This recipe didn’t work …and here’s why

I often stumble into the kitchen with a bunch of vegetables and a bunch of ideas – nothing set in stone – but because the produce is fresh and gorgeous, and I’m feeling perky, ideas flow and I’m soon chopping and sizzling and filling the kitchen with tempting aromas.

Mostly, the results are good, sometimes they’re great and occasionally they’re fantastic. Sometimes they’re not any of that, they simply miss the mark, and a couple of times they’ve been dire (crunchy-crumbed squid with a heavy-handed measure of Schezwan pepper which turned our lips totally numb springs to mind: awful, truly awful). 

The other day I picked up some beautiful golden beetroot and I had a fennel bulb. A nice little mound of crunchy garlicky shaved fennel on top of earthy-tasting beetroot sounded like a good start. Lovely colour combo, too. I thought about pickling the beetroot, adding orange segments and rocket and topping with feta (got to get in quick with that name!), but it was a little similar to something I’d made previously, so I went left field and grabbed stuffed green olives out of the pantry. These can be brilliant as a briny-salty hit in dishes, but they didn’t work here. The fennel was gorgeous, as it always is, but I drowned it in dressing, and the dressing quickly flattened it, taking away some of its crispy oomph, so I didn’t even get that balance right. I added mint and parsley, but that had little impact. The beetroot was too sweet and was borderline overcooked. The briny taste of olives remained a separate taste in my mouth. DANG! I was in for a miserable dinner … until LIGHTBULB moment, I picked the fennel off the beetroot, spooned it onto toasted garlic-rubbed, oiled and salted ciabatta and topped it with crumbled feta and mashed it all onto the bread. The finishing flourish? A few rocket leaves and peeled mandarin segments. Ha! I should have stuck with my original idea … but it just shows, that no matter how many dinners you’ve cooked, you don’t always get it right!