Watercress and Mixed Leaf Salad with Broccoli, Beans, Stuffed Olives, Feta and Tomato in a Sharp and Spicy Dressing

Are things better in small packages?

I’m sure there are plenty of blokes out there trying to convince their girlfriends “it’s not the size, but what you do with that counts”; and in the bedroom this may be true, to a degree of course, nobody wants their manhood mistaken for a third nipple prompting an embarrassing yet discreet visit to Doctor Christian, and the subsequent airing of an extreme close up through an electron microscope of your miserable member. Joyful.

Extremities aside there are analogies across the board that illustrate the relativity between size and performance. For example; the Ariel Atom has the small and compact engine from a Honda Civic Type R, and with only 2.0L of space in the block head and a meagre 245bhp, on paper it should be annihilated by say, an Aston Martin V12 Vantage that boasts a whopping 6.0L twelve cylinder engine that pumps out 510bhp, more than double the horses whinnying in front of the Atom. However due its tiny frame and weight of 610 kilograms, the Ariel can run rings around the Aston and put a far bigger smile on your face.

The wild Mustang horses of the North American Plains are tiny, only a few hands and feet tall; stick them next to a Suffolk Punch and they’d be in danger of being crushed, but dangle a carrot in front of them and you can bet which one would have their night vision first.

What it comes down to, I think, is a question of practicality amongst your surroundings. It may be fun to have Lexington Steele in the boudoir and a Hummer in the driveway, but before long you’d end up walking around in nappies and running over small children. Likewise if you go to the other extreme and shack up with Doctor Christian’s latest charge and start bowling around in a G-Wiz, you will become extremely unsatisfied and have no room in your car for friends, shopping, or anything at all for that matter.

I’ve started to wonder if the same can be applied to man’s best friend, and what kicked started this thought process was yet another addition to the Gloop family. You may recall a few weeks ago the introduction of my new and beautiful Labradoodle; Boom Gloop the first. Well Boom was supposed to be called Eddie originally, according to my mother, and it was only after much deliberation and a few demi-dubbings along the way (Noisily, Ozora and Dave) that he finally became official. Mumsy wasn’t satisfied however, and after a couple of weeks spent wafting through the corridors in a billowing Dickensian blouse, staring into space whilst vacantly mumbling the name “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie”, before threatening to set herself alight in front of the inglenook; we thought it best to find an Eddie after all.

So it was from the post-apocalyptic climbs of East Lincolnshire, an inbreds throw from the aptly named Grimsby, betwixt the perpetual mists of pathetic phallacy, that wee Edward was rescued from the clutches of a man whose brother’s sister was quite clearly his mother.

Eddie is the G-Wiz of dogs, the third nipple; he weighs 1.5 kilos and is quite simply ridiculously small. His belly doesn’t fit him and dangles on the floor, he can’t walk further than 20 feet without assistance, he can’t climb onto the sofa so I had to fashion a ramp (pictured at the bottom), which he is still too tiny to ascend without rolling off the side onto his inherently weak back, before being mauled by the unrelenting Boom and then stepped on by anyone over 4 feet tall. He would be of regular size amongst the Lilliputians, and on the small side should he ever encounter a borrower. I used to think the Paris Hiltons of this world were ludicrous for carrying their Chihuahuas around in their Louis Vuitton bags, however I now realise that far from being an accessory, it is an absolute necessity, to ensure the Eddies don’t become as flat as the Lincolnshire they came from!

There is one very important thing that redeems the utter impracticality of such a small creature, a factor that sets it well and truly apart from an electric micro car and an exceptionally small penis: He is impossibly cute. I can guarantee you that driving into the park on a summer’s day waving your pecker from the window of an oversized battery will not draw the right kind of attention. Stroll through with a miniature wire haired Dachshund in your arms however, and the babes will come-a-flocking. Then you can take them home and show them your G-Wiz.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

For the dressing –

1 garlic clove

1 handful fresh basil

Zest of ½ lemon

2 tablespoons pine nuts

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon freshly grated parmesan

1 bird eye chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

Salad –

1 bag of fresh water cress

1 bag of mixed leaf salad

1 handful French beans

1 packet stem broccoli

100g Greek feta, cubed

1 pot of olives, mine were stuffed with peppers

12 cherry tomatoes, halved

Method:

1. In a pestle and mortar or blender mash up all the ingredients for the dressing and set aside.

2. Boil the broccoli and beans until tender but with a little bite, strain and set aside.

3. Chuck all the ingredients in a salad bowl and pour the dressing over, toss to coat. This salad has some quite strong flavours in it so I would have it as a starter or light lunch. 

Fresh Bean Salad

Sex sells food, we know all know this. But just how far back do you think this crude advertising gambit goes? The naïve of you may think that is was our very own Marks and Spencer that resorted to a close up of a Christmas pudding being sodomised by a tub of custard, having tried every other possible angle to shift the disgusting dessert which is unfortunately synonymous with what would otherwise be the best meal of the year.

The more informed, or perhaps just older of you (much, much older), may have come across a spate of Betty Crocker adverts back in the 1950s. Actress Adelaide Cumming was drafted in to play the part of Betty herself; she’s dressed in the frock of a classic American house wife with her hair done beautifully, looks straight down the camera and delivers her line with such a homely determination it would have Liberace reaching for the Kleenex. - “The men really go for it, and so will your bridge club”. Perhaps not quite as racy as a montage of an Oakham chicken been sexually assaulted to a soundtrack of Santana’s ‘Samba Pa Ti’, but for the time it was bordering Berghain.

If you travel back in time further still to the 1880s, the corporate advertising spin doctors were following a similar format; certainly it wasn’t Kim Kardashian sprawled across a bed seductively masticating on a chicken wing, and they didn’t have the luxury of Joanna Lumley as a voice over. But to the men of the age a buxom field wench carrying a sheaf of barley was the ultimate aphrodisiac.

 Even in the animal world primates have been documented producing food in order to attract a mate, in fact this is one of the ways I’ve managed to hold onto my girlfriend for so long (3 years tomorrow). In fact if it wasn’t for the Vicodin I’ve been slipping into her lunch on a regular basis I’m sure she would have left me mid 2010.

My point is that food is sexy, most warm blooded men wouldn’t think twice about guzzling offal from the naval of Rosy Huntington-Whitely. Similarly, there are few women that would shy away from a slither of liver if the plate was Johnny Depp’s inner thigh. So, follow the instructions below and have a go at my very own sexy supper. Ooh, Naughty.      

(N/B: Before you start, open the You Tube link below in a new window, wait for the singing, and read this in your sexiest voice, very, very slowly).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1uunRdQ61M

Traditionally grown in the valleys of the Loire, through temporal soil oozing with goodness. Long, straight, perfectly formed and ready to burst. A bead of moisture collects around the bloated tip, before trickling, suggestively, along a ridge of flesh, ripe, and unbound.

This isn’t just a bean, this is a fresh bean.


R.I.P. Etta James, one of the all time greats.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

1 large handful of fresh, sexy, French beans

16 sticks of phallic asparagus, just the tips

½ a bag of bulging pine nuts

1 bag of mixed leaf salad, with bite

1 handful of ooh baby spinach

1 tablespoon parmesan, shaven

½ tspn lemon zest, rhymes with breast

Small handful of seedy olives, seeds take out

1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar, to get her drunk

Black pepper, corny

1 Swedish made penis enlarger pump

1 receipt for Swedish made penis enlarger pump, signed, by Augustus Gloop

1 book, Swedish made penis enlargers and me, by, Augustus Gloop

Method:

1. Put the asparagus and beans into a saucepan and add boiling water to them, don’t start them in cold water and then put them on the heat as they will lose their colour. Boil for 5 minutes until tender but still with a little nibble to them. Drain them and toss them in a slug of extra virgin olive oil, the parmesan shavings and the lemon zest.

2. While the beans and asparagus are cooking get a pan and dry roast the pine nuts until they start to brown. Take them off the heat to cool for a few minutes.

3. Mix the leaves in a bowl, chuck in the beans and asparagus and toss them through. Then chuck over the pine nuts and olives and mix them in as well.

4. In a bowl mix the olive oil, red wine vinegar and mustard. Add a couple of turns of pepper. Dress the salad thoroughly and serve up with a few extra olives scattered over it.

Insalata Caprese

I was sat in my girlfriends kitchen flipping through the Daily Mail, the back up paper I hasten to add, and sure enough on page two there was a picture accompanying the important news that four baby red squirrels had been rescued after being blown from a tree in high winds. One of the youngens was snapped giving its sibling a peck on the cheek, precious, I thought.

There was something about global economic meltdown in a column on page 40, but sod that, the squirrels are safe!

A knock fell on the door and in came two of the neighbours, a delightful Polish couple called Alex and Ursula who had just returned from a trip to their motherland, bearing a bag of tomatoes so bulbous and ripe that they looked positively cryogenic.

“These are from my brother’s garden” Alex exclaimed, “and they are the best tasting tomatoes you will ever have”.

A serious claim, and obviously one that had to be tested and tasted. (It turns out he was right).

If yesterday’s steak has cured your haemophilia then this salad will surely purge your soul.

Ingredients: (Serves whoever gets there first)

2 large, red, delicious Polish tomatoes from Alex’s brother’s garden, roughly chopped

1 red onion, chopped into half moons

2 cloves garlic, crushed

Handful of fresh basil, chopped

1 ball of fresh buffalo mozzarella, torn into smallish chunks

Balsamic Vinegar

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Pepper

Method:

1. Mix together the tomatoes, onion and mozzarella in a serving plate. Grind a couple of turns of black pepper over the mix, sprinkle the basil over, slug around two thirds extra virgin olive oil to one third balsamic vinegar. Use quite a lot so you end up with a good centimetre or two of juice at the bottom when you’ve eaten the salad, enable this with some crusty baguette.

2. Eat it. This salad takes about two minutes to make and is one of the more deliciously fresh things on earth, more so than Vanilla Ice in his heyday.

Salad Nicoise

Sometimes a salad doesn’t sound like enough when a main course may be more than you’re after, you want a bit of flesh, some substance for the leaves to wrap around and more than just a drizzle to add the flavour. The French are master salad makers and do some quite spectacular things with duck gizzards and foie gras that the unethical amongst us can enjoy guilt free, however the most basic and quintessential of the leaf based dishes beyond the ‘salad vert’, is the deliciously fresh Niçoise. This recipe was put together by my baby sister (19, but the youngest) and I added a dash of flavouring and helped with the plating up.

Having paid some attention to ‘The Great Fish Fight’ and several other programs regarding the alarming dissipation of our oceans’ populations, I urge you to enquire as to whether your tuna steaks were sustainably caught before you purchase them. Pole and Line fishing are the two best ways to do so.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

2 tuna steaks

100g mixed olives, stoned and halved

100g plum tomatoes, quartered

1 red onion, finely diced

2 little gem lettuces

150g French beans, boiled and sliced down the middle

3 soft boiled eggs cut into wedges

Extra virgin olive oil

Red wine vinegar

Balsamic vinegar

Small pot of anchovies from the deli

Salt and pepper

Method:

1. Season the tuna in salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil and sear briefly on both sides so it is still pink in the middle. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl mix the olives, diced onion and chopped tomatoes with a little seasoning, a dash of olive oil and the same of red wine vinegar.

3. Boil the French beans for 5 minutes until tender, strain and slice carefully down the middle.

4. Pull the individual leaves off the lettuce put in a bowl with the beans, dress in olive oil just before service.

5. Soft boil the eggs for 3 minutes and run under cold water, remove the shells and cut into 6 wedges being careful not to lose the tasty yolk.

6. Finally sear the tuna for another minute on each side so it is medium rare and chop it into rough chunks. Toss the lettuce and beans in olive oil, get a handful and dump it however which way on your plate, as though it just fell from the sky. Do the same with the onion/tomato/olive mix, then the tuna chunks, a few anchovies, the egg wedges, drizzle of olive oil and the same of balsamic vinegar and you’re ready to serve. It is massively important to wait till the last minute to dress your salad as the leaves become heavy and the plate will look flat.