voices in food.
What to eat when spring hasn’t sprung
In like a lion and out like a lamb, March is a fickle month and it’s hard to know what to put on the table, says Debora Robertson.Her solution? Patience, planning and a big reset
PHOTOGRAPHS: HANNAH HUGHES. FOOD STYLING: JESS MEYER. STYLING: VICTORIA ELDRIDGE
It’s a funny time of year, isn’t it? No longer winter, but not quite reliably balmy, beautiful spring. The mornings are still crisp when I walk the dogs.
It’s a transitional time, as they say in fashion. The what-to-wear dilemma – shrug off your big coat, but hold tight to scarves, cardigans, warm jackets – is matched by the question of what to eat.
After a winter of casseroles (which we must, apparently, always describe as ‘hearty’, in a slightly medieval-merchant manner) and thick soups, I’m longing to dive into a salad…
By salad, I don’t mean a simple green salad – which I eat almost every day, often after that ‘hearty casserole’ – but those salads that have ambitions to be dinner all on their own.
But I recommend we all hold out for a bit. If I commit to cold food too early in the year, I find it damply unsatisfying and am raiding the fridge for the makings of cheese on toast or a scrambledtogether pasta dish within the hour – with a generous hand on the chilli flakes too. Or I’m just disappointed, after the faff of preparation, that it’s not a pie (see this month’s recipe).