About

About me

Hello foodies of the word! My name is Julia, I am 36 years old and I have been passionate about food  in general and soup in particular from an early age. Some of my most cherished memories are both my grannies teaching me how to cook their classic recipes, being those my first steps in the kitchen. The one who introduced me to soup, was my nanny and although her version of soup was just some stock with soup pasta, it became my favourite food.

Later on, travelling, other of my life’s passions besides cooking, led me to discover a whole new  world of flavours and ways to prepare, present and enjoy food.  From street or  food courts in Southeast Asia to the soup of the day in an Irish pub; from those fancy Michelin stars restaurants in Europe to a market seasonal menu in a tiny cozy Mediterranean restaurant;  everything have been an inspiration to research and experiment in my kitchen. And soup have always been  present among my favourites dishes from every culture.

Being born and raised in Argentina, having travelled (and eaten in sooo many places, nothing scares me!) quite a bit around the world and having lived in Mediterranean Spain for ten years now, my cooking style and taste in food is ever-changing and influenced by a wide range of cultural backgrounds.

That is why I started to cook ethnic food at home with enjoyable results and the help of some wonderful recipe books and food blogs from around the globe that were the kick-off.

My academic training as an agricultural engineer gave me good notions of the food-producing system, food groups and their nutritional information but I felt that some creativity was lacking in this picture, and then without mine even noticing it, I have found a creative path through cooking and this soup project  have shaped up as a blog.

And now I just want to share it with you and to travel the world together through a bowl of comforting soup. I hope you will pop up to try and enjoy my recipes!

Finally, some notes:

• Although Spanish is my first language, I decided to write this blog in English so I can reach more of you food lovers out there, so please forgive my mistakes and kindly help me improve them!
• Once in a while I will be posting some other recipes besides soup.

About soup

If you are wondering: why soup? Well for many reasons…

• It can be as healthy as you want to make it. It even adds to your water daily intake.
• It is a very versatile dish: almost every soup recipe can be modified to your taste and needs: vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, low carb, low fat…you name it.
• It can be a quick and easy way of preparing a complete, nutritious and comforting homemade dish
• It is practical, it can be cooked in large amounts at once and frozen in servings to be used at your convenience
• It is cheap, few amounts of every ingredient yield a lot and you can transform virtually any leftover or missing piece of food in your pantry and fridge into a soup
• And last but not least, it boost your creativity! Cooking is a form of art!

About the photographs

Unless otherwise indicated, all the pictures you see in Around the Bowl were taken by me, while and after cooking at my home kitchen, using my tableware and during trips. If you want to use them, please let me know,  give a link  back to this site or credit them accordingly.

About measurements

To be honest, I never measure quantities when cooking savory food and I don’t pay too much attention when following recipes either. I just follow my instincts and make adjustments on the go, with good results most of the times. Of course there are exceptions, for instance, I do measure quantities when preparing dough and I also try to be more careful when adding rice, legumes or pasta to a preparation.

However, I am aware of the importance of accurate ingredients amounts in recipes in order to make them easy to follow successfully for everybody, no matter how skillful in the art of cooking. Therefore, I really try my best to quantify components of every recipe I post, but you may need to adapt some to your taste and experience and I’d be very happy to hear any suggestion to improve my recipes together!

Finally, I use metric system to my measurements, but to keep conversions simple, I try to stick to universal measures like cups or spoons whenever I can.

Bon appétit!

Julia (Soup Guru, my blogger ID)

Advertisement