10th November 2024

I really do love cooking but sometimes the day to day hum drum cooking after an extremely busy day is just too much.  The last few weeks I have been struggling to even enjoy cooking which really is not like me. Work has been so busy and tiring and I just mostly feel drained and exhausted, just not wanting to anything, even cooking which then really makes me very sad.

Today however I thought enough is enough, cooking relaxes me and makes me happy in a way nothing else I can do does. So I got back into the kitchen and got some of my mojo back.

The book of the month for the cookbook club is Ottolenghi Comfort and today we did our first cook from it, a beef, black bean and baharat pie. I really do love spices, I love how they can change dishes - this pie is very similar to other minced beef pies, but the addition of the baharat and black garlic really did give a totally different take on it.  It was quite a long cook but not overly complicated and it tasted really delicious, even with the 20-30 black garlic cloves.

I love new cookbooks and love trying new recipes, I usually make the recipe first time round exactly as written but then like to tweak things and change them to suit our tastes. This was a very deep pie and I realise I like my pie to have lots of pastry so if I made this again I would have the filling or just make 2 pies.

Cooking really resets me and I feel so at peace and happy whilst I I potter, the food at the end is just the icing on the cake as they would say.