Ribbons on a Bashed up Pair of Jeans

My Christmas reading of Anna del Conte's tome on Northern Italian cookery has helped add a few new standards to my repertoire. One of these is such a simple way of making roast vegetables a bit more interesting and a lot more appealing to the eye than normal, and I've made it twice in the last fortnight, once more or less to her instructions, once tarted up a bit.


Her dish uses courgette, potato, aubergine and red pepper, all of them cut and sliced into neat pieces then laid in stripes on a bed of finely chopped onions, with a few blobs of passata on the onions then on the upper veg. With seasoning and a drizzle of olive oil it is quickly prepared, then left to cook - it doesn't even need the recommended occasional basting at a pinch - at 160C for 90 minutes it comes out looking colourful, smelling appetising, and giving cook and diner alike a feeling of virtue. I won't buy courgettes in winter, and had no decent spuds to hand, so my version used aubergine, red peppers, and sweet potato.


The second effort a week or more on used the same vegetables, but I couldn't leave well alone, so added a dividing strip of green chili rings, a load of garlic cloves peeled but whole, and another dividing strip of cherry toms. It worked again, but was not as satisfying as the original, simpler dish. Sometimes embellishments work, sometimes they don't. These didn't: the tomatoes - strange given the passata that's part of the original - jarred, and the chili felt out of place. The garlic, sweet and tender, fared best of the three additions. But overall it felt like I'd added ribbons to a pair of comfortably worn in jeans.


Cooking, domestic and professional, should be about trying things, making changes here and there. I dislike those interminable arguments about the one true recipe for xyz, where departure from someone's fixed idea of what's right is deemed heretical... Paella is one example where such debate seems particularly fatuous, given there are many regional and local variations, and the Valencian original began as a peasant dish where people used - and still use - what they had/have to hand. And Paella, like that roast veg idea, invites experiment. That said there are limits: I'm no fan of  'fusion' cookery, partly because it can seem false, forced, and worse, arch. So the bad boy/girl chef who uses AdC's idea and introduces coconut milk, curry spice and guavas won't get my applause. That would be like ripping big holes in the knees of those old jeans, and who'd be daft enough to do that?

Breaking My Fast

As these days the Dear Leader and I undertake a 600 calorie fast every Monday we actually do break a more meaningful fast than normal on a Tuesday morning. Strangely we neither of us wake up ravenous, nor horribly early, on the morning after the slight deprivation before. In fact what we have on the Tuesday is only a variation on the Monday fast breakfast (and yes, it is fast to do as well) of a boiled egg and a bowl of fruit.


Lest this all begin to be too too virtuous, I am looking forward to a short holiday in Scotland in not many weeks' time, where I hazard a guess there may not be bowls of fruit available on the hotel breakfast menu. With luck there will be black pudding, and I am certain sure bacon and sausages will feature, things reserved now for high days and holidays. For the sake of my - love that euphemism - digestive transit - I hope they will have given in to brown bread as an option.


That bowl of fruit is a major pleasure, but given my constant wish to have diversity in our diet it is something of a challenge too. It's April, so imported strawberries make the grade occasionally now, along with blueberries. Citrus is a must for some sharpness (but as per my previous post, not as sharp in the case of grapefruit as was once the case), kiwi for the beautiful green and the eye-beneficial compounds signaled by that colour, and plums for some crunch and their purple or yellow skins. Pomegranate seeds (the trick is to bash the back of the halved fruit over a bowl with a heavy wooden spoon) strewn over the lot once or twice a week bring a touch of Aladdin - it takes little imagination to see them as drifts of rubies in a bandit's treasure chest. But back to my less camp self now.


The rather limited fruit range offered by my local supermarkets is bolstered by visits to the excellent Asian shop we use more or less weekly. Today I bought dragon fruit, golden plums, guavas and a bright yellow-skinned mango (along with a load of non-fruit items). The white with black dots of the dragon fruit, cut in elegant dice, and even the light-green-beige of the guavas, will add to the richness of the breakfast palette. It is not too long too until we will have our own rhubarb, gooseberries, greengages, mirabelles, pears, apples, quince, blackcurrants and even with luck apricots to add to the mix.


I will enjoy the contrast of hotel bacon and eggs for a few days (they can keep any hash browns on offer, I'm yet to encounter one anywhere that's not oily and badly cooked), but at the same time will miss the burst of colour (and flavour) that breakfast at home brings.