I like food. People sometimes don’t believe it, since I tend to drink it rather than eat it, but that’s basically because most of the food I get isn’t particularly well-done. The few times I go to a restaurant and the pasta is not overcooked, I could kiss the pasta guy; it’s simply that it doesn’t happen.
I love going to new restaurants, but hate doing so alone. I like cooking when it’s for someone else; when it’s for me it’s more like “throwing a meal together”. Haven’t tried to bake for years: lots of work and… I don’t like sweets! So unless someone is around to enjoy it what’s the point, there’s faster ways to get my house smelling of apples and cinnamom.
Guess I should put an ad in the personals: “person to go explore restaurants with wanted. Being able to speak German and either Spanish, English or Italian a plus. Age and gender unimportant.”
I like company at restaurants, but I never put off going to a great new place because no one else wants to try it. In fact, I like going alone the first time because I can concentrate on the menu and the cooking without any distractions. A well-prepared meal is the best company I can think of!
I am a foodie that doesn’t particularly like going out to restaurants. I have so many recipes to try, why would I want to have other people cook? My goal is to eat as much of my own cooking as possible.
I love working with new ingredients. I love working with whole grains.
I love reading about other people’s cooking. I love cooking blogs.
I read cookbooks in bed (currently - In the Sweet Kitchen). I am single, but own close to 150 cookbooks. And I actually cook from them.
Again I’m plugging him, but this is why Nigel Slater is so damn good a food writer. He does give recipes, but you only get them at the end of a chapter, after he’s explained (beautifully) how to cook the ingredient/recipe by feel. The effect is that when you get to his recipe, you already know how you’re going to tweak it, or that you’re going to abandon it completely and do something you’ve just thought up. He’s really the only food writer I know who has this effect. It turns one’s cooking from a by-rote science into an art. I can’t recommend his books enough: he’s really made me a hell of a lot better at cooking.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Nigel Slater is the *reason * I started cooking. The tone of voice in his books is very warm and encouraging and he takes a lot of the mystery and snobbery out of food. He makes you feel as if there’s nothing you can’t cook and that it’s about the enjoyment of the food more than anything else.
If you’re ever in the neighborhood of Basel drop me a line, I’ll lend you my kitchen. Daily farmer’s market; a grocer’s right at my doorstep; Swiss supermarkets reachable on foot and French ones by tram
Hepp,
I must confess my sins; I am a foodie too. I mostly dabble in seafood and game. There is nothing better than scallops fried with white wine, lime and a pinch of chili, or wolffish steamed on a bed of juniper. Since I also have the opportunity to hunt for moose and deer as well, I can prepare the meat from the very beginning. Bockbeer-cured mooseheart with a rowanberry chutney was something I tried for the first time this autumn; the meat just melted on the tounge…
Further plans are to make a smokehouse, both for fish and game.
Foodie in exile here…I’m having to learn new ways with only seasonal produce, sketchy meat and no restaurants. However, I now have plenty of time to spend all day cooking things that I would have never bothered with at home. Sometimes, though, you have to improvise. Cream of macabo soup, anyone?
