Chefs Corner

 

Only a handful of us ever become famous cooks like Delia Smith, Gary Rhodes, Nick Stein or Danny Boome but a good amateur cook can create inspired dishes to match the masters.

Presentation is the key word. A delightfully flavoured dish will lose a lot of it’s appeal if just plonked on to the first plate you take out of the cupboard. If a dish is visually appealing you are half way there.

Watch TV programmes like Ready Steady Cook or Gary Rhodes and note the little touches used to stimulate our senses. See the use of coloured herbs and flowers for decoration as well as smell. The cleverly co-ordinated dishes drawing the colours together and the placing of the food, usually piled rather than plonked, with the gravy and sauces, poured around and just a little over food to prevent that drowned look.

Timbales (rice put into moulds and carefully pressed onto plates) can look so stylish and yet are so easy, salads using different leaves to make a picture on a plate can completely change a dish. Food becomes an art form when used with imagination and style.

The last 20 years has brought an incredible change to the kind of food we eat. All those holidays abroad have given us a taste for the exotic. The ready availability of fruit and vegetables from around the world means we no longer have to use only seasonal varieties and it is no longer only the rich who can have strawberries at Christmas.

Cooking is no longer just for women. Many of the top chefs are men and in quite a few homes, men do all or most of the cooking - often just because they enjoy it.

Cooking can be very therapeutic and relaxing, which makes it an ideal hobby for today’s stressful world.

Sections to suit all tastes!

• Dishes we can cook from memory
• Scot's Specials
• Baking
• Desserts
• Fish dishes
• Foreign dishes
• Snacks
• Traditional dishes
• Vegetarian dishes
• Cookery web-sites
• Hints & Tips
  
  Enjoy your cooking – And do share some of Your favourite recipes With Us