Scuff's Kitchen: Introducing Andy Smith | ABREWCADABREW

I first ?met? Andy Smith via Facebook. He regularly left comments with a mutual brewer friend, usually clever quips relating to music or beer or food. When I discovered that Andy had a blog about cooking and went to check it out, I was completely amazed by his undeniable talent and devotion to the art. I knew immediately that I wanted to feature his site, and so was inspired to interview him via email for the occasion.

Tell me about yourself. Where are from? What you do? What are your interests?

I was born in Brighton, East Sussex, in southern England and lived there all of my life up until I moved with my girlfriend to a country village about 15 miles away last year to buy a larger house when we had a baby. I?m now 27 years old and getting to grips with fatherhood.

Professionally I?m an IT Technician, a job that as with most people in the industry I accidentally fell into, but I spent a good 10 years of my spare time moving around the local punk scene playing guitar in ska bands and drinking probably too much. Nowadays that lifestyle is a little harder to support so I fill the hobby gap with cooking.

When did you first get into cooking? And how?

I?ve always had an interest in food that stems from my father who is an excellent cook. He and I share many foodie discussions and tips. When I was growing up I was encouraged to try everything before passing judgment on it, which I consider to be an important attitude to food.

I think it?s a real shame that there are people who will never taste black pudding or haggis just because the idea of it grosses them out. I think I started to get really creative when I first moved out of my parent?s house and had to start shopping and cooking for myself every night of the week without my Dad in the house to point me in the right directions. In those early days there were naturally quite a few kitchen disasters!

What is it that you enjoy about cooking?

I don?t like to rush things, I?m very much a fan of taking my time and experimenting, and I find the methodical process of gathering, preparing and processing the ingredients very therapeutic. I look at most dishes as an experiment and get an enormous sense of satisfaction on those occasions that I manage to produce something restaurant quality myself from scratch.

Who do usually cook for?

Just myself, my family and my friends. I?m no showman and I prefer small scale batch cooking to cooking for large groups of people.

Who would you like to cook for? What would be your fantasy dinner?

I don?t have a great deal of time for celebrities so I?m afraid, rather boringly, I couldn?t put together a dream guest list of any names anyone is likely to recognize. Instead, I?d ideally like to cook a big meal with a big group of friends, a big party where everyone pitches in and makes their own dishes and brings the best of their talents to the dinner.

In my fantasy dinner we are all in a big hall, surrounded by kitchens and ingredients and people just wander around and mingle trying as many different things as possible.

When you did start your blog? Why?
I really just wanted an online scrap book for my own purposes, but because I love to share food experiences with people, I started a private forum and posted everything I made up there. My thoughts were if I got chatting to someone who was interested in my cooking, then I could just give them the address and invite them to the forum. As my writing and cooking skills grew so did my confidence and I developed a sort of blogging style, so I decided to go for it.

I used to include a link back to my forum with information on the research I?d gathered behind the dish (I do research most dishes very thoroughly before blogging about them), but this was basically like typing up two blog posts every time and I just got a bit too busy to keep this up.

I suppose my target audience is the bored office worker looking for five minutes of reading material once or twice a week on their lunch breaks. Thinking about it, I do miss the little forum articles I did, so I may go back and write a few more research articles with links in the blog.

How do you choose topics for your blog posts? What?s your creative process?
I do think of my readers and try to vary things a bit, so rather than just going through a bread phase, I?ll force myself to break and do a butter or a preserve or something. And because I like to appeal to an international audience, I try not to do too many articles about local food. But other than that it?s fairly random.

I like to pick things that people wouldn?t normally think of making themselves at home. I think a lot of people, certainly in the UK, would never normally dream of making their own selection of Chinese cooking sauces and are probably clueless as to what actually goes in the stuff you buy in jars or order from a takeaway menu.

As for the process, I?ll spend perhaps a week researching the food, sourcing the ingredients and planning the time for some of the posts. Then I?ll prep all my ingredients and get to work with my camera and never-out-of-reach notepad.

What?s your favourite thing to cook?
I love making sauces and standing over a big pot that bubbles away filling the house with the aroma of food. I get a kick out of having all the ingredients lined up and prepared in advance for me to add stage by stage. Maybe one of my favourite things to make is ketchup. I love seeing all those bulky raw ingredients rendered down into a neat little product that I can bottle away and use in hundreds of other recipes.

Least favourite?
Cheese is massive hassle; I?m constantly trying to find an easier way to make it. I love when it works and you get a beautiful end product, but I hate giving up a whole day to something that can easily go horribly wrong last minute or in the ageing process and then has to go in the bin.

Any future developments, plans, or things you?re looking forward to?
Loads! I?ve got some really big projects to look forward to, probably mainly next year. These include building a curing chamber and trying my hand at some artisan charcuterie, building a duck house and using their eggs in a few recipes, and hopefully, in the not too distant future, using some of my experience and knowledge to get some craft beer on the go.

Other than that, there are plenty of breads and cheeses up my sleeve, and I?d very much like to do a bit more with fish. I?ve also just started a blog about my new garden, which I plan on being very closely linked to the kitchen. Being a city boy, I?m a complete novice at gardening, so everything on that will be a first time for me.

You can read more about Andy Smith (and I strongly urge that you do!) at the following: His blog (Scuff?s Kitchen) ? His garden blog (Scuff?s Garden) ? Twitter ? Pinterest

? The ApPeal of a Bottle of Beer

Source: http://www.abrewcadabrew.com/scuffs-kitchen-introducing-andy-smith/

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