I’ve written before about my love of baking. That love is still with me. The intervening years have seen their fair share of rock hard buns and soggy bottoms (not to mention a few perfectly risen domes). I even did a Christmas cake for 2019’s festivities. But during those years, my love of things culinary has gone far beyond flour and eggs. Now I salivate over the savoury too.
A slave to the flavour
Liverpool has definitely raised the bar when it comes to dining experiences. So many restaurants to try, cuisine to explore and treats to try and justify! We’ve been to Elif and Sanskruti. Hafla Hafla and the Baltic Market. The Italian Club and Mowgli. And many more. And they’ve all been gloriously delicious.
Each time we try a new restaurant I get overwhelmed by options and bowled over by flavours. All these new ingredients, styles and combinations blow my mind and - simply put - make me incredibly happy. It’s a definite pro of moving to a big, vibrant city.
But it’s not just eating out that’s got me hot under the collar. Sure I love the food, the new, (the lack of washing up!) but I also really love the inspiration for trying new things at home.
Cooking up a storm in the kitchen
Shout out here to my fella who last year made the most incredible butter chicken that is yet to be bested for home-cooked curries. He showed me what was possible.
Cooking new recipes brings me so much excitement and pleasure. Old favourites done to perfection are like a big tingling hug. And gradually getting better, building a spice cupboard and learning why ingredients do the things they do has grown from a side-effect of sustenance to a full-blown focus.
Recently, I’ve tried out paneer curry pies, lamb cobblers, gnocchi bakes, and squash and chickpea curries. I even made my own curry powder from scratch for that last one and I tell you, never have I understood the importance of a spice grinder more. Pestle and mortars are not for the faint-hearted.
(Anyone want to buy me and my withered arm a spice grinder?)
I’ve been enjoying the curries in particular. I want to understand spices, and blends, and levels of creaminess. Next on the list in fact, inspired by the joy of eating at Mowgli, but perhaps controversially informed by Dishoom’s recipe book, is House Black Daal.
Not only am I super-intrigued how five hours of cooking will pan out, but the excuse for the trip to the Lodge Lane Super Store was brilliant. Thanks to that wondrous cave of international ingredients, I now have my urad dal and my Kashmiri chilli. It’s going to be a good week.
A standing start
As you can probably tell, I really love food. I mean, I think about it all the time. While I’m eating breakfast I think about what I’ll make for lunch. And the only reason I’m not contemplating dinner too is that I’ll have spent a bunch of time at the weekend searching through recipes and picking my experiments or old favourites for the week. (Or the fella will.)
This wasn’t always the case though. When I was small, I was one of the fussiest eaters around. Nothing green - obviously. Nothing with seeds or pips. Raisins were occasionally ok, but not actually IN anything (good god!). And onion - are you mad? Anything other than mac ’n’ cheese or peanut butter sandwiches and the jury was out.
I can’t remember the moment this changed. Perhaps at university … perhaps a little later when I had a bit more money to buy ingredients. It was definitely gradual. Trying the odd new thing and accepting that it wasn’t, after all, the spawn of Satan, was only the first step.
It took much longer to start putting my mini-revelations into the context of recipes and to begin trying to actually cook them myself. What a journey though.
What you lose in time, make up for in presence of mind
Would it have been good to know about all these tastes, textures and cooking delights a little sooner? Sure. But that wasn’t me. You couldn’t have got me to try a curry for all the money in the world when I was 10. And while that means I’ve had less time to love and learn, it also means every bite I experienced for the first time, I experienced with a greater presence of mind.
Learning more complex recipes and flavour combinations as an adult has forced me to pay attention, revel in the excitement, and savour it all the more.
Whether it’s adding a bit of onion to mac’n’cheese or diving into slow-cooked urad dal, I enjoy food more intensely now because its new and because I can remember what it was like before I had such joy in my life.