Our racing travellers’ hearts

and a recipe for harissa onions to eat with just about everything

The writer’s dilemma is not having enough words - it’s in finding exactly the right one.

In our quest for precision, emotion, expression and nuance, it can sometimes feel like the exact meaning we want to convey is just beyond our reach, a ghost playing tricks in the mirror of our minds.

With over 600,000 words in the English language, you’d think this wouldn’t be a problem. Yet as I read recently, the vocabulary of a language is not determined by the thickness of its dictionaries. That’s why I love discovering gems from other cultures that hold a world of meaning in a single word. I discovered such a word this week: resfeber.

Resfeber (n., Swedish)

The restless race of the traveller’s heart before the journey begins, when anxiety and anticipation are tangled together.

At the end of April we had planned a trip to the UK with some dear friends. London, Oxford, Bath, the Cotswold…it was a much-anticipated journey to places both well known and new.

But something about the trip wasn’t sitting quite right with me. There was the spike in Covid cases, seemingly running rampant in a country that has decisively lifted much-loathed restrictions. There was a new work project that didn’t exist a month before, and that was both urgent and complicated. Get togethers with my London friends weren’t coming together quite so smoothly. There was resfeber in my heart, when anxiety and anticipation are tangled together in a kind of travel fever - except the anxiety was holding sway.

And then one of our travel companions fell unexpectedly ill, with a different racing of the heart. With less than 48 hours to go before takeoff, Steven had pacemaker surgery, and we began the task of unravelling our plans. Hotel and restaurant reservations cancelled, airline tickets refunded, suitcases stored for another day.

One of my favourite places: a bird’s eye view of the sky on a plane to somewhere

The happy ending to the story is that the illness happened here and not there, or worse yet, in the air. Steven is feeling fine, most annoyed now that he has to delay playing golf for six weeks while he recovers. We’ve got the calendars out to plan anew, my heart aflutter again with resfeber, anticipating, with a delicious mix of trepidation and delight, the next great adventure that awaits.

Harissa onions

From Ottolenghi’s Simple

Makes about 1½ cups

Many years ago, on one of our first visits to London, we stumbled across a bright and cheery food shop called Ottolenghi in Notting Hill. Gleaming counters full of abundance, dishes with interesting unusual flavours - harissa, pomegranate molasses, rose water, za’atar - many that we hadn’t tasted before.

Photo credit Mia di Jesus, on Unsplash

Of course, the world now knows Yotam Ottolenghi. What started as a simple shop has expanded into a groundswell of restaurants across London. All offer wonderfully inventive food, where vegetables are often the star performers and layers of complexity create delight. Ottolenghi has said, "I want drama in the mouth” and he delivers on that philosophy effortlessly. While I am disappointed that we have to delay our London visit, and with it, a trip to an Ottolenghi restaurant or two, I can comfort myself by cooking from one of his many wonderful cookbooks, which are as joyous, colourful, flavourful and surprising as he is.

Ottolenghi’s recipes have a bit of a reputation for being, well, complex. If you want a great introduction to Ottolenghi’s fabulous recipes, get Simple, a cookbook focused on creating great food more effortlessly. And nothing could be simpler than these harissa onions. The recipe calls for them to be used as a mix-in for tofu, but they’re equally fabulous on roast chicken, grilled vegetables, scrambled eggs or fish.

Note: Rose harissa is a heavily spiced North African chile paste. The difference between harissa and rose harissa is the addition of rose petals; they bring a special sweetness to the paste and soften the chile's kick. I use Belazu rose harissa. Start with a smaller amount and increase to your taste.

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, peeled and finely sliced
1½ tbsp rose harissa (or to taste) (see headnote)
½ teaspoon salt, more to taste

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and fry for 10 minutes, stirring often, until deeply golden and soft. Be careful not to brown the onions. Stir the harissa into the onions for a minute, taste and adjust for seasoning.

The recipe is easily doubled and the onions keep well in the refrigerator for up to five days.