Hi, I’m Harlen and welcome to harlensdinner, my small corner of the internet where I can share my love of cooking and food experiences.

I’m not a professional chef, nor have I ever worked in kitchens or ever had any training, I’ve spent my professional career working in the hated IT industry.

I would love to be able to say I developed my love of cooking sat at the kitchen table enjoying the wonderful culinary creations lovingly prepared by my mother every night, but that’s just not true.

I learnt to cook because my mum was so bad at cooking (sorry mum if you ever see this), not that she didn’t try but everything was just the flavourless style of British cooking from the 50’s and 60’s and she never moved on from over cooking meat until it resembled shoe leather and boiling vegetables till they were a flavourless mush.

Now I just love to cook both for myself and to see my friends and family enjoy what I make. I’m always looking to find new recipes from all over the world to try.