authenticity | Ramblingrose

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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Vadouvan - will 2026 be its time?

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness." [not] Oscar Wilde I'll begin with an aside - the quote above. First I just used the first half of it which I had a feeling was by Oscar Wilde, then I found Terence Eden's Blog which first reminded me that there was a second part of it and then told me in great detail why it wasn't Oscar Wilde who said it - the conclusion being it might have been a now defunct magazine - My Family Magazine

Jan 30

Chicken Kiev - or Kyiv, or something else altogether?

"the only thing that really matters with a kiev is that when you cut into that crisp shell, you're rewarded with an eruption of vivid green, garlicky butter. And that's a pleasure that will never go out of fashion." Felicity Cloake Only beware, because if you cut into it too rapidly that hot butter could spurt out and all over anything that is nearby - the tablecloth, your clothes, your fingers. And it will be hot. The trick is to get it to ooze - as shown here in Nagi Mae

Jan 29

Linzer torte - Italian, Austrian, Jewish?

"I didn’t have great hopes for this Linzer torte – it just seemed too simple to be really delicious." Alix Clark/SBS And I have to say when I turned to my lucky dip page - this is a lucky dip recipe - I felt a bit the same. When I think about it I don't think I have ever tasted a genuine Linzer torte. Did my mother ever make such a thing I wonder because I do remember something with a lattice top and maybe jam in the middle? If I did I doubt that my mother, or maybe even m

Jan 20

Fruit fools

"Savlon for the tongue" Nigel Slater That's a somewhat weird, maybe even repulsive or at least unattractive way of describing, what to me and many other English people is the most sublime of desserts - particularly the gooseberry version. ‘Soft, pale, creamy, untroubled, the English fruit fool is the most frail and insubstantial of English summer dishes’ says Elizabeth David and even Claudia Roden - doyenne of Middle-Eastern food describes them as "one of the delights of s

Jan 3

Feta or fetta?

"Keep a jar of Persian-style fet[t]a in the fridge and you'll always have something to smear on veg, swirl through pasta, add oomph to recipes and basically make life better." Sydney Morning Herald Good Food I have learnt a few things about feta/fetta today and not just the initial thing - that feta and fetta are not the same thing - but a whole lot of other associated stuff too. And let me say that I am not the only one who uses the two spellings somewhat haphazardly. I c

Nov 21, 2025

Indian cookbooks - then and now

"Books, even cookbooks, are written for a diversity of reasons and it is often more profitable to enquire why they have been written than analyse their contents in an uncritical manner. " Shylashri Shankar/The Peepul Tree I guess this particular post stems from one of those books on my desk - The Food of India - a large beautiful book which I picked up from the op shop for a song. Like it's companions in this series from the Murdoch stable on various world cuisines, it feat

Nov 4, 2025

From the street to Michelin stars - first recipe

"there is no such thing as ‘traditional, authentic cuisine’ anywhere. It’s constantly evolving." Thitid “Ton” Tassanakajohn - Michelin star chef Bangkok Before I return yesterday's book to a shelf somewhere I thought I should do a first recipe thing on it, as it will be placed on a shelf that has already been given the first recipe treatment. I also decided retrospectively, having researched a bit, to cover two different dishes here - the first and third recipes in the book.

Oct 17, 2025