mrph | Food, glorious food

Unsurprisingly, one of the best things about having a proper kitchen is that cooking's much easier and more enjoyable. I'm also wasting less food, as it's much easier to store and sort ingredients (and to quickly do something interesting with leftovers).

Accordingly, there's a small risk that this may turn into a cooking blog for a bit. If it does, Nigel Slater and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall should take much of the blame...

So far, though, my favourite recipe this year (from the 'River Cottage Light and Easy' book) has just been a very simple and frugal soup - not as some sort of backlash against Christmas excess (although that's no bad thing), but just because I was cooking for friends with dietary restrictions.

Vegetable stock, Savoy cabbage, carrots, sautéed onions and caraway seed. And that's about it. Seeds and bits of vegetable bobbing about in broth (which picked up a nicely warming sweetness from the caraway). Completely vegan - and no potatoes.

I've been a bit biased against caraway in the past - it's lovely in seed cake, but I'd never taken to using it elsewhere. Probably now time to change my view on that and experiment a bit more, though...