Almost vegetarian!
I am almost a vegetarian. Why? I love the flavours of fresh vegetables. I can also taste in them a world of nutrition.
I have also been put off meat and chicken. Years ago, I lived above a butcher shop in Paris, and witnessed the animal carcasses being delivered by truck. A terrible sight.
And then in my younger days, I worked on a kibbutz in Israel where one of its activities was raising chickens to then be sent away to slaughter. The chickens lived in long buildings, with controlled lighting and feeding. They enjoyed six weeks of life. Then we had to round them up, and put them into small cages for dispatching. Shocking.
You could say the same about seafood and aquaculture. But I love seafood. No-one is perfect.
When I was very young, my mother taught me how to cook. She insisted that a young man could no longer rely on modern women. As a proud mother, she considered me a great cook. But she was hardly objective.
As time went by, I did some cooking courses, mainly for Indian cuisine. I also read many cookbooks.
But I ultimately took inspiration from one of my Chinese painting teachers. He believed that you must learn by copying the masters. But once that is done, you must develop your own style, by transcending the masters.
So I have thrown out all my cookbooks. Now I cook based on instinct. I have read that Donald Trump makes his business and political decisions also based on instinct.
A strange model, you might say. But he is surviving, and some would say succeeding.
If you are not ready to throw away your cookbooks and recipes, you may be interested in some of the recipes that I will soon post on this Internet site. But please don’t blindly follow my recipes. Use them as inspiration, and adapt them to your tastes.
Last question. Why do I like Indian cuisine so much? When I first visited Calcutta in 1975 (before it was renamed Kolkata), I visited an underground spice market, where the sellers were sitting next to large piles of spices. The bouquets, especially of the cumin, were intoxicating. I have never been the same since.
Indian cuisine with its sublime array of vegetarian dishes is also perfect for someone who is almost vegetarian
Bytheway, the young lady in the photos is Ann, our maid and my sous-chef!