Why, that's a very large salad. . .

My lunch. The last of the bulgar wheat, more of the feta, the scraplets of the waffer-thin ham. But why such a large bowl? Why is that necessary? You want to know why? Because of lettuce.

Lettuce, lettuce, obnoxious lettuce.

Now the sins of lettuce, as you are all only too aware, number in the thousands. Here I confine myself to the top three transgressions of this most uppity of salad-stuffs.

One.

It has no right taking up so much space in a bowl. It has nothing nutritious to offer besides a bit of water and some smugness of having 1 of The Five. The Five is a tyranny that shall be addressed at a later time, when lettuce has been utterly Denounced. As it stands, lettuce is party to this tyranny, and therefore must be eliminated as an enemy of Freedom.

Two.

It simply refuses to be cut down to size. No matter how one shreds or tears - or indeed pummels - there will always be a frond here or there, its ludicrous self-belief refusing to be contained by any hapless consumer’s contorted or sucking maw, forcing one to flail facially in order to tame the bastard. Put them high if you hear me people – TESTIFY.

Three.

Everyone with the most basic knowledge of alliances among vegetables acknowledges that lettuce has a long-standing arrangement with the cherry tomato, both plotting night and day to enslave the eater of salad via a process of attrition and humiliation. Lettuce, I can now reveal, is, in fact, the pimp of the cherry tomato. Brutalised by life in the greenhouse, a cherry tomato on-the-vine (a bargain at Farmers’ market for £1.50) appears from its brown paper carrier, its pendulous fruits quivering with ripeness, only then to be shamelessly used as a ‘fluffer’, distracting from the lettuce’s own inadequacies.

So there we have it. Why salad is the devil.

That being said, it did make a very tasty lunch, and there was even some left for a tasty side tomorrow. Turns out characterising the ingredients of one’s salad can make for a jolly and, in my case, indulgently self-righteous lunch hour. 

 (lettuce is tamed)

Phat Beetz*

Ah, writing about beetroot. In the words of giant pop band of the 90s Lighthouse Family - What Could Be Better?

I didn't grow up with beetroot. Just not part of the rotation in our household. Very occasionally when we got taken out to Garfunkels (for the £2 kids meals - such glorious days), Dad would get beetroot from the salad bar, along with everything else. But I never liked the cut of its jib. Oozing a dark unguent. Most suspicious, my five-year-old-self thought. I didn't ever appreciate that it is the pinkest food in the world (and as a five-year-old girl obvs I just lurrrrrved PINK). Digression verging on gender stereotyping rant? Myes.

So at the delightful farmers' market of wednesday last I bought a big bowl of beetroot for £1.50 - what a bargain! The scottish ancestors within me cackled with delight and cracked their knuckles at the thought of such sparing of expense. Satisfied with them and myself, I duly consulted cookbooks, sure there would be absolutely tons of stuff to do with roots from beets.

But here is the trouble with being lazy. No matter what dear Yotam Ottolenghi, Leon, Nigel Slater, or indeed Delia say, you just peel it all and put it in a roasting pan with oil, salt, pepper and the only type of vinegar you have in the cupboard - balsamic. Now the beetroot is Everywhere. In fact, I lied. I didn't put it all in the roasting pan. It didn't fit.

It certainly is jolly having it around. I mean, it is so PINK. And a cool fluorescent pink at that, not wishy washy 'I-could-give-you-salmonella' pink. Not, 'I'm-a-salmon-hear-me-roar(-weakly)' pink. PINK PINK. Cutting up beetroot with pinking shears would be a sheer delight. Also, although it is part of that category of vegetables that Do Funny Things To You That We're Not Meant To Talk About, it's not as objectionable as what happens after consuming Jerusalem artichokes (wikipedia it) or asparagus. Thus for the past two days, in which I have eaten roughly 1.5kg of beetroot, I have caught myself staring at some hapless fellow sufferer/student in the library thinking 'heeeheeeeeeee I have a secret'. If you don't know what I mean, you Clearly have not eaten enough of this delightful, subtle and obnoxiously psychedelic veg.

Being lazy, I also cooked up a big pot of bulgar wheat with onion and garlic and a completely half-arsed amount of cumin in it ("oh, it'll be like spiced yoghurt, only spiced bulgar wheat"). So that's all I've been eating really. Bulgar wheat, beetroot and roasted carrot (the carrot got lavished with a tablespoon and a half of honey. Treat your carrots right, and they'll treat you. To nothing. But they might taste nice independent of their well or ill wishings towards you).

 At first, it was exciting. Just look at them colours! It's JUST like I'm in MOROCCO!

And then, OOH but feta makes it better. With lemon juice, pomegranate seeds, more spinach and black pepper, it was verging on taste-tastic.

And then.... exactly the same thing for lunch!

The best part about doing salad in a box has to be the Required dance-around-the-kitchen-shakin-the-box-up-yeaaah which Dave definitely did not walk in on. Lucky Dave. He always wears great socks.

Now, for the uncooked beets that lie dormant and in wait for me in the cupboard. What the hell am I going to do with them?

*Title pun kindly donated by Oliver James Westerby Cox (2011). Damn him for making it first.

Intro to Me

I like my food. I like tasty things. If you see me sitting in the library, typing with a serious face on, or staring intently at a screen, it is likely I'm thinking about food. Specifically, I am perpetually perplexed and obsessed with the question - "What would be The Best thing to eat right now". I'm also a graduate student at a posh-ish university. This means whilst I have the general mindset of 'I Am Poor. Put It Down', I have a whiff of bourgeois about me and like looking wistfully over and around cheese counters in the covered market. I have Googled 'gurnard'.

So what's all this about? I've decided to have a bash at doing something semi-regularly - writing about the food I cook in my student kitchen (sparse, electric cooker, strip lighting, bleak and Le Creuset-less).

And here we go. Tonight's Lazy Creation? Soya Mince Bolog!

"WHY BUY SOYA MINCE??" I hear you cry! Well, it's cheap. And new (to me). I have a friend who likes cooking healthy things and she mentioned it to me. Feeling puckish in Tesco I bought some and Tonight is the Night when Mince Gets Rehydrated (to be sung - with difficulty - to Spice Girls 'Two become One').

Le packet says to rehydrate mince before cooking but I, devil-may-care, cad-around-town that I am disregard. Two smallish onions chopped, four cloves of garlic (it is soya mince after all - it'll need some punch), three smallish carrots cut up small all into some olive oil in a big pan. Soften them bad boys up and then IN with the MINCE! 200g of dried mince plus 750ml of hot veg stock = something resembling very gross things. Help is at hand in the form of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and a daring grating of nutmeg. The mince begins to expand and I am not very encouraged by the smell of pot noodle emanating from my cheery red large saucepan. The contents are far from red or cheery.

TO THE TOMATOES. A carton of tesco passata, what feels like a quarter of a tube of tomato paste, a fork-ful of marmite (I ent got no Bovril), thumb-and-fingerful of maldon sea salt (I took the intro to Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries very much to heart), scrobbling of black pepper, vigorous stir, and finally, the last third of bottle of red wine that's been sitting near the cooker for the past four weeks. I really hope it is mine. I have assumed. The flatmates and I don't really talk extensively. I begin fantasising about what anyone would do if they walked in and I was sitting on the floor surrounded by everyone's food and stickily licking out yoghurt pots and smoothie cartons. May or may not attempt this if things get really lonely.

And Lo! We have a bubbling pot full of something that may resemble bolog! I have no spag so it'll be conchiglie bolognese this eve. Amid the fantasy of gorging self on the leftover pizza on fridge shelf below mine, I have managed to turn on the nasty electric hob thing so its heated up in time for the boiling of water for pasta - and in that goes.

I have a lovely sister (one of three) who is fantastically conscientious about vegetables and so, remembering that my health is dependent on veg, I try a new method of preparing spinach. Post washing authentic-looking mud of the leaves I put it in a bowl with a wee bit o water in the bottom and microwave for 2mins. Brilliante! So overjoyed with success of this new cooking method, I don't use a sieve and attempt pouring the water out of the bowl without, resulting in spinach falling out of bowl into sink, as it is wont to do when tilted in such a way. I've just done the washing up - I'm sure the sink is clean. The spinach bowl is now to be the serving dish for dinner. It is larger than a cereal bowl and heavier too, but not in the realms of mixing bowl. It is characteristic of the student kitchen - odd and ugly.

Slurp of olive oil onto now cooked pasta, swirly swirly in the pan (a conchigli makes a bid for freedom - I hope it enjoys its life on the kitchen floor) and onto the spinich. A final tast of the soya mince bolog prompts more tomato paste, salt, pepper and a bolder grating of nutmeg, with the result it doesn't taste like pot noodle.

Lashings of parmesan and boom. We have a saturday night supper.

Final word from this lazy student cook: soya mince - don't buy it unless you have to... I have a whole pan-full of the stuff now to freeze and eat. Remember me comrades....

If you have had success with soya mince, or if you are a lazy student cook, let me know. We can vibe.