Foodie
Food is a massive part of my life - it just isnt what I do for a living, so I wanted to have a foodie section. I should explain that I have been raised and worked in the food / restaurant trade - despite being a designer now. I started as a bakers son, learning about good bread and more importantly pastry. I then used that trade knowledge to get jobs in restaurants as a chef while studying - which I greatly enjoyed. The pay was never high enough then ( it is now ) unless you were head chef at the Dorchester or something so I never went into the business full time. Ive always kept the love with me, and still agonise over food now. So I’ll use chef terms and generally gravitate towards more capable cooking - I guess my target audience would be very keen amateur.
My current projects are stuff I'm interested in, breakfast dishes, recipes from cookbooks with no pictures and amazing kitchen eqipment.
Things to note :
- Foodie very much includes drinks - although Im not that interested in wine…
- I often refer to the Kitchen repertoire - or to give it its proper name Le Répertoire de la Cuisine, as a base text.
- Im a believer that the Italian way is right - freshest, highest quality produce is best.
- No weights and measures - unless its baking. For cooking it isn’t necessary. Im going to assume you know it and if not you’d just experiment.
Latest Foodie items
I said I would blog some images of dishes that don’t have pictures. I have an illustrated Escoffier and it doesn’t appear there - but despite being illustrated, its actually not - with a few plate photos because its an old book in that style - a new one would use split images of course, but Escoffie...
This is definitely one of my favourite breakfasts despite it not being a classic or in the repertoire. Basically sourdough with avocado, sweetcorn, bacon and a poached egg. It’s a bastardisation of eggs Benedict with the addition of avocado replacing hollandaise and sweetcorn I see quite often - and...
Breakfast is nothing without the right drink - its an essential part of the Sunday morning ritual. And Saturday for that matter. You spend ages labouring over the perfect breakfast and serve a cup of tea - no, no, no - this will not do. Maybe the one exception is a full English.
Reigning supreme...
OK, so new series as I have been meaning to start blogging about food for ages, just the other stuff seemed more important first. There is much I could write about food, and it’s all been said before. In fact one of my pet hates is how the BBC for example simply takes a new star and gets them to mak...
Eggs Boitelle is another Kitchen repertoire special - incredibly simple, but requires some quite difficult cooking techniques.
Basically - a bit of bread with a timbale shape of cooked egg inside a mushroom case, with a mushroom sauce. Sounds easy - making the thing is slightly more difficult. Mu...
Eggs Benedict, the king of breakfasts. Also incredibly bad for you unfortunately - it must be a million calories a fork full. The only tricky bit is making a hollandaise sauce - which is effectively a savoury custard.
Ingredients :
Muffin halfs - I see it made with these a lot, I cant remember w...
I worked in several places that put fish in pole position on the menu, plus I live in a town that has a small fishing community. I know fish and will eat anything basically. I try to eat sustainably and use cheap fish, but sometimes I want cod or I cant be bothered to pick the crab.
It always surpr...
If you’re a keen amateur cook, the minute you step above IKEA knife block, there is a bewildering array of knives and the costs of some are mental, so Id intended this as a common sense guide to what is cost effective and useful. Generally if you’re spending more than £50 on a knife you need to stop...
