I love cooking. It’s one of the few things in life that naturally offers a positive feedback loop - the more you do it, the better your food gets, the worst other food seems in comparison, the more you want to cook. I was lucky enough to be sucked in during my second year at uni, and have been happily frying, boiling, roasting, and chopping ever since.

Probably 70% of the meals I cook are inspired by asian cuisine - curries of all kinds, stir fries, noodle soups, and fried rices (the first dish I ever properly learned tried to make, though much improved over the years), not to mention the rest. It’s unbelievably varied - though perhaps we should expect this of a continent with close to half the world’s population - always flavourful, and often relatively simple. Almost all of the remaining ~third are pasta dishes, chillies, and scattered mediterranean/middle eastern style meals.

So, on the back of looking for some variety, feeling like I was leaning too heavily on the power of spices and things I already knew to make good food, and a Gordon Ramsay video binge, I’ve been trying out some cuisines from closer to home. Tonight I tried out a Frenchish style main course, with decent results:

• Chicken thighs roasted at ~180 for ~45 minutes with rosemary, feta, and olives (Yeah that’s a little further East than France. Bite me).
• An onion, leek, bacon, garlic, and white wine reduction with lots of butter, fried/simmered in that order (except the butter, which was piled on throughout).
• Served on a bed of white rice. Bless my former housemate for teaching me to cook rice decently, it’s the best.

If your diet leaves you with maybe 1000 calories to spare and you want something incredibly decadent and rich, give it a shot. The olives didn’t feel quite right with the rest of the dish; it’d be great to find something else that’s different enough to provide contrast, but fits in better. Maybe something citrusy? Drinks-wise, I’m more of a red kind of guy, so have little to say about the wine choice. I somewhat arbitrarily picked up a chateau souverain chardonnay which seems to have done the trick in the sauce. After the cooking was done, the first glass wasn’t quite to my taste, but the rest went down very smoothly.