How I Wrote My Own Cookbook (Part 2)

If you’ve ever visited Shetland — or dream of doing so — you’ll know that food is woven into the experience of a place in ways that are hard to separate from everything else. The smell of the sea and its rich produce. Rhubarb jam on a fresh bannock with a cup of coffee after a long coastal walk. Taattie soup made with reestit mutton. The way a simple meal tastes different when you’ve spent the day in the wind. My cookbook grew out of that world — out of twenty years of living, cooking and growing things here.

When I arrived in Shetland in July 2004, I had very little idea of what kind of cook I was going to become.

My cooking skills at the time were not great. I could get by. But the move — the turbulent upheaval of it, the strangeness of a new place — did something unexpected: it made me appreciate the warmth and calm of my own kitchen, and with it, turn towards my own heritage. And finally, I’d be able to have my own garden where I grow things.

One of the first things I remember from those early weeks of my new life in Shetland was little chilli plants. Donald had grown them from seed that spring, and they needed repotting. It became one of my first proper tasks in the garden here. After I repotted them, they went alarmingly droopy — limp and fragile in a way that made my heart sink. I was convinced I’d killed them. And in my anxious, unsettled state, it felt like a metaphor I couldn’t quite shake. I made myself a quiet promise: if those plants could survive and eventually thrive, maybe I could too, in this new country and new home, starting from the beginning.

They did survive. They gave a beautiful crop that summer. And slowly, I let things develop.

But back to the recipes — because that’s really where this story lives.

Living so far from home meant I started to feel a nudging pull towards the food I’d grown up with. The flavours of my childhood in the Czech Republic. Bábovka — the walnut bundt cake my mum made, which I wrote about in Part 1. Vánoční cukroví — the Christmas cookies that take patience and time. Potato salad the way it’s made for special meals. Hearty soups made with humble ingredients. These weren’t dishes I’d cooked regularly before. Growing up, you take these things for granted. You assume they’ll always just be there.

It’s only when you leave that you realise how much you miss them. That feeling became central to the cookbook.

A Year in My Shetland Garden isn’t a Czech cookbook. Or a gardening book. It’s a book about moving to this place, about making home at 60 degrees north, about the garden we’ve built here and what it produces through the seasons. Rhubarb, which thrives here like nothing else. Elderflowers foraged from abandoned crofts. Wild garlic found in one of Shetland’s rare patches of trees. Fish and lamb, which for me now are as much a part of home as anything from my childhood kitchen.

The challenge — and the joy — was finding the balance between all of these things. My Czech self. My Shetland life. The garden. The seasons. The hospitality that comes naturally when you live somewhere remote and the act of cooking for people feels particularly meaningful. And then cooking and baking for my knitting groups, putting all those years of experience and passion into practice, making people from far away feel at home around a kitchen table.

I didn’t set out with a perfectly structured plan. It was more that one thing grew from another, quite naturally. Years of working for VisitScotland, Promote Shetland and Shetland Amenity Trust had deepened my understanding of this place and its heritage. My love of beautiful books and print — of good design, of paper weight and typography — had always been there. My garden had been growing, literally and metaphorically, for years. When I finally sat down to shape the cookbook, all those ingredients were already waiting.

The hardest part, if I’m honest, wasn’t the cooking or the photography or even the writing.

It was trust. Trusting myself to do it. Trusting that the book would find its people — sharing something so personal always feels vulnerable. And running your own small publishing company means every decision lands with you — there’s no big production team to rely on. It’s both the freedom and the weight of it. But I had a wonderful little group of people who helped me make this happen — my photographer, my editor and my designer.

Through the process of creating this book I’ve come to believe — and I hope it quietly shows — that food doesn’t have to be perfect. It has to be honest. Cooked with care. Rooted in something real. Whether that’s a Czech Christmas tradition brought to a Shetland kitchen, or a smoked haddock risotto lovingly prepared on a cold dark winter evening — if there’s love in it, that’s what comes through.

I keep dreaming, but now I know dreams can be within our reach. And perhaps this is what a reader and my friend noticed too:

“The thing that strikes me most is how you and your personality come through and with that a sense of family life, work, and sense of hospitality and adventures big and small.” — Hayley Anderton

Next in this series: the practicalities — how I planned the recipes, worked with a photographer to shoot the photographs, and worked with a designer to bring the book to life.