What is Snig's Kitchen?
It's a food focussed blog which is the hobby of food enthusiast Snigdha Nag.
Who the hell is Snigdha Nag?
Snigdha is a Senior Lecturer at City Law School. If you are a student of hers, you might want to check out her other blog: http://snigsclassroom.blogspot.co.uk/. She is also a South Londoner (South London isn't just a place, it's a state of mind!), home cook, music fan, travel obsessive, wine drinker, beer botherer, guitar torturer, cat lover and wife of Him Indoors (a very patient man indeed!).
Why are you blogging?
I started blogging in May 2011. Before that I'd written down recipes I'd invented myself on scraps of paper or the backs of envelopes, then discovered that when I wanted to recreate the item in question, I'd lost my note! So I started posting recipes on my facebook (as notes). I got some positive feedback from friends, so decided to start a food blog. Since then I've found I've really enjoyed sharing my thoughts and hearing from people who read my blog.
What do you blog about?
Anything to do with food, drink and travel. I post my own recipes, I review restaurants, cooking and food shows/events, I test recipes by bona fide cookery writers (see my Recipe Road Test posts) and write random thoughts about food and drink. I am also a very big music fan, so music creeps into the blog. I have a microblog where I share some of my shorter form thoughts, photos, cooking ideas and other stuff, including music, which you will find here: http://snigskitchen.tumblr.com/
Why should I bother looking at your recipes if you're not an actual chef?
It is purely because I am no expert that I know where things go wrong. That is the reason why I take step-by-step pictures of how I make each dish. I know when I've tried to make something from a cook book, I look at what I'm attempting and think 'That looks wrong, but I don't know what it should look like!' and panic ensues. I want to help all the new and aspiring cooks like myself get their kitchen confidence. That can't be a bad thing, can it?
What do you take your pictures with?
Whatever is at hand. My pictures are WYSIWYG. I don't believe in doctoring the truth, so I don't fiddle with the pictures other than cropping them. It is because I know that amateur cooks want to know what the dish looks like in reality (to match up their effort with the recipe) that I don't do flashy styled pictures. I am currently using either my smartphone or digital camera.
What kind of food do you like?
I'm very international in my tastes. I love French, Italian, Spanish and Turkish food – the food of the Mediterranean is always inspiring to me. I grew up eating home cooked Indian food, so the tastes of the subcontinent are my heritage and first love. However, I am probably most obsessed with the food of the Far East; Canton, Szechuan, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam all make food which delights my palate and fills my dreams.
What kind of restaurants do you go to?
A mixture. For very rare treats like birthdays or our anniversary, we push the boat out. But dining out is not just about fine dining, is it? As long as the food is authentic, tasty and well prepared, I don't care if the tables are formica and the napkins are made of paper.
What else do you like?
I love travelling, and wish I had more time and money to do more of it. I love music, fiction, film and art. I'm a social media nut, too. I write about law, mainly employment law and equalities issues.