Ciao! Yep, you guessed it. This is another of my blog posts which likely will begin with that stalwart boilerplate about how I regret not blogging more frequently, listing one or two decent(ish) reasons why I have not blogged very much recently and then gets on with it all. Instead of doing that, I have written the above sentence. With that out of the way I can get on with the post:

I have always had an interest in cooking, and from quite early on I have been involved in cooking by my parents. You will have to forgive me for not mentioning the exact particulars of this early culinary fore but suffice it to say that there are photos of my in a nappy with wooden spoon in hand masterfully crafting a Chile con carne. Prodigy, I know…. Towards the end of Trinity however I decided to indulge in this latent desire to craft something tasty and began to cook at college. This was met with mixed success, but I only managed to set the house fire alarm off once so I am treating it as a success.

After term had finished, my cousin suggested that I get hold of a copy of ‘Nigella Express’, as she thought that Nigella Lawson and I shared a food philosophy or two; that food should taste great, but also that it shouldn’t have to be massive amounts of hassle and effort. Having been drawn to the food goddess before through her TV shows, and of course through the wonderful Dead Ringers sketches about her, I picked up a copy. Diving in head-first, with my family as fairly willing guinea pigs, I have since picked out a few recipes from the book and put them together. I have to say that on the whole they have (mostly) been a success. There have been a few disasters and the one which springs to mind is the ‘Mirin-glazed Salmon’. The term epic fail does not do that one justice: burnt on the outside, raw on the inside, and pretty dismal all over.

I have also picked up a copy of The Frugal Cookbook by Fiona Beckett after a recipe from it was mentioned on Helen Graves’s fantastic Food Stories blog. I have only made the Welsh Stew from this, and despite being rather more work than any of the Nigella recipes, turned out amazingly well and went down rather well with the guinea pigs too.

Having done this I mentioned to a few friends that I had been cooking and the overwhelming response was one of awe. It seems that to many of my peers from SPS cooking is something which should be restricted to a bag of pasta and a pot of Lloyd Grossman’s finest. This seems like such a shame. If my experimenting in the kitchen, limited though it may be, has taught me anything it is that the best thing to do is to just give it a go. Try it. Have a fire extinguisher on hand if you feel it is appropriate, but don’t be put off by the hob and the cooker. While at Magdalen I had a wander around the covered market and saw that the butcher had pigeons on sale for a few quid each. I had never cooked anything as ‘exotic’ as a pigeon before, but bought it anyway and did some Googling, found a decent set of instructions and put a meal together. It surprisingly turned out pretty well.

So what is the point of this post? I suppose it is meant to be some form of feeble inspiration. As the title says: ‘Rustle something up!’. Go out of your culinary comfort zone. Get away from the pasta or the microwavable rice and just have some fun. There will be some disasters but there will also be some great triumphs. I would never presume to call myself any sort of expert, quite the opposite in fact, but it does sadden me when I see that many don’t even give it a go. Of course please let me know how it goes.