the art of instinctive cooking

About Me

Hello!  My name is Danielle.  To describe myself as a married, middle aged, mother of two boys (technically adults), forces me to pinch myself!  How did I get to this point; acting on my desire to revive a seemingly dying art?  The art of feeding ourselves with simple ingredients, cooking from scratch and without costing the Earth.

The answer lies somewhere within being born to a Seychelloise mother where the diet is healthy, simple and always home made; university, where I wanted to eat well but on a budget; teaching in secondary schools for 20 years seeing pupils eat monochrome fried food regularly; and then becoming a mother.  On top of that, we are all becoming more and more aware of the shocking amount of readymade and ultra-processed foods which surround us, let alone the well-known baddies of sugar, fat and too much meat. Anything we can do for our family’s diets is a huge responsibility, but it doesn’t need to be overwhelming.

A modern problem...?

There have never been so many cookery programmes on TV, or cookery books published.  We are surrounded by advice from well-meaning chefs all telling us what to cook, when to cook it and how easy it all is! Believe me, I love them but I never copy their recipes. Instead I absorb and glean as much as I can “between the lines” where chefs use nifty little ideas without explaining why - that’s what I want to pass onto you.

Also, our world is getting ever smaller.  We are expected to be able to cook food from cuisines of every continent, simply because many of the ingredients are so easily available in our supermarkets.  And this is a wonderful thing (yet not necessarily sustainable!) - but if someone feels intimidated to know what to do with what they find at the bottom of their fridge or the back of their cupboards (some wrinkled peppers and a tin of tomatoes) and would rather drive to the shops to pick up a ready meal or phone in a take-away, then there is something wrong with the basics of this wasteful and unsustainable form of living.

But it isn't easy.  Believe me, I know!  Our time is limited, the cost of fresh ingredients seems only to be rising and we are bombarded with advice, conflicting ideals of parenting, government health campaigns etc, etc. 

The Cobbled Kitchen was born out of a genuine desire to help you find your way through the stresses of modern life, to give you something that at least once a day connects us with what is good.

So when you think "cookery lessons", think of the time when we were young, watching our mothers, grandmothers, whoever, preparing our food daily and allowing us to dip our fingers in, pour, stir and mix.  Sadly, the last couple of generations have largely missed out on that invaluable experience.  I’m not a trained chef, but it’s this experience I want to give you here at The Cobbled Kitchen - the chance to feel involved and able - to make delicious and beautiful food, no matter what our background.

To find out more about what I'm up to, tweeting about or cooking at the moment, find me on Facebook and Instagram.