Food For Thought.
The year is 2010. I'm a second year student both in university and in IRL culinary experience. It's just after midnight at 82 Park Road. Bottles of Sainsbury's Basics Spanish Red Wine are strewn across the table, as well as half-drunk vodkas and unbranded tonic water. No memory of dinner eaten – maybe some leftover Nandos? – and more than a little drunk, my housemate Amy and I stumble around the kitchen trying to make our post-night out ritual. Midnight eggs.
Midnight eggs often (but not always) include three to four eggs not totally whisked, perhaps with bits of shell in for added texture; too much salt; sliced white bread. On nights when we were feeling particularly adventurous, midnight eggs might be fried in pools of oil. Never poached (risky even at the best of times), never boiled (no one's waiting for six minutes around these parts). Optional add-ons included burnt toast (that time I set the toaster on fire) and an unprecedented squeeze of tomato ketchup. Add pepper for a grown-up twist.
Possibly pre or post midnight eggs. The expression often remains the same. Can of Boddington may suggest ‘pre’.
Maybe less so for Gen Zers, but there was such stigma attached to students and university food. Instant noodles (check), batches of lasagne (check), Dominos pizza (double check). First year was a blur of catered halls/petrol station fare – microwaved ramen, full English cooked breakfasts three times a week, prawn mayo rolls, Esso meal deals – while my romance with cooking began in second year. Like many first relationships, it was uncertain, filled with bravado and a little unhealthy.
Second year cooking was defined by jacket potatoes topped with 'oily veg'. That is any amount of vegetables cooked with chorizo and oil. That was it. That was the whole meal. Mayo on the 'side', but at that point it was more of a main event. Third year brought a strange obsession with Fruit + Fibre cereal, which I ate almost religiously three times a day, especially when working at Urban Outfitters (obviously). There were also heavy roasts complete with Yorkshire puddings no matter the meat, cauliflower cheese and dense roast potatoes.
Come Dine With Me-style dinners were done between the girls and boys houses. Thai red curries, chocolate fondant cakes – and that was the boys' turn. I used to host big dinner parties for cast and crew members of the rotating plays we were all involved in; but I can't remember what I made, because I was probably more consumed with wine and the prospect of snogging the leads.
A classic girls dinner party at 33 Park Road. This looks quite profesh. Salmon + asparagus.
2009-2012 were our salad days that never involved salads. I grew more in love with food, then totally out of love with it, too. I devoured dishes like I consumed experiences. Pasta with a side of heartbreak. Drunken nights with a side of cheesy chips. Seeming first love with a side of pizza. I was hungry for it all. And perhaps I got too full of it all halfway through, and tried to empty myself of everything by the end.
Cooking looks a little different ten years later. Whether we're 19 or 29, we'll always cook according to feeling. And just as our cooking evolves, so do the feelings attached to each meal. The dish you ate on repeat in second year becomes tinged with silliness, hope, expectation, sadness. The meal someone made for you when you were hungover becomes a new ritual. For me, midnight eggs was probably the beginning of my eggs-anytime-of-the-day mentality.
Here's to the early versions of ourselves, and the food that fuelled us.
Cat x
Recipes-not-recipes.
Potato, wild garlic + spinach frittata
From midnight eggs to picnic eggs. Part frittata, part Spanish tortilla, totally delicious. We ate this on shoot day for Paynter at a Kent winery called Tillingham – wonderful, please go, do a wine tasting, get drunk on wines you can't pronounce – after a particularly cold morning playing badminton between vines (not my forte, nor an attractive face for photos). We came back ravenous and returned to cheese and tomato toasties and an oozing, gooey frittata. God, it was good. So I recreated it last weekend for a picnic.
6 fresh eggs (or 7 for luck / you have a rogue one in your fridge like I did)
5 medium-sized baby potatoes
1 medium-large banana shallot
Handful of spinach
3-4 wild garlic leaves (optional)
More butter than you think you'd need in a frittata (or vegan alt)
Salt + peps
Whisk the eggs with salt and pepper in a large bowl and set aside. Slice the baby potatoes really thinly (I used a mandolin) and halve the shallot then finely slice lengthways. Add a large knob of butter to a big pan on medium heat, and add the onions + potatoes. Season with salt + a few twists of pepper. Let it almost caramelise, which should take about 15 minutes. You don't need all the potatoes to be completely cooked, but you want some golden bits. Pre-heat the oven to 220º. In a smaller, non-stick frying pan, heat up more butter (and a splash of oil so it doesn't burn). Add the potato mixture to the big bowl of eggs, your spinach and mix. Pour it into the frying pan, making sure it's pretty even, then just place the wild garlic leaves across the top. Let it sit on a medium-high heat until you start to see the sides cook. Then pop it in the oven for about 10 minutes. It should be cooked all the way through, but still gooey in the middle, so just give it a poke to check. Best served with a lemony salad, a cold bottle of orange wine, outside on a sunny day.
Since I Asked.
Emailing strangers is something I do on a daily basis. And while most involve project timelines, chasing invoices but also the occasional 'shall we meet for a dip?', others are more food-related. For this week's "Since I Asked", I posed a few questions to Kate Todd, a SNOA reader who I love receiving emails from. She always tells me what she's eaten that day, the way it felt and like all good Brits do, we talk about the weather. I feel a pang of humans-can-actually-be-quite-wonderful when these exchanges happen. Plus her answers are great and would make us hugely suited to sit around a table together, eating risotto and meatballs (hold the olives). Kate, you're great, and the concept of Hateful Dinner is actually quite genius.
If you were a dish, what would you be and why?
If I were a dish, it would probably be spring vegetable risotto with plenty of pepper and a dash of lemon - classic and comforting, but with a bit of fire and zing.
What’s one food you’ll never get on board with (if any)?
Olives. I omit from every recipe and every time they're kindly placed on a table in a restaurant, they sit there in their bowl, sad and neglected until a server takes pity on them (in the interest of not wasting food, we try to tell the server that we won't have them so they won't go to waste!) I've tried them many times, but they've never stuck.
What’s a food-related dealbreaker in a friend/partner/lover?
My partner and I have different food intolerances. For me it's seafood, for him, it's eggs and not for love nor money can we stomach the other person's meal. The solution is 'Hateful Dinner'. Once every couple of weeks, we'll prepare and tuck into our respective dinners - typically baked eggs with toast soldiers and fish and chips with mushy peas. There's always a good-natured but obligatory wrinkled nose in the other person's direction.
The dish you always come back to (and why)?
So many to choose from... We have a relatively deep rotation of regular meals in our house (I'm a big meal planner and have only gotten more intense about this since having a child). Now that we eat with our toddler most nights of the week, we're leaning heavily towards one-pot meals, tray bakes, slow cooker recipes, etc. One meal we regularly come back to is spaghetti and meatballs. Made in a slow cooker (with the pancetta crisped in a pan first), the meatballs are tender and the sauce (with a pinch of chilli flakes) has had a whole day to develop. Also, what toddler doesn't love long noodles and plastering spaghetti sauce all the way up to their eyebrows? It's a joy to watch her dive into a meal with gusto.
Leftovers.
Pasta salad with morty d from my fave Molly Baz (her cookbook arrives next week and I am buzzzzed)
This is a minimalist picnic vibe (baguette + spritz)
How good is egg mayo, especially when it looks like Joe Woodhouse’s lunch?
Smacked cucumbers, but make it avocado
Thought it was gnocchi, but they’re actually confit leeks. Ottolenghs, I’m in!
If you’re not dipping a sandwich, what r u doing? Miso-stewed beef French dip incoming.
Life is better with a good grilled cheese. Here’s a simple how-to.
Literally fly me to LA and let me loose in Gjusta for breakfast.
Real into this smoked trout dip c/o Rebekah Peppler