I always knew I wanted to cook! Even when I was a kid.

It didn’t happen though. At least not the way I imagined it would.

I was born and raised in a small town in the North East of Scotland in the 1950’s and 60’s where boys didn’t grow up to be cooks! The UK in general and Scotland in particular was not exactly known as a culinary Mecca at that time. (Times have changed since and excellent food can now be had all over the country.) Outside of Glasgow or Edinburgh there weren’t really many opportunities for aspiring cooks even if as a dorky teen I had the gumption to go and look for them which I did not!

There were no mentors in the home either. I’m the only member of my family that I know of who has the cooking gene. My mother was a full time housewife, what today we would call a homemaker. She was what I would call a utilitarian cook; that is to say the meals she prepared were simple using locally produced meats and seasonal vegetables. (Gee, what concept!) So, no heart warming stories about how I learned to cook at my mother’s side. Quite the reverse actually. I would hang out in the kitchen as she cooked and was more often than not shooed away for getting underfoot!

And so, after leaving school I bowed to family and social pressures and began a career in engineering.

I did break out eventually though. In my early 20’s I left my home town and spent the next 12 years or so living a somewhat nomadic life, mostly at sea in the merchant navy. During this time my inner cook lay dormant until in 1983 I came to San Francisco to marry the girl of my dreams and here I stayed.

With a permanent home now I began to dabble a bit in cooking but it wasn’t until 1987 when serendipity played its hand that my passion for cooking came fully awake again.

I landed a job at the Campton Place Hotel in San Francisco where the executive chef at the time was Bradley Ogden (a really big name in the food world, although I didn’t know it at the time). For the first time I tasted world class food and I was in smitten. As the hotel’s chief engineer I always seemed to find a reason to be in the kitchen where I would watch the cooks at work and glean some new gem of knowledge. Sometimes by osmosis and sometimes by asking directly, “What are you adding there, chef?”

For the past 30+ years, while earning a living at my day job as a facilities manager, I have been practicing my craft; largely by trial and error, reading as much as I can, taking the odd class and in more recent times consulting Dr Google. In that time I have acquired a body of knowledge and experience that I would like to share with you.

I understand that not everybody has the same passion for cooking that I do but that does not mean non cooks cannot enjoy good, nutritious home made food. My goal here is to provide a base understanding of food; not just the recipe but what makes the recipe work. A good knowledge foundation should inspire more confidence in the kitchen, leading to greater successes. And since success feeds upon itself, hopefully readers will be inspired to further develop their cooking skills. There are few experiences that can match the satisfaction of feeding family and friends a good, tasty meal you prepared yourself in your own kitchen. I’ve been doing this a long time and for me it never gets old.

And what is Tea and Biscuits all about anyway? It harkens back to a time in the UK when the work day was interrupted mid morning and again mid afternoon for a tea break. (Back in the day it was invariably tea, not coffee.) Your cup of tea was often accompanied with a biscuit. It was said that a nice cup of tea could solve all the world’s ills and it was true. For the 15 minutes or so that you relaxed with your tea and biscuits, all your worries disappeared and it gave you a chance to recharge, ready to face the rest of the day. My Avatar shows a cup of PG Tips tea with some of my homemade digestive biscuits. (Click here for the digestive recipe.)

When I am not cooking or thinking about cooking I like to read (mystery and spy novels mostly).  I also enjoy landscape photography and carpentry. I retired in 2010 and there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the things I want to do, just like I thought it would be. No veg-ing in front of the TV for me!

Welcome to my blog. I hope you learn something from it.

KAY’s Dad