Commuter food:Don't queue for a boring sandwich - think ahead and bring a lunchbox to work with you, writes Catherine Cleary
We expect a lot from our food these days. Those Omega oils make us clever, low GI foods make us slim, endorphin-enhancers make us happy. The daily dinner becomes like a medicine cabinet full of remedies for modern life.
By midday most breakfasts, especially the slice of toast at the steering wheel variety, are a distant memory. Dinner might not be until after 8pm. Most of us respond by grazing, not in the healthy, munching-a-carrot-stick fashion but on the foods that lead to a different kind of expanding commuter belt.
Any restaurant owner will tell you that coffee and sandwiches provide the highest profit margins. Forget all that slow home cooking. Slap a piece of ham on a well-buttered slice of white and your bank manager will love you.
For people who love their food, the workday lunch is often the equivalent of those food pills we imagined we would be popping by now. It is an injection of joyless nutrition for which you have to queue. At home in your fridge, good expensive food waits in the dark.
The solution is to bring those tasty ingredients to work and do some food assembly, without the plastic snap-on gloves. We may associate real cooking with real ovens, but the office microwave is not such a bad stand-in, if you bring the right ingredients. You will save time, money and hassle by cooking food at home, freezing it and bringing it into work.
TWO-CHEESE POTATO CAKES WITH SCALLIONS
Makes six Once fried, the potato cakes can be frozen and they make perfect lunchtime goodies to reheat in the office microwave.
30g butter
100g wholemeal flour
Four medium potatoes, boiled and mashed with butter and milk
Four spring onions
Olive oil for frying
50g Gruyère cheese
50g goats' cheese (the small round variety)
Rub the butter and flour together until it looks like breadcrumbs. Mix in the cold mashed potato and stir in the chopped spring onions. Using your hands, shape the mixture into scone-sized rounds. If you have the time you can roll the mixture out and use cookie cutters to make perfectly shaped ones. Dust the finished potato cakes with some extra flour.
Heat some olive oil on a hot pan and place the cakes on the hot pan. Slice the goats' cheese into thin rounds and press a round into the uncooked top of each potato cake.
Grate the Gruyère cheese over the top of the cakes as they are cooking. Don't worry if some of the cheese spills between them. It will form a crisp layer that can be gathered up with a fish slice. Cook over a moderate heat until the underside has browned, then flip and cook the cheesy side until it is crispy. Serve immediately with fresh rocket or watercress and cherry tomatoes.
ROASTED TOMATO SALAD WITH FETA, HAZELNUTS AND RED ONIONS Makes two portions
8 cherry tomatoes
Olive oil
Pinch of sea salt
1 red onion
50g feta cheese
1 handful whole hazelnuts
Vinaigrette to dress
Heat the oven to 100 degrees. Chop the tomatoes in half and put them in a roasting dish. Drizzle some olive oil over them, and sprinkle with a little salt. Cook for up to 50 minutes, or until they are cooked but still juicy. Slice the onions finely and put in a bowl. Stir in the tomatoes, letting the juices coat the onions, then crumble in the feta and add the hazelnuts.
Leave in the fridge overnight. Pour some vinaigrette over the salad in the morning when you put it in a lunchbox to take to work.