Lynda Hallinan
Releasing my inner mongrel
Of all the lines that sportspeople spin in interviews, one porkie stands out from the post-match hubbub: ‘‘Away from the court/pool/ field/track/stadium/arena, I’m really not that competitive, except with myself.’’
Competitors who claim to be anticompetitive are about as honest as skinny chefs and introverted attention seekers. (Kim Kardashian once told the Huffington Post that her authentic self was ‘‘very shy and reserved’’.)
Few have ever accused me of being shy – or competitive, for that matter.
At school, my lowest grade was always for PE. I wasn’t any good at sport, and yet sport was the only extra curricular activity at my country school. So I wasted my youth as a fair to middling netballer, so-so swimmer, less than brilliant badminton player and a gymnast of no great shakes.
I was, at best, an average athlete. You might say I lacked mongrel. When, on the rare occasions, I aced an opponent on the tennis court or slam dunked a sneaky shuttlecock, I felt remorse rather than triumph. If I was better than someone else, then they must have been really hopeless. Is it nurture or nature? Why are some kids born with a win-at-all-costs mean streak while others are content to sit on the sidelines, making daisy chains?
During one memorable game of social doubles, my teammate, frustrated at my laissez-faire stance at the net, took my anti-competitive spirit for insolence and deliberately served a ball at my turned back. I wouldn’t have taken this act of poor sportsmanship so badly had my teammate not been my father, and our opponents the lady next door and her 9-year-old daughter. Wimbledon it was not.
Some might say it’s unsporting not to give a toss but to them I say, if I’m going to toss something competitively, it might as well be a salad.
Last weekend I hosted a group of foodies for a foraging tour of my garden followed by a plot-to-plate lunch. Before they arrived, I’d slaughtered the lamb (or defrosted one butchered by my brother-in-law) and marinated it in homemade plum chutney, roasted Golden Nugget pumpkins in home-churned, cultured butter, grated a bowl of raw beetroot and red cabbage and pulped a bucketful of passionfruit for pudding.
All that was left to do was pick a plate of salad greens. And that’s when I saw Wellington chef, caterer and food writer Ruth Pretty’s recipe for a 20 Vegetable Salad with Cucumber Dressing in NZ Life and Leisure magazine.
A stalwart of the Wellington foodie scene, Ruth Pretty isn’t just a pretty face with a pretty selfsufficient Te Horo garden. She’s also, clearly, a gourmet gasconader, whereas I was raised on a diet of meat ‘n’ three veg, except in summer, when Mum served meat ‘n’ three veg salads (shredded iceberg lettuce, cucumber rounds and quartered tomatoes).
Ruth’s 20 Vegetable Salad is a thing of beauty, with gently-torn cos and frilly green lettuce adorned with the broken hearts of bok choy and endive; a handful each of baby sorrel, rocket, rainbow chard, miner’s lettuce, nasturtium leaves and pea tendrils; celery leaves from the heart; mandolin-sliced spring onions; a lemon-drizzled, dismembered avocado; green beans; snow peas; a fennel bulb; spiralised courgette; a quarter each of a daikon radish and a small cucumber; and a smattering of microgreens.
The mere sight of that chartreuse selection made me suddenly come over all competitive. I’ll see you Ruth, I thought, and raise you a dozen more. Into my harvest basket went deep red Salanova and Cos lettuces; plump ears of sweetcorn; late strawberries and a solitary spear of purple asparagus; blood-veined sorrel; Greenfeast peas and puffy Goliath snow peas; rainbow chard; a stringless quartet of butter, broad, Scarlet Runner and Purple King beans; tatsoi and purple cabbage; beetroot; celery stalks; nasturtium leaves, flowers and poor man’s caper pods; a bunch of green grapes; red capiscum, caped tomatillos and green cherry tomatoes; Iznik mini cucumbers; marigold and rose petals;