My 2017 Cooking Challenge

Everything is basically a muscle. Your heart is a muscle. Your legs are a muscle. That table over there is a muscle...

No, I've lost what I was trying to say here.

Let's start again. As far as I can tell, everything is a muscle, in that you have to practice again and again, and the more you practice, the easier it gets to work it. I've found this to be true with learning Japanese, making sure I read every day, and of course working out....unfortunately, not all of these are things I've continued to do. It takes so much time to make the habit, which eventually becomes easy and natural - but allow yourself to fall out of the habit and it's suddenly as hard as it was at the beginning. It's like sweating and puffing your way through climbing up a mountain, and then sliding all the way back down on your arse.

Cooking is one of these habits for me. While living in Japan I got very used to cooking frequently, especially in bulk. But moving into a new flat with a tiny kitchen, with no radiator, in the middle of January, does not exactly inspire me. I want to be curled up in my bed with takeout, not huddled over a stove in a hoodie. Moving to a new city with loads of cutesy restaurants doesn't really help either. I've become more reliant on cafes for food - especially lunches - and it's having a bearing on my wallet and my waistline.

With that in mind, I've set myself a challenge. I will select 10 new recipes to try every month. I thought about making all these recipes healthy, but to be honest it's not my priority right now. My priority is to find joy in cooking and eating homemade food again. I'd also like to improve my basic skills - I'm not a bad cook by any means, but I could just get a little bit cleaner and more efficient with things like knife skills.

For the record, here's my first recipe. It's sort-of based on fettucine alfredo but mainly based on the fact that I love pasta and nutmeg. It was simple but went very well, and will definitely be a staple in my future comfort-eating regimen. It also turned out to be one of those recipes that gets better the day after you make it - the sauce thickens overnight and clings to the pasta all the more. Not diet-friendly, but very definitely me-friendly. I made it just before going to bed, so I will name it:

Delicious Creamy Midnight Pasta

Ingredients:
200g pasta
400ml tub of single cream
A big ol' slice of butter (50-100g)
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
A generous knob of parmesan
Salt and pepper to taste

1) Boil the pasta in one saucepan, melt the butter at a medium-low heat in another.

2) Add cream, and nutmeg, grate in parmesan. Cook the sauce for the same time as the pasta, stirring frequently, and adding salt, pepper and more of the nutmeg and parmesan to taste.

3) Oh...that's it. Enjoy hot or cold.

I will endeavour to update in May with how the cooking challenge is going, and showing you my favourite recipes of the month. Maybe some of them will even be healthy!