So why should you care about the rantings of a cantankerous little Irishman and the food in his life?
Frankly you probably shouldn’t but in time-honoured blogging fashion, I’m sycophantic enough to think that what I write should be read by the general public and know just how right I am. About everything. Not least food and drink.
Of course, my knowledge of food and drink is easily surpassed by a great, great many people. Thank Christ. Otherwise Michelin standards would most likely reach the lofty heights of the Red Leicester and malted bread sandwich that I just finished (complete with lazily spread Flora). So whilst I’m not an expert, I’m definitely an enthusiast. I adore my food, I want to learn more, I want to eat more new things, I want to be a better cook, I want to understand food more and make more exciting dishes. I want to eat in new restaurants. I want to have more of those incredible experiences where a flavour just catches you by surprise and you know you’ll remember that sensation and taste for the rest of your life. The food I eat each day won’t always been so shockingly wonderful. Not a chance. But if I can improve the experience I have with each meal, even just a little, then that’s something very worthwhile.
That’s what this blog is about. It’s charting the highs and lows of meals, the ones I buy, the ones I cook and the ones that (hopefully) get cooked for me.
So what’s the twist…
Well you know I love food. Blah-de-blah. You surely do too. But guess what? I don’t live a perfect, glossy cookery-book lifestyle. I’m frequently stressed to distraction and suddenly the urge to prepare a gourmet meal deserts me. I eat crap. I stay late in the pub, stuff my face with a dirty kebab on the way home and breath garlic sauce on my poor girlfriend. And even when I do cook, I can balls it up. I often break my pastry. I cook something and think “yeah, grand, very nice – but not really worth the effort, is it?”. I make curries, it’s the end of the month, I’ve waxed all my cash (again!) and I don’t buy the holier-than-thou free range chicken.
In other words, I may love my food, and I’m aspirational in what I eat. But real life has a nasty habit of interfering in that aim. So this blog is going to be honest. It’s about the flaws as much as the fancy.
So it’s going to be a bit like Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries. Except with trauma (kitchen and otherwise), swearing, petulant opinions, cooking cock-ups, dining disasters, attempts at humour in addition to the triumphs and successes that make food so incredibly worthwhile.
In reading it, I hope you find something that makes you think “ah yes, I know just what you’re talking about” I hope it makes you smirk, giggle or smile. And if I could be so bold, perhaps you might even find something useful (I’m not as hopeless as so of my posts may suggest).
Finally, I hope you’re a publisher and you spot the hither-to hidden gem of talent that lurks in me. The offer me a massive contract that enables me to buy a Hampstead mansion, penning occasional missives whilst lovingly tending to a slow-cooked curry and a bottle of red.
