Taste the difference
I adore good food and drink.
If you asked me how I felt about cooking two years ago, I would have told you that I absolutely hated it and only cooked out of necessity. Somewhere along the line of life, I had become a nervous, overly apologetic ‘hit and miss’ cook. Amazing food one day. A hot mess wondering ‘what went on here?’ the next.
I now accept that it is probably not my natural inclination to follow recipes ‘to the T’, and I (still) rarely taste my food during the cooking process. Nine times out of 10, the very first time I taste my food is when I sit down to eat it. That’s just me.
With the exception of baking, I learned how to cook intuitively from my Jamaican mother mainly, but my Nigerian father too, by ‘eye’ and ‘feel’. That is ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ with our many senses. My mother tastes her food as she goes along. My father never did. Hmmm … sounds familiar. While it has had it’s casualties, I must say I actually enjoy the freedom of cooking intuitively and creatively. Fine if I’m eating solo, but this can be a little bit risky when you’re cooking for others. So, all hail recipes!
Today, I am able to exercise enough discipline (just about!) to follow and learn a recipe, and to produce some pretty tasty meals (though I say so myself). Once I’ve learned a recipe though, the real joy starts the minute I decide to deploy my more ‘random’ self, changing ingredients and methods, and in the process coming up with a lot more hits than misses!
In this blog, I share recipes for food that I love, wherever possible made using fruit, vegetables and herbs that I grow myself on my allotment plots, as well as with bought ingredients. And believe me, I really do taste the difference when I cook with just-harvested produce. Most supermarket bought vegetables simply cannot compete.
Just-harvested sweetcorn Zea mays F1 ‘Mirai White’ and F1 ‘Swift’ from Suttons, simmering gently, August 2019. I’m going through my stock of seeds at the moment. I’ll definitely be buying more Sweetcorn F1 ‘Mirai White’. I won’t try to match my father’s half acre crop of sweetcorn decades ago in Nigeria, but I do want a LARGE harvest this 2020!
The only word I can find at the moment to describe my own-ingredient salads is ALIVE! I love the fresh, vibrant taste of my ‘Quick & Easy’ Chicken Soup in which the only bought ingredients are the chicken, salt, and a little sunflower oil (optional). I’ll share my recipe with you later. No need for boiling ‘to death’. Delicious!
