Another piquant way to skin a pear

27^th August, 2011 –  If a firework that hasn’t gone off should never be returned to, then revisiting a spectacular explosion on the taste buds is equally follysome. A dish reprised is rarely a patch on the original. A little of the aura is lost through but one attempted facsimile.

I had no intention of making the pear salad again, and certainly not so soon. Indeed I was trying to resist the temptation. However, a grooved slovenliness, some unimaginative habit, must have got the better of me as I found myself repeating and recreating, knowing the odds were that I would be disappointed. (Those who cannot forget the repast are condemned to repeat it.) But starring at a fridge that needed eating up, and with Gorgonzola, salad and cobnuts to hand, what to do except toddle to the supermarket? This time to for better class of pear, the dumpy Comice (but still rock-solid).

Second time around, there was nothing deliberative or idiosyncratically planned. No sweat. Quite the reverse. I barely paid any heed. The cheap, thin pan burned dry, ringed with a tidemark from Old World treacly Rioja. The pears scorched (but rescueable). Much careful attention, not directed to the kitchen but to packing for a holiday.

One week on the cobnuts soft caramel and no longer fresh. The dressing a clumsy, last minute stand-in – a fit, but not a rigorously psychometrically tested match. A try-hard, bossy, vinaigrette. There is no danger of it hiding its blaring lights under the largest bushel of salad, and distractedly I make too much and with too much: too big a spoon of mustard; too much acidic red wine vinegar; too many sea salt flakes lazily uncrushed. This time, the cheese is an unsentimental Piccante and the salad, on closer inspection, is bitter watercress only and which, some leafs turning yellow, needs to be picked over. Far too little remains for too much dressing.

A footling performance, a marked show of ineptitude; but I got away with it (and no one need ever know). By no means a disappointing sequel. A jarring, unsteady and brash concoction. (Last night, another Mahler symphony. Perhaps my tastes were primed for loud bits.) Eaten hurriedly from the bowl and which left me licking my lips. A gauche, undignified salad lacking all poise: all wrong but still very much all right. My type of slap-up meal before dashing away. Must pay more attention though; or maybe sometimes, when winding down at least, pay a little less.