How to stop colleagues stealing your salad dressing at work

Let's face it, dressings are what make salads worth eating. Without dressings, your salad is essentially tortoise food. Having been told that I look like a tortoise when I eat, I am keen to remove myself from further comparisons, and so prefer my salads to be dressed with a healthy portion of oil and vinegar. For some reason, I find the addition of salt and pepper to a salad to be hedonistic, and never add either. Except to tomatoes.

I always make salad dressings myself rather than buying them. I normally make at least double, more often triple, quantity, so I always have some in the fridge when I need it. Basic dressings made with oil, vinegar, honey and mustard can be stored for months in screw-top jars. Since fresh herbs will go black once cut, you can always sprinkle herbs over the salad rather than adding to the dressing if you want to include them.

Do not store your salad dressing in the fridge at work: someone, or, more likely, several people will steal it. Unless your dressing contains dairy, it doesn't need to be kept in the fridge; just keep it in your drawer (which, for a reason I don't know, we call a pedestal).

Strangely, I always keep salad dressing in the fridge at home. It is unlikely someone will steal it from here. In fact, the opposite is true: I often hide things I don't want O to eat in the salad drawer of the fridge, as I know he will never look in there for snacks. 

Here's some salads to have with your dressing:

Ham salad, 70s style 
Apple and rocket salad
Roasted vegetable salad

Or some more substantial salads:

Sausage salad
Vegetarian salads
Chicken noodle salad

Ham salad

Cara, Angel, Joyce, Kate, Grace, Danielle, Courtney, Gabi

This reminds me of salad we used to have for our 'tea' in the summer when I lived with my grandparents in Tynemouth, near Newcastle.

All the salad ingredients were grown by my granda in his garden or allotment.

We would have:

• cucumber, from a frame in the garden
• round lettuce, from a frame in the garden
• tomatoes, from the greenhouse
• cress, from the windowsill
• radishes, I'm not sure where they grew
• eggs, sliced with an egg cutter (you never see egg cutters anymore)
• ham, from the butcher
• boiled new potatoes, tossed in mint (from the garden)

All with a dollop of salad cream, since salad dressing hadn't been invented in the 70s.

Gina, Peggy and Andrea

Ham salad ingredients

For Salad Club we used the following ingredients:

• Ham, from the deli counter in Tesco
• Hard boiled eggs, cut in half with a knife
• Salad leaves, from a packet
• Coleslaw (was going to be homemade but in the end was from Tesco)
• Cherry tomatoes, from Tesco
• Cucumber, from Tesco
• Mashed potato salad, made by Joyce*
• Salad dressing, made with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, grain mustard and a pinch of sugar)
• Paula's plum chutney 

* Mashed potato salad

I have to admit to having reservations about mashed potato salad, but this old Higgins family recipe is absolutely delicious.

1. Make mashed potatoes as you normally would, by adding butter, milk, salt and pepper to hot cooked potatoes, then mashing till smooth. 
2. When the potatoes are cool, add finely chopped white or red onion, salt, pepper and malt vinegar to taste. In our case, you add a lot of malt vinegar. I know it sounds weird but think about it - you add malt vinegar to chips.  
3. Serve cold.  

 

Ham salad

The photo of the ingredients looks quite sad, so I made it small.

A vegetarian feast

No photos and no recipes this time, just a list of dishes all based on those found in the River Cottage veg book. If you don't have River Cottage Veg Everyday yet, you should seriously consider buying it. I made slight tweaks to most of the original recipes, some intentional and some because I forgot to add a last minute ingredient. The result was a fabulous vegetarian feast - even the confirmed carnivore Ollie said that this meal was delicious. 

 

To start

Pistachio dukkah

Dukkah is an Egyptian spice mix made with toasted cumin, coriander and sesame seeds with dried chilli flakes and some shopped nuts. The version I made used pistachio nuts, and also a little chopped mint. 

The idea is to dip your bread first in some oil and then into the dukkah. It's pretty good and keeps for ages in a jar. It can also be used sprinkled over salads, roasted veg, grilled meats, anything, really.  

Cannelini bean hummus

This is made the same way as normal hummus but since the beans are very creamy when processed they don't need nearly as much oil. Not sure if I used rapeseed or olive oil in this recipe but both work equally well. 

Flatbreads 

I meant to combine the Jamie Oliver Moroccan chickpea flatbreads (add cumin and coriander seeds and chickpeas) with the HFW half plain half bread flour recipe. But since I didn’t read the recipe through before I started, I left the bread to prove without adding the chickpeas and spices. So I ended up with the River Cottage version with a bit more yeast, salt and sugar added.

I cooked these flatbreads in a hot oven (220 degrees C) rather than in a pan. This was probably a mistake. I took them out after almost 10 minutes by which time they were fairly crisp though had not puffed up as I expected. They tasted OK with the butter bean hummus and dukka though.

To follow

 

Roasted squash and shallots with merguez chickpeas

The trick to tasty chickpeas is to dress them while they are still hot. The ones in this recipe are delicious, and I would definitely make them without the roast veg as part of a tapas selection or to accompany to lamb chops. You can make the chickpeas a few days in advance as they will keep well in the fridge.

I didn't make the couscous or spiced yoghurt that you'll find if you follow the link above. Instead I made a few salads.

Date and orange salad with red cabbage and raw parsnip

Parsnips, it turns out, are an excellent raw ingredient in salads. Who knew?
I couldn't find Medjool dates for this salad so I just used regular ones. 

Sweet potato, puy lentil and watercress salad

The actual recipe for this dish uses roasted parsnips, but since I was using raw grated parsnip in the date and orange salad, I used sweet potato instead. This made the dish quite substantial but it still all got eaten, despite the fact that I forgot to add thin slices of the hard goat's cheese I'd bought to especially for the dish.
 

Tahini-dressed green bean salad and oven-roasted tomato salad

Tahini salad dressing is so moreish, especially if it includes a little honey as this one does. Since I don't like cooked courgettes I omitted them, and didn't replace them with anything. I oven-roasted the tomatoes for a little too long but once combined with the rest of the salad ingredients this didn't really matter. I think I forgot to add the mint at the end. 

Roasted aubergines with feta and pomegranate

To be honest, the dish I made was vaguely inspired by this recipe, but I could hardly say I followed it. I happened to have a handful of new potatoes so added these to some aubergines and roasted with some crushed whole garlic cloves. I added pomegranate seeds and crumbled feta to the dish before serving, but forgot to add the grated lemon zest and herbs. 

To end

Poached pears with chocolate sauce (not from River Cottage book, details to follow. Really.)

Homemade coleslaw that comes with a warning

Homemade coleslaw is a doddle, the only effort required is chopping and grating. You can use whatever raw root vegetables you fancy  - swede and celeriac work well - so long as you include some form of cabbage and a little onion. The pear goes well with blue cheese, but grated apple is also good.

Coleslaw ingredients

• 1/8 red or white cabbage
• 1 very small red onion or 1/2  tennis ball sized red onion
• 1/2 raw grated parsnip
• 1/2 raw grated courgette
• 1/2 raw grated carrot
• 1 tablespoon mayo
• 1 tablespoon yoghurt
• 1/2 very ripe pear, grated
• about 1 tablespoon blue cheese, crumbled
• 1 teaspoon English mustard
• About a dessertspoon poppy seeds 

How to make coleslaw

1. Lightly toast the poppy seeds in a small frying pan then leave to cool.
2. Mix together the yoghurt, mayonaise and mustard in a large bowl.
3. Discard the outer leaves of the cabbage.
4. Cut down either side of the tough stem and discard this too.
5. Shred the remaining cabbage leaves finely. 
6. Finely chop the onion
7. Add to the dressing along with the other raw vegetables and the pear.
8. Gently mix together so that everything is coated with the dressing.
9. Scatter over the poppy seeds and crumbled cheese and fold gently to combine.

Homemade coleslaw: a warning

Do not make too much! You will not eat it. Then you will feel guilty about throwing it away.

Rhubarb and tomato chutney

Last week I had intended to make two varieties of chutney and chilli jam, but having weighed out my fruit I don't have nearly enough tomatoes to make all three. I refuse to buy overpriced fruit and veg from the supermarket for chutney, and since it was Good Friday neither the market nor the greengrocer's were open. I decided to make an experimental rhubarb and tomato chutney instead.

For the chilli jam I need 10 red chillies. I bought £1 worth from the market, giving me about four times the amount I need. I'm going to add more than usual to the chilli jam to give it more of a kick, but also add some to the chutney. 

First, though, I needed to sterilize my jars. This is the boring bit of chutney making, especially when you don't have a dishwasher. I left them in very hot soapy water for about 20 minutes then rinsed them in very hot water. After that, they go into the oven, which has been heated to 150 degrees C. As I was going out in the afternoon, I switched the oven off and left them to dry for a couple of hours. 

Rhubarb and tomato chutney ingredients

• 700g rhubarb
• 2 very large onions (about 950g-1kg)
• 1335g very ripe tomatoes
• 500g sultanas
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed 
• 5 red chillies, finely chopped and seeds removed.
• 300ml malt vinegar
• 300g soft brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons curry powder*
• 1/2 tablespoon mustard powder

  How to make rhubarb and tomato chutney

1. First skin the tomatoes. To do this, place 3 or 4 in a large Pyrex bowl. 

• Pour over boiling water from the kettle to cover. 
• Leave to stand for about 5 minutes.
• Remove 1 tomato with a slotted spoon and peel - the skin should come off easily if the tomatoes are ripe. Don't try and crowd too many tomatoes into the bowl at once or the skins won't slip off easily.

2. Chop the onions roughly.3. Heat a little rapeseed oil in a large preserving pan and add the onions.
4. Fry for a few minutes, then add the crushed garlic cloves and curry powder.
5. Roughly chop the tomatoes and add to the pan.
6. Add the remaining ingredients.
7. Stir, without boiling, till the sugar dissolves.
8. Simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally until the chutney thickens - about 1.5-2 hours - a wooden spoon scraped across the bottom on the pan should part the chutney.
9. Leave to cool slightly then pot into warm jars. 
10. Leave to mature for at least 2 months before eating.  

*For the curry powder, I used a Madhur Jaffrey recipe, which I found here: 
http://www.loulies.com/curry_powder/