A blog about food and cooking.

Food related blogs abound on the internet – in the thousands, I imagine. Mine is but one more voice in the chorus celebrating food; something I am passionate about. I enjoy making food for family and friends and I enjoy writing about it. I would sometimes be asked for the recipe for a dish I had prepared and I would write it up as requested. So how did that evolve into starting a blog? Well…

On a visit home to the UK several years ago I spent a day out in Cambridge with my brother-in-law while my sister and niece went off for a mother/daughter day out. As the afternoon wore on the inevitable conversation about “what’s for dinner?” came up. Eat out? Take out? “No, I’ll see what’s in the fridge and make something at home”, I said. “But we have nothing in the house”, they said. “Hmm, we’ll see”, I thought. So I rooted around in the fridge and cupboards and gathered enough bits to make stuffed chicken breast with a mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes and glazed carrots. The family was mightily impressed that I could “make something this good out of nothing”. “Well, not quite ‘nothing'”, I said.

In the conversation that followed we talked about how the meal came about and my brother-in-law suggested I start a blog for family and friends spread across the globe. (I live in San Francisco and I have family and friends in the US, UK, Hong Kong and Australia). None of my family cook the way I do but all of them enjoy good food. My hope is that this blog will encourage some of my family and friends (including friends I haven’t yet met) to practice and expand their cooking skills and most of all to enjoy the adventure.

I live to cook. It is what I was born to do. Devoting an inordinate amount of time to practicing my craft is time well spent for me. However, I recognize that not everybody shares this passion; some are quite happy to enjoy the good food others have prepared for them and there is nothing wrong with that. Each to his own and all. If you are one of those people this blog probably isn’t for you. For those reading this who share my passion (or at least have an active interest in cooking), I hope we can learn from each other. If you just want to try new recipes or processes with a better than even chance of success, please feel free to take from my ramblings what you will.

When I began my (amateur) cooking career, lo these many years ago, I had many more failures than successes. I tended to tackle projects that were perhaps a little ambitious for a novice but I was never intimidated by the process and kept plugging away at it. (I sometimes wondered if I was just too dumb to know I should be intimidated!) As time went on the balance shifted to more successes (although not always raging successes) than failures and as success feeds upon itself I became more confident and proficient. The ‘time’ I am talking about here is measured in years, not days or even months.

My point is this: you watch TV chefs do their thing and they tell you how “easy and delicious” this is because it probably is easy and delicious. What they don’t mention is that it takes a long time and lots of practice before it becomes so, especially for those among us who weren’t blessed with an innate talent for cooking. There are no shortcuts to success in cooking, no “secrets” to get you there faster. It takes a lot of focused attention and most of all, practice, practice and more practice.

That being said, one of the things I hope to do with this blog is to help cooks understand the ingredients they are working with and how cooking works, and perhaps to reduce the frustration that often comes with cooking disappointments. Such disappointments and attendant frustrations will often discourage further attempts to break out of the same old same old choices for dinner. Armed with the knowledge I hope to impart, readers will have a better chance at success but make no mistake, it will still involve a lot of trial, error and patience. I mean, you can talk about this stuff for days but absolutely nothing beats strapping on an apron, picking up your knife, pots and pans and other cooking paraphernalia and diving in.

The goal though is well worth the effort. Feeding family and friends good, wholesome food that satisfies the body and spirit is an expression of love and a joy for both cook and guest.

And what about the recipes on this blog? One of the goals I have for this blog is to guide cooks with advice and suggestions based on my own experience with the recipe. I find that many recipes can be a little parsimonious with details and instructions that inexperienced cooks might benefit from. I try to fill that gap to give cooks more confidence and a better chance of success. While I want to give as much information as possible, I don’t want a recipe to be like reading War and Peace either. My personal challenge is to know when to shut up!

Under the heading, “There’s nothing new under the sun“, most recipes, either in books or on line, are inspired by someone else’s recipe which in its turn was inspired by someone else’s and so on. Each iteration being slightly different from its predecessor so that over time you end up with a whole “new” recipe. I am a home cook and as such I don’t have the resources to be a true recipe developer. Sometimes I use recipes I find just as they are written – after all, if it’s a good recipe, well written, why mess with it? I sometimes combine features from several similar recipes to make my own and only occasionally do I create a recipe from my imagination. You will notice that when I use someone’s recipe, either directly or as inspiration, I always give credit to the author.

You will notice too there are very few photographs to accompany the recipes here. (There is a lively debate in the food world right now on what role photos play in cookbooks and digital recipes and whether they are necessary at all. But that’s a whole other conversation). As noted above, I am not a recipe developer and the food I cook is going to be eaten by my family. I don’t have time during the cooking process to stop and set up a photo shoot. The best I can do is try to make the words convey what I want to get across.

One final thought: I think a little humility in a cook does not go amiss! There is a well known chef called Jacques Pepin who began his career as an apprentice in post war France at the age of 13. In a recent interview he said of today’s celebrity chefs, “The trouble with young chefs today is that people tell them how great they are and pretty soon they start to believe it”. So, by all means bask in the glow of the compliments on a fine meal made from ‘nothing’ but don’t forget to reset the dial on your ego for the next one you prepare.

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