Signal Status: It's Complicated
A trip to the Breccy Bs and those meals that put things into perspective.
Food For Thought.
There is something that happens when you're extracted from your daily routines, 'normal' life and comfort zones. You stop performing. Pull a tomato out of a Michelin starred restaurant dish, macerated, confit or dressed up any which way, and it's just a tomato, sitting on a vine, asking someone to put salt on it.
Meals cooked in the same kitchen, over and over and over again, on repeat, in between meetings, after work, like clockwork, slowly becoming emotionless, slowly becoming fuel, hamster-on-a-wheel thoughts invading, the walls closing in. Cooking in a kitchen is a privilege, but I sometimes feel like I'm limited, trapped, kept small by it. I often conflate escaping with running away but after weeks and weeks of feeling small and lonely and like even cooking wouldn't save me (a true sign of sadness), a trip to somewhere wide open felt vital.
Emails off. Slack notifications muted. Signal status: it's complicated. Just a van full of groceries, a two-hob gas cooker and a deep-rooted desire to eat every meal outside. It's impossible to delete all the anxieties and mental post-it notes that occupy your brain. But for a few days, I sat on the edge of those thoughts and spent more time thinking about what I was going to cook for dinner than whether ambition was absolute or constantly calculating how much money was arriving and leaving my bank account (spoiler: less of the former and more of the latter). Insecurities about how unoriginal I am? Sorry I'm too busy sweating up this mountain on an unplanned hike without suncream to notice. Overanalysing every relationship to an astonishingly granular degree? My mind is swimming in ice-cold waterfalls and is freezing you out, bye!
Punishing thoughts about how much I've eaten that day were dissolved by an appetite built up by physical tiredness, not mental exhaustion. Anytime we were hungry, we ate fresh bread and French butter studded with chopped chives and sharp crystals of salt. We wolfed down cold peach and feta and tomato salad dressed with nothing but lemon juice and olive oil when the sun was too hot and our necks were burnt. We walked at sunset and lit a fire when the sky was lilac and the moon was up and the light was gone we ate potatoes and charred courgettes in the dark. We improvised a creamy coconut daal that cooked in minutes thanks to a sturdy Reiss pan and a powerful gas flame.
Simplicity yes, but also perspective. A realisation that life exists outside the bubble you create for yourself. That ambition isn't absolute. That money will come and go. That food doesn't just taste better outside, but when you let your mind out of its trap-door. That to be happy isn't to be rich or important or known or overworked, but to be healthy and balanced and accepting. That bread and butter is a meal. That two hobs are all you need. That you can adore the distance. Love the boundary. That you don't have to please everyone. That you don't have to perform.
Here's to the meals that put things into perspective.
Cat x
Recipes-not-recipes™️
I owe this meal to Lisa's beautiful Reiss enamel pan (that I will be hunting for on eBay immediately). Hours before cooking this, I smashed a glass container of rice all over the van, which meant that rice was quite literally off the table and on the floor (Lisa was so prepared that she had a mini vacuum to hoover the rice grains up... although we were still finding them in the strangest places two days later). So I really felt the pressure that the daal had to be a delicious main event. It didn't disappoint.
For two hungry people, you'll need: 1 cup of green lentils, soaked for an hour in just over a cup of water
1/2 tin of coconut milk
1/2 veg stock cube
Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
1 chilli, deseed and finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
6 spring onions, finely chopped
A thumb of ginger, peeled and finely chopped,
1-2 tbsp curry powder
1 tbsp olive oil
In a medium sized pot, heat up the olive oil and throw in the tomatoes, garlic, whites of the spring onions, chilli and ginger on a medium heat. When they start to sizzle and sweat, add the curry powder. Then pour in the lentils along with the water and crumble in the veg stock cube. Turn up the heat. Stir and finally add the coconut milk. Let it come to a boil then lower the heat so everything simmers and the lentils cook in the liquid. The lentils should still have a little bite. It's ready when it's thick and creamy and the lentils are taking up most of the liquid. In a separate wide pan add a little more olive oil and throw in the naans, browning on both sides. Serve in bowls, sprinkle some of the spring onion greens and use the naan as a spoon.
Leftovers.
Something about Proust’s madeleine starting life as toast.
St John proving they can do summer lightness as well as hearty winter fare.
I swear I made a potato salad with radishes without even looking at Molly Baz’s feed. But she made it Caesar, obviously.
A perfect Tender Herbs™️ focaccia sandwich.
It’s the beginning of Hot Korean Girl Ssammer (IYKYK)
All you need is pasta and courgettes.
Will be dining at Sonny Stores as soon as I’m back in Bristol.