About
Hi, I'm Rashmi, the cook, food photographer, web designer, photo and video editor, digital marketing manager and writer of OvalShelf blog. I live in London with my husband and teenage son. I was born and brought up in the bustling city of Mumbai in India. As a Maharashtrian, I was exposed to Maharashtrian cuisine and living in the heart of Mumbai, I was never far away from delicious cuisines from all parts of India, not to mention the scrumptious street food that Mumbai is so famous for! Along with this, my foodie family thought that food shouldn't just taste great but should also be a feast for the eyes.
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After moving to London over 20 years ago, I started missing the delectable food that I was so used to eating in Mumbai. To satisfy my appetite for the
mouth-watering Indian food, I started cooking everything at home and experimenting with different cuisines.
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As years passed by my love for food grew and blossomed into OvalShelf. My source of inspiration is my loving and caring husband and sweet son. They both are my biggest cheerleaders. They have encouraged and supported me in every shape and form to build this website and OvalShelf YouTube channel where I can share my passion with everyone.
Me as a Person and My Cooking Journey
I wasn’t born a good cook but have been on this long journey of constant trials and errors with cooking, never being scared of experimenting and stepping out of my comfort zone to learn new cooking skills. I still sometimes have complete food disasters and fail miserably and get that feeling of all my time and effort being wasted. But then I try to think positively, convert failures to lessons learnt and use them as stepping stones to improve myself
further. I keep trying over and over, never giving up, until I’ve mastered the recipe!
I have this constant urge to learn something new everyday which has helped me become a better cook. I am still learning something new every single day, not just in cooking but all walks of life, and this journey for me will continue forever…
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Apart from cooking, my interests include gardening, travelling, arts and crafts, and going on long walks on breezy summer days.
My Background
I am a science graduate and have a qualification in multimedia and technical writing and authoring. I have over 15 years of work experience in the field of web content management, web design, print media, digital marketing, and e-commerce. Hence, this website is entirely my creation and is completely designed and developed by me. Also, all the OvalShelf’s image and video editing is entirely done by me.
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How it’s done – the Process
I thoroughly enjoy the process of building the recipes and creating videos and blogs which requires huge amount of organisational skills and attention to detail. It all starts with choosing the recipe I want to work on, trying and testing it several times till I have perfected the recipe and it tastes utterly delicious, noting down the accurate measurements even if it is the tiniest of the amount (even like 1/8 of a teaspoon). Once the recipe is well tried and tested and I feel confident about it I move on to the video shoot.
Proper planning and a lot of foresight is needed before every video shoot. Right from sourcing all the ingredients on time and deciding the props and the backdrops with correct colour coordination to choosing right type of pots, pans, crockery, cutlery, and utensils which will aesthetically enhance the looks of the dish. Since starting OvalShelf my collection of pots, pans, crockery, etc. has grown exponentially and collecting different types of props for photo and video shoots has now become a new hobby of mine.😊
On the day of shoot various activities need to be carried out. These involve collecting, chopping, and exactly measuring all the ingredients for the shoot. Then arranging all the tripods (I use 2-3 to capture shots from different angles), cameras, lights, and hob and then action begins with takes and retakes (sometimes several retakes) to get the perfect, neat, and clean shots. It can take hours to shoot a simple dish as so many things can go wrong while shooting and might need multiple retakes of a single shot. Once the dish is ready many photographs are taken with different props and backdrops in different light settings, angles, and formats.
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Then it’s time to edit the video (which takes up maximum amount of time, unlike common belief, to get the video looking just right). Entire video footage needs to be trimmed down seamlessly to just a few minutes. I use DaVinci Resolve video editing software to edit the videos. Once the edited video is ready it is uploaded and released on OvalShelf YouTube channel. I try to release one video each week on the channel.
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Finally, it’s the time to write the blog, publish it here on OvalShelf website and share it everywhere on social media. And then the whole cycle starts all over again and repeats itself for the next recipe.
Team Work
My husband supports me whenever he can, and we both work as a team. He kindly helps me with the video shoots whenever he is free. All OvalShelf videos are shot at my home in my kitchen. All OvalShelf food photography is jointly done by me and my husband. As my husband has an Information Technology (IT) background, he also helps me sort out any coding or technical issues that I might face with the website from time to time.
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Apart from cooking and shooting, I also manage all other parts of content creation including writing, photo and video editing and web content management along with digital marketing, web design, and social media management and do not outsource any work. As I am a bit of a perfectionist, pleasing me is a tough job so outsourcing anything might not be as helpful. Besides, OvalShelf is my baby and I have poured my heart and soul into it, so I do enjoy doing everything on my own, even if it means putting in a lot of hard work and giving up all my time for it. OvalShelf has now become my identity and I am very passionate about it.
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So that’s how everything is done here.
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Welcome to OvalShelf. Glad you’re here. Thank you for stopping by and wanting to know more about me and OvalShelf. Hope I can be of help and inspire more readers to cook with confidence.
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I test every recipe several times before adding to OvalShelf. If I am not entirely happy with how a certain recipe tastes, I don’t add it here. Also, I have made every effort to make each recipe as simple and easy to follow as possible with tips and tricks, step-by-step guidelines, images, quick videos, and precise measurements.
Please follow below guidelines for all recipes. You can adjust salt, sugar, and spices to suit your taste.
Measurements:
1 Cup = 250ml, 1 TBSP = 15ml, 1 tsp = 5ml
I love hearing from you so keep your feedback, suggestions and queries coming. Thank you.
Copyright Information
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Copyright © OvalShelf | All Rights Reserved
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All content including videos, video thumbnail images, recipe photos, and written content on this website and on OvalShelf YouTube channel are copyright of OvalShelf. Don’t use our copyrighted content in any way or form anywhere else.
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A lot of hard work, resources, time, and energy goes into cooking, creating videos and photos, and writing blogs and hence is copyright protected and must not be copied and used anywhere else other than OvalShelf.
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We LOVE hearing from you
If you have tried any OvalShelf recipe, please do let us know and share your food photo with us. Mention @ovalshelf or use hashtag #ovalshelf on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Thank you.
