the female body, so stuff like this is going to creep into my posts from time to time because i think it's important. for those of you not in the know, that was your heads up. as a young woman in contemporary culture, i feel i am encouraged by many media sources to treat food as a form of self-denial, in direct relation to how i am supposed to feel about my body. adverts full of women extolling cardboardy 'cereal bars', low fat (yet still mysteriously oversugared) yoghurts, and 'healthy' salad options abound; and apparently unless i adopt this martyrdom diet i don't have the right to feel good about my body. it's all part of the old chestnut of having to be thin to be beautiful in today's society, and i'm sorry, but i just don't buy it. oil and salt are usually the first ingredients in the firing line in this doublefold war on food and the female body. now, before we get started on why this is quite so wrong and gross, i would like to put out there two basic principles: i am not saying overindulgence in high-fat foods and salt is good for your body if done on a regular basis. and i am not saying i have the perfect body or that i am always happy with it; i'm a uk size 12/10 depending on the shop, and i could probably only really comfortably lose a stone before i started to look ill (not that i'm even trying to, i bruise my hipbones on the bar at work enough without them sticking out any more)
i have previously bought into this cult of denial in food. i couldn't keep it up for two reasons. one; it made me boring; i was a packet-reader, a recipe-editer, and more importantly, completely antisocial regarding food. and secondly, it was boring to eat. people hate on oil and salt but they're vital for a very important thing: flavour. even just a tiny bit glossed over the skin of a sweet red pepper, as though you were applying lipbalm, is enough to encourage it to yield and blacken under a powerful grill heat. now tell me you wouldn't rather be eating a pepper soft, smoky, and sweet like that, than watery and oversugared in its raw state? exactly. and salt? while i don't think we need it in quite the quantities that some processed-food manufacturers add it, it's a very necessary component. imagine a noodle dish without soy? a world where you couldn't pep up depressing tomatoes with a few grinds of sea salt and a lick of (you guessed it) oil? life without that king of sweets, salted caramels? it's horrible, isn't it? if you're anything like me, it's unbearable.
now, i'm not recommending you all start doing what my grandma does and putting a pile of salt on the corner of your plate to dip your food into (no word of a lie, she genuinely does that) but people need to stop being afraid of these ingredients. not least because, aside from anything else, they are so useful in cooking. i have worked with both in preserving contexts this week, something i could probably not have bought myself to do in the previous food-fear days. so let's get onto the first recipe, shall we?
saturday night spinach and mint pesto
(note, i didn't use a recipe, i just eyeballed the quantities, so here's a rough estimate on ingredients)
about 300g spinach (basically half a bag-full if you're using baby leaves like me)
2-3 sprigs of mint
4 garlic cloves, peeled, and crushed
about 100g of pine nuts (maybe a handful and a half)
about 100-150g parmesan (i use a veggie variety from sussex, if you can't find it and are concerned about rennet then you can usually sub grana padano or pecorino as they're easier to find veggie versions of)
juice of a lemon
about 250ml olive oil, plus extra to seal.
okay, about the only step in this recipe is to whiz it all up in a food processer until it's a coarse, bright green paste. when you put it into containers, cover with another layer of oil, because it stops discolouration, and store in the fridge. it keeps for like a month, so if you've made tons like me, it won't be a problem.
now because i was making this before literally my busiest shift so far this year (we had a band on that literally pack the place out every time they play, so you just go into the shift with your game face on, take whatever it throws at you, don't expect to get home before 1:30am, and you're golden) i just served it plain, with as much spaghetti as i imagined i could physically eat:
because i literally couldn't be arsed to do anything more elaborate. it was good, more than good actually. it made what would otherwise have been a mindless exercise in carb-loading a pleasurable experience. this recipe in itself was an exercise in saving food from going to waste. despite my endeavours to reduce packaging and stay seasonal, i have an addiction to those bags of ready-prepped baby spinach leaves that verges on the pathological. i can and do literally wander round the house eating them like crisps. but my cooking has not been in a particularly leafy groove for a while, so i had to think of a way of using up half a bag. and then, lo and behold, i get a kilo of pine nuts free from work. thankyou service industry gods. of course, that now means i have a giant tub of pesto in my fridge, which i will have to think of things to cook with. are you beginning, now, to see how this cyclical cooking thing works out for me? i think i prefer spinach versions of pesto to actual pesto actually. maybe because they haven't been ruined for me by mediocre versions? or maybe because the delicate flavour of spinach acts more as a light background for the bolder flavours like garlic to come through? either way this is a pretty good go-to for the time-pressed who don't do bland.
right, so that was recipe number one, onto recipe number two taken from my trusty river cottage preserves handbook:
preserved lemons
1kg small, ripe, unwaxed lemons
150g good quality sea salt
1 tsp black or pink peppercorns
3-4 bay leaves
1 tsp coriander seeds (optional)
wash the lemons in cold water and pat them dry. set 3 or 4 of them aside - these will be squeezed and their juice poured over the salted lemons.
using a sharp knife, partially quarter the remaining lemons lengthwise by making two deep cuts right through the fruit, keeping them intact at either end. rub a good teaspoon of salt into the cut surfaces of each lemon. pack the fruit chock-a-block into sterilized, wide-necked jars, sprinkling in the remaining salt, peppercorns, bay leaves, and coriander seeds as you go.
squeeze the juice from the reserved lemons and pour over the salted lemons. they must be completely covered. you can top up with a little water if necessary. seal with a vinegar-proof lid. leave for at least 4 weeks before opening to allow the lemon rinds to soften.
et voila. i can't actually tell if these are going to be any good for a month, obviously. this recipe was a big change of pace from sugar-set preserving; no angsting about boil points, or testing for setting. but with its lack of pre-jarring measures it brings a new set of anxieties. namely, 'is this really going to work?'. given that we have about a month to wait, they will be ready in ideal time for my traditional 'invite loads of mates round for a birthday dinner before the horrendous piss-up' early march event, which will, if all goes according to plan, involve a helluva lot of middle eastern food. in the meantime, i'm happy having the jars kicking around prettying up my kitchen. we all know by now that i am a magpie for colour, and i spend all of winter desperately trying to bring it into my kitchen. anyway, things have been so god-damned busy lately that i now have a mountain of laundry and chores to get on with (not helped by the fact my mother has been hit hard by flu, and my brother has a broken thumb), so rather than waxing lyrical about food all afternoon, i'd better get myself back into the real world.
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