About Me
Hello, I am Meghalee. Welcome to my food blog!
The short story:
I love to cook, and writing is my profession as well as a hobby. This website helps me keep a record of all my recipes and allows me to share my varied experiences in the kitchen with others. I hope you find the content useful and also create some wonderful culinary memories of your own. đ
The long story:
Food and the process of cooking has always been an integral part of my life — I have great memories of watching my mother concoct delicious meals, sitting with my grandmother while she ground aromatic spices for pickles, following my grandfatherâs instructions on how to grow and pick the right vegetable at our kitchen garden, and being my dadâs assistant, as he created those spicy slow cooked meat dishes, while I patiently waited.
In fact, you can know so much about peopleâs personalities by just observing how they cook. I guess there are some styles that are born out of necessity. For example, when my mother cooks, it is like a hurricane in the kitchen that leaves great food behind. I can tell how she is constantly planning in her head, multitasking and trying to finish as soon as possible so that she can get on with her other chores. But the results are always excellent. When my husband cooks, it reminds me of my fatherâs style of cooking… meticulously planning every little detail, as the food slowly simmers away to perfection.
Some of the simplest joys of my life are a well-stocked pantry and cooking a hearty meal. As a friend once rightly observed, cooking makes me happy. Itâs like creating something beautiful from these separate parts, which by themselves may not mean much, but come together to become this extraordinary sensory experience. When I worked as a journalist, writing food reviews, among other assignments, was part of my job. But back in those days, I used to live alone and although I loved to cook, I didn’t really have the time to experiment with cooking. After getting married, I finally got the time to indulge in this hobby and it was nice to cook for someone too. Like most newlyweds, I posted some pictures of the first cake I baked or the first chicken dish I cooked on my social networking profile. đ When some friends started asking for recipes, I thought of creating a food blog. Thus was born âMeghâs Kitchenâ, my 21-month-old blog.
The response I got was something I had not expected at all! Besides encouraging words from friends and family, I was fascinated to see page views from countries like Croatia, Bhutan, Ireland, Russia, besides the usual Asian, European and American countries. Although there is no dearth of food blogs on the World Wide Web, I decided to create my own website, The Saffron Platter, where I get more freedom in terms of creativity, features and various technicalities.
Most of the dishes mentioned here were probably cooked by me in the middle of the night when I couldnât sleep, was bored or hungry or got a bright idea that just had to be put into action. I also find myself trying to analyze anything I eat at restaurants and then recreate it in my kitchen. Sometimes I am so happy with the results that I start singing my own praises in the empty house, and sometimes they are so disastrous that I end up laughing hysterically, especially when I spend hours cooking something, taking pictures and writing notes, and yet the dish cannot be saved. đ
Any post written after April 18, 2013 has been written in the new website, but I have all my previous recipes listed too. The Saffron Platter will also have some new sections like âGuest Postsâ, which will feature dishes cooked by my friends/family, and âStoriesâ which will include my experiences related to food, restaurants, new cuisines, outdoor cooking, travelling and so on. I hope you have a fun time exploring this blog and enjoy cooking food as much as I do.
Thanks for stopping by!