Dishing Up Magic

I remember walking into the house and instantly a delicious smell of all the different foods she had created would hit my nose. I would always want to help her with what she was cooking. So she would set up a little stool for me to stand on and I would watch her peel all the veg and then she would say “Chuck the peels over your shoulder and make a wish”… and then we would turn around and see what words we could create with the funny shapes that the peels had landed

All of these beginning adventures within Nini’s kitchen filled me with so much joy and I’ve always thought that’s what lead me on my journey to what I create in the kitchen today. Her love for entertaining matches mine, her love of music, her passion with flavours, spending hours in the kitchen, it all alines with how I like to spend my time in the kitchen. I cherish those memories and I owe this journey to her, as I know she would be so proud to see me doing what I love most.

From learning so much from my Nini after she passed away I wanted to explore food within culture, so I decided that I was going to throw myself out in the world and see what happened. I wanted to learn, grow, taste, smell and see the many amazing treasures that fill this world. So I booked a one way flight to china with the hope to travel for the next year or so. Ive got to be honest… I was shitting myself at first, I was still living at home, very much still a “Mummys boy” and here I was going to china, where they didn’t speak English or even have google to translate anything! But what could possibly go wrong!

I’ll never forget walking round the old town in Beijing and seeing meat stalls, veg markets, lots of weird and wonderful foods I’d never seen before and I wanted to try everything. I was travelling with my best mate and it was winter and we were hungry. We had no clue where to go or what to eat, so we went in one of the first places we came across for a late breakfast, early lunch. As soon as we stepped foot into the restaurant, the smells were incredible, the freshness from the noodle soup broths, so many different flavours going on and we looked at the menu and didn’t have a clue what any of it was, so we ordered by the pictures. We both went for what I think was a beef noodle soup, and oh my days was it good. We get Chinese in England, but it is NOTHING and I mean nothing like the food I had out in china and as soon as I had the first noodle bowl I knew this journey of culture of food was going to be a bit of me. I was hooked! We went back to the noodle bar 5 more times within the 2 weeks we were in china.

After eating my way through the many flavours of china, I went on to Vietnam. Vietnam ver quickly became my first and favourite love when it comes to countries. I fully fell head over heels for the country. The people were so amazing, the country itself seemed was just beautiful and the food was just insane! I’ve got to be honest, I hadn’t had much Vietnamese food before going there, so a lot of it was new to me. I feel like back then it wasn’t recognised as much as it is now in the western world. All the food was so fresh, simple and delicious. I would get a Banh mi at almost every stall I would see, I remember them being something ridiculous like 50p for a big old roll packed with pate, fresh pickled veggies and your choice of meat; they were incredible. Then I took my Pho virginity… I never thought a noodle soup could get better than that little food bar in Beijing, but Pho took my heart straight away. All the flavours in the broth are unmatched, then you have all your fresh herbs that you had to it, laced with some delicious rice noodles and your choice of meat or veg. A way to describe Vietnamese food for me is perfecting the flavours… keeping them fresh and not trying too hard. This works bloody well!

My love for asian food was only growing stronger by the second, I couldn’t get enough, so why stop there…. On to Thailand I went. First stop Bangkok…. Khaosan Road if you know you know… The craziest street in Bangkok, and my best food memory from that street, were the insanely cheap Pad Thais, you could get at ay time of the day or night for so cheap and sink it with many beers and maybe a ping pong show if your lucky. I travelled a lot of Thailand from top to bottom, and the northern food was so different to the south. One of the stand out dishes from the north for me was Laab, which is like a spicy beef salad, oh lord was it spicy, but absolutely incredible and full of so many flavours. I remember Thai food always had a lot of fish sauce in their dishes… you could smell it cooking in the sun down alleyways where they poured it down the drains…. Not the nicest smell! But in the food it gave it so much flavour, like in tom yum soup, one of my favs! I loved the culture in Asia around getting heaps of food bought out to the table and everyone getting stuck in at once. Rather than everyone having their separate meals and rushing to finish, the asian culture is for it to be occasion and it to go on for a few hours into the evening, bring everyone together, laugh, smile, drink, listen to music. It bought me back to how my Nini used to entertain and I think that’s why I could relate so much.

I then went onto to travel Australia for a year and worked in a an Italian style kitchen cafe in Melbourne for a while. I got the buzz of being around chefs and that fast pace environment. How they prep the food and cook to order, how they build the menu with different flavours. I learnt a lot in that kitchen and the food was incredible.

That then lead me onto Canada where I adopted a plant based diet and it was something I become very passionate about very quickly. I feel like I learnt enough about food whilst eating meat and travelling the world for me to take that knowledge into my vegan world and show everyone how easy it is to do. I saw how much pressure the world was under , the damage taking place, and I wanted to do something about that in any way I could. So I adopted a Plant Based diet and fell in love with it. My health drastically improved and I feel amazing every day I wake up. It was a completely new way to cook and I learnt so much about all the different ways you can level up plant based recipes. It definitely helps me think outside the box in the kitchen.