Salad dreams

I know, I know, there’s very little that’s duller than hearing about other people’s dreams. But a couple of nights ago I dreamt about salad. And, well, when I woke up I thought of the Confined Kitchen.

To be fair, it wasn’t actually salad per se, but a place called The Salad Centre, a (in their own words) ‘vegetarian wholefood restaurant’ in Boscombe, which I and my parents haunted throughout my youth and teens. I will never know why Sue and Nick – the brains behind the place – thought Boscombe an auspicious spot for such a joint, but it was regularly packed out on a Saturday lunchtime, with queues back to the door. 

It did very much what it said on the tin: hearty veggie meals, with a salad bar of six rotating varieties as the centrepiece. Pick a size of bowl and they filled it up with your choices kind of thing. And hearty stews, pasta bakes, the biggest jacket potatoes with the meltiest cheese I have ever known, homity pie, carob fudge brownies, banoffee pie about 4 inches tall and most of that was cream, fruit cheesecakes, scones, and almost certainly the first ever cappuccino I had. It was an early adopter of the EXTREMELY LOUD MILK FROTHER, that’s for sure. 

Writing about it now, I can still taste lots of these things with astonishing clarity, and it certainly influenced my culinary outlook. Two things I’d have come to much later were it not for Boscombe’s finest are sultanas in a cabbage salad, and pineapple chunks in a brown rice salad. Don’t knock ‘em till you’ve tried ‘em.

Sadly, I can’t encourage any south coast residents to rush there (in a socially distanced manner), as it closed down a while back. After doing the sad thing of changing hands first and Not Being At All The Same Anymore.

It’s been a week of being mentally thrown into long-ago places, but you don’t need to hear my thoughts on the Secondary School Dream. I guess it’s quite likely all the current Uncertanties (I’m pretty scared) are making the sub-conscious seek the familiar.

After my Niçoise effort, Melinda encouraged a continuation of the salad theme, but to be honest, they’ve subsequently been a bit less dramatic.

Dramatic lighting at least.

This ‘un should really have been grated and/or finely chopped, but you know those days when cleaning the grater doesn’t seem worth the effort? It’s beetroot, apple, radish and celery, dressed in horseradish and lemon juice. We had it with a dinner of bits and bobs – some leftover potatoes fried up, some egg mayo, a few tomatoes probably. 

And when does something stop being a salad and start being a cold, dressed, side vegetable? Friday night’s home-made ‘kebabs’ (houmous and falafel pittas) were adorned with a selection of not-quite-salads but not-quite-plain-vegs: 

• Cabbage and fennel softened in salt and acid (lemon and cider vinegar), with sultanas
• Grated carrot in lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, with ground cumin
• Thinly sliced cucumber salted for an afternoon and then drained
• Grated (less lazy this time!) radish and sharp apple in horseradish and yet more lemon juice

There is disagreement in the household about how seemly it is to photograph one’s meals, so there’s no visual record of this meal. It sounds awfully fancy, but really wasn’t that much work. And we bought the falafel frozen and ready to grill, so that was straightforward as well.

It’s feeling increasingly like I missed my moment for getting out and doing things, but I did go large on virtual Heritage Open Days yesterday, with a tour of King’s Lynn museum (which you can visit on Google), and the architectural history of the place I work (bit buswoman’s holiday, this one).