There was an article on the Kitchn website about the way that food bloggers are often at polar opposites – they’re either coming up with super fatty, indulgent, massive junk food creations or they’re competitively “healthy” (are they really that healthy?) AKA who can eat the least amount of carbs. It seems right – there are hardly any bloggers that we see nowadays that espouse the “everything in moderation” mantra, which actually makes it quite hard to eat healthily. Either you’re getting subliminal messages to eat a great big dirty burger or you’re faced with unattainable/undesirable images of “healthy” food which happens to be a big bowl of veg and nothing else. (So you think, I’m going to fail anyway…) The article even pointed to another article on a diet blogger who just eats mountains of fruit to detox. Why? Most of us have perfectly good livers!

So in an attempt to eat good food that we actually like, we came up with a warm salad, perfect for a summer’s day here in London. This was actually supposed to be a soup but 1) it’s so hot for all that and 2) cold soup is sad. (Yes, yes it is. Unless it’s gazpacho as a starter.)

We were going to try another recipe for the Thug Kitchen book but we had to do the end of week clean out of fridge items and as with a lot of creations, it was about finishing off things first. (Boring but sensible.)

So this salad is about slightly wilted farmer’s market vegetables and bacon! We think it’s delicious. We doused the root veg in truffle oil and ghee (apparently Escoffier does something similar with his Provencal recipe of artichokes and potatoes). And ghee instead of butter because apparently it’s healthier. And we’re Indian.

Maybe Thug Kitchen next week.

Serves 2-3

3 rashers smoked bacon, cooked and chopped into cubes
150g new potatoes, sliced
300g jerusalem artichokes, peeled and sliced
2 handfuls of curly lettuce, roughly shredded
2 large yellow tomatoes, sliced
1 tbsp truffle oil
1 tbsp ghee
salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Place the bacon, potatoes and artichokes in a baking dish.
3. Add the truffle oil, ghee, salt and pepper. Mix so that it is evenly distributed.
4. Roast for 30 minutes until the edges of the potato slices are golden brown.
5. Stir so that nothing sticks to the baking dish.
6. Toss in to the tomatoes and lettuce and serve warm.

So what do you think? Feel free to share your questions and comments below! We’d love to hear what you have to say.