CREATING NEW RECIPES KEEPS ME ALIVE & KICKING !!!
That’s my Signature Line. So I Breathe, Eat & Live FOOD !!!!!!
Born in a simple family as Shital Shroff with just one sibling; my beloved younger brother (Snehal) & my biggest Guinea pig since childhood, I was a very quiet child, very studious & loved Art & could Read voraciously. My Dad was the Disciplinarian in my life & My Mom was the Friend every child needs to have, to date they still are !!!
When I was only sweet sixteen I met my Hubby Mitul Kakad & my simple life suddenly started changing, became more Colourful !! Married to him since 27 years but still feel as young as ever !!!
Born in a Foodie Family with both my Grandmothers & My Mom, My Aunts all being excellent cooks, all the family both maternal & paternal are Big Foodies like how Gujaratis are known to be !!! We have food running in our veins literally, haha.
I wanted to cook food from a very young age & I made my first Roti ( Indian flatbread) when I was just 8… My little nephew today does the same!!
As I grew older I would harass My Mom to make Recipes from her wide collection of the Late Tarla Dalal Books which were a rage then & I still love her recipes… As I mentioned earlier I was always a voracious reader & I started reading a lot of Recipe books available then.Till date, I collect Good Recipe Books & have a huge collection of Indian & International ones.
Cooking New Recipes when you are a novice is indeed a task & My poor Mom suffered for this. I would simply make the dish & walk out of the dirty Kitchen 😃😃…
But the one thing My Mom taught me which has helped me throughout my food journey is not to always take the book literally ( not for recipes that need the exact measurements) & to take an “Andaj ” meaning to take an approximation whilst Cooking which has been my biggest strength always…
Moving on I got married again in a family who loves to Eat… My husband, My fave Brothers in law love food. I literally went from a Green Zone to a Red Zone after marriage meaning My family comes from the Surat Navsari belt of Gujarat & my Mom in law is from Rajkot Gujarat. Whereas in Surat we cook all the food with green chillies, in Rajkot it is usually cooked in Red Chillies. So here I was learning a totally new way of Cooking the same Gujarati food from my Mom in law.
The Credit for my love for Authentic Gujarati Food must be given to My Mentor for whom I would cook some actual simple dishes which I had never tried Cooking before & perfecting a simple Authentic dish is much more difficult than anything fancy. To get the Flavours right is the Key!!!
Gujarati food is so vast in itself but it still forms only a part of our Amazing Indian Food & the Recipes of which I am slowly curating & documenting !!
After marriage I started travelling quite a bit with my husband & that’s where my love for Vegetarian Global food started. I would come back & try making the same dishes at home.
I don’t know whether I travel for Food or vice versa but my passion for these makes me write with a broader vision. Travel makes you connect to people, their Culture & Food which is according to me the best way to curate a Recipe.
My reading of Cookbooks continued & with the Internet being launched , the reading grew manifold.. Now there was also YouTube to be seen & get inspired !! With this My Passion to convert Meat Recipes into Meatless & Egg Recipes into Eggless started taking shape.
I would invite my Family & Friends at home & make innovative dishes for all of them … My husband & My Besties ( my college friends ) insisted me always on starting something with food as that was my Forte. So when I shut my Designer Clothes Studio after almost a decade, I started taking orders for Desserts in the name of “Shitalsfoodcottage ” ……But this was not what I wanted to do as by now I had already started creating my own dishes so I wanted to share my creativity. And that’s when I came across a friend who told me how to start a blog.
So I finally started my blog in 2016 but I had a lot to learn & which I slowly started learning when I joined the FBAI !! Meeting some great Bloggers, making new friends ( some of them half my age ) I started learning how to post perfect, how to Instagram, Twitter which was all new to me.
Getting a lot of love & likes from all of my followers made me more confident & I even started hosting Home Dining Events which is a great way to share my food & my passion. The Personal Interaction with the Diners is simply amazing & I will definitely be doing a lot of this in the future. Also a lot of other food-related Events planned too.
My Journey as A Recipe Developer has started off slowly but steadily & I hope to share many a Delicious & Delectable Recipes in the future. Maybe sometime soon in the form of a Book !!
My Motto in Life —
BE HAPPY & THANKFUL !!
Love Always,
Shital kakad
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