Smith - On the Side A Sourcebook of Inspiring Side Dishes

This book is for anyone who already realises that the best bits of a Sunday roast are the trimmings. And for everyone else too because youll see the light soon. Contents On side dishes This book will change how you think about your meals. A bold statement, I know, but bear with me. Ive been writing a food blog, RocketandSquash.com, for six years. For nearly three of those I was also beavering away as a corporate lawyer; I then trained as a chef and started working in the food industry.

My blog covers the usual things recipes, restaurant write-ups, the odd doodle but a few years ago I added a new element to it: every Monday I publish a digest of the recipes in that weekends newspaper supplements. Its been an illuminating and only occasionally laborious process. Ive witnessed the way seasons and annual events inspire food writers; Ive watched trends arrive, and some of them crash and burn; Ive seen a million and one ways with chicken, hundreds of crumbles and nearly as many chocolate fondants. And yet, in all this time, barely a handful of side dishes. Which is madness. A key part of every meal time is being ignored.

To my mind, roast chicken or pork belly is naked without a few good sides. Slow-cooked lamb flounders without something to punctuate the rich meat and juices, and even the perfect seasonal vegetable tart is lost without a perky partner on the plate. Im deflated whenever I read a cursory eat with potatoes and greens or goes well with rice, as if the trimmings dont really matter. In restaurants and at friends houses, Im quietly despondent if the mains are let down by overcooked or poorly matched vegetables or stodgy, bland, unsuitable carbs. What we call side dishes actually make up the bulk of a meal. They have the potential to be as inspirational as the main event itself.

In fact, theyre often the best bit, whether its roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding alongside a rib of beef; cheesy polenta with luscious cavolo nero underneath a meaty Italian rag; or refreshing, crunchy salads and pickles to go with a Japanese or Korean dinner. Yes, Id like to push the oft-neglected supporting acts to centre stage. Its the two veg rather than the meat that I focus on here, because whether theyre plain or fancy, side dishes should never be an afterthought. On the contrary; they can be the starting point. Good sides lift a meal from being just fine to being truly delicious or memorable. They might be comforting and moreish, complex and impressive, or simply a handful of vegetables harvested at their peak and cooked to perfection.

Some sides have the power to inspire a whole menu, while others happen to be exactly the right thing for the centrepiece youve already set your heart on. Its so satisfying, isnt it, when each ingredient on your plate is independently delectable as well as complementing and enhancing the rest? That moment you realise that you need seconds of everything oooof. Just to calm things down a bit, although many of the recipes in this book could very well be the star of your lunch or dinner, I dont mean this to be a mains-versus-sides, us-versus-them thing. A meal is the sum of its parts, and the recipes and words below are really aimed at ensuring everything comes together in harmony. My point is simply that by thinking about the elements that are sometimes disregarded, your overall eating experience will be more gratifying. For me, its all about balance: of tastes, textures, flavours, colours and, just as importantly, effort versus results.

With that in mind, it seems worth setting down a few principles of eating well on the side. Which, of course, also means eating well in the round. On matching sides to the centrepiece Match your sides to the meat. Or fish. Or vegetables. Or tofu. Or egg. Or egg.

Or, indeed, a gaggle of other sides. This seems obvious, but perhaps its so obvious it gets overlooked. Some things just work well together, and few of those combinations are a secret or as yet undiscovered. Think leeks and pumpkin with lamb; onions and cauliflower cheese with beef; or sweet things like corn, carrots or fruit with pork. Theres no harm in following tradition, even clichs. In fact, you can make that classic match your starting point and work the other accompaniments around it.

But how do we know what goes well together? In part, its trial and error, which is what some people call experience. Im afraid this largely comes with time and effort. But theres no shame in piggy-backing on other peoples work too, by paying attention to flavour combinations in restaurants and scanning the recipe titles in cookery books and the weekend supplements. Its rare that any chef or food writer is truly laying down new discoveries for the rest of us to eat, read and generally marvel over; most reaffirm or reinterpret age-old traditions and flavour matches. So we can learn from them and do the same! Im a voracious collector and reader of recipes. Though I rarely follow them to the letter, Im constantly inspired by flavour combinations within them.

Some of my most thumbed and dog-eared cookbooks include Niki Segnits The Flavour Thesaurus, which examines ingredients that go well with each other, and considers why; Bar Tartine by Cortney Burns and Nicolaus Balla, because the techniques it introduces and the taste and textural combinations in its recipes are instructive and inspirational; and Nigel Slaters Tender, volumes 1 and 2, because its a tremendous resource for ideas, across a variety of cuisines, about which vegetables, fruits and meats work together. Youll probably have your own favourites too; its really worth dipping into books and the papers from time to time to keep the creative juices flowing. On which note, do use the directories at the back of the book and the Alongside notes with each recipe. These are just suggestions, but I hope the ideas persuade you to try something new as well as reinforcing your well-rehearsed preferences. On the number of sides How many sides to prepare? There is no single right answer, thank goodness. In Britain weve been schooled with the phrase meat and two veg.

As it happens, I think thats a pretty strong rule of thumb to go by, largely because theres a law of diminishing returns when it comes to home cooking. Is it really worth doubling your work to make four instead of two sides? Is the meal better for it? Will anyone else appreciate the effort? Sadly for us cooks, the answer is usually no. More often than not, its best to keep things simple. Three, two or sometimes just one side dish tends to be the right way to go, even (especially) for a Sunday roast. That way you can concentrate on making sure that everything youre cooking is perfect. You might simply serve a bunch of purple sprouting broccoli dressed with olive oil and tarragon and nothing else ( with perfectly cooked but otherwise plain rice.

Choose your sides and build your meal according to the centrepiece, the season, your mood, the other trimmings and the practical realities of your kitchen and ability. Naturally, rules of thumb are there to be broken. Perhaps the best way to do that is to ignore the meat part completely. I think as eaters were creeping away from the idea that there must always be a standout piece of meat or fish in a meal; at least I hope we are. You could quite easily make a well-balanced feast from three, four or five of the recipes in this book, and I encourage you to do just that.