Thursday 20 September 2012

Day 131: Artichoke salad

Thursday, 20 September 2012
Right, so my other 2.5 minutes of fame was being in The Irish Sun today. To be honest, I was only expecting a wee snippet but there I was – a large picture on page 20 with Dear Husband. And, just in case you were wondering, the photos were choreographed by none other than yours truly. Actually, that’s not exactly true. They were choreographed via email by Aoife Bannon from The Sun who contacted me to ask if she could do an article so of course I obliged. She was such a lovely girl. Well, it’s not every day you get a request like that. She did the interview over the phone and asked if I had any photos of me cooking – erm, no. Did I have any photos of me on my own? Erm, no. I’m usually in photos with other people. Therefore, I was under instructions as to how to carry out the ‘photo shoot’. Dear Husband was to take a photo of me cooking and I was to take a photo of him holding up a score card. All I could think was “thank God my hair is still ‘done’ from Saturday!”. When my hairdresser does my hair, she doesn’t do it by halves (hello Karen Porter!). She had done such a perfect job of it on Saturday that I managed to get 4.5 days out of it and, being a full-time worker and mother of two, any day that I don’t have to wash and dry my hair is sacred.

Anyway, back to the photo shoot - all very simple. Except, I could not for the life of me find my digital camera nor could I find Dear Husband’s – well, they had both gone AWOL in the midst of all the commotion of the wedding at the weekend. Therefore, I relied on the good old iPad to save me and, of course, no sooner had I emailed the photos through to Aoife when I found Dear Husband’s camera. Murphy’s Law. Not one to hang about, I like to get things done and dusted so the photographs really took about 10 minutes including email time. Well, I really did feel like a bit of an eejit and I did also have to get on with dinner.

Then, we were on to today and because Dear Husband was going to be home later than normal, I decided on Artichoke salad. As the recipe came from the Store Cupboard section of the cookbook, I had the ingredients stocked up on ages ago. So, here’s how it went…

This was the perfect opportunity to use my lovely new Pip Studio bowl which I got from Interior Dreams at Castle Furnishings in Derry last week and just had to take a pic of it too! Into the bowl went preserved artichokes which I had cut into bite-sized pieces followed by chopped roasted red peppers, semi-sun-dried tomatoes, red onion, olive oil, red wine vinegar, pesto and salt and pepper. I simply mixed everything together and dished up.

The verdict…

The first forkful was a real burst of flavour which was something I need as Thursday is the day whereby I do the most amount of talking at work. Therefore, I was rather parched and in need of something exactly like this recipe. I haven’t eaten artichokes too often but there were so many layers of flavours to this salad that I navigated my way around each ingredient. In terms of marks, based on flavour alone, I would give this recipe 7 marks out of 10. That said, I don’t think I could eat a lot of this on its own because there is a fair bit of olive oil in it so the next time I make it, I would use it as part of a salad but not the main feature – especially if I was having potato salad too. I was also thinking that this salad would be a nice accompaniment to a meat dish except I haven’t exactly figured which one out yet. Actually, you know what?! This would be perfect for a barbeque or for tapas.

Overall, it was one of the easiest and quickest recipes I have ever made and I am so glad to say that I now have another one on The List especially for me. I already have some packed into a lunch box for work tomorrow. Now you couldn’t beat a recipe like that…

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