Food for Thought...

For some people, the kitchen is little more than a showpiece. Glossy white acrylic cabinets and black quartz worktops with nary a scratch. Then there are others, like myself, for whom the kitchen is a place of function over form, a hub that serves as both a breeding ground for creativity as well as a place of meditation.

For a long time now, I've had an interest in meditation and spirituality. One of the concepts that has become most important to me is mindfulness, whereby you make a constant effort to remain conscious of the present, to stay "in the moment". This isn't always easy, but there's always one place I can achieve that serenity; yeah, you guessed it, the kitchen! Whether it's chopping an onion (and trying not to shed manly tears in the process) or slapping soft dough against a chopping board, every moment spent cooking and baking is a meditation in itself. It's a completely natural instinct, to put all your care and attention into everything you make. An art echoing thousands of years of history, going all the way back to those early innovators who sat around a fire under the stars, watching the day's hunt cook and salivating at the scent of the searing meat.

To cook is even more than just a therapeutic exercise though. It is a hotbed of experimentation and exploration. Endless millions of recipes have been created, the result of necessity and that tireless quest for new flavours. With food being the foundation of all cultures too, it's an exciting thing to be able to find a recipe of a foreign land and recreate it in your own home. To get a small window into the world of another country. Whether it's a gooey croque monsieur in a Parisian café or the enchanting BBQ smell of yakitori on a Japanese street, food is one of the few ways to gain an authentic experience of the world without leaving your home.

On top of that, the experience of an active kitchen is a culture all of its own. Boiling water dancing in bubbles and languid vapours, the crackle of cooking meat and the scents of herbs... it's a lively and comforting place to be.

Of course, it's not all about recipes either. From an early age, I've had a great deal of fun trying to create my own culinary inventions (with wildly varying success — don't ask me about the pale doughy blob topped with hundreds and thousands that I made when I was nine! Really. Just don't.), and not just in recipes themselves. As anyone who's spent thirty seconds on Instagram knows, there's a whole world dedicated to the visual aesthetics of food, and that's my bag. To a fault, really. I once created a "deconstructed salad" that saw me layer the individual elements in a concentric formation — the outermost circle being cherry tomatoes carved into waterlilies. It was quite an impressive showpiece, everyone said, but also bloody impractical. In the end, I had to sacrifice my chef-d'oeuvre, letting it turn into an smooshed up jumble so as to be edible.

So where do scissors fit in? Everywhere, of course! Scissors are one of those tools that no chef's arsenal should be without. Whether it's opening those damned awkward plastic packages (you know the ones I'm talking about), cutting up bacon, slicing up a pizza, shredding up fresh herbs or prepping your greens, those divine snippers are integral to a cook's sanity. If I entered someone's kitchen and there were no scissors, believe me when I say that person would be getting some serious side-eye...