Recipes

“A Recipe Has no Soul, You as The Cook Must Bring Soul to The Recipe”

DO NOT COMPARE WHAT YOU HAVE MADE WITH THE PHOTO IN A COOK BOOK. OK! GOT IT? YEAH! READ WHY…

My favorite seafood is crab. I like it in all kinds of dishes but you can’t beat picking the meat out while sitting on a harbour wall. If you haven’t got a harbour wall at home ,it’s just as good eating it while watching a cooking programme , preferably one where they are making a crab dish.

Will be throwing recipes of what I cook for myself at home on this page . I will soon post a blurb which will be in my cook book with stories. It basically explains my thoughts on not taking cooking too seriously and how trial and error is so important.

One week later and as promised, here it is.

There are certain recipes and dishes that you should follow with the exact amounts of ingredients, cooking and baking times. I am a big believer in experimenting with adding and taking away. Substituting this for that. Play around with your ideas. Do not compare what you make to the glossy photo in the cookbook. Trial and error. Cooking is easy. The more you cook and experiment the easier it becomes. It does not always have to look or taste good. When you spit the first mouthful on the floor your taste buds are telling you what it needs or didn’t need. Thing is, if you enjoyed the process and can see how you can improve, you’re already winning. The photos I put up here will be mostly of the ingredients and not finished dishes..well..for the time being anyway. Take a step back to the days when all they had were illustrations of the finished dishes. Did they compare their finished results to a sketch? I think not.

Just have a go. Click on the food buttons below to zip you to wherever in the world your taste buds fancy going

Indian

Bloody Hot Curry Base Sauce

Firstly I should point out that the photo of spices was taken by me, yeah, taken from another website that allows you to download such pictures. As a photo of sauce would be boring. I will however, be taking pics of what I cook shortly. Meanwhile, this is what you need to chuck together to blow your pants off. Of course , if you’re not a hero like me, you can tone the amount of oomph you add.

Here’s what you will need, lets call them the IN GREEDYANTS:

Serves 4 or 1 depending how hungry you are.

1 Parsnip

3 Carrots

2 medium size potatoes

2 large onions

1 apple

1 Broccoli stem

As many cloves of garlic you can handle.

1 tin of tomatoes or 5 vine tomatoes.

1/4 tube of tomato paste

1 stock cube

4 large tablespoons of Madras curry powder

2 Large tablespoons of Garam masala( powder form or whole seed mix)

2 Tablespoons of Chili powder

4 Fresh chilies of your choice. The hotter the better.

Peel any veg and roughly chop them up. Chuck them into a pan with a dash of oil on a high heat for 5 minutes , stirring now and then.

Throw in all the spices. Mix until the it coats the veg and stir for a couple of minutes.

Bang in the tin of tomatoes ( be sure to just use the contents only as the metal will take ages to break down. Years probably).

Add the tomato paste, mix. Add water to the pan. Almost to the top. Keep an eye on it while it comes to the boil. Turn the heat down to a simmer and leave for 90 minutes. Topping up with a bit of water now and then. You are looking for the sauce to condense down to around half on the pan. Leave to cool down and blend the crap out of it with a hand electric mixer or blender till its nice and smooth. Fold in a drizzle of olive of veg oil at the end. Freeze or keep it in your fridge ( 4 days max ) until ready to use or both. Split it up. Heat the sauce up and add it to any meat or veg curry. Add a 1/4 cup of water as the sauce will be very thick.

Remember , the in greedy ants can be played around with and quantities varied. Just have fun.