Both of my parents are accomplished cooks and if they had known about the Slow Food Movement they would have been founder members. As regards food and cooking, I inherited the following beliefs:
1. Eat everything in moderation.
2. Eat as little processed food as possible. Processed food typically has additives which I stubbornly believe are bad for me and I don’t like how they taste.
3. Eat organic/happy free range as much as you can. On this point I understand people are divided and that’s fine with me.
4. Wasting food is a sin.
Living by those inherited principles, I cook the following as a matter of course:
1. Jams, jellies, pickles, and chutney. I do this in order to preserve fruit and veg in season and/or if I have a glut of something that is at risk of going off and would otherwise get wasted. Honestly, you will be amazed at how easy preserving is.
2. Soup. It’s my favourite food and, as above, I often cook and freeze soup to avoid wasting good vegetables or good bones from the previous evening’s roast. With the right equipment it does not take much longer to cook soup from scratch than to heat up something ready made.
3. Leftovers. I don’t want to brag, but I am a wizard with left overs. My parents grew up during the war and their inventiveness with bits and pieces is the stuff of legend. With a few simple principles and a good larder, you too can claim wizard status.
4. Bread and other baked goods. Yeast is your friend. Enriched flour is not. Baking is as easy as falling off a log and, for many, deeply satisfying.
By dint of the fact that my mother is German who lived in Puerto Rico before moving to Canada, my father is English who lived in Japan and China before moving to Canada and I am Canadian but have lived in about five different countries, a lot of national cuisines influence my cooking.
I have studied cooking with professional chefs in Thailand and Laos. I have also studied Italian, Japanese, and fish cookery here in the UK. I also just happen to love food and take great pleasure in cooking simple things that are so good that everyone thinks I slaved for days when the truth is that I was mostly sitting around drinking cups of coffee or glasses of wine and reading the news paper while they just sort of took care of themselves in the kitchen.
I think other people may like to learn how to do some of these things. If you are one of them, please see the list of classes that I am going to hold and contact me to sign up. If you would like a more personal touch, contact me to talk about a “kitchen consultation.”
Email Me: I look forward to hearing from you.
