Ok so a little bit about me.

I’ve been cooking for as long as I can remember. Well that’s not strictly true, I’m not sure I remember what I was doing last week, but you know what I mean. Everyone in my family has always been into their cooking so I’ve always had cooking in my blood. From growing up watching Ready, Steady Cook through to watching Keith Floyd and Jamie Oliver on TV I’ve had a lot of influences in my cooking.

I’d say my cooking is quite varied. I don’t just cook one style of food, most the food you’ll see on the blog will be food anyone can do and the sort of food you could cook any day of the week. I’ve read countless cook books and its amazing how many of them contain recipes that you would never cook on an every day basis. For sure if you’re doing a dinner party you might want to do something a bit flash but if you’re using good ingredients you really don’t need to do anything that flash to give someone a good feed and impress them.

A lot of stuff you’re going to see here will be some good traditional favourites plus a few weird and wonderful recipe ideas. I guess I’m hoping that if I do a recipe that you cook yourself like a bolognese or a chicken casserole or bangers and mash that my recipes will give you a few different ideas to try.

A lot of the time most people will have a repertoire of recipes they cook but maybe they get a bit bored with them, if I can shake things up a bit for you and inject a bit of life into one your favourite recipes that you’re a bit bored of then job well done I say.

I guess one of the most important things for me when I cook is cooking each ingredient correctly, at the perfect stage in the best way for each recipe. I think it’s so important and if you give it a try I think you’ll find it could transform your cooking. Even for something as simple as bangers and mash, if you cook the onions correctly and do a couple of very simple things at the right moment you’ll get so much more out of it.

I try to use fresh good quality ingredients as much as possible. I don’t do cage eggs, they’re not much more expensive than free range eggs so I don’t see why people use them. Free the chickens! Plus all these pasta ‘sauces’, please, please, please don’t use them. If you’re cooking a tomato based pasta use good quality tined tomatoes or get a good tomato Passata. It will cost you the same if not cheaper and you’ll get much better results. These crappy Dolmeo pasta sauces taste weird in my opinion. A Passata is generally just tomatoes and a bit of salt…Perfect. Next time you think about using a pre-made pasta sauce have a read of the ingredients on the back, I bet it will have a load of random stuff in it that you really don’t need, including some random numbers. I’ve never been great at maths but I’m pretty sure eating numbers is not good. It ain’t going to help you add up better either. That’s what calculators are for and you don’t eat them. Tried it once, didn’t work. Calculator a l’orange does not work. Fact.

In terms of vegetables, organic stuff is for sure more expensive but some vege really does benefit. I’m not going to say you have to use organic vege. Use what you can afford. Give it a try and see what you think. For sure organic carrots really do taste better so if you’re doing a soup or a carrot salad try and use organic carrots. You will taste the difference. Vege like potatoes and broccoli also seem to taste better.

With meat, again try and use as good quality as you can afford. If you can, try and go to a local butchers. You can normally get good quality free range eggs there too. (Cheaper than the cage crap you get in the supermarkets too) There’s loads about and for sure getting to know your butcher and where your meat comes from is great. I think it’s much better to know what you’re eating. We have some amazing produce in the UK and it’s all available to you even in a big city. You just have to hunt around a bit sometimes.
If you have to go to supermarkets then obviously that’s fine, you can get some great quality stuff from them now. Supermarkets are realising more and more that people do want better quality produce and they’re doing pretty well.

Well I could probably keep waffling about food forever so ill stop here. Any questions or if you’re ever stuck for something to eat, drop me a comment somewhere on here with what you’ve got in the fridge and I’ll try and get back to you with a recipe idea! Happy cooking….