This cartoon depicting a man stood on a pile of cookery books reaching for a pot noodle really tickled me, it really sums things up! I don't know about you but I have a huge collection of cookery books
Cookery books and food blogs follow trends, we had the phase of 'quick and easy' Delia's how to cheat, Jamie's 30 and 15 minute meals, Nigella express. Currently it's about saving money: save with Jamie, a girl called Jack and thrifty lesley. Yet inspite of all this culinary information ready meal sales topped 3 billion pounds in the past year in the UK.
Ready meals answer a demand for decent tasting food without requiring any cooking ability. They are also an easy solution to changes in family eating habits where family members eat separately at different times and sometimes even demand different meals.
The top five dishes in 'modern mum's repertoire' are spaghetti bolognese, a roast, sausage and mash, jacket potatoes and Mexican fajitas. So, however much is made of a supposed renaissance in British cooking, the glut of cookery books are not making a dent in our culinary skills.
Of course we now have the option of online food shopping which inclines us to repeat our food orders by clicking on to our 'favourites'. Week in week out we stick to the same products, long gone are the days when we made daily trips to the butcher, the grocer and the baker.
So, why am I writing a food blog when clearly the market is saturated with professional and celebrity chef's cookery books which do little more than collect dust on our kitchen shelves? Personally I think you have to already be a relatively good cook to navigate the endless recipes in most cook books. Most of us will remember learning to read by matching pictures to words and I think cooking is no different. To see a recipe being prepared and cooked step by step (as in children's cook books) certainly makes it less daunting and that is the basis of my blog. I don't have an 'amazing staff' researching, cooking and photographing, it's just me, a regular woman on a budget cooking for her family. I am passionate about real food and loathe our reliance on commercially prepared meals which are notoriously high in sugar, salt and fat and hope that my recipes and photos will inspire you.
These next two recipes are foolproof, quick, easy and economical! Traybaked meals need little preparation and while the oven is doing the work you can get on with doing other things!
Traybaked chicken
Recipe
Serves 4
4 free range chicken legs
4 free range chicken thighs
4 large baking potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 jar cherry peppers (alternatively 2 fresh peppers, chopped)
1 bulb garlic (roasted whole in its skin makes it sweeter, squeeze it out at the end)
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper
Smoked paprika (optional)
Preheat the oven to 180c/gas mark 4
Add chicken, potatoes, peppers and garlic to tray
Season and add olive oil, toss everything together really well to coat, spread everything across your tray
Roast for 1 hour, turning and basting a couple of times to ensure everything is golden
Remove from oven and serve with a fresh green salad
Bread and butter pudding is a huge favourite in restaurants which never ceases to amaze me given that we throw 1 billion pounds worth of bread away every year in the UK! I never throw bread away consequently we regularly eat bread and butter pudding, I don't faff about making fancy triangles (but feel free to faff as much as you please), I butter some bread in quick speed time, layer it in a dish, sprinkle with dried fruit, douse with a cup of milk mixed with an egg, top with sugar or a few dobs of marmalade and pop in the oven for 20-30 minutes and Bob's you're uncle, Fanny's your aunt!
Bread and butter pudding
'What I've enjoyed most, though, is meeting people who have a real interest in food and sharing ideas with them. Good food is a global thing and I find that there is always something new and amazing to learn.'
-Jamie Oliver
Love Donna xxxx
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