Recipes-not-recipes #24

An asian-ish fish finger salad (yes, it's a thing) is a lunchtime saviour

I’m currently sitting in the Barbican library (thanks for tip, Joe!) looking out on my favourite type of London architecture. I can hear the orchestra tuning and practising behind me, an audible, Proustian madeleine moment transporting me back to my teenage years of nerdily being part of orchestra both at school and in different parts of the country, lugging a cello up and down vast, echoing great halls and hoping one of the trumpet players would notice me.

I’m trying to shake off my obsession with nostalgia but I fear it’s so engrained in my personality that it would be as difficult as shrugging off emotions or the fact that seeing a dog crosses its paws sends my heart into a tizz. I have some strange urge to collect my cello from home and bring it back to London, where it will likely sit in my living room, untouched except for a few moments where I might remember the Fauré piece (Élégie – hearing Jacqueline Du Pré play it still makes me tear up) that I learnt when I was 17 years old and desperate to be like the first chair of our orchestra (the same girl who introduced me to the Artic Monkeys’ Beyond the Boardwalk EP on a music tour of Vienna – I’m forever grateful).

Anyway, this is a recipe-not-recipe for a fish finger salad that I’ll probably eat when I get home. It features very little cooking (unless you count throwing fish fingers in the oven); and leans on my lunchtime saviour, a packet of grains from Waitrose. I always have a couple of these in my fridge for just-in-case moments. I’ve also had this head of red cabbage in my fridge since before Christmas, and it’s still as fresh as it was when I first bought it. It’s one of the best vegetables to keep for when you need some added crunch and want to feel a little virtuous. I prefer it raw to cooked and it’s been on rotation in my meals since feeling rough.