It was the last day of the half-term holidays today, I took my son and his friend orienteering, they wanted pizza on the way home so we stopped on the way and they had a takeaway pizza. I realised about 8.30pm when my stomach started growling at me that I hadn’t eaten yet. I wanted something quick and tasty and decided on a tuna, mixed bean and pea shoot salad with a lemon vinaigrette.
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Pea shoots are in season, and boy are they tasty. Right now Sainsburys and Marks and Spencer are selling UK grown pea shoots in 50g bags, washed and ready to eat, for under a quid. They have a delicate pea flavour and are a great ingredient for salads. Today I used them in a delicious warm salad along with pears, walnuts and stilton cheese.
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There has been a lot of talk lately about eating seasonal food, sourced locally. Gordon Ramsay, one of the UK’s most prominent chefs has gone one further and suggested that restaurants should be fined if they serve out of season produce. Now although I don’t think that this will ever happen, I think the logic behind this call for local seasonal produce is valid, for the following reasons;
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I thought to balance things out, after sharing a recipe for salad cream, I would post a recipe for homemade mayonnaise. This is an easy mayonnaise recipe, though it does require constant attention and preferably a blender or a hand whisk.
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Salad cream was invented by Heinz in 1914 and was very popular with working classes in the UK, a socialist salad dressing if you will. However, its popularity waned in the latter part of the century, with the arrival of the decadent mayonnaise, flaunting its spanish roots and pushing the humble salad cream to the side. But like any good socialist, salad cream would not go away and still remains a firm favourite in the UK with people who have refused to climb that social ladder to mayonnaise.
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