Work in progress

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I can sometimes find this whole food business rather intimidating.  It is fairly obvious that there has been something of a food revolution over the past few years, with a wealth of cookbooks, cookery programmes, food blogs and food photography apps mushrooming into the public conscious.  I think that this is brilliant - clearly, as I would be a hypocrite otherwise, what with this here burble that I pretend is a food blog, and my penchant for taking pictures of food and prettifying them on Instagram.  However, I do have one concern about all this - the pursuit of perfection.

It seems to me that so many articles, programmes, how-to videos and all that jazz are all about one thing -  how to make the perfect whatever. Which I find puts really rather a lot of pressure on the would-be cook.  What if it doesn't come out perfect?  Am I a failure?  My grandmother makes amazing roast potatoes, which I adore, but this recipe says it's the 'ultimate' roast potato recipe, so does that make my previous opinion of my grandmother's potatoes wrong?  What if I don't like one of the ingredients in this 'perfect x' recipe, does that mean that if I make it without it, it will be imperfect?  Even if I prefer the taste?

Have a pootle around the world of food blogs too, and it seems as though as no-one ever has any problems.  Everything seems to have gone smoothly, no confusion, no burnt bits, no muddling up recipe stages.  And the end result is always perfect.

Am I the only one who struggles with new techniques?  Am I the only one who is willing to admit in the public sphere that sometimes you can spend hours on making something for the first time, only to end up in tears and having a boiled egg for supper instead?  (Which of course, as everyone should be able to confess, is NOT the easy thing it pretends to be and that it actually takes loads of practice to get a soft-boiled egg  with a white that isn't still viscous or a yolk that hasn't turned to powder.)

It is a well-established notion that we learn from mistakes.  Mistakes provoke chance discoveries and new creations, or at the very least, help us to form our tastes.  I am willing to admit to mine, and I hereby present a couple of my recent disasters:

Cornish pasty - look, wasn't I organised?  Didn't that bode well?

Ah, all ready to be tucked up and baked.  Shame that the swede stayed rock-hard and the pastry turned to hot dust.

My first (and only to date) attempt at making bagels.  This is after about ten minutes of kneading the dough.

A further half an hour of kneading, and it looks like I'm trying to make a model solar system.  This all went in the bin and I went to try and not cry in the shower.

There was also the memorable fish risotto I made five years ago - its over-salted, pungent hideousness still lingers in my tastebuds' memory.

So, there you have it.  I have a food blog and I am not an expert on food.  Now, I'm off to make some scrambled egg for lunch - fingers crossed that I don't overcook it and it doesn't just all end up caked to the pan.

Feta, or, one cheese's quest for greatness

The eponymous hero of this post starts off, like all good protagonists, with a humble beginning -as a smooth, clean character to be moulded according to the whim of its creator.

It sets off on its journey to greatness with some easy tasks.  First, to enliven the lunchtime of a bored office worker.  Before I went freelance, one of my favourite packed lunches in winter was a lentil, roasted red pepper and feta salad.  Pah, this task is almost too easy though - a forgotten stale biscuit in a desk drawer can cheer up a cog in the corporate machine.

So, our hero moves on to slightly more ambitious salads, for example, this one with pomegranate and couscous from Jo Pratt's In the Mood for Food:

Summer, innit.

Yeah, that's still too easy for feta though.  You can put anything in a salad (although see my 'Warning' post for a caveat to this wild statement).  

Onwards our hero strives, striking forward into the more dangerous lands of dinnertime.  Still not wishing to push his luck, as all good heroes are reluctant ones after all, he allows himself simply to be crumbled over roasted aubergine:

Also with softened onions, chilli and mint - another Diana Henry job.

Well, this is working ok, he thinks to himself, what if I marinate myself with some garlic and chilli and get sprinkled over baked sweet potato?

Oh, and just a little bit of coriander too.

Getting a little more comfortable in his role as saviour of tastebuds, he realises he has barely been stretching himself.  What must his loyal followers think of him, he hasn't even moved away from being eaten cold!  Time to warm up then, and to join forces with that most compliant of compatriots - pasta.  First, he tries an alliance with mint and peas, which results in a refreshing, yet comforting partnership.  But now our hero is getting tired of being comforting - he wants the world on a plate, and goes crazy with some prawns and lemon:

Cheese and fish?!  What is this madness?!  It's genius, he cries, genius I tell you!  Heady with success, our hero seeks out more and more outrageous comrades - feta can do anything, it's the champion of the cheese world, it can work with any foodstuff!  

But oh, the horror - baked beetroot, chickpeas, dressing.  How the mighty are fallen, what oily slime is this, even without the orange?  (And we all know how that turned out before.)

Then, as in all good stories, a wise old sage appears (in this tale, the sage is played by Nigel Slater).  Back to your roots, feta, says the sage.  But I still want to prove myself, still want to show what I can do!  Ok, feta, one last chance - take some thyme and go somewhere warm for a bit.

And so, as the oven cools and the wholemeal wrap tucks feta up in a bed of lettuce, he knows he has done the right thing.  Experimentation is a fine thing when you're learning, but stay true to your calling and you will always have a happy ending.