Pangasius and leskol

The vicious rumour doing the rounds about our staff restaurant is that if you eat there, and you’re a vegetarian, you might not be quite as much of a vegetarian as you thought you were. Words like “inspection” are being whispered in the corridors. But anyway, I’m sure it’s unfounded. I for one have never seen anything even vaguely resembling meat on sale there. The only way you’d ever get any is if an unfortunate rat got deep fried by mistake.

Our canteen doesn’t have time for meat anyway. It’s too busy specialising in discovering new ingredients nobody even knew existed. And they normally sound like the sort of diseases that used to claim millions of lives back in Victorian times before they were cured by a bunch of capital fellows with moustaches, monocles and microscopes. For instance, the canteen recently proudly proclaimed that it sold pangasius and chips.

Pangasius.

It turns out that pangasius is another name for catfish. They managed to find a way of making catfish sound even less appealing than it already does. But they don’t always trumpet their miracles of gastronomy. Sometimes they are hidden, as in their hilariously titled “Hey Pesto!” sandwich, the main ingredient of which is something called leskol.

Leskol.

Yes, they are selling a leskol sandwich in our canteen. I am not making this up. Like pangasius I had no idea what leskol even was until I did some research. And I’ve discovered that it’s a low fat cheese substitute. I even went to their website only to be put off by an inappropriately placed apostrophe on the front page. So if I wasn’t boycotting it before, I’m definitely boycotting it now. But you’ve got to hand it to them – normally they put some effort into the names of cheeses (Stinking Bishop anyone? Cathedral City?), and normally substitutes for dairy products at least try to sound exciting (Flora sounds all floral, Vitalite all, well, vital). So to come up with a name which looks almost as unappealing on a Scrabble rack as it would in a sandwich is no mean feat.

Funnily enough the July edition of our somewhat vacuous catering firm’s handouts (critiqued here) was far from forthcoming on the sinister origins of catfish with aspirations or chronically poor rapeseed-based substitutes for cheddar. Nor did it have anything to say on those pesky rumours about cross contamination.

Instead, it had a puff piece about the importance of eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day (the irony) and confirmation that the 21st July is indeed the National Day of Belgium. Will they celebrate with waffles? Moules? A nice foaming pint of Kwak in a glass shaped like a lab flask in a tasteful wooden rack? My money is on frites being the only thing to make an appearance. Like they always do.

It led to an especially surreal conversation last week when Gemma was reviewing the section of the pamphlet extolling the benefits of eating lots of different coloured vegetables.

”It says you should eat purple peppers,” she said, “whoever heard of purple peppers?”

“Isn’t that what Peter Piper picked in the nursery rhyme?” I said.

“No, that’s pickled peppers.” replied Iain. Then I realised something.

“Hold on, how can he pick a peck of pickled peppers? Surely if they’ve already been pickled someone has picked them first. They aren’t going to pickle a whole pepper plant just so Peter Piper can pick pickled peppers. Preposterous.”

Nobody disagreed. I’m not sure if that’s because I was right or because they were just so impressed that I managed to make it through the whole of that tirade with my tongue untwisted.

But worse was to come from our not especially vegetarian friendly leskol pushing chums in the staff restaurant.

There are all manner of disappointing experiences in life (having inflicted a number of them on ladies in my time on the planet I feel well qualified to speak on this subject). There are mildly disappointing experiences where you let out a little sigh - internally or audibly, it doesn’t massively matter which - and get on with your life. There are quite disappointing experiences where you might tell a friend or two, or mention it to other people if it naturally comes up in conversation. And then there are the disappointments so colossal that they convert the person who suffers them into an evangelist, keen to tell the world. You want to stop passing strangers in the street and tell them all about your shoddy experience, keen to deter others from an equally underwhelming fate.

The fish in the canteen on Friday fell squarely into that latter category.

I neared the front of the queue and looked down at it, wan and unappealing on the stainless steel serving plate. But the quality of the batter was the least of the problems here. It was meant to be cod. Cod is a magnificent beast of the ocean. Cod fillets are lovely, huge, fleshy things. And I know it’s endangered but I thought the solution was sustainable sensible fishing rather than dishing up miniscule helpings to homicidal office workers. I did my second double take when I clocked the price - to cap it all, it was £2.85! For £2.85 I could have got a piece of haddock roughly eight times the size at my local chippy. And that was before you’d paid for chips. It was mind boggling.

The person in front of me, improbably, asked for the fish and chips. Maybe they’ll give him two pieces, maybe that’s how it works, I thought. But of course it wasn’t. So I had the vegetarian fajita – which was an education in itself because I’d never associated broccoli with Mexican food (and now I know why).

“Looks lovely doesn’t it?” said the nice lady at the counter as I handed over my cash.

”Yes, it does.” I said. Then I paused. I couldn’t help myself, because it was that kind of disappointment. “Not like that cod, what’s all that about? That’s the smallest cod I have ever seen in my life. It’s like a slightly butch whitebait.”

She grimaced at me, sending me scuttling to my seat. Throughout the whole meal I found myself banging on about the fish to Iain. It was such a crap portion I was spent my lunch break complaining to someone who didn’t care about the size of something I hadn’t even bought. Because it was that kind of disappointment.

For Christ’s sake, it was smaller than my Blackberry. The fact people have designed a device that can make calls and send and receive emails which is smaller than a piece of cod is an inspiring triumph of human ingenuity and endeavour. But the fact that the devious penny pinching sods at our staff restaurant are dishing out portions of cod smaller than a Blackberry is a depressing indictment of catering standards in darkest Bracknell.

You’ll notice I haven’t done a “microchip” pun. Because I’m better than that.

On the way out I stopped by the suggestion whiteboard, hilariously entitled the “blogboard”. You’re righter than you know, I thought to myself as I wrote three little words on there with a stark black marker pen:

Smallest. Fish. EVER.

It’s like Gandhi said, non violent protest is the only thing that ever really changes the word. And I know he was a bit of a thin chap but even he would have turned his nose up at that mangy scrap of battered mediocrity. I mean, really. Come back pangasius, all is forgiven.