Techniques and Methods

Welcome to my blog/journal/whatever

This is the real guts of this website. The old website and its archived posts is still available at its old url. Newcomers might like to dip into it every now and then.

Welcome to you all. Amazingly I still don't seem to be running out of ideas on what to write - well occasionally - but I have my writer's block strategies to turn to - see the text on the right. Check this page for the latest posts and if something interests you just click on it. It's easy to leave a comment and I love to read them. And now you can subscribe to the blog and get emailed notifications of new posts. And sorry I just don't understand Facebook.

"We are not here for long. So let's at least make ourselves something good to eat."

Nigel Slater

"I was born hungry, not a cook."

Julia Child

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well"

Virginia Woolf

Writer's block

Every now and then I can't think of a suitable topic and so I have devised a few strategies to get around this.

Lucky dip

The first strategy I devised is to go to one of my three cook book bookshelves, close my eyes and pick a book. Close my eyes again and pick a page. It's really quite an enlightening method of getting over writer's block.

'A word from'

My second strategy is to devote a post to the thoughts of one of my favourite cooks. Hopefully it will introduce them to you

Or

I shall choose a picture I have come across and extemporise on that.

A second kind of lucky dip

I have been thinking about first recipes in cook books - so I shall choose a book not quite randomly and then look at the first recipe for inspiration.

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enjoy

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Picking apart a quote

"The reality is that the best way to become a better cook is through failure, and learning from it to tweak the dish for next time. If you are going to take chances in life, cooking at home should be one of them. There's no feeling in the world like the one that comes from making something delicious by pure instinct - like you stepped up to the podium without writing a speech and delivered the monologue of a lifetime." David Chang I confess I almost am tempted to say - "if

Feb 5

David Chang, my microwave and I

"How I learned to stop worrying about recipes and love my microwave." David Chang I'm returning to my kitchen tour and at the same time trying to say a few things about one of the books sitting on my pile. Not exactly a review - just a few words. Above is my microwave in situ, that cleverly looks as if it is really built in, although its actually just sitting on a shelf with a manufacturer supplied surround to hide that fact. It's not a very classy one - a fairly basic Sme

Feb 3

Thickening with flour

"Once the water has bonded with the flour and gelatinised, there’s no going back." A Life of Geekery I have returned to my sometimes series of how to thicken things - and flour. And I am confronted with a dilemma, because, I'm sure you all know how to thicken things with flour - or cornflour and maybe arrowroot - the other contenders shown here. I'm also not really into all the science behind how cooking happens. As soon as I start seeing those incomprehensible chemical na

Jan 26

Things that scare me in the kitchen

"The fact is that cookery is not risk free. It involves fire and knives. While the possibility of injury may decrease with experience, the likelihood of it happening increases because of repetition." Jay Rayner/The Guardian This is actually a piece of street art but I've edited out the walls around it - an interesting picture for the street - but it's actually the best I've found so far to illustrate my theme of the day I think. I'm pretty sure that Jay Rayner's observation

Jan 15

BTW

"BTW - by the way: used, for example in emails, when you are writing something that relates to the subject you are discussing, but is not the main point of the discussion" Cambridge Dictionary It's also the name of an Indian food company that has fast food outlets, a catering service, and a whole range of snack foods, based in New Delhi. I'm not going to go into it in detail. Suffice to say that there are amazing people in the world who come from nowhere and build an empir

Jan 13

A medley

Medley: "a varied mixture of people or things." Oxford Languages In a post-Christmas lazy lull, and on a hot day, I am resorting to little bits and pieces. I feel a bit like this quote I found in the Smitten Kitchen newsletter: "confused, full of cheese and unsure of the day of the week." So oddments from here and there ... 'Medley' implies some sort of organisational process behind the combination of this and that to me. A selection has been made with an overriding t

Dec 31, 2025

Coq au sauvignon blanc

“This popular dish may be called coq au Chambertin, coq au Riesling, or coq au whatever wine you use for its cooking.” Julia Child Based on, based on, probably ad infinitum is the story of tonight's proposed dinner. And for want of a better description I'm calling it Coq au sauvignon blanc - or 'sav blonk' as some would say.. But of course it's not coq at all, so let's begin there on this tiny ramble around a classic french dish. For every group of chickens that actually ha

Dec 17, 2025

A kataifi template or two

"a bit like shredded wheat, only 10 times tastier" Yotam Ottolenghi Today's Guardian Feast newsletter featured this Kataifi pie with feta. tomatoes and warm oregano honey from Alice Zaslavsky. I was a bit taken by it, thinking that this might be the next thing I will make for a vegetarian. I mean it looks wonderful, has all the trendy things like the drizzled honey thing, pistachios and feta and all things I like inside - tomatoes, cheese, onions. And no chilli. But se

Nov 28, 2025

If you're a dedicated cook ...

"I’ll admit it's a labour of love, but so very worth it." Ixta Belfrage This will be a quickie I think. It's inspired by this recipe for A curry leaf, cherry, coconut & hibiscus crudo on a red millet tostada which turned up in Ixta Belfrage's substack newsletter. (I think the link will work - if it doesn't just do a Google search.) It arrived in my email this morning. As you know I am a huge fan of Ixta. Her food is truly exciting, and generally only a tiny bit difficu

Nov 25, 2025

Thickening with eggs

"Stir an egg yolk into any dish that begs for an element of thickness or creaminess. That's it." Daniel Skurnik, pastry chef/Food and Wine You may remember that I was going to have a series on how to thicken things. And I started with bread , but then the idea sort of disappeared. Well today I remembered that and decided to do eggs. It's a vast subject, so I decided to ignore some of the obvious things like custard, and everything you can make from custard like icecream an

Nov 19, 2025

Beautiful words, beautiful food - Nigel

"Early spring, Kamakura, and a small basket appears at my table and a tiny dish of salt. In it, a single whisp of new season's bracken in tempura batter, the fern caught in the process of slowly unfurling." Nigel Slater Looking for inspiration again - it's an everyday thing. I couldn't get excited about the cuisine of El Salvador or smoked fish canapés (my next first recipe - maybe tomorrow), and so I decided to have another look at Nigel Slater's beautiful book of small w

Oct 29, 2025