Preparation, Food and Service

So let’s continue where we left from in the last blog Life’s a journey not a destination.

Food – Is the main thing in our household, the bigger the family gets the more we give importance to it. Jas relates this to his background at home, they’re a family of 7 and he always says “I remember my dad he made sure the fridge and freezer are always full and I believe I took his tradition”.

We always make sure we stock and pile up with food and this is how we work it out:

• A4 shopping list book in the kitchen to write down what we need as we go along so nothing is ever missed (we try our best at least cause annoyingly there is always something missing)
• Every last week of the month I do our big shopping online and get it delivered by the beginning of the following month.
• On top of that, we buy fresh products that we consume daily/weekly.
• Ingredients that have a long shelf life we try to stock as much as we can and look out for good deals so our pockets can benefit from that too.

Preparation – What is it exactly, what does it mean? This is the million-dollar question.

According to our experience, preparation is a great tool to follow in everything we do in life in general. When it comes to food, without a good preparation (what they call mise-en-place in the professional kitchen) we don’t have or are able to put together a good plate of food.

At home, preparation of food includes the writing down of a big monthly shopping as mentioned earlier. This is when it gets easier to have an idea of what you’re cooking on a daily basis and those not-knowing-what-to-cook days are dramatically reduced.

When it comes to kitchen, before we even start cooking, preparation has to include making sure that:

• Recipe’s instructions are well read through.
• We’re keeping a good eye on the ingredients amounts, utensils needed for the whole recipe and cooking timings.
• When we get to the cooking stage, we’d have ready peeled/cut/chopped/rinsed etc ingredients all set to go on the hob.

If either of these are not prepared well, it’s easy to find ourselves stuck in the middle of a recipe and cooking time will be all over the place, resulting in an overcooked ingredient disaster.

I understand that sometimes it is not as easy to follow a recipe and that’s why we launched this robandjas project to provide you with an easy step-by-step guide for a successful family meal.

Service – It’s all happening here!

Rob