January 14, 2025

Crunchy Bois

Salads take too long. A bag o’ leaves, olive oil, salt, maybe some capers if I remember to take them out of the fridge… All of this is golden, God¹-tier food. I just don’t want to have to put it all in a bowl beforehand.²

It’s not necessarily that prepping the ingredients takes longer than, say, prepping a soup siren from the middle distance, just that the effort involved seems to outweigh the output, the noticeable difference between, say a bowl of frozen peas being considered soup, and a bag of leaves ready to grab from being considered salad. One I³ would make a meme from, the other is something to hold six inches from your grinning maw.

Considering this (and the fact that I actually do enjoy the process part of a recipe), I think it’s the lack of down time in salad preparing that gets me. You wash, chop, dress and - done? Just go? You just eat it now? You don’t have to wait for something to simmer or toast or even cool enough to eat. It’s all action, then all eating. I need a little break. I want to stand by the stove⁴ stirring while I list in my head all the other bits I need to prep. I want to shove⁵ something in the oven and then remember I haven’t watered the plants in what - a month? and gather them all in the bath. I like a little moment to switch off, especially in those pivotal few minutes between completing a dish and needing to transition into eating that dish. Give it a chance to surprise me, powder its nose, change into something more comfortable before it lays on the table to be adored

here is where I stopped writing and came back…four days later. Please enjoy the lack of continuity of thought

So, have you ever toasted quinoa? It’s great! Takes a while⁶ to fully dry out in the oven, but yeah, fully recommend it. Did it with cous cous the following day, and again, gave lunch a bit of interest. Some class. Plus, you have to wait for it to cool a little, so you can prep everything else, mix it up, then go to the toilet, empty the laundry, make a cup of tea and then be like: okay, lunch time and toss in the toasted beads of crunch.

I’ve given up on dill for now. Imma try and grow some, and maybe there is a reason outside of lack of demand that explains why my local shops don’t have it, but I am letting the matter rest for now. Sohla does seem to love it though, and it is for sure the ingredient I’ve had to find adjustments for the most (outside of kosher salt, which I do want to understand at some point⁷, but I have a book about salt I’ve needed the urgency to get to, and I guess this is the tipping point. Once I’ve finished this Romanovs book. Man, did you know that the ruling classes are all, like, related? Mind-blowing stuff, I know). I will want to remake some of these dishes in the summer because I want to know what dill will do to them, but I’m not stressing⁸ about the specifics of ingredients, trying to replicate the texture and general flavour profile and counting it as a win.

The Green Goddess Dressing is a winner, doesn’t take much to impact whatever it’s dressing, and lasts in the fridge (we have frozen some to be used today, so will let you know results). For vegan buttermilk, I use plant milk (Oatly Barista for the fat content, yum!, but I’ve defo used soy for buttermilk before to great success, and I think any of them will curdle, it’s just whether you want that flavour in your dressing. Most are probs a yay), and an acid (this time it was lemon juice, but for soda bread I generally use rice or white wine vinegar. It just sits oddly to put lemon in my bread). In this case I measured the amount of liquid in oat milk and then squeezed in some long-life lemon juice, because I didn’t care too much about having a loose dressing, but generally I replace a minimum of two tablespoons of milk for acid. Then you leave it for a minute and look over and it’s all gross on the top and separated. Like baby sick. That’s the image, that’s the aim, don’t at me.

The dressing is also great because everything goes in the blender and then, boom, done. I would probably minimise the amount of raw garlic/spring onion in future though, as it has that homemade hummus problem of being really good but almost hot with the alliums⁹ on the first day, and on subsequent days the flavour grows. Not a bad flavour. Just it takes up a large amount of real estate in the Dressing suburb of Flavourtown.

Oh, and also, on the second day I used my juzzer¹⁰ instead of chopping and mandolin-ing the hard veg, and that very much improved my quality of life re:salad prep. Finally, ten seconds to stare into that middle distance everyone’s been talking about! It does make for a slightly sloppier salad, but again, I’m good with a loose dressing. Plus, the toasted grain evens that out. The toasted kernels don’t absorb the liquid as you’re eating it, but the non-toasted ones do, so you get a nice crunch to slop ratio.

So, lessons learned: Toast half your grains until they are properly dried out, aim for baby sick, and…salads need some down time built into the prep.

I can do that.