Cooking, baking and other stuff

There is a lot to say when it comes to cooking - knowing all the spices that goes together, knowing the recipes for various dishes but what makes cooking so fun for me is the improvising. There is no greater joy in  a dish which is made with ingredients that you just throw into a bowl, mix with spices that You think could work together and in the end get a tasty food out of it. Sometimes you only need to go for salt and pepper, sometimes adding basil or thyme makes a huge difference. It`s all about trying out new stuff, and learning constantly. Yes, you will make mistakes, yes, sometimes you will run to the toilet because clearly the 'NEW IDEA' didn`t work out quite ass you thought... But by making these mistakes, you can become the chef of your kitchen and make something extraordinary.

This blog is meant to keep track of all the random things I cook in every day bases, to post my favorite recipes and also my stupid fails. But what it comes down, is for learning - learning to cook in a next level than just making the usual mashed potatoes with some boring sauce, or Sunday-morning pancakes. No, here nothing will be boring.

Four months ago I moved to Scotland to study Politics and Economics and as I started to live away from my parents, I started to cook more often. And to meet the small student budget, I could not find all the spices I wanted, for a reasonable prices. Sadly, they don`t have small packages, so while I`m back at home, I went to supermarket to stock up with some quite essential herbs and spices that you need to use.  Dried herbs, dried dill and basil, vanilla sugar etc. Those are the ingredients that you need to have on hand on daily basis to make the food more fun. 

Some of the things that I got for my cooking adventure:

Curry spice;

Turmeric;

Dried dill (it is quite difficult to find this in UK);

Dried basil;

Paprika powder;

Chili powder;

Baking powder;

Dried thyme;

Cumin;

Dried marjoram;

Grated Nutmeg;

Bay leaves;

Cloves;

Gelatin (this one doesn`t smell like soviet time glue as the one I got in Glasgow);

Vanilla sugar (yes, haven`t seen this bad boy there either, but very essential in baking).

This should cover everything for quite some time and leave a room to improvise with different combinations, however, I will not stop here and later on try to use something from their most common spices to make something brilliant. So stay tuned and keep on cookin`!