Sue on...Sue on Food

Hi y’all! It’s been a minute. I took a break from blogging for quite a while, but I've been itching to get back to it. (Sometimes it felt like writing about food during a deadly pandemic and such huge changes to our body politic seemed a little insignificant.) But we’ve all been cooking more than ever and there is a lot to talk about. I've missed that. 

I needed a new name for my blog. Food Network Musings didn’t really fit anymore, since I don’t watch the Food Network that much. I do dip in occasionally - but the purpose of the blog is the same: to share ideas, recipes and thoughts about food and cooking. And, gosh, I spend a lot of time thinking about food, so I settled on Sue on Food. 

Probably like you, I get recipes from all over the place – websites, magazines, real people, television…wherever. But no matter where they come from, there's one constant - I almost never follow a recipe as written. I can't help myself. I've been cooking for a long time and I just know what works and what doesn’t and what the ideal way is to treat certain ingredients, so it’s virtually impossible for me leave a recipe unchanged.

Here's an example. Whenever I use warm spices in a recipe – the common ones - cumin, coriander, turmeric, chili, curry powder, paprika and their variations, no matter what the recipe says, I always cook them in oil over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes (often after softening onions) to get rid of their rawness. It makes a wonderful base for other ingredients.  

For something as simple as a curry mayonnaise (look for my Coronation Chicken recipe later in the week), you might see a recipe that has plain curry powder stirred into mayonnaise. No! Take a little extra time to dice up a bit of onion, cook it until soft in olive oil, and THEN add the curry powder and stir over low heat for 3 minutes. After it’s cooled a little, stir it into the mayo (with a bit of fresh lime juice) and you really have something! OR instead of the curry powder, use your favorite chili powder in the same way (don’t forget the lime juice) and go to town as a dip for barely blanched cauliflower and broccoli… 

Even though I can’t help myself from changing things up, I do leave baking recipes intact…mostly. AND, even though I think I know everything (and believe me I really don’t!), at the same time, I love recipes that give me different ideas and act as guides to a new way of approaching things. Maybe it's a new ingredient or a combination I hadn't thought of or a new cooking method. 

That’s what’s so fun about cooking - all the twists and turns of what's possible in the kitchen, AND, of course, gabbing with people about their favorite recipes. Hopefully, I’ll see you back here. Welcome to Sue on Food!