What working in paradise feels like

Hello and welcome to my newsletter about food, people and planet. It’s free to read, but you could choose to be a paid subscriber to support me.

My new book In Good Taste: What Shapes What We Eat and Drink - And Why it Matters is out now and available on Waterstones, Amazon, bookshop.org and more.

It’s been a month since I started going into an office again. I last had a formal workplace and colleagues six and a half years ago, so it was a big move. Except this time things are a bit different. I took the decision to do something that contributes to food, people and planet from the ground up, quite literally. For all the talking, prodding and provoking I do, I was missing an important piece of the puzzle: the doing. In a space where the future can feel futile, I want to tell you how it’s been so far.

I took the tube, train and bus on the hour-long commute from south London on my first day as Commercial and Marketing Lead for Hackney School of Food. It was sunny and warm, the organic growing garden a suntrap for 40 fruit trees and shrubs, schoolchildren and their carers. I ate lunch out of a box assembled at home, facing gooseberry bushes.

The MD, Zoe, offered me a cup of tea. I asked if she had any peppermint tea lying around. She said yes, went into the garden, picked some fresh mint leaves and steeped them in freshly boiled water.

As I went to the loo afterwards, I got surrounded by impossibly happy little people emerging from a cookery class. Six-year-olds were making pizza from scratch, proofing bread, grating cheese, chopping vegetables and using an outdoor pizza oven. I struggled to tell them I was having a busy day in the office on a mere two-day-a-week contract, and stayed to have a little chat with my new friends instead.

Since day one, I’ve discovered chocolate mint, or leafy After Eights. There are apparently 30 edible varieties of mint. I’ve watched a chicken chase a pigeon, words I never thought I’d utter. I’ve eaten school meals from Mandeville Primary next door that wouldn’t be out of place in a city café (beetroot and paneer with seasonal leafy salad, anyone?). I’ve watched 13-year-olds make pasties the Jamaican way, including boys who roll pastry better than I do. There are seven-year-olds learning about the business of beekeeping and cooking ribollita.

And best of all? Their families come along to cook with them, feast with them and have a bit of fun. The recipes, methods and enthusiasm often make their way home too. There are also food education, mental health and physical wellbeing programmes in place for older members of the community.

This is impact and sustainability in action. It’s tonic for a tired soul. And if this isn’t working in paradise, I don’t know what is.

I do have a tall order ahead of me, though. You cannot deliver impact without commerciality. Hackney School of Food needs to treble the commercial revenue it currently generates by making more effective use of its state-of-the-art kitchen, food and garden expertise, and stunning event space, the Garden Room. I’m in the midst of creating a strategic plan to grow commercial revenue through:

• Team away days: Strategy, team-building and bonding sessions with a difference, with wholesome lunches plus food and garden education included. They’re already doing this with excellent client feedback, but we’re about to up the ante.

• Corporate partnerships: Inclusive, longer-term relationships with kindred organisations, with varying levels of venue use, volunteering and donations to fit corporate pockets of all shapes and sizes.

• Masterclasses: A cook-with and learn-with calendar of private paid events featuring incredible talent to engage the local community and spread the word about HSOF’s mission and values.

The space is also available for private ad hoc hires, so I’m busy introducing the right people to it. Networking events, brand activations and photoshoots are all on the table. And all of this will be supported by simple and effective marketing and communications. It’s a small team and the ambitions need to feel achievable.

This is food system transformation in action, and we can all be part of it.

It’s a six-month gig, so I have my task cut out for me. Please wish me luck and, if any of the above appeals to you and you think you can make a contribution or connection, do get in touch. There are more pics here.

Leave a comment

Working in paradise also involves three days with the warmest people, cooking on stage and talking about culture, diversity and sustainability.

I was at Ballymaloe Festival of Food last weekend talking about diversity in Irish food, demonstrating a high-protein south Indian lentil pancake called adai and making bhurji, scrambled masala tofu. I then joined a panel with Darina Allen, the doyenne of cookery teaching, and Jimmy Doherty of Jimmy’s Farm, after which my book sold out.

First, a note on Ballymaloe.

If you didn’t know, Ballymaloe is a global culinary institution on the edge of Shanagarry in County Cork, dating back to 1964. Its history is deeply rooted in local, seasonal and sustainable cooking. What’s fascinating is that its evolution has been underpinned by the family’s daughters-in-law, with the husbands playing supporting and supportive roles. Darina established the cookery school. Rachel Allen is the celebrity author and educator. And Bree Allen runs events with an efficiency reminiscent of my corporate days and among the best I’ve seen at a food festival.

You can now see why my worlds would happily collide at their festival!

With no cookbook to promote, I hadn’t done a cooking demo on stage in a while. But I fell straight back into it and, guess what? It turns out spices and Indian recipes are a gateway to talking about food, people and planet. As part of my patter, I covered need-to-knows on the recipe ingredients, as well as:

• Beans, peas and lentils

• Organic spice production

• Plant-forward diets

• Soya production and animal feed

• Processing versus UPFs

• Food waste

Sharing a panel platform with Irish food royalty Darina was immense. We covered some of the challenges around policy, food education and culture in a packed tent, with people sitting on the grass and spilling out the sides. It was a captive audience of food lovers who want to do better but find it all complicated and confusing.

Both my talks were steered so breezily by Dee Laffan, founder of Scoop Magazine and author of the bright Blasta Books Soup cookbook, which I use often.

I got stopped several times afterwards by people who’d made their way to the festival bookshop too late, only to discover the book had sold out. In Good Taste is, of course, available online and in excellent bookshops. I’m proudly published by the Irish imprint Nine Bean Rows, part of Kristin Jensen Blasta Books, and it was wonderful to finally meet and watch her incredible talents in action and eat their food.

Food highlights included the speakers’ reception in the walled garden with local produce including Rossmore Farm oysters, new-season strawberries (they arrive earlier there), Ballymaloe orchard cider and local smoked trout. And then there was the Chef’s Table dinner at Ballymaloe House, with local lobster and their famous dessert trolley.

As for the stalls, let’s just say this is the best quality and value festival food I have ever eaten. All the meat is organic as standard, the portions are Irish and Indian (Irindian?) levels of generous, and everything is served with a grin. What happened after spicy margs, Guinness and Murphy’s in the house, hotel and festival bars is probably best kept offline. My new favourite word is “funtastic”. The Irish know how to put the fun into fantastic and it couldn’t be more apt.

Special grateful thanks to Bree Allen for inviting me along, Evanna Lyons and Cullen Allen for seamless hospitality, and everyone who helped me discover the craic, as they say. I can’t recommend the event highly enough.

I’ve popped what I got up to here and some very special people I got to the spend the weekend with here. I’ll do a highlights reel at some point.

I would create a new series called “Tired girl dinners” but there would be too much content to manage. I came home at midnight from Ballymaloe with a stash of incredible artisan food and beauty gifts. Lunch the next day was cobbled together with the two shrinking potatoes and pack of asparagus I acquired in an untimely shop before the travels with more gifts from my food and travel adventures.

I cooked the potatoes in the microwave, steamed the asparagus in a pan with the potato water (three minutes, lid on), then crisped the potatoes in Jersey butter. Two fried eggs on top with fresh Mexican salsa, Jersey salt and pepper and the job was done.

Pic: Asparagus, crispy potatoes, fried eggs with Mi Amor Cheeky Green

A note on chipotle

The traditional Mexican salsa is by the brand Mi Amor by Paola Almeida, who comes from Chihuahua, the desert region of north Mexico. She did a a little shudder as she told me how she felt about chipotle paste. She hates that it’s synonymous with Mexican food. These are dried and smoked red jalapenos that are sometimes stirred into dishes for flavour. It’s not used everyday as a condiment or salsa, despite being the marker for Mexican cuisine overseas. Now you know.

The Underdog

I started reading Felicity Cloake debut novel The Underdog on the flight to Cork. I laughed out loud two times in chapter one, startling awake the sleeping man seated next to me. It’s very funny, with the added bonus of lots of food chat and a main character called Dr Dipesh. It was lovely to spend time with Felicity at Ballymaloe, where we also ended up signing books together.

Scotland, here I come!

Hope to see some of you Edinburgh foodies there! Link to book is here.

That’s all from me this week. Thank you for reading, caring and sharing.