Ro Cooks! Lamb Chops with Butter Bean Mash

So I did some cooking the other night, and I got my camera out to celebrate :) Because that's the way that I roll. Check out the results:

Cooking the books

I could lose hours in cookery books. They provide me with great inspiration, both in a culinary sense, but a photographic one too. My mum always taught me not to follow a recipe closely. Once you learn the basics, then you can kind of adapt things to what you fancy. She gave me a copy of The Dairy Book of Home Cookery informed me that it was the dhammapada of basic cookery. And it is exactly that. If you need to learn how to make a basic white sauce, a basic sponge, or even a cheese sandwich. The recipe is in there.

A chef that I really respect for his similar attitude to cooking is Jamie Oliver. I find his books very inspiring - both from a cooking sense and photographic one. Jamie makes recipes easy, encourages you to play around and the photography is sublime. I've been really inspired by his photographer David Loftus. Loftus has a lovely style. Real, unapologetic and punchy. They've worked together a long time, and you can really see that in the integrity of their work.

It's time to get my head in that stack of books :D

Everywhere you go, you take the weather with you

Happy New Year! I hope that you enjoyed the holiday break - it was a frenetic time here at Ro Pho HQ. I travelled down to the Isle of Wight on Christmas Eve (with some train related drama for good measure), then back up to London on the 28th - shortly after the pantomime matinee that we were watching was pulled short by a power cut. That weather! Then back and forth to Sheffield, a former love, and I'm now up in Newcastle, where (surprisingly) it is beautifully sunny.

I always get the train on long journeys. I actually really love it, the time away from chaos, the opportunity to read, maybe have some quiet time (if the quiet coach allows that!), the countryside whizzing past.

The Solent, seen from Ryde on the Isle of Wight - taken on a crisp Christmas Day :)

Somewhere in Cambridgeshire, taken from the train on Tuesday :)