June 2010 - An interview with...................

June already! This year is flying by, I can hardly believe it's June so soon. The winter here in Spain has been very long & very, very wet. Then suddenly during the last few days of May, the sun shone, the temperature increased immensly and summer arrived; until today!!!!! It's gone cold, raining again (grrrrr) and our coastal views have disappeared in the mist. I'm currently wearing a cardigan & feeling quite depressed, plus we've just encountered a power cut which is a regular occurance during bad weather!

OK, rant over. This month, we have the pleasure of meeting fellow blogger, Kavey, from Kavey Eats

Photo of Kavey taken by Pete, Kavey's husband



Hope you've enjoyed this month's interview & don't forget to look out for next months too with.......... (you'll just have to wait & see) hee hee. Kavey, stretching pizza dough at La Lotta picture taken by Alan Ager

Kavey opened up her blog to the public just over 1 year ago & has become very popular & well known in the blogging world. Apart from her duties as a wife, an employee & a blogger, she is also very involved in her mum's website too (read on to discover more).

I first became acquainted with Kavey as a member of the BBC Food Message Board a couple of years ago, where we would frequently chat & share tips, recipes etc. We both started our blogs around the same time & immediately became followers of each other's blogs.

Coincidentally, Kavey lives fairly close to my previous home in the UK & occasionally posts reviews of pubs/restaurants I used to visit.

Well, that's enough of me ranting on, read all about Kavey below. Oh, & remember to pop over & visit her site too.

Debs Q....... Your blog is just over one year old, but you had recorded many posts prior to going public, why did you not open your blog initially?

Kavey A...... All the archive posts (anything dated before 2 April 2009) were not originally posted to Kavey Eats (which didn’t exist in any form until that date). They were originally written and shared in a variety of places including emails, food discussion boards, a personal life blog and even travel reports. When I created Kavey Eats at the beginning of April last year, I realised that it made sense to copy all that content into the blog as an archive record of my earlier foodie mutterings.I've always been into my food, always loved sharing great food experiences with other like minded friends and family, even taken photographs of special dishes for many, many years. So I don't know why I didn't start a blog sooner, really, especially as I had been reading other food blogs for several years. But it just never occurred to me to do the same. Then I went to an Easter chocolate tasting event, also attended by many London food bloggers, and it nudged me into the realisation that food blogging was essentially just creating a platform to share experiences I was already putting into words elsewhere.

Debs Q....... You are also involved with some other blogs. Tell us a little about them too.

Kavey A...... The only other blog I contribute to is one my husband and I keep as a personal record of our vegetable gardening – it’s not really a blog of interest to others, I should think.

But I am heavily involved in my mum's recipe website, Mamta's Kitchen It's not a blog but a collection of recipes with supporting advice pages and a discussion board. The site started after my sister and I, having left home, asked mum to write down the Indian recipes we'd failed to learn growing up. That request morphed into the idea of a family recipe website, which I designed and my husband created. Mum continues to provide most of the content (though we have some wonderful regulars who also contribute in many ways). Pete and I administrate and look after the IT side. After its launch, the site was quickly discovered by non-family members, I’m not sure how that happened actually. As they started to spread the word, our visitor numbers grew. In response to the many lovely messages and requests from readers, we gradually added all the extras you see now.

Debs Q...... Unlike most food bloggers, you do mostly restaurant reviews and socialising with other bloggers rather than cooking. You say 'I prefer someone to cook for me'. I guess this is not just your husband Pete, or your mum, Mamta. Give us a little more insight into your food passion.

Kavey A..... Many London food bloggers do a lot of restaurant reviews, I guess because we have such an incredible range of restaurants to visit! But yes, overall there are definitely more recipe food blogs than restaurant review ones. Apparently, the best advice for increasing visitor numbers is to specialise in one area, be that baking, vegetarian recipes, restaurant reviews, chocolate or something else. But I blog primarily for my own pleasure and I love all of it so I post anything and everything food-related that I want to talk about. My mix includes restaurant reviews and recipes, yes, but also interviews (more of which to come soon), food festivals, cookery book reviews and more. I do enjoy cooking but I also find it difficult to spend hours standing up in the kitchen or bent over a chopping board - it kills my back and hips. So when I cook, I like to find recipes which don't require too much fiddly preparation. Short bursts of effort between periods of long, unattended cooking are perfect! Luckily, Pete is not only a great cook, but happy to follow suggestions about what would be nice to eat! That said, we do cook together a fair bit. We've been cooking some great things recently and there are a number of recipe posts I'll be sharing in coming weeks.

Debs Q....... You socialise a lot with other food bloggers. Tell us more about this & what you get up to?

Kavey A...... I became active on twitter at around the same time as I began blogging and have found the London blogger and twitter foodie community very active, welcoming and hugely sociable. And of course, with our shared interest, it’s unsurprising that many of us arrange to meet up for food and drink experiences together. Often it’s just a case of someone talking about a new restaurant, or a particular dish at a favourite old one, others expressing interest and a date is organised.

In addition, one of the wonderful things about having a food blog is receiving invites to some great PR events; often these are a lot of fun and some are quite unique. And of course, I meet lots of foodies at these events too. What I particularly like about these is the opportunity to meet with chefs, cookery book writers, product developers and restaurant owners whom I’d never normally have the chance to interact with in this way. And hey, who knew I’d get my face printed on a personalised cereal box?!


Debs Q........ What's your favourite cuisine?

Kavey A...... I have a particular fondness for British, Indian, Chinese and Italian, with Japanese following closely behind. I don’t think I could ever narrow it down to just one!

Debs Q....... Are there any cuisines you've not yet tried, but hope to one day?

Kavey A...... Oh, lots! I don't know much at all about the very varied cuisines of the East. I've never tried food from Laos, Burma, Cambodia... and even from better known Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia I've tried only a fraction of the diverse foods eaten there. Plus there are so many cuisines I love but want to know more about - Chinese, Japanese, several South American cuisines... actually, there is no cuisine, not even British, which I have comprehensively tried all of!

Debs Q........ What is your favourite restaurant & why?

Kavey A...... My all time favourite restaurant has been closed for a couple of years now. It was a local neighbourhood Italian restaurant called La Lotta, just a minute's walk from us. Not only was the food truly excellent, but the staff became genuine friends (we still see them socially). That always made a meal out there a much rounder experience. We went there for casual weekday lunches, we went for quiet, relaxed dinners, we went for sociable meals with friends, we went for fabulous boisterous meals with larger groups, we went for celebrations of birthdays, anniversaries, job successes. Even with the other restaurants I love, I don't think anything will ever replace it. Of restaurants that are open, I'd say Bob Bob Ricard. I enthuse about this place so positively I've been accused of being their new PR, but it's just such a great experience. The interior is crazy and luxurious bling in a style that harks back to the heydays of the Orient Express, such an over the top excess that it makes one feel special just walking inside. I'm not a huge drinker but their cocktails are fantastic. Their signature rhubarb and gin cocktail is my favourite, which is odd because I don't like rhubarb and I don't like gin! They offer a range of chilled vintage vodkas served with Russian zakuski (snacks) which are delightful. The standard menu is full of comforting (mainly British) classics, all superbly cooked. And service is very warm and friendly. It's not cheap but it is good value. I took Pete there for his birthday at the end of May and we had, as always, a wonderful evening!


Debs Q........ Which restaurants are on your wish list to try out next?

Kavey A...... Oh my list is ridiculously long with new places being added faster than I can tick others off, but a few I’d like to visit are Club Gascon, Hibiscus, Le Gavroche, Ottolenghi, L’Anima, Viajantes, Providores, Terroirs, L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, any of the Galvin stable…

Debs Q......... You & Pete grow your own vegetables & fruits. Tell us what you've got planted and what's on your wish list.

Kavey A...... Vegetable wise this year we’re growing 4 varieties of potatoes, leeks, lettuce, gherkins, sweetcorn, courgettes, carrots, 3 varieties of tomatoes, sugarsnap peas, peppers and purple sprouting broccoli.

For the first time we’ve also planted lots of fruit this year including a cox’ orange pippin apple tree, raspberries, tayberries, gooseberries, rhubarb and wild strawberries.

Oh and I just bought some purple shiso seeds after falling in love with the herb at Mat Follas’ The Wild Garlic restaurant recently.

I think, for the moment, this is enough, though I’m sure I’ll think of something extra to add to the list next year!

For anyone interested in growing your own, you might enjoy my recent review of Celia Brook Brown’s New Urban Farming book in which she shares her experiences of taking on an allotment and shares lots of advice, ideas and recipes.

Debs Q........ Tell us more about your other passions, travel & photography.

Kavey A...... My parents love travelling, especially my dad, so I've inherited that passion - it's in my genes! I'm really pretty obsessive about it, I'd even go as far as saying it's a bigger deal to me than food, though it's a hard call and one I'm glad I don't have to make. So I've been fortunate enough to travel around the world since I was very young, and seen so many wondrous places. And I'm lucky enough that my husband, who had not really travelled overseas before we met, has grown to love it as much as I do. We particularly enjoy travelling to see wildlife in its natural habitat - our last trip was a month in the Falkland Islands surrounded by penguins and albatross. Our next trip is a return to Kenya on safari. For me, researching and planning a trip, which can sometimes absorb me for several months, is just as enjoyable as the trip itself and the memories afterwards! I got into photography as a kid and begged my parents to get me a proper camera - they bought me my first SLR when I was 12 or 13. Since then I've gone through active and quieter phases of interest, but have always been excited about taking pictures on my travels.

I started selling prints of some of my images several years ago, which was hugely gratifying. I’d like to update and reactivate the print sales website and get some recent images up on it, that’s another project on my long to do list at the moment!

These days both Pete and I sell images through stock libraries – it’s on a very small scale but it all goes towards more travelling and more great eating! Despite being interested in photography for so long I'm very lazy with my food photography. Mostly I'm just desperate to eat the food as soon as it’s ready, and seldom take the time to grab more than a snapshot or two, let alone put in place any food styling or decent lighting. I admire the stunning food photography on many of the blogs I follow but it’s not an area of photography I have much skill or focus on.

That's all folks.......