Not just an excuse to show off . . . . .

Hi Guys,

This post is all about something I love doing.
By using a bit of love and affection in the way I present my food, the more pleasure everyone has when they tuck into it.

I have always wanted to impress Esther by serving up food for her that looks as impressive as I can make it. I think it makes me seem like a better cook than I actually am. Not that it never tastes good, but I let her have have the first mouthful with her eyes.
It gives me a huge amount of satisfaction when I manage to make my plates/platters/boards or bowls to look like they do in the pictures in Jamie's cookbooks. It's not just me showing off though, as I really do believe that if the food looks delicious then the taste battle is half won.

With this in mind, I thought I would share with you a few pictures I have taken over the years. They were all taken using light from the window and are all of food that I have cooked at home, in my little kitchen in my little flat.

I hope you like them, and if they make you at all hungry, then what I am telling you is true!

OK, I'm a professional photographer, but I have no training in food preparation or presentation at all. I just put a whole lot of love into the way my food looks. I don't try to achieve anything too fancy with it. I like rustic looking proper food. All the images above are all about the food and how it's going to taste. I'm not a fan of those chefs who are into small angular pieces of food stacked up or arranged in such a way that the finished plates look like they belong in an art gallery, I don't know what to do with that, it looks far too precious. Food should look delicious . . . . . simple.

I want to share a little story with you because it is something that I just can't let go when I am on the subject of food presentation. I gave myself a massive job to do at our wedding a few weeks ago when I decided to make the dessert for everyone. I know . . . . . . I'm crazy, but to be honest the catering company were hog roast specialists and the desserts they were suggesting were uninspired at best. That's probably a little unfair, as it was pretty standard for wedding food . . . . . . . but I guess that is the whole problem. Anyway I decided it would be a really nice touch if I were to make the dessert. I chose to make individual chocolate pots served in cappuccino cups, as they are simple to make and heavenly delicious to eat. They also look really sweet. I was serving them with some local seasonal fruit and the best homemade shortbread in the world, which was made my friend Ruthie. All the catering company had to do was serve them . . . . . easy right? Wrong! In their infinate wisdom they decided to "ponce up" my dessert by plonking half a strawberry in the top of my chocolate pot . . . . . not cool. If that had been what I had asked them to do then fine, but it wasn't. I was pretty annoyed, you can probably tell that I'm still a bit annoyed now. It's not that I don't like the idea of the strawberry, just that I wanted it served simply, and I had provided all the fruit to serve with it on the side. The pot was all about the chocolate. Had I have been in the kitchen serving them, I would have added a few flecks of shaved chocolte and some grated orange zest . . . . . . . . but at that point I was being the Groom, so I decided a simple presentation was fine. I promise I will let this go now!

I guess what I am trying to say with this story is that there is a danger that things can be overworked when ultimately it's just better to let the food speak for itself most of the time. A few small herb leaves and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, or some grated lemon zest over your food can be enough to take a dish from looking nice, to looking amazing. . . . . . In my opinion anyway!

Thanks for reading. 

all food images belong to me and cannot be copied or reproduced

Welcome to my food blog!

Hi Guys,

Welcome to my new blog!

It's been a few months since the end of the cycle ride and about time that I started blogging again. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about (seriously? . . . . . . where have you been?) I will quickly get you up to speed. In the summer, I cycled 312 miles from London to Cornwall with 3 of my best friends and raised over £1700 for the British Heart Foundation. It was a massive achievement and a huge journey for me personally. I started a blog during our training, and tried to keep everyone who read it involved and up to date with how we were doing. It's still online and can be viewed at www.paullovesesther.blogspot.com if you want to see what it was all about.

This blog is about a different side of me, the side that is obsessed by food. I love cooking. I love eating fantastic food and I love sharing the fact that I love it so much with as many people as possible, irrespective of whether or not they want to listen to me.

This blog is going to be a way of me expressing the enormous passion I have. I have got loads of ideas as to where I want this to lead, and the sorts of things I want to upload, but I'll save those as surprises for the not too distant future. This post is all about me - well sort of!

I've had a bit of a crazy relationship with food over the years. I was a nightmare baby, throwing my food all over the walls. I was a nightmare kid, reducing my Mother to tears when it came to trying to cook for me, telling her that I hated everything, killing her confidence in her cooking abilities. I also hated watching other kids eat, and had to have a separate table at school for me and 1 other "approved" person to sit and eat at. How crazy is that by the way? (and my school let this happen!). I was of course an awful teenager, with a terrible diet consisting of supermarket pizza, pasties, crap chocolate and having salad cream with everything. I didn't eat salads or vegetables very much either.

So what changed? . . . . . . Two words . . . . . . . . . . Jamie Oliver.

In 1999 "The Naked Chef" TV series hit our screens and the world was introduced to a bloke from Essex who had a passion and a way with food that was infectious. For the very first time food became "cool" for me. It was being made by a guy who was just a little bit older than I was, and it was being knocked together in a way I had never seen before. A way that I just fell in love with.
We used to watch "Ready, Steady Cook" in our house, and I always enjoyed seeing what the chefs were going to do with the little white bags of ingredients the contestants would bring on, but the food itself was never anything that I saw myself doing, or would have any reason to do either. Jamie changed all that. The Naked Chef always had a story, either his mates were coming over, he had a party to throw or he was trying to impress Jools and her family. He made me understand that food wasn't just for eating, that it was also a social thing that could bring people together. Food wasn't just fuel anymore, and at 19 that really was how I looked at it. Food was also a potential party and flavour explosion in your mouth. I certainly never got that with the food I was eating. The other thing Jamie did was to explain not only what he was doing with the food and why he was doing it,  but why I was going to love it, and how easy it was for me to do it.

All I needed to do then was to do it. I started small and did a few of Jamie's pasta dishes before moving on to cooking steak. Steak was a big breakthrough for me as I would then have the confidence to cook tuna and swordfish steaks too. I also discovered rocket. What a brilliant salad leaf rocket is! It's got a fantastic peppery flavour and got me into salads big-time. From never eating salads, to always eating them was incredible, and made me feel so much healthier and better for it.

Then I met Esther. Esther is now my beautiful wife, but when we started going out in 2005 my life would change forever. Not just because now we are married, but because I finally had someone to cook for and to try and impress. Food when you are dating is pretty important, you go out to restaurants for dinners or lunches and stuff. I wanted to do all that, but at the same time try and live out my Jamie Oliver fantasy that had been brewing inside of me for the past few years.
The first meal I cooked for her? Steak! (sticking inside the comfort zone early on) Well my new favourite way to cook steak at the time anyway.
Paprika Sirloin Steak Wrap from "Jamie's Dinners" to be exact. And apart from getting paprika all over everything in the kitchen (nightmare! . . . . . especially in someone else's house!) it turned out brilliantly!
I'll admit that I can make it better now, and quicker too, but I was properly chuffed. Esther loved it and I guess it's fair to say that I've never looked back. I loved cooking for her, and she was enjoying eating it. I had hit the jackpot! Knowing that what you are doing is making someone else happy is what it's all about.

My relationship with food was finally positive, it had helped make everything in my life positive and it's no coincidence that Esther and I got together when we did.
Food is something to be loved, looked after and treated in the right way, if you do that properly it will look after you in return. With Jamie's guidance, it certainly has done that for me.