Mercurio - Kitchen mojo: 120 + easy recipes to sink your teeth into

Contents

Finding your

kitchen mojo

Too often I meet people who tell me they never cook, cant cook, theyre too busy to cook, they find cooking scary or boring or they admit that theyre just too plain lazy to cook. Frankly, I cant understand itI mean, I have to cook, its in my blood. If I havent cooked something for a day or two I go stir crazy (even just typing these words I start to think about cooking up a stir-fry!). Im obsessed with preparing lovely plates of all sorts of delicious things. I love cooking, I need to cook and if I am not cooking, well, I tend to lose my mojo for everything.

Food is life. Without eating we will wilt until we no longer exist and, when you think about it, life is about energy, creativity, love, laughter, nourishment, family, friends, happiness, harmony, fulfilment to name just a few of the reasons we live. As we get on with living our lives we spend a lot of our most meaningful moments breaking breadwith family, friends, colleagues and even strangers. So when someone says to me they dont like cooking, what Im hearing is that theyve lost their mojo for living! You see, being connected to your mojo is about having a zest for life (now Im thinking of lemon curd cake). Cooking is a celebration of all the good things about life and thats why finding your kitchen mojo is so important. Its about nourishing yourself on all sorts of levels and then nourishing those around you. No recipe is too simple, too easy, too complicated or too hardthey are just wonderful opportunities to get your mojo on, express your creativity, entertain your friends, feed the family or treat yourself.

Contrary to popular belief, no one is born a master chefit takes years of experience and many failures along the way to attain that mantle. That said, we dont need to be a master chef to cook a cracking good meal, we just need to understand a few basics, such as if you cook something over high heat you will probably burn it! In fact, the very best bit of advice Ive ever heard about cooking on a barbecue was For heavens sake, just turn it down! I was certainly guilty of thinking cooking on a barbecue meant turn it up high, chuck the meat on, turn it lots and take it off once it was blackened! Therein lies our first important piece of advice on cooking welltemperature control.

This book is not aimed at teaching you how to cook, there are plenty of books and websites that do that. Instead, my aim is to help you find your kitchen mojo so you can embrace your inner chefyes, we all have oneto take that leap of faith into the kitchen and give it a go. Hopefully, along the way you will discover that you do actually like cooking, you are actually good at it and above all it is fun!

Cheers and happy cooking!

chapter 1

Home

ALONE

I ts an unfortunate fact that when most people find themselves at home on their own at dinner time they cant be bothered to make something nice to eat. Its as if our thought patterns are saying, Im on my own, so I dont deserve a nice meal. Ill just have a piece of toast with some melted cheese and a glass of water! Well, let me suggest to you that just because youre on your own doesnt mean you dont deserve a terrific and nutritious meal.

These days, cooking a meal for one has never been easier; you no longer have to buy a bunch of celery when you only need one stick; heck, you can even buy peeled and measured-out cut up ingredients all ready to throw in a pot and make a soup or homemade curry; and you can buy just the right amount of salad ingredients to make a fantastic dish without incurring the wrath of the leftover gods or finding said leftovers several weeks later in the back of the fridge well past their use-by date.

But why go to the effort of cooking just one meal when there are plenty of frozen and premade, unfrozen, prepackaged or ready-to-go cooked meals out there, I hear you ask. Well, theres nothing wrong with an occasional prepackaged feed when you feel like slacking off in front of the TV. Mind you, anything you buy prepackaged was probably cooked a few days or weeks ago, so there will be a compromise on flavour. Nor is there anything wrong with going down to your local Thai place for a freshly cooked takeaway if you dont feel up to facing the kitchen yourself. But when you do make the effort to cook for one youll be giving yourself total control of what you eatnot only will you be giving yourself flavour and freshness, youll also have absolute control of the amount of salt, saturated fat, preservatives, carbs and sugars in the meal, and be able to ensure that each meal has the right balance of food groups.

The most important point for me, though, in cooking for one is taking it as an opportunity to cater just for myself. I love it when Im home alone for meals because I can cook whatever I feel like at the time without having to think about what other people want. It also means I can cook all the things I love to eat that my wife, kids and friends dont. See what I mean? Cooking a special meal for one can actually be pretty exciting. It doesnt have to be an effort. In fact, it can be a joynot only are you nourishing your body with good food, you are nourishing your soul by doing something for yourself that makes you feel good, feel happy and feel worthy.