For an age I have been meaning to write this post. To tell the back story of The Secret Kitchen and how it has all come about...

I didn't land on Earth as a bad ass, mega pan wielding social eating entrepreneur. In fact I have had about every crummy job going and some great ones too. I have come to realise that half of our collective problems stem from an idea about what work is and what our time is worth... Tap up any successful person who isn't just in to money and you will hear the same story... Do what you enjoy and stop working in ways that you really don't like... What a waste of energy!  Easy to say, you say? Well really isn't it harder to continue to do what you don't like rather than take a risk on what you do like doing?

Can I get a rewind? 

Aged 12 doing a newspaper round for £2.50 per week and crying on Saturday when the supplements came in because they were so heavy the man from the newsagent use to lift me up and give me a push off on the bike. Aged 13 babysitting for the alcoholic Mick and his vulnerable young wife. Getting driven home at 2am by this loon and running from the car as it wheeled homewards. 


Chicken Factory misery for £2.50 an hour! 


Getting sexually harassed by the greasy Casanova Mufeed in a pizza joint. Grassing him up to his wife and seeing him on my last day with cat claw scratches across his face... Priceless.... though I'm not sure I'll ever erase the image of him wielding a salami and trying to gaze into my eyes.....


Working after getting my higher 2:1 degree in a factory where my sole job was to scratch a bit of cardboard with a nail so a toy could be adhered to a cardboard box (me getting sacked because I worked out how to build a tower out of these boxes and go to sleep inside them).... Working in a crisp factory in Scunthorpe where I had to spend each day shouting 'cheese, prawn, beef!' to alert the forklift drivers as to which hopper needed filling...Getting sacked for persuading Pat the forklift driver to plough through a cardboard tower I'd fashioned out of Skips boxes and it turning out that the bottle of 'water' he'd been sipping was actually pure vodka .... Every awful hour I have 'worked' led me to rebel about what was possible in the pursuit of getting paid enough to 'live'....

I have had lots of bad jobs where I got paid crappy money and I did it for that crappy money because I didn't know any better....In my early twenties I was working at Uni for a journal having just finished at a Cadbury's Creme Egg factory line. I vowed to work less hours and enjoy my hours off more. I vowed never to work in a factory again.... That decision shaped my future work probability. Since making that choice things got better. I got better work, did less hours, earned more and enjoyed my work more. I learned how to live cheaply, how to cook cheaply, how to actually thrive on little money/lots of time....

Next post I'll talk a bit more about how the idea for Secret Kitchen came about and hopefully I'll inspire you to think again about what it is you do, and how you might want to tweak things to suits yourselves more. I'm not saying quit your job.... I'm just saying that I have learnt a lot of stuff along the way and it is high time I shared it with you...

When the weather is this super hot not only do you need something to cool you down, you also need it to happen without hours of toil in a steaming kitchen.

Simple Cucumber and Herb Salad

Roughly chop a peeled cucumber and add chopped chives, mint and parsley.

Add a splosh of olive oil, a grating of lemon zest, a squeeze of lemon juice and then season.

Leave in the fridge for a bit, then eat.

This goes very well halloumi and a few bits of fresh, red chilli. If you are feeling like something more substantial add to boiled potatoes and eat with capers and some thick yoghurt. 

Enjoy the sunshine!

Mmmmm crispy, melty, chargrilled bowls of delight in pepper form filled with a juicy mix of courgette and spinach lolling enticingly on a bed of nutty, buttery beans....

Really easy and really tasty... Spinach and Courgette Roasted Peppers

Grate courgette, fry in olive oil with onion, a grating of nutmeg and garlic then add spinach and wilt down until soft and well-cooked. Don't let it dry out, it needs to be able to survive a roasting Lots of seasoning. Fill pepper halves with courgette mix, drizzle with more oil and top with mozzarella then bake until the cheese has gone crispy and the pepper has softened and blackened.

Eat with Quinoa with Tomato, Paprika and Butter beans

Fry onions, garlic and a bit of smoked paprika in oil. Add the quinoa. Cook the quinoa mix with stock and add a tin of chopped tomatoes and a squeeze of tomato puree. Add a grating of lemon zest. When the stock has evaporated and the quinoa is cooked stir through a tin of butter beans and then slosh a good glug of olive oil over proceedings to lubricate things. This is best eaten warm.

You can substitute grated carrot and red onion for the filling, add a few raisins, a sprinkle of cinnamon and top with feta. Eat with lemony couscous, black olives and chickpeas. Add a bit of mint and you have yourself a nice bit of scoff. 

Or if you are feeling a bit more crazed for something melty fill the peppers with greek yoghurt, loads of black pepper, chopped chives and lemon zest and roast. Mop up the subsequent squidgy fare with some fresh Turkish bread. 

Enjoy!

Sweet Baby Jesus! This is good and pretty goof for you too. Very simple to assemble and it was demolished in less time than it took to make. 

I made this for the Notts Nosh local food celebration at Sneinton Market this weekend.

For those that missed to chance to apply this to your face on Saturday, here is the recipe.

Summer Fruit Assembly

Whatever soft fruit you have, I had strawberries, cherries, blackberries and raspberries, layer on the bottom of a dish and sprinkle with vanilla sugar. Add a load of lemon curd and stir through a bit. Layer with really thick greek yoghurt. Add a scattering of toasted almonds. I sprinkled with raw coconut sugar but you could use muscovado sugar too. The little pink bits are freeze dried strawberry. This was to tart things up but obviously you don't need them. Grate a bit of orange zest on top then climb up onto a diving board and belly flop into this dish of summer goodness knowing there is both fruit, nuts and some good bio-cultures to nourish you.