You’re a great cook, just so that you know. Everyone can cook. It’s just a question of practice and confidence – much like everything else.
When Yeshi first first arrived in the UK, he was surprised at how timid we all were in the kitchen, always apologising for our efforts, often taking whatever short-cuts the supermarkets provided.
Pre-prepared sauces and pastes, microwavable instant mash! That was a stand-out.
Now part of this behaviour is down to our Britishness – we are apt to downplay our efforts and abilities. But there’s something else going on too, and it starts in the baby aisle.
When our kids were little, Yeshi loved the weening phase. He worked hard to mince up the almost unmincable. He did it all by hand, like his parents had done for him.
But everyone else had special contraptions, he noticed, machines that reduced the time involved, special little trays for freezing tiny portions so that the job only had to be done once a week.
And then there were the pouches. When he was brave enough to attend the local baby groups (he was always a rare dad in the room, and certainly the only Tibetan) he found himself blindsided by those brightly-coloured squeezy packets. The “organic” ones.
The supermarkets have got us in a stranglehold. They’ve tapped into our busyness and gone to town with products that help us to skip the foundations, or to avoid cooking altogether. Often, like the baby pouches, they promise something healthy, while delivering something highly processed instead.
The result is a chipping away at our confidence. We’ve stopped enjoying and even believing in our own ability to turn out tasty, nutritious meals.
It’s clever. If they can convince us that we don’t have the time and that they can do it better anyway, so they can keep us in an endless cycle of buying and accumulating.
Think about it: food with a long shelf life is easier for them to keep and stock than fresh produce.
When we wrote the Taste Tibet cookbook, one of our biggest motivations was to show just how easy it is to cook up delicious food from everyday ingredients using straightforward methods that don’t require any machinery or lots of time.
Happily this is the feedback that we receive about the book, that far from being exotic, Tibetan cuisine turns out to be practical and easy for anyone to produce. Wonderful. This is exactly what the experience of food should be.
If you’ve lost your mojo, our cookbook is currently on sale here or come and grab a copy at the restaurant. Our freezer food is also a reliable alternative to less scrupulous supermarket offerings, and a solution to food waste, making it an ethical as well as delicious choice.
We’re open again from this Friday. Our full opening hours are as follows:
Fri: 5-9.30pm (dinner only)
Saturday: 21-3/ 5-9.30pm
Sunday: 12-3 / 5-9pm
This week’s menu is up on the website – check it. Come for dine in, take away and freezer food. Sepen chill oil is now back in stock at the restaurant – enjoy!
Newsletter subscribers enjoy a free chai – hot or iced – on us this week. Have you signed up yet? Click here to subscribe to our weekly Substack.
Looking forward to seeing you soon,
Julie and Yeshi
Opening hours this week:
Weds – Fri: 5-9.30pm
Saturday: 12-3pm 🥢 5-9.30pm
Sunday: 12-3pm 🥢 5-9pm
☏ 01865 499318
Do you have the Taste Tibet cookbook? Grab it here or please take a minute to leave a review.
