Finally Some Good Food 3.2: Blue Skies and Salad Season
Finally, spring has sprung!
Hello my little crumpets, and welcome back to Finally Some Good Food. In exciting news, we’ve got some new subscribers here - Hello! Welcome! Make yourself at home! -So I figured I’d give a little reintroduction to what to expect at FSGF.
Our humble newsletter is written by me and only me, and is not part of any wider, more sophisticated publication. I am my own writer, subeditor, meme designer, etc etc. so our house style is loose and ephemeral, like underwear blowing away on the washing line. But despite the jokes, be warned that I do sometimes take my writing seriously. Sometimes the intro is a genuinely sincere page-long treatise about some philosophical topic like death or depression, but also sometimes it is two sentences about a day trip or a meme. Truly, the two genders.
For example, when I started drafting this back in January, this newsletter was a very depressing piece. Now, finishing it off in April with blossoms and sunshine and the return of my will to live, it’s a much more optimistic affair. Don’t get me wrong, there are still current factors in my life that are too difficult to write about at the moment* which may hinder future newsletters to come (as a side note, I loved this piece on failing to write after grief by one of my fave critics, Barry Pierce). However, recently I’ve rediscovered a new kind of joy. I’m enjoying being bored.
I’m trying to get used to boredom. I was inspired by various thinkpieces and this Eddy Burback video in particular, but there are two main reasons I think this is useful. For one,I realise that I use music to get through more mundane tasks. This is not inherently a problem, but I want to be able to get better at not procrastinating and completing normal tasks without being distracted. So, I’m experimenting to see how much of my focus can be regained by changing my behaviour and lifestyle factors, versus what parts of my neurodivergence require actual medical intervention.
Secondly, I’ve realised that boredom is an excellent tool for creativity. If I have to sit alone with my own thoughts, I have to make up some interesting ones. Sometimes this also means I have to sit with some uncomfortable or upsetting ones, but I hope this means that I am actually processing what I’m feeling rather than deferring to a later date.
In the specific case of cooking however, the most notable thing I've found is that I’ve been experimenting more and improvising almost everything. This is not to say I don’t use recipes or believe in them. In fact, quite a few of the things I made sprang off someone’s beloved blog to begin with, but having to be fully present in the process of cooking means it has become a sort of creative expression, like doodling. There is something quite joyful about this - it is play!
Therefore, today’s newsletter is somewhat recipe-rich, but as usual, we will also be rounding up my favourite snacks and restaurant dishes I’ve tried as well. I’m trialling moving these free editions to a quarterly schedule to give me more time to work on my various writing projects and workshops.
Speaking of which, for those who want to do some in-person writing, my next workshop is a FREE writing workshop and walking tour with The National Trust on the 11th of May, where we will be exploring writing prompts based on Manchester’s blossoms and plants. Also I’m looking to book more writing workshops over the next year, if you are a business in Manchester or otherwise, especially if you are a food business interested in hosting a food writing workshop, get in touch!
For the final shameless plug, I’ll be releasing a travel exclusive for paid subscribers in the next few weeks about what I ate in Mexico, so if you’re a keen traveller, stay tuned!
Now, let’s get into it, shall we?
Every season is a salad season if you’re eating salad
As mentioned in my newsletter at the end of last year, I’m still trying to eat ‘healthier’, aka trying to eat more vegetables. However, after our New Year's hangover, my partner also wanted to try, especially as he is a Type One Diabetic and wanted to improve his blood sugars. Therefore, we have been experimenting with eating fewer carbs.
Do not be mistaken!
This is not me telling you to cut carbs in any way. It is because I am too lazy to cook two separate meals, and most importantly, I am not going carb-free, just reducing it slightly. I cannot say for the most part, there has been any noticeable benefit that these fad sites might try to sell you. I am not a new woman, I haven’t mysteriously discovered some font of energy, and I am not more beautiful than before because you can’t improve on perfection. The one thing I have enjoyed is the variety it has brought to my diet; I enjoy pasta and pizza a bit more now it feels more like a novelty again.
As the unemployed person in the relationship, this means I have been doing the majority of the cooking, but most of what I have been making is salads. I have resisted the idea of salads for most of my life due to toxic diet culture, but because I want my partner to feel good in his body as much as possible, I decided I was going to investigate how I could make salads flavourful and interesting. I have boiled it down to two main steps.
Roast vegetables in as delicious a mix of spices and oils as possible. MSG, smoked paprika and crispy chilli oil are your friends.
Dressings are everything. There’s no way in hell I’m having a dry salad.
That being said, these are the big winners I’ve come across so far.
Salad #1: Fake chicken, roast veg, avocado and salted lemon yogurt
As mentioned last year, I became obsessed with Ottolenghi’s charred tomato dip. However, as I was constructing my newfound salads, I wondered if I could use the delicious salted lemon yoghurt elsewhere.
As my partner is a big fan of breaded chicken, and I was looking for a source of veggie-friendly protein for each meal, this was a fairly straightforward swap. The yoghurt dressing is just Greek yoghurt, flaky sea salt and lemon zest. The roast veg I used was primarily sweet potato and tomato, but obviously sub in what you like - tenderstem broccoli would also work well here.
Salad #2: egg fried in crispy chilli oil (Lao Gan Ma), roasted chickpeas and veg, salted lemon yoghurt, tahini dressing, salad leaves
I roasted sweet potato and aubergine with the chickpeas in smoked paprika, garlic and MSG. It uses the same yoghurt as before, which is on the base of the dish, layered with the veg, and then the tahini dressing (which was vaguely inspired by this recipe but with added Worcester sauce), is drizzled over the top before the egg is added.
Salad #3: soy, honey and crispy chilli salmon, roasted veg, pickled ginger, sesame seeds/dressing, salad leaves
Similarly to the last one, aubergine and sweet potato go well, along with some tenderstem broccoli, roasted in salt, pepper, MSG, sesame oil and crispy chilli oil. (FYI sweet potatoes tend to take slightly longer to roast than aubergines so its staggered timing). Melt some butter and mix with soy sauce, garlic, a tiny bit of honey and sesame and crispy chilli oil. Wrap a boneless salmon fillet in foil and drizzle the butter mixture over and season with salt and pepper before sealing. Once the veg have about 10 minutes left, put the salmon in. Mix the salad leaves with the pickled ginger. You can also make a bonus dressing for the leaves by mixing the pickled ginger brine with soy sauce and mirin, or if you’re lazy, I really recommend Kewpie’s sesame dressing.
If you want more carbs, I also recommend adding potatoes. But this is a general rule for a lot of dishes, not just salads.
Salad #4: Tortilla, roast veg, aioli and/or balsamic dressing, salad leaves
For a slightly more mediterranean inspired salad, I recommend using one of those ready made tortillas you get in the supermarket as your protein (I got one of those Unearthed ones when they were on Nectar card offer), and roasted tomatoes and courgette in garlic, lemon peel and olive oil, before serving with salad leaves and aioli.
Salad #5: (fake) bacon, blue cheese, avocado, butterhead lettuce, balsamic dressing
Slightly inspired by caesar salad and Niki Segnit’s Flavour Thesaurus (an indispensable guide for all experimental cooks out there!!), this is exactly as described. Cut the bacon into small bits and fry until crispy, serve with chunks of the blue cheese of your choice (I recommend a creamier one, like Saint Agur). Balsamic dressing is just balsamic vinegar and oil, but you can also buy this dressing ready-made.
Salad #6: grapes, blue cheese dressing, cashews, salad leaves
This one was almost entirely inspired by scrounging what hadn’t gone off in our fridge and cupboard before the weekly food shop, but while I hadn’t thought to put nuts in a salad, roasted cashews were a surprisingly nice addition. The blue cheese dressing is just blue cheese in a blender with a smidgeon of greek yogurt.
Salad #7: potatoes, labneh, hummus, falafel, avocado, salad leaves
My most recent experiment inspired by another Nectar card offer, this time on Sainsbury’s new ‘small plates section’ having a 3 for £8 deal, I cooked some salad potatoes (I like to parboil and finish in a pan, but do it however you like) and served with either or both of their dips, hummus and labneh (the labneh is particularly delicious, with confit tomatoes), salad leaves and avocado.
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That’s my top salad recipes for now, but I am looking to continue expanding my repertoire over the summer months, so please send me any certified banger recipes if you have them. (Unless they contain raw onion. Respectfully, miss me with that sh*t.)
Potatwo Pot Luck
As long term followers of the newsletter will know, last year me and my friends held a potato themed potluck for St Patrick’s Day. Of course we had to do it again this year and this year I decided to do something between a cheese and potato pie and a galette, using folded puff pastry, parboiled potato chunks and a mix of cream cheese, wholegrain mustard, salt, pepper and a lot of comte.
This was obviously delicious, but I wanted to challenge myself further and after avidly following Great British Menu this year, I decided I wanted to try making a pickled walnut ketchup. Turns out this is much easier than anticipated, as long as you’ve got a blender and a sieve - I used this recipe and it made the perfect companion for my pie.
If you’re looking for potato dish inspiration, the other dishes this year were:
Vada pavs by my friend Joe - these were so good they gave Bundobust a run for their money!
Emma’s potato pizza - She made not one but two different kinds, but the spiced potato was chef’s kiss!
Alienor’s cheese and leek stuffed potato skins
Bran’s cheese and pepper sweet potato rounds
Will’s even more cursed-looking homemade potato smilies (still tasty though).
Shoutout to Jake, who only got a proper oven this year for many years with some weird shit hybrid, but still made some excellent roasties.
And not a potato dish but Cherelle made her version of Nigella’s Guinness cake, which truly never misses.
Adventures in Hot Sauce
While in the past I would have identified myself as a spice wimp (not a moral judgement if you are also a spice wimp FYI), after travelling to Mexico in February and accidentally eating a large amount of habanero sauce (more on that in the paid newsletter), upon my return I have been tentatively experimenting in a much more normal amount. If I am ever invited on Hot Ones, I don’t want to be not completely unprepared and pull a DJ Khaled. These are the preliminary success stories for those interested in branching out:
El Yucateco Habanero and Charred Pineapple: This one was a souvenir from Tulum, and while it was more hot than I’m used to, it had a superb fruity flavour. It went surprisingly well with a grilled cheese and would definitely get again as the flavour was good enough to try working on my tolerance for.
Pablo Diablo - Jalapeno, Lime x Coriander Hot Sauce - This is technically classified by Tubby Tom’s website as a mild sauce, and to be fair, they are correct. It is very mild, so good for complete beginners.
Nuff Love - Tropical Hot Pepper x Pineapple Jerk Glaze and Hot Sauce: This is listed under their hot sauces, and it is slightly hotter, but good flavour. In fact, I found myself using this one more than the milder one, which I think is growth.
Pancake Day
As you can probably tell by the potato potluck, I am a big fan of single-food-item-based holidays; it will therefore be no surprise that I love Pancake Day. Who doesn’t? I once spent a solid six months with a coeliac flatmate in Venice perfecting a gluten-free crepe recipe. Anyway, this year my friend Emma hosted a pancake evening that was lovely and delicious, except for one anomaly. We experimented with mixing some crispy M&Ms into some batter, but when I took a bite, my tongue started tingling in a way not too dissimilar to an allergic response. I stopped eating immediately and had a funny stomach for an hour or so afterwards (presumably the stress of perceived potential anaphylaxis) - but I’m wondering, has anyone experienced a reaction like this? Especially with crispy M&Ms? Or am I just mentally unwell?
However, in terms of something actually useful to you guys, I do have a handy tip: if you’re looking to make buttermilk/American style fluffy pancakes but can’t find buttermilk anywhere, I have found out you can use kefir as a substitute! All the pancakes I made with it were perfectly fluffy and went very well with maple syrup and butter as a topping. (Yes I’m late to the maple syrup and butter game, but now I’m here I’m not looking back).
Bury Market, you will always be famous
Now, as you may know, I wrote a bakery crawl piece for The Manchester Mill. I loved doing it, and I’m so glad to see the bakery crawl getting wider coverage in the Guardian only weeks later. But as you can imagine, getting published in a big publication that is read by thousands of people is slightly daunting. Naturally, I reacted to its release by obsessively reading the comments. Pretty much all of the comments seemed fair; I only had a certain amount of words to try and cover every single city centre bakery (that wasn’t Greggs), and there was stuff I just couldn’t fit in. However, I was and currently still am working on a follow-up to cover the bakeries outside the city centre - please send me your recommendations! So far, I have Barbakan and La Chouquette on my list, and there is one stop I have completed already: Bury Market.
Bury Market is such a delightful find, particularly on a sunny Saturday morning. For one, it sells all sorts of food and has genuinely cheap lunch options (I got a fried egg sandwich for less than £3). Also, if you’re interested in more niche baked products, this is definitely the place to go. Not only could I found the increasingly rare Staffordshire oatcakes (like a savoury pancake made of oats) which the vendor told me he could only procure “through a favour”, but I was finally able to get my hands on more Manchester specific delicacies, including eccles cake, chorley cake, a Manchester tart of course, and my personal favourite: the Wimberry pie.
Wimberry is another name for bilberry, which is the sweeter, juicier version of the blueberry and tends to be native to the UK. Unfortunately, they are too juicy and delicate to survive the transporting to become a frequent feature in supermarkets (honestly, same), but luckily for us and Bury, some bilberries grow locally on Holcombe Hill. The flavour is sexy and jammy and somewhere between a cherry and a blueberry, which is just delightful in shortcrust pastry, ideally served warm with some form of cream or custard. I got mine from Harry Muffin, which is a family-run stall, and I can highly recommend getting out of the city centre to visit. It’s just a tram ride away!
Best of the Rest
I attended my first friend wedding, and it was so lovely! Everyone looked great, all the speeches were lovely, and to top it off, I had perhaps my favourite apple crumble I’ve ever had. I was initially thrown off by the bright blue ice cream on top, but it turns out it was just vanilla and tasted lovely anyway. Also, they had a buffet of perhaps the nicest fries I’ve had in the late evening, which was an inspired choice considering all the wine I had consumed and the wedding cakes were two personalised Colin the Caterpillar cakes. There’s nothing more heartwarming than discussing love with your friends in your finery while munching on Colin’s face slab.
I tried two new recipes from the Green Roasting Tin, which were both great: the crispy gnocchi with sage and mushroom, and the creole spiced leek and mushroom tart. The tart was particularly impressive as the bottom turned out perfectly crisp.
My partner and I went to 10 Tib Lane for Valentine’s Day. It is always good, especially their cheese beignets, but I want to shout out their beetroot dish. I’m normally not a fan of this wet vegetable that tastes of soil, but they served it with pickled blackberry, whipped buttermilk and walnut, and it was surprisingly really good (and less soil-y).
After dinner, we went to Schofields and I had the Esmeralda, which was a creamy chocolate mint cocktail. An excellent dessert alternative.
Finally, my friend Cherelle made the nicest paneer curry, but I forgot to ask for any of the details, so if you’re reading this, drop the recipe queen.
That’s all for this edition of the newsletter, I know it’s a long one, so thanks for sticking it out until the end, and as always, if you’ve enjoyed it, please feel to share.
I’m also still open to requests or recommendations or burning questions from anyone, and it would also make my day if you try anything mentioned, so please get in touch!
Also if you want to keep all these cool free recommendations going, I highly suggest perhaps flinging a donation this way or paying for a subscription if you can afford to do so; I am in the process of building an archive of all my recommendations on my website, so any donation will be very useful in making this happen!