Some bloggers may simply be blaggers!

I am happy to say that I have avoided any wrath from him so far (fingers crossed) but then, I don’t claim that my soup can cure cancer etc.

I personally don’t like being called a blogger as first of all, I write for a reputable newspaper and I do a lot of research to understand the topic I am writing about.

Most food blogs are filled with beautiful photography, a lengthy story about how the recipe came along, followed at the bottom with the recipe. Considering that bloggers have time to test their recipes before publishing it, one could expect a flawless result.

Normally, when I like to try something new, I go through my extensive collection of cookbooks, call on my chef friends or simply rely on my experience with food.

Let me tell you what happened when I looked for a recipe to re-create a dish I ate in Iyer’s a while back. I didn’t want to bother him and asking for the recipe directly (he can be very secretive at times) but thought I might find something similar online.

From the lists of ingredients, I thought I should be able to find the recipe.

A blogger claiming to have the best recipe for my required dish wrote a long post on how she got to know the recipe and that it could compete with any restaurant.

For once in my life, I followed instructions, measured everything (something I normally don’t do) and was already envisioning the dish to be eaten in front of the fire.

It didn’t happen – I did eat the result but it wasn’t anything like the photo on the blog post or even anything the blogger said it was going to be.

Looking at it (and I am trying it again with my own version tonight), it was clear that the measurements weren’t correct at all.

There were too many dry ingredients compared to wet ones to form a paste that would coat the delicate little cauliflower florets (it was an Indian cauliflower recipe) and there wasn’t enough of it to use up the entire cauliflower as advised.

The spices didn’t have any impact, as it should at least be the double measures of each spice. The only thing that worked beautifully was poaching the cauliflower in turmeric water, which gave the florets a sun-golden hue.

But apart from that – the recipe didn’t work. Sometimes when I am researching things online, I come across US bloggers and always smirk a bit when I read their recipes as most of it starts with ‘open a tube of biscuit dough’ – not the Rich Tea kind of biscuits but what we would call scones.

Or open a package of cake mix, or use a jar of hollandaise sauce…you get the idea. The majority of recipes are not cooked from scratch but using highly processed ingredients.

My cauliflower adventure has shown me that I should keep doing what I have done most of my life – cook from the heart with the experience of the many years of trials and errors (still the best way of learning) and if in doubt, call Paul Treyvaud.