Inspiring Photo Essay VII - Coleslaw
I started blogging a couple of years ago hoping to somehow connect with my longed-for future readers and make myself seem a likely writer of gripping literary fiction. Two years later, and my regular readers think I am obsessed with fish and mermaid erotica, and they mainly get excited when I publish a new Inspiring Photo Essay, preferably about the state of the kitchen.*
The series began with me going to see how my book was printed (paperback
out today, which is why Scott very kindly asked me to guest here). It moved through the amazing party my mother organised to celebrate publication and then into the interminable kitchen saga. In IPE 2, I promised the mind-exploding secrets of my mother’s coleslaw. I secretly thought the secret would be simple and not mind-exploding, since the coleslaw doesn’t taste weird in any way, just delicious, but now I know the secret and, basically, wow. Heston Blumenthal has got nothing on my mum.**
The secret is even more mind-exploding than realising that ‘Only Smarties know the answer’ is a pun, or that the little protruding badge on Imperial Leather soap is an integrated stand that you are supposed to use to keep the rest of the soap off the bath so it doesn’t go gooey. I have been eating this coleslaw for twenty-five years, but I was as incredulous as you will be.
Start by shredding a cabbage.
If your mind has exploded already, you probably don’t know what coleslaw is. Ignore the red onion. That’s for some red onion and beetroot salad.
(As proof of my frequently commented-on Capa-esque devotion to putting you realistically in the place where the thing is, here is a picture of the ro&b salad (thin slices of each in layers, well-seasoned, balsamic vinegar sprinkled over each layer, left at least 24 hours).)
Hard-boil some eggs. Bring to boil and ten minutes will be more than enough and less than too much. I’d do it for a bit less but I’m where food bravery goes to die.
You are probably pretty impressed with my knife. You’re no fool, and there’s more where it comes from.
Take your eggs – three if this is a big cabbage, otherwise two is plenty – and cut into very small pieces. The pieces you see here are bigger than ideal, but his was my first time. To give you an idea, I had no idea there was hard-boiled egg in my mother’s coleslaw, and when you see this one I make, which tasted very similar, you will still see the egg.
‘What’s that just north of the egg?’ I hear you cry. It is, depending on what you’re looking at, a mug with some food safety tips produced by a Ministry in the distant past, of which we have several; a Fortnum and Mason stilton jar we keep sugar in; the meat for some burgers.
Next up: cheese. About six reasonably thin slices of cheddar.
Cut them up as per the eggs. Ignore the limes. They were drunk pretty soon after this picture was taken. I know everything about limes. I am the Lime King.***
I was, at this point in my mother’s recitation of ingredients, already slightly surprised. Then she said, ‘Now, take a tin of pineapple.’ I made her repeat herself eighteen times. It seemed like she was doing one of her funny jokes at my expense. I told her I was cooking this for friends, some of whom I like. She insisted she was not being funny.
For real.
Chop these up into slush – which I already knew must be the case since I’d had no idea of pineapple’s presence in this coleslaw and nor did my friends who have eaten the real version in Little Hallingbury.
Add some finely chopped chives.
(You might be so excited by now that your photography gets blurry.)
Finally, pepper lightly and add mayonnaise (‘How much?’ I asked. ‘The right amount,’ my mother said. ‘You’ll know it when you see it.’ This is pretty rich coming from someone who once scornfully dismissed all her brilliant cookery as ‘reading with actions.’) Anyway, I did this, and mixed things up, and it was like my mother makes, which means delicious, but not as nice, but not by as large a margin as I am not as nice as my mother.
No one indentified the pineapple without prompting.
* One piece of thrilling IPE update news for regulars: the plastic covering remains on the kitchen cabinets eight months after the refit, still catching crumbs, but recent dramatic events saw a friend explaining that this might conceivably lead to unbalanced fading. Several test panels of plastic have been removed, and it appears the rest will go any day now.
On the downside, one of the shelves wonkily erected by my brother in the dawning days of the 21st century has gone further on the squiff and for a brief moment the this imperilled the new television. We have resolved this problem, who knows how temporarily, by carefully adding its books to one of the many floor-piles.
** Can you prove Heston Blumenthal is not an elaborate character created and played by Harry Hill? No you can’t. Nobody can.
*** Some people genuinely call me this.
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The Kilburn Social Club
by Robert Husdon is published today. Buy it. It's great.
?
, which I have helped to publish as a book.
and 
.
is dark. Very dark. But it is equally funny. Lena and Pru argue more than they detect and aren't averse to a bit of hows-yer-father with some of the blokes they meet on the way. It is a most unusual whodunnit (or did anyone do it?) and one that proves far more entertaining that most of its formulaic rivals.