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Right, roughly chop the carrot matchsticks.
And following a recipe I've found online for easy vegetable soup.
Cook time 15 minutes.
prep time zero minutes apparently I say
as I stand here chopping carrots do I trust it this is always the question with a recipe isn't it
because it's not just a list of ingredients or a set of instructions it's a promise that what's written on the page will turn out beautifully and in good time too but we all know from bitter experience that that's not always what happens.
So today's episode of The Food Chain from the BBC World Service with me Ruth Alexander is about how to write a recipe.
Why it's hard to get it right,
what separates the good from the bad and how it can take years to develop a scribble on an African into the glossy page of a recipe book.
More often than not,
the recipes that I come up with are from randomised ideas that I have in the middle of the night.
And I keep a notebook by my bedside for that reason, because ideas come at random times.
This is Easter Balfridge,
a London-based chef and food writer who co-authored Flavour with Yutem Otolangi.
The latest of her own books is called Fuzal.
But the way I tend to sort of turn it into reality is I start with an idea.
I'll sort of pick out the main ingredients,
the stars of the recipe and then I'll guess weights and timings and I'll write a skeleton of a recipe.