Neil Cooks Grigson is 10!

Blimey! What a milestone to reach with the blog – I can barely believe that I am still writing entries for it. I know they are rather infrequent now, and I am really trying to spend more time writing, but starting this blog a decade ago unwittingly made me a bit of a busy bee today.

Four-hundred and twenty-four recipes in means I only have 26 more to cook so there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I started the blog back in 2007 because I had just began my PhD in evolutionary biology at The University of Manchester; I knew I’d have to do a lot of writing, so a blog seemed like a good idea. Having never heard of Julie & Julia, I thought cooking a whole cookbook was a pretty original idea.

Those first few posts are rather badly written as I had never done any of this sort of thing before, but I soon settled into a style and found I really enjoyed the history side of things, hence starting the second blog British Food: A History.

So much has happened from the blog it is startling! If I had known the potential of writing a blog I might have chickened out.

I’ve started a food business, The Buttery, from market stall via a pop-up restaurant in my own house  to a restaurant with my business husband Brian Shields, founded a community market in Levenshulme, Manchester, come second in a Telegraph cookery competition for bloggers and Radio 4’s The Food Programme and been nominated for a Manchester Food & Drink Award. More recently I’ve been working on an episode of a history programme with Channel 4 as well as my first paid writing jobs. The restaurant is also going to be expanding in the next year: wait til you hear about that!!

All of this is because of Jane Grigson; none of this would have happened had I not forced myself to cook dishes containing ingredients such as brains, eels, sweetbreads, quince and the like. Jane opened me up to exciting and scholarly food writing and a whole unknown world of exciting British food. She is also an excellent teacher.

I’m going to try my best to work through the remaining recipes, some of which I have no excuse for not trying yet. I promise to pull my finger out. A bit, at least.

Finally, of course, I wouldn’t be writing blog entries if you good people didn’t read them and send such great comments.

So many thanks to all of you and to Jane herself, because without you I wouldn’t be on this unexpected journey!

Introducing... Blog #2

For some crazy reason I have started a second food blog, and I thought you might like to know! It is called British Food: A History. Surely this blog covers alot of that suject, you say. And you would be right. It is somewhat restricted by the recipes in the book English Food. Granted there are a total of 449 recipes to cook for the blog, so it is not exactly non-comprehensive, but there are so many recipes not in the book at all. There is no jam roly-poly or beef Wellington! Major oversights by Griggers there. Also there are recipes she unfortunately never got to see flourish. Chicken tikka masala, anyone? I have been compiling a list on a spreadsheet for a while now. I originally intended to do an English Food Part II or something, but found there are lots to write about other than the recipes and the stories and factoids behind them. I also realized that it’s not just England, but Britain that should be represented as well as the countries that have influenced it the most like Ireland, France and countries of the ex-empire such as India and China.

So it won’t just be recipes but any interesting nuggets I find plus the best of the recipes from English Food and the blog. I always said that I would never go back and alter any posts, and some of the early ones are pretty bad, so I will tart some of them up and add them. It’s amazing how my writing has developed since those early days of the blog. But don’t worry, Neil Cooks Grigson shall not suffer! I just need somewhere to put all the stuff that doesn’t quite fit.

It is very early days for the blog, but do have a look at it – I would be very grateful. Perhaps become a follower. In fact, I know that there are a few food bloggers (and would-be bloggers?) that have a look on here from time to time that might like to post on it, so if interested let me know as I would love it if several people contributed.

Laters!