Goodbye carrot salad
When you move to London, they prepare you for the weather. They prepare you for the shock of NZD to GBP conversions and the reality of it taking at least 30 minutes to get anywhere. They even prepare you for black snot if you’re a tube user, and under-seasoned food if you like to eat out.
What they don’t prepare you for is how hard it is to be a child away from home.
This might not be so if you don’t have a good relationship with your parents, or care much for their company. But if you are a child who likes their parents - gets on with them even - it is hard to be a child away from home.
Although you might from time-to-time annoy one another over the course of five weeks spent together - them unsure of your preference for stopping for endless drinks or cups of coffee rather than go-go-going; you annoyed that they don’t know how to blow up their QR code rugby ticket on their phone or how to work their around the self-serve checkout at Waitrose - you miss them when they go. It is desperately hard to say goodbye.
It is hard to say goodbye because the thing you realise you will miss the most is what you don’t have when you live in different cities: the ability to spend small moments together. Contact that is regular, but not necessarily for a long time. Popping into their place on your way home from work for a glass of wine; them coming to your place for dinner on Sunday night because you found a nice piece of fish to cook. You can’t do those things when you live on the other side of the world from one another.
Instead, you have these rather surreal times together, visiting galleries and drinking in pubs (29 in less than 29 days in London according to Dad), going to shows and eating practically every meal out. Of course, those times are wonderful. Special. Fun. But they’re hardly real life. And when those times come to an end, you realise the thing you’ll actually miss the most is your parents sitting on your couch reading their books while you’re “working”; sharing a glass of wine with them after work; walking to Waitrose to choose which Charlie Bigham you’ll have for dinner that night. The ordinary and the everyday. The stuff you get to do when you live in the same place. On Sunday night Mum said she would finish a bottle of wine with me, just because it would be two years before she could do that again. I cried so much in the shower that night.
Today has been hard. For god’s sake, I suddenly burst into tears as I was riding on a bus in Harlesden to a work meeting this morning when I realised in five hours I’d be home and shipping my parents off to Heathrow. And just three hours ago I was sure I wouldn’t be capable of not crying ever again.
Phil knew I was upset. He gets it too. He texted me and told me I needed to cook something delicious for dinner to distract myself. I asked him what he wanted. His response was “roast chicken and Middle Eastern things” (very specific, yes). And so, I walked to the Chapel Street Fruit and Vege Market and popped into Sainsbury’s to pick up my provisions, rubbed a small chicken with butter a-la Rachel Roddy, and made a salad of spicy roast baby carrots with thick Greek yoghurt, spring onion, coriander and chilli. We ate the chicken and the salad with flatbreads and a bowl of hummus, and decided we’d have a glass of wine because it’s the first time we’ve had dinner for just the two of us in weeks.
Of course, we’d always rather the option of inviting our parents to our dinner table, but tonight was one of those times where you told yourself you simply had to search for - and cling onto - the positives. And as I sat there eating my chicken, I thought to myself, “that’s exactly what Mum and Dad would say.”
Goodbye carrot salad
Trim and wash a bunch of baby carrots. Slice the carrots in half lengthways.
Throw the carrots in a cast iron skillet with olive oil, salt, pepper and whatever spice you fancy - cumin, paprika, ground coriander, a combo. You do you.
Cook the carrots over a hot element until they start to soften and take on some colour. Add a splash of white wine (try not to cry about not being able to finish the bottle with your Mum) and let the carrots cook a little more.
When you pull the roast chicken out of the oven, bung the carrots in the hot oven for a few minutes - they can sit there quite happily while you’re carving the chook and sorting the rest of the salad.
Spread a plate with lots of thick Greek yoghurt and season it with salt and lemon juice.
Top the yoghurt with the carrots and some of the juices they’re sitting in.
Sprinkle finely sliced spring onion and roughly chopped coriander over the carrots. Throw on a few splashes of hot sauce (or some finely chopped fresh chilli), and season with more salt, pepper and lemon juice.