Writing about food is an odd occupation.
To get it right, to write a post that really hits the mark, certain things need to line up perfectly.
There has to be a decent subject, maybe a recipe that really worked, or a good angle on something or other. There has to be a little spark in my imagination as I pound out the words. There has to be that fleeting fraction of a second where a camera shutter opens and captures something that, at the very least, can be salvaged later in Photoshop.
Sometimes all of these things just happen easily, sliding into place as if writing blog posts were the easiest thing in the world, as if this is what I was BORN to do. Other times, getting a post over the line is more of a marathon than a sprint. Sometimes, I stare at a blank screen for an eternity, willing that first line to emerge, blinking from my broken mind.
Occasionally, there are posts that just end up in the bin, because I know when I’m defeated.
You should see my bin.
There’s a whole anti-blog in there.
And sometimes, all of that happens at once.
Firstly, these little lamb shanks tasted IMMENSE. They were seriously good. They deserve not so much a half-arsed blog post as to be written about for centuries to come as one of the finest tasting meals ever experienced on this earth. They deserve immortalising in stone for future generations to discover and read about. They were that good.
On the other hand, they weren’t particularly photogenic, as you can see above, and that led them to teeter on the brink of the Bin of Broken Promises for a considerable length of time as I internally debated breaking The Golden Rule of food blogging – crap photos equals crap post, don’t do it.
, is a perfect introduction to the dark art of making soup. And a dark art it most certainly is, but one that can be mastered with a little attention to detail and basics. I’ll say it now – STOCK. Making a good soup is all about the base ingredients, and in many, many cases, that means stock – chicken, beef, fish, vegetable. Get that right and you’re going to win.