Shellfish: why there is none in my food

I am allergic to shellfish. Not dangerously, life-threateningly allergic but they make me ill, usually within 20 minutes of consuming them. So I don't eat or cook with the following:

• prawns
• shrimp
• crab
• lobster
• mussels
• scallops
• oysters

It is easy enough to avoid using whole shellfish in most recipes, but Thai cooking often uses shrimp paste and oyster sauce is a common  or ingredient in Chinese dishes. Vegetarian substitutes exist, usually made from fermented bean curd or mushrooms, but I tend to use light soy sauce instead. There is a useful article about vegetarian alternatives in Thai cooking here http://www.thaigrocer.com/VegAdapt.html

When eating out I try to be careful. I don't order Pad Thai or Singapore Noodles, for example as I know they generally contain prawns. But many dishes contain shrimp paste which is not listed in the menu. Luckily the amount used is quite small, and so far (fingers crossed) I have been fine.

So, when I cook Thai curries, I leave the shrimp paste out and, to be honest, I don't really notice the difference. I will be cooking Thai next weekend and will share the recipe I use so you can try it out for yourself.

Finding recipes

With the internet, finding recipes to suit every taste and occasion has become very easy indeed. Type 'green curry paste recipe' into Google and it returns about 755,000 results! Whatever you want to cook, sweet or savoury, someone has posted a recipe for it. The trick lies in filtering out overly complicated recipes or ones with obscure ingredients. While it would be great to include galangal (a root similar to ginger) in your Thai cooking, it may not be easy to buy locally.

When searching for recipes online I find the top results are often from websites I know and trust, like BBC Food or celebrity chefs such as Delia Smith. Sometimes the links go to recipes provided by commercial companies. Both Blue Dragon and Amoy sell a range of quality Asian cooking products, from cook-in or stir-fry sauces to ingredients such as Thai fish sauce or tamarind paste and they have excellent websites which provide a range of recipes using their products. Of course you don't have to stick to the brand to enjoy cooking and eating the food, but it helps to know that the ingredients for what you plan to cook are readily available!

As I live in the UK, I tend to stick to UK-based sites, especially when it comes to recipes as the measurements are familiar. US sites tend to use cup measurements - this baffles me as it is too vague. Do they mean a teacup or a mug? Anyway, I find it all a bit confusing, so unless they provide measurements in either imperial or metric, the recipe is of little use to me. Also, they tend to refer to coriander as cilantro and courgettes as zucchini - there could be other misunderstandings, hence my preference for UK-based websites.

Many of the websites I have listed in the left column have internal search functionality, where you can enter an ingredient, such as chicken or lemongrass, and it will return a list of recipes using the item specified. This is handy when you have one or two  main ingredients but are not sure what you can use them for. It helps to have a well stocked store cupboard though. I always have the following in stock:

• coconut milk
• tinned chopped tomatoes
• rice (Basmati, long grain and jasmine)
• noodles
• several types of pasta
• a range of herbs and spices, including dried chillies
• garlic
• ginger
• ready-made curry pastes (Madras, Thai green curry, harissa)
• soy sauce (both light and dark)
• Shaoxing rice wine
• sesame oil
• olive oil

With these 'basics' available, I can always cook a dinner in the evening after work. It is easy to whip up a stir-fry with whatever fresh meat and/or vegetables I have in the fridge. Tinned tomatoes make a great sauce for pasta with the addition of garlic, onion and basil if there is no meat around. In fact, with a little bit of imagination it it easy to rustle up a quick meal from a few basic ingredients cooked with herbs and/or spices.

Beginnings...

Welcome to cooking -Murf style!

Living on my own, it takes a degree of motivation to cook a meal from scratch for myself. The easy option is to pick up a ready meal on my way home from work but this can get boring after a while. Plus, I'm fussy! Being allergic to shellfish rules out a lot of meals, not liking mushrooms, courgettes, cauliflower or aubergine (amongst others) limits the choices even further. So I tend to make quick and easy dishes at home during the week.

This blog is all about food - the food I cook for myself and for friends, using recipes I have found in books, magazines or online. Many have been customised to suit my personal taste. I will be sharing these recipes, but also writing about my favourite ingredients, discussing healthy options, exploring regional cuisines, commenting on the latest food trends, highlighting seasonal products, looking at the politics of food production and more. If something food-related catches my attention then I will post something about it here.

My favourite meals are generally spicy... Indian, Thai, and Chinese recipes are regularly cooked in my kitchen. I love curries and stir-fries, rice and noodles, cardamom and ginger. There is something very creative about Asian cooking, especially when you make the curry pastes and spice blends from scratch. But there isn't always enough time to cook a proper curry, which is where ready-made pastes come in very handy, particularly for after-work meals.

One area I would like to develop is baking. I haven't made bread since domestic science classes in school, although I have baked a few cakes and brownies since then, it isn't a regular thing. Given I have a sweet tooth, it would make a lot of sense to bake at weekends instead of buying cakes and biscuits from the supermarket! And the smell of freshly baked bread is always delicious.

So, this blog will be a record of my cooking experiments, and of all food-related topics that interest me. I will label all recipes with the type of cuisine along with the main ingredients and cooking method which should allow easy searching. Comments will always be welcome, especially if you have tried some of the recipes yourself. I would love to know how you got on.