Renewing a love affair with cooking

I have enjoyed cooking for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are of afternoons spent in my grandparents kitchen. We would go there after school on a Thursday, entering the house through the backdoor, we would be greeted with the most wonderful smell of home baking. There was an old fashioned larder in their dining room that seemed almost enchanted, as it always contained the most delicious freshly baked cakes and biscuits, and the most delicious fruit and vegetables from their allotment. My grandma was a great cook and it seemed that she passed on many of her recipes to my mam, who’s hand written cookbook, was like a scrapbook of recipes collected over a lifetime.

Continuing the tradition of cooking on Thursdays, as I got older, I’d help my mum in the kitchen on Thursday nights, making chocolate cakes and sauces. We’d often cook lunch together on Saturdays too, sometimes making spaghetti, other times salads or Vesta Curries (you don’t really see those any more, but they consisted of boil in the bag rice and dried sauce that you added water to). It was basic stuff, but I enjoyed it.

When I went to college one of the most useful things my mam gave me was Delia Smith’s ‘how to cook’ – to this day it’s still one of my most treasured books. By then I was pretty comfortable in the kitchen, which was just as well, as we spent much of our time in the kitchen cooking for each other and playing risk (a strategy board game). The kitchen was the only shared space in the halls of residence, and while some people didn’t use much more than the microwave, there were also some great cooks. I learned all sorts of new recipes and experimented with all kinds of new influences from Italian to Iranian.

Later when I got married, many of our gifts were cooking related, cutlery and crockery, pots and pans, even a blender and lemon squeezer. With new family to impress, there were lots more excuses to cook. I got to know Lucinda’s family over many shared meals and many swopped recipes. One of the most touching wedding presents we received was an old photograph of my grandparents garden, along with it came a cake dish, a cookery book and a note from by grandparents neighbour. However, to this day I still haven’t found the patience for baking cakes, but I’ve kept the book in case one day I do.

Over the last few years, both my mam and mother in-law passed away and I somehow fell out of love with cooking,  falling into making the same old things week in and week out and stopping experimenting with new dishes.

During my time in India though, watching the women in the lodges chatting as they worked together preparing the days food, and having the opportunity to taste a wide variety of new foods, from dals to rice puddings, I was reminded of how much I used to love food and cooking.

Then when I got home, I told myself I’d have to give curry a go, but didn’t do much about it until a fellow runner (and now very dear friend)’s blog. She’d made a masala and paneer cheese. Shamed into action, I picked up a copy of ‘Curry Easy’ by Madhur Jefrey at my local super market, along with the spices and Coconut milk required to make a ‘Goan Prawn Curry’. I gave it a go that night. It only took 20 minutes to put together, and I was really shocked by the result, it was simply divine. A perfect balance of warmth and flavour, far more delicate than anything I’ve ever tasted from a supermarket or take away.

Over the past few weeks my love affair with cooking has returned, fuelled by the renewed passion for life I’d found in the hills of the Himalyas. My kitchen has never smelled so wonderful and I’ve discovered all kinds of new flavours. I’ve made Green Lamb Curries and Kerela Style Chicken…and there are still untold recipes to try over the coming weeks.