About me

I love food.  Or to be specific, I like good food.  Food is comforting, is exotic and adventurous, its exciting, its sexy and sensual, it’s whatever you need to be.

I cook because I love to eat good food.  I didn’t always cook well (no I’m not modest!).  At first I cooked ready meals and microwaveable rubbish.  Occasionally a pasta dish that would invariably taste revolting.  But eventually I got better, mostly because I couldn’t stand the food I cooked and couldn’t afford to eat out!  And after I got better, I got a bigger kitchen with lots of lovely appliances and tools and cook books and I became confident.  Confident enough to write this blog.

I’m not writing this because I’m an amazing chef.  I create, that’s true, but it’s always out of practicality.  In reality, I’m a cook not a chef.  I love my recipes.  I rarely make something up out of my head from scratch.  Its usually out of a book or off the internet.  But I know how to do it now.  And actually, it’s not difficult.  I used to think it was.  I was terrified of spices (except chilli).  Terrified of doughs and batters (still a little scared of pastry if I’m honest!) and terrified of doing anything from scratch.

But now most of my cooking is from scratch because it tastes better (mostly) and I know what’s in it – good for dieting and maintaining and for not coming out in rashes or other lovely conditions.  Plus all the great stuff is in the original ingredients and never in the preservatives, colourings and e numbers.

But don’t be scared.  This blog is about making cooking simple.  Starting from the beginning and taking you through it.  If you’re an experienced cook, I hope I’m not telling you how to suck eggs, but one of my most favourite cook books tells you how to boil an egg, cook a roast, spaghetti bolognaise etc – the stuff no one tells you about because they assume you already know it.  I will also tell you the things I got wrong, why changing the recipe might be better, and what you can skip or get away with.

So this blog is about the simple things, the stuff you think you should know but no one told you, and how to take the baby steps into cooking amazing food every day of the week – work or no work, kids or no kids, glamourous dinner party or not.  It’s the quick and simple, to the exotic and complicated (although I rarely do complicated, I don’t have the patience) – but always, tasting good, and feeding your emotional as well as your physical state.

On a small aside – I cook food from all over the world.  My favourite part of travelling is the food.  I collect spices and foods when I go on holiday.  So, I would say if you have very specific food preferences then perhaps this blog isn’t for you.  And if you like your spice mild then tone down my spice ingredients a bit (I’ll tell you by how much in the posts) and always de-seed your chillis.

Feel free to suggest recipes or ideas that I can try and to comment on how you found making and eating the recipes I put on here.  The more comment the better.  But be nice, no offensive words or off topic comments, this is a PG blog.