QUESTIONNAIRE: PART 1

Out With The Old, In With The New…

In the spirit of all things new here at Mikey & The Kitchen, I want you to be able to get a much more in-depth and personal experience every time you visit. So to kick things off, I’ve decided that it’s only fair you get to know me a little bit better and for you to see how I operate in the Kitchen!

So this is PART 1 of my mini questionnaire, a theme that will crop up often on this site so that you can put a face to the Kitchen and a madness to the method!

The thing most people notice first about my kitchen is:
My pantry. When I was moving into my new apartment I had an addiction to going to auctions and buying inappropriate amounts of kitchen utensils so I unfortunately filled my cupboards with ridiculous purchases (a massive salmon poacher? Really?) I realised I had nowhere to store ingredients and actual food so I had to rush out and buy an extra cabinet. At first it was for pure convenience reasons, however now I quite enjoy the aesthetic of it. I am however on a constant knife edge that it’s going to topple over and kill me.

The best feature of my kitchen is:
The views. My apartment is on the top floor of a converted flour mill in an area between the city of Cardiff and the Bay and so happens to sit at an angle where I can experience views of both areas. I am able to sit at my breakfast bar and get great views of the city on one side and from the countertop where I do the most of my cooking, I am able to get some really nice views of the Bay area, I’m very lucky.

The kitchen tools I couldn’t live without are:
My GLOBAL Japanese steel knives that my mother gave to me as a gift that have my initials engraved on them. They slice to perfection and require confident dexterity because it’s my personal belief they could slice up a brick. I also don’t let anybody else use them. I’m very territorial over my knives.

In my pantry, you’ll always find:
Paprika, which is my favourite spice of all time (both sweet and smoky). Also I will never be without Maldon salt, OXO stock cubes, good Columbian coffee and tins of pulses (preferably Butterbean and Borlotti). You’ll also more often than not find Digestive biscuits. As boring as this sounds, they are my favourite biscuit of all time. They’re also my ‘Cooks Treat’ that I snatch at whenever I’m cooking. I can eat half a pack in one sitting and not feel any kind of way about it.

The pans I reach for the most are:
My cast iron Kuhn Rikon pan with a really tight fitting lid is my go-to right now. It distributes heat so evenly and cleans quickly. I despise washing up. I also cook a lot in my Falcon enamelware roasting dishes that I picked up from a vintage cookware store in Brighton – but that’s for vanity reason because I think they look great.

The food I’m most excited about right now is:
Rice. I was never a person to get that enthusiastic over rice. I was always so distrustful of it and could never truly master it until I was shown the perfect ratio for rice:water and now I love cooking with it. I recently played around with an Orange & Saffron rice dish that I absolutely loved and now I’m hooked on playing around with rice and different rice substitutes like pearl barley, bulgur wheat and couscous.

The things I make most often are:
One pot nonsense dishes. Of an evening when I’m exhausted from work, for as much as I enjoy cooking, I can’t help but succumb to the temptation of lying on a sofa. So throwing everything into a pot and letting it simmer for an hour on a stovetop is my go-to. This could be as simple as frying up some onion and chorizo, adding some canned pulses, some salt/paprika/oregano and then pouring in a can of chopped tomatoes and letting it bubble for an hour while I spread eagle on a sofa watching some trash on the television.