Deliciously ridiculous

The youngest was captivated by the cover of Delicious magazine last week.

It featured … brace yourself … a Potato, Green Tapenade & Herb Spelt Pizza.

About the only part of that recipe the youngest would normally eat is the potato.

I stared at her like she was from Mars. “Who are you?”

She giggled and asked if we could please, please, PLEASE buy the magazine and promised she would eat at least three recipes in it.

She’s on a health kick for the World Skipping Championships and has gone all “my body is a temple”. Well, aside from lollies, they’ve been given special exemption. But otherwise it’s all brown rice and leafy greens and “no thank you” to hot chips.

I don’t buy magazines much these days, which is a bit sacrilegious for someone who worked in the industry for 25 years … but I just don’t have the time, they’re expensive and I don’t feel like I’ve had my money’s worth at the end.

But the youngest was so determined and I thought it would be funny to see her pretend to like all that millennial wankery on a pizza base.

I’d been thinking the recipe couldn’t get much more ridiculous than the name, but I was wrong. The ingredients and the method were quite something. They included potato sliced with a mandoline; store bought salsa verde; white spelt flour; chervil and goat’s curd.

Delicious, you have officially jumped the shark.

I live in a fairly affluent suburb, but the only one of those ingredients available at my local Woolies was white spelt flour.

My local Harris Farm had goat’s curd for $10.99 for a tiny tub. It did not have salsa verde. I suspect store-bought salsa verde is not actually a thing and Delicious just said it is because the list of ingredients for making salsa verde is so long and would make the recipe sound way freaking harder than it already does.

Here’s the list of ingredients for Jamie Oliver’s salsa verde:

• 1½-2 cloves garlic
• 2 big handfuls of fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1 bunch of fresh basil
• 1 handful of fresh mint
• 1 small handful of capers
• 1 small handful of gherkins, in sweet vinegar
• 6 quality anchovy fillets
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 8 tablespoons really good extra virgin olive oil

And … who has a mandoline lying around? Well … I do … but that’s a hangover from in my obsessive throw-myself-into-cooking-to-avoid-my-failing-marriage stage … I also had aspirations to be a food blogger.

That mandoline hasn’t had much use since then.

Oh and there’s the kneading of your own pizza dough, which is then lovingly rubbed with a mixture of fresh rosemary, garlic and olive oil.

I dunno about you, but I reckon a food magazine should feature stuff on the cover that is actually achievable for most people. I don’t spend $7.95 on my food mags for them to just lie around looking pretty.

As for how my $30 homemade pizza tastes … well, I’ll let you know.

And don’t get me started on the $10 packet of freshly pulped turmeric I bought for the Delicious beef rendang recipe …

Do you buy food mags? Do you cook things from them or just look at the pretty pictures?

Song of the day:  Iggy Pop “Candy”