I create and write recipes, write about food cultures and food history, and make bespoke feasts for events.
Ask me to:
Create, test and write recipe content for books, magazines, brand promotion
Consult on menus for your project
Write longform pieces on food history and culture
Create a bespoke menu for your event and bring the realised food
About:
My childhood began in Shropshire, a rose-coloured 70’s haze of perfect coxes apples, Grape Nuts and Homity Pie, reading with fascination of Heidi’s toasted Alpine cheese, Laura Ingalls’ sugar snow and salt pork. We were a family of adventurous food habits for the time and place, there was miso in my sandwiches, we sprinkled gomasio on brown rice, my Dad baked sesame and linseed loaves in the cellar. Holidays by Citroen van were filled with Pyrenean goats cheese, sirop de grenadine and cassis ice cream, new places to live remembered by speculaas and Dutch marzipan rolls, caldo verde, cod and cornbread, eaten under bright blue skies, buffeted by Atlantic wind. Teens brought pecan pie experiments, bacon and vodka. A family home in the Cantal led to a long friendship with goose fat, chestnut honey, Salers cheese and Aligot - these years inform the way that I cook now, with a carousel of new influences dropping by.
I did an English Literature degree at Leeds, worked in places with words and food (Shakespeare’s Globe – Carluccio’s Deli - Carnevale – The Charles Lamb – Konstam). Meanwhile, I wrote a little book about picnics, and set up my catering company Melimelum, making generous, interesting and always delicious food with good ingredients and a focus on season and place, for lots of weddings, civil partnerships, funerals, christenings, launches and private views, and ran a series of Supper Clubs based on European regions.
I went on to write recipes for people’s books and businesses as guest or ghost, assisting styling some of them, and continue to cook, write and feed my keen interest in food cultures and traditions, the migration of recipes and how food connects us to the past and present of others.
