For this first episode around the kitchen table, Katerina gets talking to Kirsten Gibbs about all things sustainable and practical:
From one pot cooking and shopping by sail cargo, to surprising uses of pumpkin and the art of confit garlic, we dive into personalised eating, conscious food sourcing, local markets and many more stories and cooking tips from Kirsten's resourceful kitchen. Tune in for a wealth of resourceful and delicious ideas to explore in your own cooking adventures!
⭐ SHOW NOTES
theintuitivecook.co.uk/podcast-ep1
⭐ CONNECT WITH KIRSTEN
⭐ CONNECT WITH KATERINA
website theintuitivecook.co.uk
community Simply Good Food Collective
instagram @intuitive.cook
youtube @intuitivecook
contact hello@theintuitivecook.co.uk
⭐ LINKS
Find out more about the things we discussed (Note: links are posted for your convenience, and do not imply endorsement, affiliation or advertisment)
sail cargo: New Dawn Traders
book: What Your Food Ate
nutrition app: Zoe Personalised Nutrition
Original music by Colin Bass
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⭐ MEET OTHER CURIOUS HOME COOKS IN OUR COMMUNITY
I'm Katerina Pavlakis, The Intuitive Cook, and At Home
katerina:with me today is Kirsten Gibbs.
katerina:Kirsten is a Boss Disappearer, yes really!
katerina:She helps bosses structure their businesses in a way that allows them
katerina:to step away when they choose so.
katerina:She lives in England and is well-traveled, and as you'll see
katerina:from our conversation, she is really passionate about cooking that is
katerina:sustainable, resourceful and practical.
katerina:And full of flavor, of course.
katerina:Welcome Kirsten!
katerina:Let's get started.
katerina:My very first podcast conversation.
kirsten:Oh blimey.
kirsten:Good for you.
kirsten:I'm very pleased to be here though then on the first, I'm honored to be the first
katerina:It's lovely to have you as the first.
katerina:Why don't we get started with food memories?
katerina:One of my favorite subjects.
katerina:Do you have like a really early memory of food or cooking, or...?
kirsten:I think probably the earliest thing I can remember about
kirsten:food is my dad cooking us beans on toast while my mum was in hospital,
kirsten:having one of my younger siblings.
kirsten:But an early cooking memory, is that when I was about four?
kirsten:There were four of us children then.
kirsten:And we all had our own mixing bowl and rolling pin and wooden spoon, and we spent
kirsten:a happy afternoon making pastry, all four of us at the table with my dad helping.
kirsten:what I always remember is cuz I was four I was slightly better at it than
kirsten:my two year old brother who ended up with this enormous piece of dough cuz
kirsten:he kept adding flour and then it would get too dry and then he added water
kirsten:and it would get too wet till it just got bigger and bigger and bigger.
kirsten:But of course it had to be cooked and then eaten by my parents.
kirsten:All of them had to be cooked and eaten by parents.
kirsten:So I pity them for that day.
kirsten:But it was fun.
kirsten:I do remember that it was a lot of fun.
katerina:Did you eat any of it?
kirsten:Probably, but I, I can't remember that bit.
kirsten:I could just remember the, the four of us all cooking together, which was nice.
katerina:Which is interesting that you remember the togetherness, isn't it?
katerina:Cause I keep thinking about this, how, how cooking has become a bit of a, a
katerina:lonely thing for many of us these days.
katerina:You know, this sort of slaving away in the kitchen and cooking
katerina:didn't use to be like that.
katerina:Cooking used to be something for people to do together.
kirsten:Yes.
kirsten:So, I mean, not so much if you were kids perhaps, but certainly
kirsten:you know, once you're grownups.
kirsten:I wonder if that's partly architecture, you know, when we moved into this
kirsten:house, for example, it had a tiny kitchen at the back that really two
kirsten:of you couldn't be in to cook, because it wasn't designed to work that way.
kirsten:It was designed to be, the housewife was gonna do all the kitchen stuff in the
kirsten:kitchen and the kitchen wasn't there to be used for anything other than working in.
kirsten:Whereas now we've had the extension, to be honest, I still cook, but I can
kirsten:at least be talking while I'm cooking.
katerina:Yeah, you know, I, I remember sort of doing my homework on the
katerina:kitchen table and things like that, so maybe I wasn't cooking when I was
katerina:a kid, but not normally anyway, but I was kind of there, in the kitchen.
kirsten:Yeah, same for me actually, because we were, we were a big family so
kirsten:we ended up in big houses and they always had a breakfast room as well as a kitchen.
kirsten:So the breakfast room was where we ate.
kirsten:The kitchen was where all the cooking happened but like you, everyone did their
kirsten:homework on the breakfast room table.
kirsten:So you were around, everyone was around and that's a thing
kirsten:that's really lived with me.
kirsten:I never found it possible to work in libraries cuz they were too quiet.
kirsten:I didn't want interruption, but it's the hum of noise around
kirsten:you is quite a good environment.
kirsten:Not radio, but just general, the sound of people around.
katerina:Yeah, the hum of life.
katerina:I find this too.
katerina:I, I find the sound of people doesn't distract me at all or doesn't bother me.
katerina:What, bothers me are sort of noises like, you know, car alarms going off and things
katerina:like that, that is not, not life itself.
kirsten:Yeah.
kirsten:So I guess that's probably my earliest cooking experience.
kirsten:making really bad pastry, making my parents eat it.
katerina:well I think a lot of us started by, you know, experimenting with pastry.
katerina:And do you remember how or when you learned to cook?
kirsten:Well, officially, I guess at school, because when I was at school, we
kirsten:girls still did domestic science and that still meant actually learning how to cook.
kirsten:So we did learn how to cook, from the age of 11 onwards.
kirsten:So I got to the point where I could make, I probably still could make
kirsten:rock cakes with my eyes closed.
kirsten:Cause we, we did a lot of that.
kirsten:Or even though actually, I spent at least a whole term banned from cooking.
kirsten:My job in cookery lesson was to clean the ovens because I'd turned up
kirsten:without the right ingredients one week.
kirsten:So I was banned for quite a few weeks after that.
katerina:Oh dear.
katerina:That's quite a severe punishment for not having the right ingredients.
kirsten:I think it was, especially as, you know, my
kirsten:family were by no means wealthy.
kirsten:And um, I think we'd been asked to buy haddock to make fish pasties.
kirsten:Me being me had left it till the very last minute to tell it to my
kirsten:mum, oh, we need some haddock, I need some haddock for tomorrow.
kirsten:It's me all over.
kirsten:secondly, I remember her thinking and me thinking as well, you
kirsten:know, haddock was an expensive fish to put in a pasty, you know?
kirsten:But anyway, that's the reason.
kirsten:And um, I just listened to them all learning to cook while I cleaned ovens.
kirsten:Very Cinderella like, but it didn't bother me.
katerina:Did that in any way put you off cooking?
kirsten:No.
kirsten:No, you know, it, it was good.
kirsten:You know, knowing how to make pastries, scones, bread, all those
kirsten:sorts of things is just really useful to, to know how to construct a pie.
kirsten:It was a useful skill to learn and we were probably among the last
kirsten:to properly learn that at school, because I know my sister, who's four
kirsten:years younger than me, she didn't.
kirsten:My brothers didn't, even though they went co-educational and they tried
kirsten:a term of the boys doing cookery and the girls doing woodwork.
kirsten:But, uh, you know, that's the feeling I got that in the end,
kirsten:cookery kind of disappeared from school and became nutrition.
kirsten:So you learn about what food is and what it does to you,
kirsten:but you don't learn to make it.
katerina:Which is a kind of odd way to go about things, isn't it?
kirsten:Which is how we've ended up with all the things that Jamie Oliver
kirsten:was up against of people not knowing that, that you could eat any part of a
kirsten:chicken other than the chicken breast.
kirsten:But the rest of it was also edible.
kirsten:You know, there's some atrocious stuff has happened since I grew up basically.
katerina:It occurs to me that while there is so much conversation about, you know,
katerina:eating sustainably and everybody's sort of scrambling to, to reduce their meat
katerina:consumption, if we only ate, you know, the whole animal, this would be already
katerina:just on its own a lot more sustainable.
katerina:Because, you know, a chicken only has two pieces of breast and maybe two legs.
katerina:So what happens with the rest of the chicken?
kirsten:Exactly!
katerina:To waste that or to send that to pet food manufacturers or whatever.
katerina:For me, eating sustainably has to involve going back to
katerina:actually consuming the whole,
kirsten:the whole thing.
katerina:And that doesn't only go for meat.
katerina:It's like the same thing with, with vegetables, you know, broccoli
katerina:stems and cauliflower leaves.
katerina:All these things are perfectly edible.
kirsten:Absolutely.
kirsten:I mean, I survived as a student on that kind of thing.
kirsten:So I remember when I was in Manchester, actually it was after I was a student
kirsten:and I was unemployed and didn't have a lot of money, and, there was a green
kirsten:grocer not far from where I lived.
kirsten:And I remember I was looking at vegetables.
kirsten:I must have been looking hungry because he just handed me whole load of cauliflower
kirsten:leaves that he'd cut off cauliflowers for display and just said, you can have those,
katerina:So what did you make with them?
kirsten:I, I can't remember.
kirsten:I probably just stir fried them with some noodles and some bacon and some ginger.
kirsten:Oh, and actually one of my favorite meals in those days was liver and
kirsten:bacon with ginger and noodles.
kirsten:It was nice.
katerina:Liver and bacon with ginger and noodles.
katerina:So how did you get onto the Ginger idea?
kirsten:I think I just added it one day and thought, mmm, that's quite nice.
kirsten:Sort of maybe just trying to go for a slightly chinesey
kirsten:vibe because of the noodles.
kirsten:But that worked pretty well.
kirsten:I mean, in that period, I was quite poor, so I was eating
kirsten:one meal a day effectively.
kirsten:So it would be something like that, which was quite good.
katerina:Yeah, sounds, sounds very good to me.
kirsten:With veg, obviously
katerina:What kind of weg would you have had?
kirsten:Well, cauliflower leaves, anything I could afford really.
kirsten:So yeah, I've always loved veg and I think, again, that comes back to
kirsten:school cuz I went to school at a time when school dinners were what
kirsten:I'd call proper school dinners.
kirsten:They weren't pie and chips or, you know, they weren't fast food for schools.
kirsten:It was a proper meal with veg.
kirsten:And I loved school meals.
kirsten:I loved the really wet, well cooked greens that were really green, really dark.
kirsten:I loved them.
kirsten:And I, I learned afterwards that that is one of the ways to cook them.
kirsten:You either cook them very quickly or you cook them for a long time.
kirsten:It's the bit in between that's bad.
katerina:Yes, exactly.
katerina:One of my favorite pasta sauces is kind of cooking broccoli with anchovies until.
katerina:It all kind of falls apart and then you just quickly mush it with a fork and,
katerina:and that's a lovely pasta sauce really.
katerina:So, but you need to really cook the broccoli properly until it falls apart.
kirsten:Yeah, no, that sounds lovely.
kirsten:So yeah, so I'm, I'm very happy that I learned to cook in school I did
kirsten:probably learn to cook a bit at home.
kirsten:I mean, I learned how to cook chips from my dad.
kirsten:Thrice cooked chips.
kirsten:And I can remember being asked by my mum one weekend to cook the
kirsten:Sunday dinner and thinking, oh no.
kirsten:I said, I don't know how to do that.
kirsten:And she said, you've seen me.
kirsten:And I did manage.
kirsten:But I remember thinking that wasn't the best way to learn, just
kirsten:to be told you are gonna do it.
kirsten:But which I've carried through into what I do now because part
kirsten:of what I do now, I don't just leave people to learn by osmosis.
kirsten:Show them, show them what to do and then let them have a go by themselves.
kirsten:But don't just leave it to chance, essentially.
kirsten:But anyway, yeah, I can't remember a time, I can't remember not knowing
kirsten:how to cook, which is interesting.
katerina:And have you always since then cooked for yourself?
kirsten:Always.
kirsten:I mean, you know, we might have fish and chips, we might occasionally go
kirsten:to a restaurant, hardly ever, really.
kirsten:I'd rather cook at home.
kirsten:To me, going to a restaurant is about having something that you couldn't
kirsten:cook for yourself at home cuz you don't have equipment or you don't
kirsten:have the ingredients cuz they're not something you'd use every day.
kirsten:But...
kirsten:not wishing to boast, but perhaps actually to boast.
kirsten:I've never had a meal in a restaurant that I couldn't have cooked better at home.
katerina:Well, that's the thing, isn't it?
katerina:I, I often feel the same.
katerina:It's very few restaurant meals that were so exceptional that...
katerina:very often, you know, I'm thinking, oh, I could have done this better
katerina:at home and it wouldn't have been so expensive and the wine would've
katerina:been better, and you know, all that.
kirsten:all of that.
kirsten:All of that.
kirsten:I mean, there are things that I think you I wouldn't do at home.
kirsten:I probably wouldn't do lobster.
kirsten:So there are a few things, especially as, I mean one of my bug bears,
kirsten:I was vegetarian for quite a few years and it was before being
kirsten:vegetarian got quite so popular.
kirsten:And the worst thing that would happen was essentially you'd go out to a
kirsten:restaurant or something and what you'd get was the vegetables that were part
kirsten:of the meal of what everybody else had.
kirsten:That's it.
kirsten:That's got a lot better.
katerina:Yeah, that is true.
katerina:Well, obviously it's all about vegetarian cooking these days, isn't it?
katerina:And, and there is some really great vegetarian cookbooks around and
katerina:yeah, for me, coming from Greece, my background is a different
katerina:culinary tradition with vegetables.
katerina:because I think in Britain, a lot of the time, the veg is the side dish.
katerina:And in Greece, there is a lot of vegetable dishes, a lot of dishes with pulses,
katerina:and you know, the kind of national dish of Greece is actually bean soup.
kirsten:Mm.
kirsten:Lovely.
kirsten:No, I agree.
kirsten:I was thinking about this the other day as well because, one of my favorite
kirsten:things which I learned when I went to Spain as a student, and just seeing
kirsten:how different countries eat is so interesting when they're, you know.
kirsten:Not in a restaurant, at a home.
kirsten:And I stayed with a family and every night we would have a meal and it would
kirsten:start with either a salad or what they called verduras, which was basically
kirsten:courgettes, greens, potatoes cooked together, served with oil and vinegar, and
kirsten:then you would have your piece of meat, which would might be one piece of meat
kirsten:on a plate, then you'd have your pudding.
kirsten:and I thought that was very interesting because the tradition
kirsten:in this country is you fill up on stodge before the meat, so Yorkshire
kirsten:pudding or those kinds of things.
kirsten:You had something to fill you up first then the expensive thing,
kirsten:the meat, then something after.
kirsten:And I think the Mediterranean thing is that you, you fill up on vegetables
kirsten:and the meat is that bit of an extra, even if it's in with it, it's, it's a
kirsten:flavor rather than a main component.
katerina:Yes, exactly.
katerina:And therefore, you use a lot less meat.
katerina:I was talking to someone the other day again about, this idea of trying to
katerina:reduce meat consumption and gosh, we need to make all these meals without
katerina:meat and I don't have enough ideas.
katerina:And I was saying, well, you could also just reduce the amount of meat by half.
katerina:Like if you're making a stew, put in half the meat and extra vegetables.
katerina:If you're making a hamburger, you can grate in some veggies into the hamburger.
katerina:And this is, again, you know, something you, you will often do in Greece anyway.
katerina:And suddenly you have halved your meat consumption without necessarily, you
katerina:know, having to cook without meat.
kirsten:Yeah.
kirsten:Exactly.
kirsten:When I was vegetarian, I think I also was whole food at the same time.
kirsten:I got to know all the pulses and all the things you could do.
kirsten:even though now we do eat meat, what we've been doing recently is reducing
kirsten:the quantity but upping the quality.
kirsten:So buying half a free range pig.
kirsten:That's been more or less hand reared as far as we could see somewhere in Wales.
kirsten:And because it's better to have it little, not very often, but much nicer, which is
kirsten:why I went vegetarian in the first place.
kirsten:It wasn't about not liking meat or being squeamish.
kirsten:It was about animals deserve to have as good a life as they can.
kirsten:Just the same as we do, you know?
katerina:There are obviously farmers who do rear animals in exactly that way.
katerina:And, thankfully it's now much easier, I guess with the internet that,
katerina:farms can sell direct to people.
katerina:So if you just a little search, you, it is not difficult to find, good
katerina:sources of, meat from small producers.
katerina:And I think this is, you know, like, I think this is an
katerina:organization, isn't it, it's not just a slogan: farms not factories.
katerina:That idea that, you factory farmed anything, whether it's pigs or almonds,
katerina:is just bad for the environment.
katerina:And it doesn't really matter if it's plants or animals.
katerina:It's just terrible.
kirsten:Yes.
katerina:And, lot of damage is being done.
kirsten:Even recently, I read this brilliant book called What Your Food
kirsten:Ate, which is about what's in the soil.
kirsten:So what are the plants taking up from the soil and how are they doing that?
kirsten:And how have our farming practices changed that over the years.
kirsten:And you know, we have been devastating the soil around the world with
kirsten:plowing and artificial fertilizers.
kirsten:and it's not so much that they're artificial.
kirsten:It's that it's, it's like everything.
kirsten:We pick three things when actually there's a million things going on in the soil,
kirsten:and we only replicate three of them.
kirsten:So everything else is lost.
kirsten:All the, the bacteria and the fungi that are also transforming chemicals
kirsten:and minerals from the soil so that the plant can take it up, which means we
kirsten:can eat it or our animals can eat it.
kirsten:So we, we've actually made our food less nutritious as well by farming this way.
kirsten:But it is so easy to put back.
kirsten:All you do is say, it's not a factory.
kirsten:You rotate.
kirsten:You have lots of diversity.
kirsten:You have animals moving pasture very quickly.
kirsten:You're not from day to day, not year to year.
kirsten:In fact, strangely enough, it's the way we used to farm.
katerina:Strangely enough, yes.
kirsten:I've been to Italy and Spain and Austria, and one thing we noticed,
kirsten:I've noticed in all those places that even quite big towns, there's a, there's
kirsten:a whole tranche of small holdings.
kirsten:It's not big farms.
kirsten:It's not like a green belt, which it is not really doing very much.
kirsten:It's kind of like there's lots of small farmers, and this is
kirsten:where these lovely markets that we love in these places come from.
kirsten:It's lots of small producers in a kind of green belt around the city
kirsten:bringing their stuff in to market.
kirsten:And we just don't have that in the UK anymore.
kirsten:Everything's got big, everything has to be consolidated.
kirsten:But Gratz in particular, you know, the, the farmer's market was amazing with
kirsten:the farmers who actually grow the stuff, bringing it in to sell with their family.
kirsten:You know, not using, you know, you go to a farmer's market in this country
kirsten:it's often some Eastern European on minimum wage selling it for what turns
kirsten:out to be more or less a corporate.
katerina:Yeah, you're right.
katerina:Things have sort of developed quite differently in the UK as opposed to a lot
katerina:of other places in Europe, maybe because we, we look up to, to the United States so
katerina:much because of course, you know, factory farming is, uh, very big deal and America,
katerina:and has been for, for a long time.
kirsten:Hmm.
katerina:Yeah.
kirsten:Anyway, so that's made me even more conscious of what I'm
kirsten:eating and where I'm buying it from.
kirsten:So we, we don't really buy from supermarkets anymore.
kirsten:And, I even swapped my veg box from Odd Box, which was a pretty good thing.
kirsten:They use vegetables that would otherwise go to waste quite often at farm level.
kirsten:So they're picking crops that supermarkets don't want.
kirsten:So the farmers are left with them.
kirsten:So odd box is a very good thing.
kirsten:but I realized, no, I want to go even further.
kirsten:And so now I've, I've bought my riverford box cuz they're organic
kirsten:and regenerative and employee owned.
kirsten:So, you know, they hit a lot of the values I'm after.
kirsten:And as you know, get quite a few other of my staples, like my olive
kirsten:oil and my almonds and my coffee and my sugar from sail cargo.
kirsten:I get them from the equivalent of a farmer's market, but
kirsten:globally and shipped by sail.
kirsten:Which is lovely.
katerina:tell us a bit more about that.
kirsten:Hmm.
kirsten:Well I met, uh, Alex who runs this particular, organization at a meeting.
kirsten:I got chatting to her and thought, oh, this is a fascinating thing.
kirsten:So what what she does is effectively coordinate a group of producers, a
kirsten:ship and a group of, uh, what she calls port allies, who are people in
kirsten:small ports around the UK and Holland and Portugal probably, and France,
kirsten:who undertake to effectively sell the produce locally to their customers.
kirsten:as a customer, what happens is I buy in advance.
kirsten:So I will buy, 15 litres of olive oil and wine and almonds and all the rest of it.
kirsten:And I pay right up front so that they know, the producer
kirsten:knows it's all been paid for.
kirsten:The ship will pick it all up and then they will drop it all off
kirsten:where the port allies have bought.
kirsten:So between me and the producer, there are basically two, maybe three people.
kirsten:So it's a much shorter supply chain, which means, although it is a much more
kirsten:expensive way to do things, producers get paid more, the ship makes a
kirsten:living, the port allies make a living.
kirsten:Hopefully the broker makes a living and I get really really good produce
kirsten:for not much more than it might cost me, somewhere like Waitrose.
katerina:Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it, when you don't go for the kind of rock
katerina:bottom worst quality if you just go one step up, going more steps up from there
katerina:isn't really that much of a, of a huge
kirsten:No.
katerina:difference.
kirsten:And it's a whole interesting thing and it's not as reliable
kirsten:because the wind is not as reliable.
kirsten:this year we were expecting a delivery mid-June.
kirsten:It's not here yet because the Northeasterlies meant the ship
kirsten:couldn't get away from Holland.
kirsten:So, so, you know, it's all part of the fun.
kirsten:You're not buying perishables, so it doesn't matter.
kirsten:But it's a really nice alternative way of doing it.
kirsten:They're basically setting up an alternative supply chain, which, It's
kirsten:going to be there when the oil runs out.
kirsten:Is kind of partly the old fashioned way of doing things, but actually better
kirsten:than the old fashioned way of doing things cuz we're not exploiting anyone.
kirsten:So it's a really good thing.
kirsten:New Dawn Traders, if you want to find out more.
katerina:right.
katerina:Okay.
katerina:I'll look them up.
katerina:And I mean, it's interesting that as on the one hand, it seems that everything
katerina:gets more and more industrialized.
katerina:There are also all these new alternative ways that, if you look for them, you can
katerina:find ways of doing things more sustainably that does not involve, corporations.
katerina:Again, because of course, this is one of those things now that, you know,
katerina:sustainable eating or, carbon neutral and all these things have become a buzzword.
katerina:Everybody is also jumping in to, to get a piece of the cake in
katerina:terms of making money from it.
katerina:So, unfortunately, that that is what happens when something
katerina:becomes the buzzword of the day.
kirsten:Yeah.
kirsten:What's nice though is during lockdown, I was determined that I wasn't gonna
kirsten:buy anything from Amazon or, you know, you needed to have things delivered.
kirsten:And that's how I found Oddbox.
kirsten:But when, when I, when you really, look, this is the beauty of the internet.
kirsten:When you look, you can find independent suppliers of almost anything.
kirsten:Clothing, and bookstores...
kirsten:you don't have to go for the first thing that appears on the search engine results.
kirsten:Just dig a bit they will all be there because the internet
kirsten:is there for everyone.
kirsten:So I was really impressed by how much I was able to find, and have
kirsten:stuck with that, on the whole.
katerina:Yeah, it's that, that human touch that despite everything
katerina:being taken over by machines, it's never going to to lose its appeal.
katerina:So that was a lot about sourcing foods.
katerina:So what are you eating today or this week?
kirsten:Well...
kirsten:so last week I started the Zoe program, which was quite interesting.
kirsten:So I've been on the run up to it.
kirsten:I've been having my blood sugar and blood fat and gut bacteria
kirsten:measured and tested and things.
kirsten:So now I have a little app that says things that are good for me to eat,
kirsten:things that are not so good for me to eat.
kirsten:So it's basically loads of veg, not very much meat, very little processed food.
kirsten:So far this week, what did we have today?
kirsten:we had tuna and lettuce and the coleslaw that I made that was, bread,
kirsten:cabbage and celery and kohlrabi and carrots and poppy seeds and sunflower
kirsten:seeds and all sorts of things.
kirsten:So it's basically loads of veg.
kirsten:And I'm just finding different ways to get as many veg as possible in without
kirsten:adding too much fat or too much sugar.
kirsten:And it's been really interesting.
kirsten:The only thing I don't like about it is they want you to meal
kirsten:plan and I hate meal planning.
kirsten:I'd much rather just go, what have we got?
kirsten:I know I'll do that.
kirsten:And that's what I tend to do basically.
kirsten:So it's what we'll be eating this week is what we have in the house
kirsten:essentially, which will come from the the veg box and stuff in the
kirsten:larder and stuff in the freezer.
kirsten:It's just learning to put it together in different ways than I have been up to now.
katerina:And this is interesting how having this kind of, I mean,
katerina:one could even say a restriction or different guideline, it is not only a
katerina:restriction, it's also a kind of a, a reason to become more, adventurous or
katerina:exploratory or experiment more .Yes.
katerina:And, find new ways and new flavors.
kirsten:And yes, and I think what's quite good about it is it
kirsten:isn't meant to be a restriction.
kirsten:They will say, there's nothing you can't eat.
kirsten:It's just some of the things you might have eaten, you want to eat a lot less of.
kirsten:You have them less frequently.
kirsten:But also what's been interesting so far is learning the whole thing
kirsten:of, oh, if I have piece of cheese for my gut, that's not good.
kirsten:It's not bad, it's not brilliant.
kirsten:But if I eat it with a pear or half a pear and half an apple and some
kirsten:almonds, suddenly it's not bad at all.
kirsten:So you are learning how to combine things so that you are optimising what's
kirsten:good for you, is very interesting.
kirsten:I am finding that interesting.
kirsten:A bit like gaming it, in a way.
kirsten:It's kind of how can I make all this stuff better for me?
kirsten:And it is interesting.
katerina:Well, exactly.
katerina:I certainly do like a cauliflower pizza base.
kirsten:Mm.
kirsten:I haven't tried one yet, but I I probably will get to it, but it, you know, it is
kirsten:just fascinating how you go, oh, if I eat that on its own, if I, if I eat a
kirsten:piece of bread on its own, not so good, for me, it's not the same for Steven.
kirsten:This is partly why I'm doing it because like Steven's got hollow
kirsten:legs and we eat the same thing.
kirsten:Obviously he's more active than me, but clearly it doesn't have the same effect.
kirsten:So, you know, a piece of bread is not great, but put some pumpkin seed
kirsten:butter on it and again, have it with some with some olives or some fruit and
kirsten:suddenly it's not so bad, you can eat it.
kirsten:It's just that you wouldn't, can't eat it the way you really liked to
kirsten:eat it, which is slathered in butter.
kirsten:Or you can, but not very often.
katerina:It becomes a treat.
kirsten:It becomes a treat, in a way, that's a similar thing to the meat.
kirsten:The meat becomes a treat rather than a everyday thing.
kirsten:So you know, what we're eating this week is going to be mostly vegetables
kirsten:and just depends on what I've got.
kirsten:So I've got some black beans soaking.
kirsten:Dunno what yet, but it might be some kind of Cuban style black bean soup.
katerina:Oh, that sounds good.
kirsten:Yeah, the other thing that I have learned from Intuitive
kirsten:Cook is, spices are great!
kirsten:Add lots of them, and that really works.
kirsten:So, you know that it's all about how do you make it tasty without using too much
kirsten:of the foods that you, you shouldn't be eating too much of, basically.
kirsten:So we've learned to love garlic.
kirsten:I've confit a whole jar of garlic whenever I can, or chili and, uh,
kirsten:loads of stuff that I've bought that I would never have bought before.
kirsten:And I've tried, you know, I'm using in recipes and things, not recipes, meals.
kirsten:So like yesterday we had jerk chicken and potato salad with yoghurt.
katerina:Sounds good.
katerina:so so tell me a bit more about your intuitive cooking journey,
katerina:because you just mentioned it.
katerina:So how has it changed your approach or even your feeling around cooking?
kirsten:I think it's just, it's really made me think much more.
kirsten:Like my coleslaw.
kirsten:It's kind of, if I chop this up small and mix it all together with
kirsten:some other things that are nice...
kirsten:it's not what anybody else would call a coleslaw, but it's fine.
kirsten:You know, it's that, let's see what it tastes like.
kirsten:It's much more get as many vegetables in as you possibly can.
kirsten:Get flavor in.
kirsten:And I like your, I really love your idea of patterns.
kirsten:And of course that would appeal to me because I'm bit of a
kirsten:patterny processy person myself.
kirsten:As opposed to a recipe person, which is more like a procedure.
kirsten:It's a kind of, oh, know, so I made a, I made the base for that coleslaw last
kirsten:week, I didn't put any of the oil and vinegar in it because I knew I could
kirsten:use it then as the base for a stew.
kirsten:It could be the sofrito, if you like, or you could dress it and have it as a salad.
kirsten:And it's that, sort of thinking, I think, which is what Intuitive Cook has given me.
kirsten:This idea that you can make batches of things and use them for multipurpose.
katerina:That's a really good way.
katerina:I like what you said, you know, that the difference between,
katerina:patterns and, procedures, that's a really good way of putting it.
katerina:And Yeah, I, I often think that when I start cooking and I start with my
katerina:chopped onion and some veggies...
katerina:and then, so I'm sort of halfway through cooking and still at this
katerina:point it could take off to anything.
katerina:It could become a stir fry, it could become a pasta sauce, it could become
katerina:a stew, it could become a frittata.
katerina:So it's, it's interesting how the components can then be
katerina:multipurpose, you just said.
katerina:So if you think of components rather than ingredients, and how to batch
katerina:them, that is really simplifying things.
kirsten:Yes.
kirsten:And also that thing you, you just said that every night I
kirsten:say, what should we have for tea?
kirsten:And every night the answer comes back, what have we got?
kirsten:I don't know.
kirsten:What have we got?
kirsten:So some days if, I really can't think, you know, there, there are
kirsten:some days aren't there, where you think, oh, I fancy this tonight and
kirsten:you know what you're gonna cook.
kirsten:But a lot of days it's kind of like, well, okay, I don't really know.
kirsten:So let's just start with this let it work itself out as we go.
kirsten:And you don't know what you're gonna end up with, but you do know that whatever
kirsten:it is, it's going to be nice and it'll be whatever you fancied in the end.
kirsten:So that's what I like.
kirsten:That you can say.
kirsten:You just keep adding things until it's right and there's
kirsten:no, it isn't a recipe at all.
kirsten:It's completely emergent but based on a pattern.
katerina:Emergent, yes!
katerina:I like that.
katerina:And, and then obviously this idea of repeating exactly the same thing
katerina:becomes impossible, but it strikes me that it's impossible, anyway, to
katerina:repeat the exact same thing, you can't replicate a meal because if you have two
katerina:tomatoes, the tomato tomorrow is gonna be different from the tomato today, and
katerina:everything else is gonna be different.
katerina:And even you as a person are not the same person.
kirsten:No man ever steps in the same river twice.
katerina:so this idea that, if you only followed the recipe, exactly,
katerina:you could replicate everything exactly, just doesn't, it doesn't
katerina:seem possible to me, so why even try?
kirsten:Yeah, I mean, I do follow if I'm trying to make a specific thing,
kirsten:like, we had some people over for dinner and they're, they're vegans.
kirsten:So I, I did follow a very nice OT recipe I would probably follow it again the next
kirsten:time I want to make it because it was very nice and I would like to make it again.
kirsten:But, once you've got the hang of it, you kind of think, oh,
kirsten:oh no, I forgot to buy...that.
kirsten:Well, nevermind.
kirsten:I'll just bang that in instead and it'll, it'll be similar.
kirsten:Won't be exactly the same, but it'll be similar.
kirsten:It'll be similar enough.
kirsten:I know where the flavor's coming from.
kirsten:I know what the different parts are doing to the dish, so it doesn't matter.
katerina:Yeah, it's about becoming aware of exactly those things,
katerina:what the different parts are doing.
katerina:And once you start looking at a meal that way, it's not that difficult
katerina:to figure this out because it is down to common sense in the end.
kirsten:Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite things is if you haven't got mushrooms,
kirsten:use aubergines, because they're are very similar sort of texture, ab
kirsten:absorb flavor in a very similar way.
kirsten:So if it says mushrooms and you haven't got any, and you have
kirsten:got aubergines, use aubergines.
kirsten:And then maybe extrapolate further and say, well, maybe a courgette would work or
kirsten:a marrow, but you'd have to cook it less.
kirsten:But anyway, it's just that, it's just playing.
kirsten:I think this is very interesting because with what I do, In my
kirsten:job, I'm a bit more prescriptive.
kirsten:So maybe this is a way of getting away from that and just
kirsten:being jazz instead of Mozart
katerina:Jazz instead of Mozart.
katerina:That's another great one.
katerina:So you just mentioned one sort of favorite tip, use aubergine instead of mushrooms.
katerina:Do you have maybe a couple of other tips you have come up with
katerina:that you think, could be really useful for other people too?
kirsten:Oh gosh.
kirsten:Can I think of anything?
kirsten:I think my big tip, which I got from Jack Monroe, is confit garlic.
kirsten:so if you have a lot of garlic, then if you can bear cutting it all up and
kirsten:peeling it all in one go, cook it in olive oil and put it in a jar and then
kirsten:you've got really good garlic and the oil for whatever you are doing in one go.
kirsten:Cuz I hate peeling things like garlic and onions.
kirsten:I really hate it.
kirsten:So getting it all over with in one big batch and then having the stuff
kirsten:to hand is a really good tip for me.
kirsten:And, garlic is a hard one to keep because if you try and keep it,
kirsten:uncooked, you can keep it frozen.
kirsten:But if you try and keep it other ways, it, it can grow mold,
kirsten:which is not healthy for you.
kirsten:So cooking it in oil first is quite good.
kirsten:And actually what I did recently, got some baby artichoke and artichokes are
kirsten:a complete waste of time for me, but these were baby ones, so I stripped
kirsten:them all and got down to the artichoke hearts and confit them as well.
kirsten:And that works really well.
kirsten:So I think cooking things in oil, and keeping them
kirsten:submerged in oil is a good tip.
katerina:I do that a lot with tomatoes.
katerina:When I have too many tomatoes, I do like a whole tray of, I kind of bake
katerina:them until they are charred and then I pack them in a jar and cover with
katerina:olive oil and then that, that lasts, uh, a good while and that's lovely.
kirsten:That that sounds lovely
katerina:I really need to get to that garlic confit.
katerina:I haven't done that yet.
katerina:It's on my list.
katerina:I'm really using garlic so much that that would be a great, great thing to have.
kirsten:Mm.
kirsten:Other tips?
kirsten:Oh, I think another one actually, which I've learned recently is
kirsten:that, adding pea flour to soups to thicken them is better than flour.
kirsten:So whether that's chickpea flour or I use Hodmeddods yellow pea flour, it's a
kirsten:nice thickener and you're actually adding protein instead of carb, basically.
katerina:I have also used almond flour, ground almonds to thicken something.
kirsten:Oh yeah.
kirsten:I love almond, garlic and almond soup is a to die for.
kirsten:So it's, it's garlic, lots of garlic and milk and almonds and
kirsten:plenty of flavoring, plenty of salt and pepper and it's just nice!
katerina:Talking about milk...
katerina:I came across this tip in actually an Ottolenghi book.
katerina:About cooking pasta in milk, and then that thickens the milk and then you kind
katerina:of, and if you then add cheese, you get a sort of cheesy milky cheese sauce without
katerina:the need of adding any extra flour.
kirsten:Yes.
kirsten:that would really work.
kirsten:And I, I think another one I have done using something like pumpkin because
kirsten:when that cooks, it goes down to a really nice silky puree, using that instead
kirsten:of flour to thicken a cheese sauce and you've added another vegetable as well.
kirsten:And the only thing is that it will split if you leave it.
kirsten:But It makes a perfectly good cheese sauce.
kirsten:So that's my other big tip.
kirsten:I mean, because we bought an induction hub to test whether it would save
kirsten:us money to have induction, but I bought a portable one, so we
kirsten:effectively have one ring as it were.
kirsten:So for the last year and a bit, I've been cooking on one ring and
kirsten:so I've adapted a lot of things so that I can cook on one ring instead
kirsten:of having the whole hob going.
kirsten:And, I've learned to cook all sorts of things in one pan that would normally
kirsten:take you three or four, which is really good cuz there's less washing up.
kirsten:And actually it did, it has saved us a lot of money doing it that way
kirsten:cuz induction is very efficient.
katerina:So what is, as you have now, a lot of experience with one pot
katerina:adaptations, what have you learned?
kirsten:Well, it's kind of like we, we were talking about earlier
kirsten:where you start off and you don't know what it's going to be.
kirsten:Well, you can start off with a big pan and it's a stir fry, and then you think,
kirsten:oh no, I don't really want a stir fry.
kirsten:So you add some liquid and then you think, no, it's a bit soupy.
kirsten:I don't really want soup.
kirsten:Well, I'll add some rice, or I'll add some pasta and then
kirsten:it suddenly isn't soup anymore.
kirsten:It's something else.
kirsten:And I think that's what I've learned is it kind of, again, doesn't really
kirsten:matter what you start with, it's, it's how you end up that matters!.
katerina:And as long as you think about the flavor, it will be
kirsten:Yep.
katerina:tasty.
kirsten:Yep.
kirsten:As long as you think about the flavor as you're going along.
kirsten:And actually, there's some things where...
kirsten:I dunno how many herbs and spices I've put in, and you kind of think
kirsten:this can't possibly work with all this, but somehow it does.
katerina:Yes somehow it does.
katerina:Isn't that amazing?
kirsten:Yes.
kirsten:You know, I don't think I've ever yet cooked something that I needed to throw
kirsten:away because it couldn't be eaten.
kirsten:In fact, I don't think I've ever cooked anything where there was
kirsten:anything left on the plates.
katerina:Well, yeah, that, is, you know, something that I keep saying, you know,
katerina:we think that we are gonna ruin something just by, changing a little something.
katerina:But actually it's really, really difficult to ruin a pot of food.
katerina:And, mostly what happens is that it might turn out too bland.
katerina:That that is by far the biggest problem and, and the
katerina:biggest challenge people have.
katerina:It's, it's not that it, it's inedible.
katerina:And if it's so burned that it's not edible, which can happen, but has
katerina:nothing to do with your cooking skills.
katerina:It only has to do with, getting distracted.
kirsten:Yeah.
kirsten:but even then, even a bit of char is really quite nice.
katerina:Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
katerina:I mean, in, in, Persian cooking, the kind of burnt rice at the bottom of the
katerina:rice pan, tadig it's called, I think, it's actually a, a sort of a delicacy.
katerina:You make the rice burn at the bottom of the pan and then everybody is
katerina:sort of fighting over the crust.
kirsten:Yeah, exactly.
kirsten:it's lovely.
kirsten:So yeah, so I'd say overall, what the Intuitive Cook has done for
kirsten:me is really broadened my use of flavorings, really broadened it,
kirsten:and I'm very pleased about that.
katerina:Yeah, makes everything tasty.
katerina:and, and this is, I think, something that I say when, you know, when
katerina:you try to adapt a recipe, just make sure you understand where
katerina:that recipe has the flavor.
katerina:And if you happen to adapt that bit, then make sure you add a different flavor or
katerina:a different source of flavor or several flavors, because yeah, you don't want
katerina:to lose the flavor because then that makes food, well, not worth eating.
katerina:Makes it a bit meh ... bland and boring.
katerina:And, and this is another one of my, my pet peeves, this idea that,
katerina:you know, we shouldn't be adding salt to taste to our own cooking.
katerina:While, you know, 60% of the average salt consumption in the UK
katerina:comes from processed food anyway.
katerina:So that is kind of, perpetuating this idea that home cooked food is somehow
katerina:boring and processed food always is so yummy that you can't stop eating it.
katerina:While, we are making ourselves make bland food just by being afraid of salt
katerina:rather than cut out the processed stuff.
kirsten:And the same to an extent with fat.
kirsten:You know, not all fat is bad for you.
kirsten:And it's often where the flavor is or where the flavor gets stored or held.
kirsten:And one of the things I love most is, buying cream from the supermarket
kirsten:when it's reduced, creme fraiche is even better, and making my own butter.
kirsten:Because then I'm in control of the salt.
kirsten:And okay, I'm not making it on a professional scale, I don't get all
kirsten:the water out of it when I squeeze it, it's not going to last me that long.
kirsten:So it, it's not gonna go off before I've eaten it.
kirsten:Butter making was hard in the olden days because we didn't have motors,
kirsten:but now we have hand whisks, you know, you can make butter really quickly.
kirsten:It's just a waste to do it with cream that isn't on sale, but
kirsten:it's a really nice thing to do.
kirsten:We've even tried cheese with, you know, milk that's being sold off.
kirsten:We'll make cheese.
kirsten:We made a lovely goat's cheese the other week.
katerina:My kind of recent obsession is mayonnaise with a stick blender,
kirsten:I've got to have a go, I haven't done it yet.
katerina:I used to, you know, having grown up in the eighties, I grew
katerina:up with this idea that mayonnaise is evil because it's full of fat.
katerina:I wasn't immune to that back then.
katerina:And then I got into this idea that there's all this processed crap in
katerina:mayonnaise, so this is still bad.
katerina:And I kind of always thought it's too difficult to make mayonnaise.
katerina:And now that I started making my own, and, and really it's only eggs and olive oil.
katerina:I make it with olive oil and, flavorings.
katerina:I mean, what is possibly not healthy about that?
katerina:So I'm completely obsessed by that.
kirsten:now we, you mentioned anchovies earlier and I'm thinking, Hmm,
kirsten:mayonnaise with anchovies it's almost a Caesar salad dressing, isn't it?
kirsten:But that would be lovely.
kirsten:So, yeah, I've got to have a go cuz I have got, I think it's probably my
kirsten:favorite gadget is the stick blender.
katerina:Are you making your butter with a stick blender?
kirsten:no, I do that with a hand whisk.
katerina:Right.
katerina:Okay.
kirsten:You basically just whip cream, just whip cream until
kirsten:it splits and then keep going.
kirsten:But turn the speed down when you hear it sloshing cuz
kirsten:otherwise it'll go everywhere.
kirsten:I have had that happen!
katerina:I definitely got to to try that.
katerina:Okay.
katerina:Well, is that a good high to finish off?
katerina:I think so.
katerina:What do you think?
kirsten:What do you think?
kirsten:Have you enjoyed it?
katerina:Oh yes!
katerina:I, I love talking about food.
katerina:This is, you know, this is a single reason why, why I'm starting this podcast because
katerina:I just love talking to people about food.
kirsten:Brilliant.
kirsten:Oh, thank you.
kirsten:It's been really nice.
katerina:Great.
katerina:Well, thank you so much!