Sooo Beige

Somewhere in this blog there's a post about grey/gray food, and how that colour is thoroughly unappetising. Last weekend I cooked a curry that was the epitome of beige, and it had the same result in terms of appeal to the eyes.


Once beige gets control, like corrupt politicians, it's extremely hard to dislodge. This was, oxymoronically, a beige black hole, the taupe singularity at its heart drawing in and destroying all other colours. I added jade frozen peas to try to brighten the thing, and seconds later they'd lost their sheen and were more brown than green. Basil and coriander went in at the last second, but they too succumbed.


Strangely the root cause of the beige was bright yellow turmeric root, that dazzling hue combining with coconut milk to end in the B word. It didn't help that the curry was bulked out with cubes of peeled aubergine, and a lot of cashews, neither of which added to the non-existent rainbow on my plate. My turmeric-dyed fingers, briefly as yellow as a lifelong smoker's, mocked the dullness of the dish.


The flavour was fine, excellent even, enlivened with a big nub of ginger (more beige) grated in, and spices various. Without a red or yellow pepper to hand, however, and tomato being wrong for it, beige the thing was. Served on beige wholegrain basmati rice. Accompanied by a pleasant hock that matched it nicely, but made me wish I'd opted for a red just to brighten our evening.


No restaurant chef would have served such a dish. At the very least it would have been garnished with something green on the side, and sweet peppers added to the ingredients list. You (and they) can take the look of dishes too far. The pointless foam. The ubiquitous single physalis, or three redcurrants, with puds. A thin squiggly line of sauce too meagre to bring flavour. Curly parsley atop steak and fish. But annoying though they be, they're better than beige.

Beating Squirrels

Beating squirrels is not some brutally inhumane conduct towards furry creatures (though grey squirrels as the saying goes are just rats with good PR), but getting to our cobnut crop this year before the little sods raided our plot. Last year we harvested precisely zero, as Nutkin and his posse made off with the lot.

Not a huge crop this year, however, as along with our apple trees and pear the three nut bushes (they call it nut bush, oh! nut bush etc, thanks Tina) were devastated by the high winds and downpours all summer.

What we did gather on Saturday was processed that afternoon, a pleasant task while listening to the radio. We got about 100g of shelled cobs. Never mind. The milky nuts were blitzed in a spice grinder, as was about 150g of home-grown parsley and basil (the basil was perhaps a quarter of the mix, but dominated the flavour), three garlic cloves and some sea-salt, the lot mixed with a load of grated Parmesan and some olive oil to make a nice soft consistency. DIY pesto, enough for a pasta dish for three of us that evening - so simple, so good - and to 3/4 fill a jar, the pesto covered with a layer of additional oil, to keep in the fridge.

Part of Ruth's packed lunch today is a very wet bean and tomato salad with a huge blob of pesto to enliven it, and the rest will not go to waste. It is not something I'd want to eat every day, or even every week, but as a seasonal    boon it's great, and I am happy to have used up the lot. Two years ago we picked far more, but only ate a few as nibbles once they had dried out and hardened, the rest left for another day that never came. That's one of the lessons we are gradually learning, that you can only eat something once, so you might as well enjoy it at its best.

In monetary terms taking the Parmesan as bought (it was actually a gift from a recent press trip), it and the olive oil would have cost well under £1, while a jar of purchased pesto that size (roughly 400g) would have cost I'd guess £4 or more. And as ours is super-fresh and far more garlicky than shop-bought I reckon it has the edge on taste too.