About Me

I started this blog because I’ve bored everyone I know on the subject of food, I love detail, if it involves food I’m interested.  Those I know who are interested in food to a degree I’ve developed a knack of making their eyes glaze over and this is my solution, having my own space.

I have too many cookery books and maybe a third I haven’t used. I’ve been influence by my family back in Portugal, at 8 years of age my Gran was teaching me how to make Portuguese rice, ‘..don’t burn the onions, Azélia..’ I remember being told.  I like to taste things, in a restaurant I would be very happy just to try a mouthful of all the dishes.  I’m a picture of contentment when planing a menu going through books, magazine cutouts and writing lists of possible dishes, thinking about combinations, timings, who’s coming and their likes and dislikes.  There’s absolutely no point in making food if someone hates it, life’s too short!

The Bread

When I started this blog it was a general place for recipes I used, recipes for Allergy Kid and anything in general I wanted to learn but this changed in Spring 2010 when I had to bake bread for Allergy kid as her allergies and food intolerances grew including one to soya.  Soya is in nearly every loaf in the shops.  This started my bread journey, during this time I was sent a piece of a sourdough starter in the post and without realising I became obsessed with sourdough and how to control it.

The Bakery & eBook Idea

I’ve always wanted to open up my own cafe/deli but as I became more knowledgeable with bread, opening up a bakery became obvious, and this is the plan one day.  Currently I’m writing an ebook on Sourdough in volumes, the first volume on starters and their ecosystems, from starting to maintaing them to what’s going on inside.  The reason for the ebook is to raise any money for my dream of the  bakery.

I’ll apologise in advance for many grammatical mistakes I make on here, being one’s own editor is not easy.  Since writing here I’ve discovered I have a tendency to swap words around like, lens for lenses, or waist for waste.  If you catch any of those and can be bother to email do, I’ll correct them.

Thanks for stopping.

To Contact Me – azelia (@) azeliaskitchen.net

I blame it on my Gran – The Pig Killer
The extended family plays a big part in Portuguese life, everything is around family and friends gatherings with lots of food and wine and we would never dream of getting together unless a large meal is involved.  My Gran who use to be hired to slaughter pigs, goes without saying she’s well respected and perhaps understandably a little feared,  takes her food seriously.  She loves eating traditional Portuguese dishes and although lot of her repertoire would be described as plain food her absolute insistence is on a good product, especially the quality of meat.

One of my earliest memories involving food in Portugal is being about 9 and helping my Gran slaughter one of our pigs by holding on to the tail…no quite the picture most nine year olds have, including my own children but that’s the way it was. I grew up watching her use every part of the pig, it was a whole family affair everyone played a part, the different cuts some for preserving, the washing of intestines to refill for making chouriço and blood sausages and…you know something…as I’m writing this I can’t remember now what she did with the head…must ring her up and ask…nothing went to waste.

My enthusiasm for food, wanting to feed people and the contentment I get from seeing people’s happy faces when eating my food comes from my Gran.

The above photo showing my Gran with her two younger son-in-laws in the garage cooking for Christmas Eve meal, which in Portugal we celebrate it as our main Christmas day, family gathers for salt cod & potatoes and exchanging presents at midnight.

My  Girls
I am a Mum of three gorgeous girls, a teenager who’s incredibly quick witted, articulate and very tall for her age.  The middle daughter who has the food allergies, sporty and talented.  The baby who’s two and and a half, born 9 weeks early and has needed some extra help to achieve milestones, she is receiving physio to try and get her to walk, needs a special walker provided by the hospital to walk and has been diagnosed with mild Ceberal Palsy.

The middle daughter has had multiple food allergies since birth and was treated at Great Ormond Street Hospital for severe eczema and food allergies when she was 8 months old. At St Mary’s she is still monitored and tested every year for the allergies, asthma and hayfever. Over a year ago she developed epilepsy and we have been referred to GOSH again to decide how to proceed with her treatment for her epilepsy.  I have written more fully in the kids page.

I was born In Portugal
I was born in Northern Portugal and without trying to bring the violins out we were very poor. We had no running water there was a communal well, shared communal toilets and I remember having baths in a large tub in the kitchen. My parents emigrated to England when I was 3 and I stayed behind in Portugal living with my Gran and Granddad until I was 10 . Coming over here was extremely hard, having to learn a new language and adapt to a completely different lifestyle. The most important thing at that age was to loose your accent so you could fit in.

In 2004 when I took Bikerboy to meet my extended family in Portugal we went back to the place where I grew up until I was 9 yrs old, there were 5 very tiny two bedroom houses around a very small courtyard and one end of the courtyard was the well you can see above, you can see the rope still there.  Through the passageway is where a plot of land was allocated to each house and we all grew our vegetables, had rabbits, chickens and I think a pig or two.

On the other side of the well that’s where my Gran’s plot of land was and I still remember exactly where the rabbit and chicken pens were, and the memory of my cousin Sérgio eating sugar infested with ants….he was about 6 or 7 years old…he said they tickle a bit swallowing…his sister Gabriela and I watched him with admiration and disgust all in one.

Here (photo above) was the main entrance from the main road into the courtyard and the white door on the left used to be the entrance to my Gran’s storage cupboard, where she kept wood logs for the fire oven, vegetables, grain and so on.  This cupboard has quite a few memories for me because in the summer months that’s where we use to have our bath in a large tub.  I can still hear my cousin screaming at my youngest aunt Lina for washing his hair, all the way across the courtyard…he hated having his hair washed.

A village called Junqueira
The village I left when I was 10 is not recognisable now. The Portugal I knew when I was ten does not recognise me. I speak fluent Portuguese but struggle to understand the Portuguese tv or read the newspaper when I first arrive. It takes me  a good two weeks to adjust to the language when I’m there. I have an accent when I speak Portuguese now. I feel I live in ‘No Man’s Land’, not Portuguese enough to live in Portugal and too Portuguese to be English.  This is a commentary I’ve heard from many child immigrants that they feel neither belonging to the culture of their birth nor to the culture of their adopted country.

All the people I knew well were very poor, if they had access to the tiniest patch of land they grew vegetables had a few chickens and maybe a pig.  I find it paradoxical that now here in the UK there is a big drive to growing your own vegetable, renting an allotment in order to grow more vegetables.  We the younger generations of Portugal grown up with their family’s vegetable patch couldn’t wait to earn enough money in the new economy to build our homes and have beautiful gardens just like the ones in Britain without the vegetable patch.  A sign of our new found wealth that we could afford to buy vegetables.

Where I live Now
I lived in North London until 10 years ago and moved back to suburbia after divorce.  I’m surrounded by supermarkets, within a five mile radius I pretty much have all the supermarkets available in this country.  Where I live is pretty good for bringing up a family but pretty lacking for access to farmers’ market or independent food shops and the only bread shop that sold the most gorgeous sourdough bread lasted little over a year.  There has been attempts to have a farmers market in a nearby town but the support for it didn’t last.  The one single thing I miss the most is a fishmongers,  three days a week I have a market stall that sells fresh fish but limited choice, I miss my fishmongers in North London, for special meals I’ll make the trip early on a Saturday morning to my old fish shop, Steve Hatt in Essex Road.  I envy the Continent for their fish markets and even their huge supermarket fishcounters are superb.

My household shop is mainly done in my weekly supermarket trip with the odd visit to the fishstall and a decent butcher for excellent pork.  With five mouths to feed the shopping and cooking has to fit around busy schedule of work, family demands, kids hospital appointments and child’s allergies.

Oldest daughter too cool for school

Middle daughter, the one I refer to as Allergy Kid,  taking to windsurfing like duck to water

Liliana born 9 weeks early, weighing 1.8Kg 4lbs, a good weight for a baby of 31 weeks.

She is by far the naughtiest out of the three but makes all of us laugh so much.