Weekly Rumblings – the first one

It has been very exciting working on my first blog post. After many weeks of work, the website is finally ready. Although a bit sparse right now, it should grow, as I write and update every week. Every weekend, I plan to post recipes of the meals I cooked over the past week. In addition, I am always on a quest to perfect tricky baking recipes and I hope to share my trials and tribulations and “my perfect version” as I go along.

As a family we pretty much eat everything, but stay away from processed food. I worry because manufacturers have to add stuff to their products to make them shelf-worthy. Maybe this stuff is harmless, who knows? I don’t want us to be the guinea pigs, only to find out in the future that some additive that was deemed safe, is now no longer so. Does that mean that the boys can’t have a chocolate chip cookie or ice cream? They can and do, and it’s mostly homemade (and the boys love to help out); proper cookies made with grass-fed butter and dark chocolate, or homemade ice cream made with whole milk, cream and egg yolks. If you think this is decadent, then you probably shouldn’t be reading my blog!

It’s in my downtime, that I plan what to cook in the forthcoming week. Our local farmer’s market also provides inspiration. This week, I was a trifle democratic and asked the family if there was anything specific they wanted to eat. The husband requested chicken tagine, and the boys complained that we hadn’t eaten burgers in ages. As luck would have it, I had a stash of some superb ground beef from Wild beef (A fab farm shop in Borough market) in the freezer, so I succumbed to burgers on Friday night. The tagine is supremely wholesome and is an excellent recipe for making ahead.

Knowing that we had a rich dinner awaiting us on Friday, I decided on a light salmon curry during the week. It’s very quick to make and is one of my oft-repeated recipes. We ate it with some stir-fried green beans with a simple  tempering.

With some guilt still hanging over me about the impending burgers, we had a green/ veggie dinner with the Broccoli and cheese soup the night before. Fortunately, it coincided with the day I baked sourdough so we had some crusty fresh bread to accompany the soup.

To round off the week, I was keen to try out a new recipe by Ottolenghi – a warm squid salad with pita croutons. It was good timing, as I wanted to make pita bread anyway, for the kids to eat with hummus as an afternoon snack.

As always, I found time to bake during the week. Apart from sourdough and pita bread, I also made granola (I do a few different varieties, this week’s was with maple syrup) and the burger buns, which I baked fresh on Friday morning. I will post the sourdough recipe soon, when I next bake.

This week’s recipes

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My current bedtime reading is “Ken Forkish’s “The Elements of Pizza”. It has been fascinating reading so far, as he delves into  different styles of pizzas and  how to make the best pizza at home. I hope to write a review for the book soon. Meanwhile,  I have collated a list of my all-time favourite cookbooks, under the book reviews tab.

Last week in the press it was interesting to read about the continuing debate on fat in the US, and official guidelines have been slow to catch up (a 19th Dec 2016 ruling deemed avocado healthy).

Meanwhile, in the UK “clean eating” has been questioned, and it seems the term “clean eating” isn’t that cool anymore. In my view, we should eat everything that nature intended us to eat and enjoy, with a clear notion of what constitutes a treat, and should therefore eaten with restraint.

As I sign off, I am reading the Weekend FT, where I am amused to see a recipe for dosa by Meera Sodha. With all due respect to Ms. Sodha, any self-respecting South Indian cook will be quite indignant to see dosa being made with Basmati rice. Perhaps she felt the need to make the recipe simple for the Western world to follow, but honestly, if I am going to make the effort to make dosas from scratch, I want to do it right. We love dosas and it’s often on the weekend lunch menu. In theory making dosa is easy, but notoriously tricky to perfect. I have watched my mum make some of the best, so inspired by Ms. Sodha, I must make dosas soon and post the recipe.

Love your family and cook for them!