Day 1...an Indian feast to come home to

Ok so I have had my first kitchen upset.  Why is opening a bag of frozen peas difficult for me! Never mind I'm sure there is some therapeutic benefit to picking up half frozen peas off the kitchen floor; forgetting at least one, for me to tread on, barefoot in the middle of the night.

The Delia of Indian cooking!

So my task for today was to try out some of the recipes from my newest cook book: Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Easy (purchased yesterday).  The cook book is lovely, despite Madhur Jaffrey always making me cringe when I see her cook live on TV.  I decided that I would make Chicken Karhai with Mint as well as a Pea and Mushroom Curry.  Chicken Karhai, according to Mrs Jaffrey, is marinated chicken thighs fried in an 'Indian Wok' with onions and mint.  Sounds lovely, and relatively simple to make, bonus!  So as I type my chicken thighs are marinating in some lovely spices (black pepper, cumin, coriander, cayenne pepper and ginger).  In the meantime I thought I would make the Pea and Mushroom curry.

I was quite comfortable with the recipe as I have been making my own curry pastes for a while now.  I love roasting the spices and using a pestle and mortar to grind them.  I couldn't get hold of any Cremini mushrooms so had to make do with plain regular closed cup ones.  Everything was going well until I added the advised amount of salt...uh oh, that is way to salty for me, especially as the curry reduced for 30 minutes after I added it.  Next time I make this curry I think I will add salt at the end, not at the beginning as instructed in the recipe, the flavour is too harsh for me.  A little bit of sugar might save it later on when I reheat it for dinner.

That's my cooking done for the afternoon, only some last minute frying and some basmati rice to cook before my hard working fiancée gets home.  I'm working till late tomorrow and Thursday so propably won't be cooking again till the weekend.  Until then.

Slightly excited, slightly scared!

My cooking addiction is spiralling out of control and my friends are fed up of listening so I guess cyberspace is stuck with me for the foreseeable future.  I am a self confessed foodie and wannabe fantastic home cook with a lot to learn.  And, yes, the italics are necessary (especially when it comes to baking).

The inspiration for 'Across the Chopping Board' is the feeling you get when you are on holiday eating a local dish and think to yourself "I need to try and make this when I get home".  With the help of my partner in crime Nat (fellow foodie and photographer extraordinaire)  we want to spend the next few months experimenting with flavours and sharing our love of cooking (and tasting) food from all around the globe.  In the future we hope to have created an A-Z full of recipes from exotic destinations as well as ones close to our heart and our home.

We realise in the process of becoming "accomplished cooks" (something I am very far from at the moment) there will be mistakes, perhaps even the occasional cooking disaster.  As long as we don't burn down the kitchen, and I would like to point out that to successfully burn down our kitchen would require a very small fire, we will persevere.