On abstract cooking

Now there is many a great cooking blog out there, unfortunately mine isn't one of them. Whilst I aspire to cook most food from scratch, seasonally when I can and with local produce when its available, I've come to realise I'm not really suited to writing about cooking. This may become an issue as the 'manchild' has asked if I'll pop something regularly for him as an online library of recipes for his university years. No pressure huh.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love cooking, its just the knack of doing it consistently, remembering what I've done and repeating it that is my problem.  I'm more of an 'abstract' cook, I lob in as I go, tasting and adjusting to please so recipes are an abstract notion to me, unless I'm baking (which is science anyway and I stick to a plan for that). For everything else, my ad hoc approach sort of works as long as I don't try and cook pre-packaged food, which I can only burn or turn to mush. Its never ever worked, I just can do pre-packed food, I blame my dyslexia entirely.

A meal for a chum, looks much better wrapped up to go than it did during the cooking stages.

Take the case yesterday. My wonderful chum's just had a baby and its nice to take around a home cooked meal for the new bleary eyed parents. Now being like many I'm not a bad fridge forager, although not as inspired as Cheri over at Cwtch Corner, her recipes put me to shame, as do her photographs of cooking. Whilst I did OK on the fridge forage and the freezer surf to find ingredients, my enthusiasm and poor time management mean I forget to take bonnie photos of the ingredients and hastily try and take them whilst cooking. So my photos, unlike many a gorgeous blog food photos, look a bit like this.....hardly inspiring. Although I did hear that it tasted OK and no ones dead, which given they are new parents, is a relief!

Cod with sun dried tomato, chorizo, lemon, courgette and shallots.

Any hints and tips of taking gorgeous photos of food please leave them below. For now I'll not leave my day job and take up recipe photography. And, the manchilds new stolen recipes blog, will be deviod of my own photos until I've mastered it.