Definitely NOT a chef

There are people who can feel and sense their way through the kitchen. Naturals, who are seemingly always coming up with new ideas. People who don’t repeat the same meals over and over again but who eat a varied and exciting diet on a daily basis. These people are regularly inventing new recipes, adapting them, experimenting with different ingredients and flirting with different flavours. They rarely experience kitchen disasters (as far as we know) and make it all look so easy. Oh how I look up to those people. I want to BE them.

I, my friends, am not a natural in the kitchen. I did not take an interest in cooking as a teenager. I very clearly recall when I was around 15 or so, whenever Mum asked me to continuously stir the bechamel sauce, I just found it mundane. I also managed to ruin the sauce on more than one occasion.

Later in my early and mid-twenties, when I did try (and I promise you, I did), it felt like I couldn’t get much right. My boyfriend was always politely telling me that it was nice, when it quite clearly wasn’t. Chicken was overcooked, sauces lacked flavour and the repertoire was limited. Let’s not even get started on baking cakes. I’ll never live down the chocolate cake I once surprised my boyfriend and his family(!) with on his birthday. Let’s just say it didn’t even resemble the chocolate cake with the gooey centre that I knew was his favourite. Said boyfriend did subsequently become my husband though (and still is), so take from that what you will 🙂

After getting married, around 5 years ago, we moved into a cottage where I didn’t have to share the kitchen with anybody else and suddenly we had our own space. This, coupled with finally starting to have people over for meals, meant that I needed to at least have a couple of recipes that I could whip up for guests and that I now had the space in which to do it.

There were a few key problems:

Extensive lists of ingredients, particularly ingredients with which I was not familiar were intimidating and therefore off-putting.
I did not have the patience for or, let’s face it, much skill in anything complex or tricky (and the bar was low here).
I really did not want to dedicate that much time to this (after all, this wasn’t exactly a passion for me at the time).

So any time I looked for a new recipe or tried to think of one, I had three key conditions in mind:

It had to be simple. No compromises on this. It wasn’t so much the number of ingredients but rather the familiarity and how many I’d need to buy in just to try and make a dish for the first time. For example, if a recipe required me to buy in 5 new types of spices, then it would be out. I couldn’t guarantee that I’d be able to use them in anything else.
It had to be simple. I can’t say this enough. I’d have to have confidence that I could carry out every step in the method without too much fuss or disaster.
It had to be quick. My cut off point was 45 minutes but I preferred a 30 minute recipe if possible.

In this part of the blog, I want to share the recipes I’ve found, adapted and created that have worked for me and my family in hope that it will help fellow non-naturals. If that sounds like you, then read on and enjoy. I am also hoping that by posting recipes I come across and adapt, it will help me expand and enrich my family’s diet and palate.

I’d love to hear from you with your thoughts, comments or questions, so don’t hesitate to get in touch!