Side Dishes

To me the making or breaking of any menu rests with the accompaniments to the main course. It is all very well to have a splendid central dish but so often one sees the cook’s concentration wavering when it comes to the vegetables. I am very lucky to have so many friends who grow their own vegetables and give me their surplus, but I have to admit it is very hard to find decent vegetables to buy. I don’t know what happens to our own home-grown vegetables, we are told the growers are in thrall to the supermarkets but if you check the shelves they are full of foreign imports, especially the unspeakable Dutch ones. I suppose somewhere in the world people are marvelling at English carrots or Scots broccoli. Now that I am back in the catering business I see the difficulty even more. I had to go to a supermarket to buy the Jersey Royals I had put on a menu and one day the very helpful girl from Anderson’s our veg suppliers told me a particular item had not been good enough from the market so she had gone to Sainsburys for our supplies! Don’t think I am weakening on supermarkets, although Jennifer has been known to visit them; their vegetables are irradiated, chilled out of existence and tasteless, and the only thing to do with tasteless products is to use them as a base and add other flavours to them.