Features
Inside the fridge Ever wondered what a food critic’s fridge contains? Do they reflect the impeccably high standards they set when reviewing restaurants? Helen Salter delves into their darkest culinary secrets
Tim Hayward Financial Times
Felicity Cloake The Guardian
What is a must in the fridge? Booze, mainly. Things like eggs, fruit and veg, jams and pickles that people routinely keep in their fridges are all better kept out… but if I’m brutally honest, I could happily starve or let everything go rotten as long as I had cold beer and wine.
What is a must in the fridge? You’ll always find whole-milk yoghurt, Pecorino Romano for grating over pasta (I prefer its aggressively salty flavour to Parmesan, and it’s cheaper too), kimchi, kombucha or whatever weird ferment I’m experimenting with, good tonic water, duck fat or beef dripping and, in the winter anyway, oranges. Citrus fruit is so much more delicious ice cold. Try it.
Go-to drunk food or a midnight snack? I’d love to say I knock out a quick omelette aux fines herbes but the awful honest answer is ‘Food In Tubes’. Principally squeezy Dairylea and/or Kaviar… a barbarous Danish smoked fish roe spread by a company called Kalles. You can eat it silently, without needing to use vulnerable crockery or potentially hazardous cutlery, it’s designed to pack a devastating umami punch and, best of all, it disgusts everyone else so much that they’d never eat it. Crackers are entirely optional. 7pm on a Friday: what do you reach for from the fridge? Amazingly predictable: ‘Flatbread Friday’. My daughter makes a batch of quick flatbread dough every Friday when she gets home from school, so at seven we’ll either be pulling out marinated skewers of meat, fish or chicken, a few bits of salad, or if the mood strikes her, mozzarella and pizza toppings.
7pm on a Friday: what do you reach for from the fridge? Whatever leftovers there are from the week’s recipe testing; I can eat the same thing for every meal for days on end, though I try and add an extra veg on the side too. Works well when it’s ramen, less well when it’s profiteroles. The only downside of my column is I very rarely get to make the dishes again as I’m already on to the next thing. Go-to drunk food or a midnight snack? Buttered toast and Marmite. Or when there’s no bread in the house, buttered digestives and Marmite. To be honest, it’s more butter with toast; the ratio tends to be a bit off and I can quite easily wake up to find I’ve eaten half the butter and need to go for a long run.
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