Judith Wills
Was catching up with some ancient newspapers, circa Christmas and found a quiz, asking us if we are 'meh'.
Well to be honest, I'd never even heard of the expression let alone knew if I was one or not.
But now I can tell you – I am. Basically, it means, taste and lifestyle-choices wise, one is middle of the road, inoffensive, boring, with perhaps a slight hint of thrift and more than a hint of common sense.
Look, I don't care. I don't want to be cutting edge, glamorous, hot, trendy or whatever the right word for those is these days. Least of all when it comes to food.
Goodness, I'd rather starve than eat even Heston Blumenthal (his food, not him) and would have done anything to avoid El Bulli, when it was going.
Apart from anything else, it's much easier to eat in my 2012 mantra way – in moderation – if you eat meh rather than fancy. If you do recipes with 4 ingredients rather than 20, you're bound to be cutting calories after all.
With this fact in mind – meh and minimal ingredients – I've been thinking up decent winter salads. This is not the time of year to be thinking typical salad items such as tomatoes (tasteless, underripe, expensive, tough skins, who needs them?), watery cucumbers, limp anaemic lettuce and other leaves that just don't want to be around in winter. But raw things are good for slimming and for health.
So here's what I came up with, to serve four:
Meh Winter Salad
1 head radicchio
½ head curly endive
1 orange
1 barely-cooked beetroot
10 walnut halves
4 tbsp good olive oil French dressing
Tear the leaves and arrange on a serving plate. Peel and slice the orange and beetroot and arrange on top. Crumble the walnuts and sprinkle over, then spoon over the dressing.
Nice with leftover roast chicken or beef. Or add some Parmesan or goat's cheese for a lunch.
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