Good morning. Hello,

Alex Luise! Great to have you!

Good morning. Thank you very much for having me.

Lovely. So we, we had a conversation before on your podcast that was, that was, very wide ranging, so, maybe we'll revisit some of those conversation points. But let's just start Quite at the beginning. Do you have a really early memory of food or cooking?

my mum used to make milk bread, Platts, so it was like a Swiss kind of recipe with milk and eggs in the bread dough, and then she'd plat it and it was like the most soft, doy, delicious thing I think I've ever eaten. And I've I don't think I've ever managed to completely recreate it. And it was the, it's the everything, right? It's the dough, the watching it rise, the smell of it. It's too hot to eat, so you have to wait and then it's still warm and, or just the whole thing, the way the butter melts on it, the way actually then when it's cold, it goes a little bit crusty, but it's still really soft. So yes is the short answer to that. you know, and I'd have been a child, I dunno what age, 'cause she used to make it, not all the time, but. yeah, and also, I mean she used to make strawberry ice cream that I'm just, it's so interesting you asking that direct question and me going, oh, what is it she used to make strawberry ice cream when the strawberries are in season? And it was, again, never tasted strawberry ice cream like it. And there's a whole, you know, it's 'cause it's childhood and trying to replicate it. And I think actually we used to go and pick the strawberries in a pick your own farm and then she would make it and we'd use cream. And you know, it's just that the whole world of proper ingredients and doing things quote unquote slowly, that it, it impacts the flavor. You can't, you can't buy that in a supermarket

Yeah.

'cause it's, the whole experience is tied up in the, in the flavor.

Exactly. That's the interesting thing, isn't it? That how the memories are not only connected to, to the taste of it, but as you said, the, the whole experience, the context, the situation, the people, the place... all all those things. Yeah. So, and do you remember. So, obviously your mom was a good cook, so do you remember learning to cook?

I don't remember formally learning how to cook. I just knew how to cook. And I think it's that being around cooking, you don't, I didn't realize I was learning. I remember being 10 11 and making sponge cakes and, you know, decorating them with icing sugar and being able to heat up a, like a long wire, um, skewer and make the pat, like burn the pattern into the icing sugar across the cake and stuff. But I don't, no one ever taught me to do that. But I was taught all the time. 'cause every, you know, my mom cooked all the time. She made, she made everything. And my dad would cook. He loved food and he would cook now and again when it was like big meals, he'd kind of get involved and he, you know, he can cook as well. it's just that being around it all the time and learning without realizing, learning it, that I think, you know, again, looking back, it's really interesting being asked this question that. We have such a move in the modern day to do formal learning and you must learn how to do something. And it's horrific. I mean, I hated school, but actually we learn just by being around stuff, which is cool, but also devastating because now children aren't around cooking in anywhere near shape or form that, you know, I was, I mean, I'm 43 and what's happened to food since I was born is just, I would say devastating. In an an unintentioned consequence of convenience. And don't worry, you'll, you know, you don't have to burden yourself with cooking. I don't think there's any, you know, dark forces at play. I think it was all done out of, don't worry, we'll help you. And look, I'm really clear that food companies need to make money, but I don't think they did it. You know, oh, we're gonna make people sick and fat and all the rest of it and take them out of kitchens and children won't learn about food. I think it was all done with a, oh, this will really help everybody.

Yeah, the, the curse of convenience.

yeah, it's devastating. It's, it's, it's beyond devastating. we don't realize it until we get sick or tired or we just don't feel right. Like, we're like, we don't, we don't feel right. And, you know, people listening to this. If they can just connect themselves to how do you feel? And if you don't feel good about the food you're eating or something feels off, that feeling's real. And it's, it is the curse of convenience. And it's, it's, difficult to distinguish because we are told this is gonna make your life better. And in some ways it does. Right? 'cause you don't have to be in the kitchen. But on the other hand, if I eat bread or strawberry ice cream, now that hasn't been cooked in a kitchen and I haven't had the full range of experience, it's kind of empty. It's just a piece of bread. There's nothing else. There's no connection and relationship and smell and wonder and curiosity, just the curiosity of watching bread rise, it still gets me now as an adult. You know, I make dough and I go back a couple of hours later and it's twice the size. You don't get that when you buy bread. And it's like all of those things that we don't really know what they do, but they connect us to something far deeper than just, oh, I'm hungry. I need to eat food.

It used to be that if you didn't cook or someone cooked for you, you don't eat. And now it's almost like cooking gets in the way of eating and it's something, you know, you have to somehow, get, get around because

Yeah.

uh, cooking is preventing you from eating. So how can you. Minimize cooking or get around cooking. And of course it is these days, it's perfectly possible to go through life without ever cooking a thing, and people do.

Hmm.

but interestingly, even if you never cook a thing, that instinct of you know, what is good to eat? We still have that because obviously we are all eating every single day of our life, whether, we cooked it or not.

Yeah. Right. I had a catering company. It is longer than I care to remember now. It's like, gosh, it's nearly two decades ago. And um, one of my strap lines was, even a sausage roll should taste amazing. And I used to make sausage rolls and people would be like, oh my God, these taste so good. So like, alluding to what you've just said, they'd be like, what did you do? I'd be like, I made it. I didn't buy it. It wasn't made in a factory. The sausage isn't full of more bread than the pastry. You know, like that whole, it's real meat from outdoor raised pork. And I used to buy the puff pastry. But I tell you the puff pastry now, 'cause what puff pastry is one of those things, even as a chef that, apart from when I worked for Raymond Blanc at the Manoir, no one makes it, like chefs don't make it. Unless you work in, you know, Michelin star restaurants and in that, and, and there there was a, I think there were 10 people just on the pastry section who made all the bread and pastry and all the rest of it from scratch. So, you know, most restaurants in the restaurant industry buy the Pastry in and it's kind of acceptable 'cause it's a difficult one to do. It is, you know, the pastry that we used to buy 20 years ago isn't the pastry that we can buy now. It's different. It doesn't act the same, it doesn't look the same, it doesn't taste the same. If I made you a sausage roll now, compared to 20 years ago, using, you know, the brands that we all know, like just roll pastry or even, you know, Sainsbury's, it's all butter pastry. I don't know what they do to it, but it's not the same. It doesn't act the same. It doesn't look the same. But we as a, as a population, we don't notice because every year stuff shifts a little bit. I. So we don't notice a big, until we have conversations like this and I go, man, the sausage rolls 20 years ago, were not what they are now. We don't notice, 'cause we usually compare things to last year. It's like the population getting larger, you know, from a weight perspective, it doesn't really feel that bad as such because it's happened over the last 30 years. And then I see a, you know, a meme on the internet. This is a beach from the 1960s, this is a beach now. And it's like, whoa, what happened? And it's the same with food and things keep creeping in. Yeah.

but actually sort

of quite surepetitiously,

you mentioned something there, you know, that you used to be a chef. So, said you learned, cooking by, by being around people who cook.

Yeah.

So how was then the next step up of, of becoming a chef?

Um, well, what's really interesting, and I've, again, I've not made this link before, is that, I started working, I did some work experience in school at 14, and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I hated school. We'd only just moved to Wales. I. I was really struggling just as a teenager. And with, you know, just family dynamic, moving, making friends, all of that. So, you know, what I wanted to do for the rest of my life was just not, I couldn't, I couldn't do my life there and then nevermind like, what do I wanna do for the rest of my life? It's one of the questions that really actually annoys me that we ask children. It's so like, it's like they don't know. I didn't know. And the ones that do it's great, but a lot of children don't know. So it was kind of like, well, people who, dunno what they do, go into catering. So I got a job. I, I, such a joke, right? It's like such a hard career to do and the people that end up there, it it, yeah. It's interesting. So I did work experience in a small hotel in Cardiff and I was Chambermainding, cleaning, doing a little bit of, I, I think I did a little bit of restaurant service, all kind of, the memory sort of collapsed 'cause they actually, after two weeks, they paid me. Which was revolutionary. 'cause at 14, to have suddenly financial means, no one else in my year of like 200 kids got paid. So I was also like, oh, this is pretty cool. They paid me and offered me a job and I said, yes, please. And the work was fairly, know, it, it was pretty basic, right? It was a pair of hands, but I suspect, because I'd done all this stuff at home with my mom, know, it was like changing beds or taking plates to people or washing up, whatever. So. I did more of what we've just talked about. I just learned by being around the people that knew what they were doing, and as I went along, I learned more and more, and I ended up then going for a waitressing job in an Italian restaurant with a friend, and I think I was like, again, 14, 15, maybe not even turned 15 at this point. And um, looking back, it's hilarious 'cause I'm sure they were just like, who are these children? Because you know, we thought we were like also grown up and I look at 14 and 15 year olds now and go, did I really look that young? 'cause I felt very grown up. they said, no, you can't have a waitressing job, but you can wash pots if you want. And we went, yeah, okay, fine. Whatever. It'll get us in the door 'cause they kind of said, and then you can become a waitress later. So we were like, yes. Okay. So then I was washing pots and when there weren't pots to wash, I prepped veg. So I was like chopping boxes of mushrooms, peeling onions, picking spinach. It was an Italian restaurant, so, you know, all, all different veg. And um, mark, the chef said, what are you gonna do? You like, I did my GCSEs when I was still 15 because my birthday's in July, so my GCSEs were done. He was like, right, whatcha gonna do? And I said. I don't know. I hate school and I'm certainly not going back there. He said, you want a job? And that was it. I was in, and instead of them pot washing, I was in the kitchen all the time, but again, I was only 15, so I was just, I just learned, they just showed me what to do and I did it. And within a year I was running the downstairs kitchen. There was like, it was a three story Italian restaurant and I'd done the pizza section, starter section, the pasta and meat section. So at Christmas time I'd run with another chef. I don't know, we did, I think we had about 40 or 50 covers customers down on that floor. And we'd just do it together I could run a section on my own and do 150 covers upstairs. Wasn't easy, but I could do it. And I did it just 'cause I'd learn. 'cause I watched the people that were there and I wasn't under this enforced learning environment like school where you're told you need to know this. I was just learning. 'cause that's what everyone did and yeah, so baptism of fire, but what an amazing way to learn. Really, you know, powerful and, and hard and all of it, like the whole thing, like so many hours. So little pay wouldn't change it for the world. I'd do it all over again. I'd recommend that. I don't think kids are even allowed to do that now. I, I think they'd actually not be allowed to do that, which I think is devastating for children who actually, you know, older children who actually wanna get their hands involved in something. You know, by the time I was 18 I was working for Raymond Blanc at its Michelin Star restaurant. And again, I went back to the bottom of the pile and I started on the veg section. And then I worked my way, way round every, every section. And I learnt by seeing what people were doing. you know, there was no far formal classroom. And at 18 there were people who were coming out of catering college who, guess what? They had to start at the bottom and pick spinach. So I'd had, you know, four years of full-time experience and full-Time in catering is 60 to 80 hours a week. It's no joke. So I was really qualified by this point, whereas the people that had been formally taught in college, it was like they were coming into a kitchen for the first time.

That's really interesting to see. You know, we, we forget that learning is something that happens, you know, every second of. Us being awake, you know, when you're a child even, uh, a lot more so, because you have to learn everything. But we don't just learn when we are being sat down to

Taught

You know, we just learn by, by going through life every step of the way. So that's interesting. So even as a chef. You didn't have a formal qualification. You just learned on the job, as I assume, you know, also chefs used to do. Yeah.

Yeah, and I mean, I, and I'd say anyone listening to this who's thinking about, you know, going to work in a kitchen, go find your favorite restaurant and offer to wash the pots. 'cause you'll learn more that way than anything. And then inevitably, within probably a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, they'll be short-staffed, or they already are short-staffed. So you'll end up doing more and then bang, you're in. Like this this idea that, oh, I must go and get a qualification so I can go into a kitchen. That's actually it. It sets you backwards, you know? It, it's, and it's completely counterintuitive 'cause we're told you must have a qualification. You need to go to university. You'll never make anything of your life if you don't have a qualification. It's not true. It might be if you're gonna be a doctor or a vet or a lawyer where you, you know, you really do like, you have to learn some stuff in that way. But for a lot of jobs you don't. And I'd say for a lot of jobs that aren't being taken by ai. You don't need a qualification. There's the paradox. We're sending everyone to university, telling everyone they need all this, these qualifications. They're the easiest jobs to wipe out with a ai.

That is a really good point. I haven't hadn't looked at this that way.

Yeah.

But also it's interesting that, you know, hearing your story and thinking about the fact that you know me as, as the intuitive cook, sort of teaching other people how to cook intuitively, I really have this hangup that, you I'm not a qualified chef or you know, I have no qualification.

Neither am I I love that we've just realized that, or that you've had that, because we've spoken before about this, but I've never met, looked at it like that before either. Like, neither have I.

and as you said, you, are not in catering anymore. You don't work as a chef anymore. You're now, you know, a, a mom of two young children. You're a really busy money coach, so you are, you know, a really busy person like, like we all are but you know, you still need to feed your family. So has the experience you had as a chef, does it help you, being an everyday person, feeding a family, or is that just a different kind of thing?

I think it makes it much easier for me and I'm aware that I don't, know what it feels like not to be able to cook, right? So I find it quite hard to comprehend not being able to cook. Like when people say I can't cook, my first question is, what the F do you eat then? 'cause like, I, I really struggle to get my head around that. So I'm aware that. I can cook very fast. I can cook intuitively, but that's because, you know, chefs end up kind of having, well, not all chefs, but a lot of chefs learn. You know, we, we know all of the, it's like the, the things that you talked about, which by the way, when you talked about food layering and patterns, I was like, whoa, I've never taught, thought about it like that before. So it makes it easier and faster for me because I've just, you know, it's repetition, right? I've chopped more mushrooms than I care to imagine. Like you, I could probably fill this room and more with the number of mushrooms I've chopped, and by very definition it means I can chop very fast. But I also don't think that, you know, in, in terms of like how long that actually takes. It's kind of fractional, you know, I've still gotta get a pan out of a cupboard and I still have to decide what to cook and I still have to do the shop. You know, like cooking is such a, it starts with what's the meal plan for the week, even if it's in a broad... I don't kind of have a very rigid plan, but I kind of know, well, I'm gonna have a whole chicken and some steaks and a pack of sausages and some stewing lamb and I'll, you know, I'll buy some mince meat and then I'll. you know, once the week starts to settle, I'll decide which days are a bigger cooking day and which are less. And I always cook three times as much as we need, and then put two thirds in the freezer. So then on a day when I'm really busy, I just get, like, today we're having bolognese. I made it last week. You know, it was in the freezer. I took it out last night. I put it in the fridge. I'm gonna cook some pasta. I'll make some salad. Dinner's gonna take me, it's probably quicker than microwaving a meal. Today, but you know, the other day I made bolognese,

Yeah, but obviously it doesn't take that much longer to make. twice as much,

Yeah, it doesn't, it really doesn't because actually once you're cooking all the other pieces, if you're cooking for one or 10, the thinking about the meal, they're going shopping, they're getting the pan out. The only bit that actually takes a bit longer is the chopping. Everything else takes the same amount of time.

And this is something, you know, I, I Try to, make people realize that the actual cooking isn't taking that much time. It's this whole sort of, the most of the brain space is being taken up by, by us overthinking it,

Yeah. Completely. Yeah.

having to, you know, planning it and shopping for it and, and trying to get your head around the recipe and following the steps and all the frustrations that come with it. So, when you start cooking a bit more intuitively, then a lot of this just falls away. well, you, you, you're not overthinking it.

Yeah, and you can do stuff differently. You can do stuff without recipe, so you can pull a meal out of somewhere, which If you can't cook it's, you know, the classic people look in the fridge and they go, there's nothing to eat. And I'm like, the fridge is fucking full man. Like, you've got lots of stuff there. We could whip up or we made frittata yesterday. Which was inspired by your Instagram video by the way. 'cause you were like, these are all the things you could do with the frittata. I was like, I've only ever thought of it as a chef, where you have onions and potatoes and you have to cook it this way and that's it. And I was like, oh, I've got loads of cooked potatoes left and there's some hallumi that's been hanging around in the fridge forever and I've got an old onion that's starting to sprout and you know, I chucked it all together and put the eggs in. And we had frittata for lunch yesterday. We've got a lunch today because I made a huge one. But it makes it, it actually makes it less time I could have looked in the fridge yesterday and gone, there's nothing to eat. cause there's not a meal ready.

Yeah, I think there is quite something about this concept of, of thinking in meals. you know, if you think in meals, then it's all quite rigid and, you know, you can only make the meal with 1, 2, 3 x, y, z specific ingredients. But if you think of it in a, in a pattern, like a frittata is basically stuff baked with a mix of eggs. You know, the stuff could be anything. You can't make a frittata without eggs, okay. Well, you can actually, you gram flour, chickpea flour instead of eggs.

Ooh, I didn't know that.

yeah.

It's interesting how, you know, you find out about one thing and then you think, oh, you could combine it with that thing and then, you know, you Google it and it a thing. So, uh, uh, I found this recipe about some, an Italian dish, which is called farinata, which is basically like a, and and you mix the chickpea flour with. Lots of water and lots of olive oil and let stand for a while, and then you can, and then you sort of cook it in the oven. You can either, you know, cook it like a pancake or cook it on a, on a tray, it into pieces. So there was one thing. and then when, you know, I started talking on Instagram or in my blog and what would be, you know, The free version, and I yeah, you could, you know, instead of putting pancake squares, you could add the vegetables in it. Which is, which is what you do with a frittata. And then you know, chickpea frittata, frittata, and. And it's all there, you know, it's versions. I I remember sometime ago I of, um, a cabbage carbonara. saw it somewhere, in someone's video and I thought, oh my God, this is genius. You could do a carbonara without using pasta. You just use cabbage and you still put in the bacon and the cheese, and it's actually really, really Amazing.

Tasty.

And you know, and I thought, oh, you know, this person But you know, once you see it, once you realize it's a thing, I mean if you Google cabbage Carbonara, there is pages and pages and pages of Cabo cabbage carbonara So, you know, most things you of discover are. a thing. Is like, you know, where does a recipe start? Who owns the recipe? Who's the recipe? You know the, well, as they say, there is as

Mm. Yeah. And there's so many nuances, but I really like that once you realize, you know, even the story about the cabbage carbonara, right? So I'm a chef, I love food. I've never heard of that. And I'm like, oh yeah. And actually then when, in terms of the way you talk about it, about patterns and layers, it's like, well, how many other dishes can you do like that? That would have pasta. You know, my children have got issues with eggs and dairy and wheat, which when it first happened I was like, Jesus. Which there's a whole nother conversation about that, about, wow, what have we done to the basic, you know? And I buy organic local where I can, and you know, I still use Sainsburys, but I'm choosy about what I buy. And I'm like, why are my kids reacting to these things? And so there's a need then, you know, and I think a lot of parents are dealing with allergies and, and intolerances and reactions now. If we don't know how to cook.... those things become a real problem. And they were quite a problem. You know, the ingredients that have just been taken out of my cupboard are dairy and eggs and wheat. And, you know, for people listening to this, just think about that for a minute. I was making fish pie with cream and I was making, you know, pasta with cream sauce. So no more pasta, no more cream sauces, no more cheese, no more eggs wheat is in fricking everything. pasta, bread, cereals, it's just everywhere. And we were eating, you know, organic sourdough bread from Riverford still. Meh.. it was because I can cook that, that wasn't actually that much of a big deal. It just took a little bit of like. Okay, we need to, you know, rejig. And then when you start saying things like, well, there's cabbage carbonara. And now, okay, I couldn't do the eggs and the dairy bit in that, but it's that, you know, I started making fish pie with a tomato sauce instead of a cream sauce. And there are things that we just don't eat. And gluten-free pasta has come a long way and we don't eat it very often, but like tonight we're gonna have spaghetti bolognese with gluten-free pasta. It's the ability to cook that removes my requirement on food companies. 'cause if I go to the food companies saying, no wheat, no pasta, no dairy. Anyone who's experienced this and you've probably seen it, it's a horrible mix of replacement vile food that I wouldn't Well, I was gonna say, I wouldn't give it to my dog. My dog wouldn't eat it. You know, it's like my dog would look at me like, why are you giving that to me? But it was the, being able to cook that made that not such a bad crisis. Cause if you take those issues to food companies their replacement versions are, I would say, probably worse than the original thing we're trying to

Yeah. Well that's the thing, isn't it? That actually, if you think about it yourself, replacing things as okay, what, you know, what does it do? How does it taste? What does it add or take away? And then, you know, you don't need a vegan recipe to. Take meat out of a recipe. You know, if you don't want fish in your pie, you just replace it with something else and you just have to have, you know, an understanding of what things do. But a lot of this understanding is actually, common sense. Like I love this quote from Samin Nosrat, and she says, you know, cooking is all about using your senses, mostly common sense.

That's brilliant. I love that. Yeah. 'cause when you first started the sentence, I was thinking when I first worked for Raymond Blanc and he's very passionate and he was really, he was you've gotta use your eyes. And the biggest thing actually that kind of taught me that I already sort of knew intuitively, but I suppose he said, you gotta use your ears. How hot does the pan sound? How is the sizzling going? like your ears will tell you a lot about cooking, but I'd never thought about it before, but I'd never, never thought about common sense being one of the senses to use. 'cause it is, it's like, well just stop and think for a minute.

Stop looking at the recipe, look at the pan. look at what is in front of you,

yeah, yeah, right?

So maybe it's something you discovered having to deal with all this restrictions, or maybe it's something from before. What? What is your favorite thing to eat?

mine, hands down every time is roast chicken. It's so simple. so in a very British way, although there's lots of versions of not great roast chicken out there, but roast chicken, gravy made from the pan juices., You know, a cauliflower cheese roast, potatoes and roast parsnips, and some form of green veg. Whatever's in season, you know, because that, that's the other thing I love about roast chicken. You can take it all the way through the seasons. In the summer I have it with jacket, potatoes and salad, or put it on the barbecue and with salad. And in the, you know, in the wintertime, I'm already very excited about this Sunday because the autumn has arrived. but South Wales, autumn is definitely here, so I'm like, yes, I can have roast chicken and roast potatoes. I think it's 'cause my mum cooked it and it was always so delicious. And when I worked in restaurants, I, I ran a pub for a, a couple of years with my first husband and I just loved cooking Sunday lunch and I cooked it how my mom cooked it. And a lot of chefs, in my opinion, mess with Sunday lunch and it's like, stop messing with perfection and simplicity. You know, they make it too chefy. It's like when chefs put things in creme brulee, I'm like, creme brulee just needs to be a creme brulee. It doesn't need anything else. And and so people listening going, but I love raspberries and my creme brulee. That's fine if you really love it, but does it really need it? 'cause actually just creme brulee as it is, is like, in my opinion, perfection. And simple, you know, it's like three ingredients, cream, eggs, sugar, that's it. so there's a memory hook to my mom cooking again, the smell, the preparation, the anticipation, the crispy chicken skin. But the chicken's still too hot to eat that whole world. And the, just the movability of it. It can be a different meal every Sunday. You, I can eat roast chicken every Sunday, but it's, it's a different meal every time. You know, I can put Indian spices on it. I can do all sorts with it.

Yeah, it's one concept.

and it's a, it's a visceral thing. Yeah, many, so, and you know, and I would say to expand it a little bit, I'd just say just roast dinners in the uk, you know, because then you, whatever the meat, it doesn't matter. Lamb, pork, beef, it's just got so many options. You know, if, like, if I had to, 'cause people used to say, oh, what, what do you love cooking? And it, that's actually a different answer. What I love cooking. Is whatever's in front of me, like whatever seasonal as a, there'll be something in front of me. It's there for a reason. Like Lorna, the farmer where we get her lamb has got lamb again and we haven't had lamb for a couple of months 'cause she hasn't had any. But if there was one meal, if I could only ever eat one meal for the rest of my life, it would be a roast dinner. 'cause I can make it different with the same ingredients.

And what is your, like go-to emergency meal? Like when you don't really have the time or the brain space to cook?

Um, so if I've got it in the freezer, it'll be a bolognese for sure. I think, I dunno why Bolognese is such a magical, it just seems to be everyone's favorite. And again, my mom had made the bolognese, we'd have spaghetti bolognese one night. She, or we'd probably have lasana the day she made it fresh. And then we'd have bolognese another night because she'd put the bolognese in the freezer. Yeah, so bolognese, if I have it in the freezer, you know, I, I pretty much always have that in the freezer or some kind of slow cooked meat, which I would put bolognese in that, you know, I cook it for hours, you know, a beef casserole or a lamb stew. and actually scrambled egg on toast, it's one of my favorites. and I cook it with butter and there's cream in with the eggs and there's a piece of sourdough toast with more butter on it. Um, when I was pregnant with my kids, this is probably why they're allergic to all these things I lived on... for breakfast, sourdough toast for loads of butter, scrambled egg with cream and butter in it. And I, and I started putting cheddar cheese on top 'cause I was just craving protein, uh, you know, and fat whilst I was pregnant. I'm making links now. I'm like, oh, maybe that's why I had overdid it a bit on those three food groups. I was pregnant. So they're both like, oh my god, no more. scrambled egg is so simple, like good scrambled egg is like the most simple the

my kind of go-to emergency meal is actually fried eggs. Not scramble.

Interesting. Yeah, and, and just eggs generally, like they're so quick. I remember the Delia Smith book that came out, how to Cook an Egg. It was like, genius. One of the tests for working at the Manoir. When I went to, I had to do a two day trial to go to the Manoir and we had to cook a meal, anything we wanted. Then eat it with the head chef. And we had to figure out what worked in that meal and what didn't. So like I did lamb and ratatouille and I was like, I've overcooked the lamb a bit. So they weren't testing my cooking skills. They were testing. Did I know, you know, that actually the lamb was perfectly cooked or overcooked or whatever, and seasoned and all the rest of it. And the other test was make me an omelet. That was Raymond Blanc's test for chefs coming in the kitchen, cook me an omelet. it's such a simple thing, and people are petrified of cooking eggs.

Really interesting about, you know, okay, you cook a meal and then you have to figure out what could have been done better. Because this is also something that I see with a lot of people when something doesn't quite work out, were hoping or as the recipe said, you kind of say, oh gosh, I'm a terrible cook. And that's not, that's not what it is about. it's about, okay, this could have been better. Well, what is it that I would change and, and become aware of it? it's a, Yeah. you know that lamb is overcooked, so then you have a mental note that next time or you know, the ratatouille is to acidic or, whatever it is. So I really, you know, encourage people to, Well, that's again, you know, use your senses, to be aware of when you like something, what is it exactly that you like? And when you don't like something, again, you know, what is it, what you don't like, because that is what builds up all these references in your head that you can then use when you, when you stand in front of the fridge and think of, what the heck am I cooking tonight? That is when these references will give you your ideas. That's, that's how you. Feed your cooking intuition.

Hmm. Yeah. And, and also I think it, it speaks to, you've touched upon a deeper journey that people can go on with food, which is. We internalize and shame ourselves and we go, I am bad or I am wrong. We cook something and we mess it up. We say that I'm bad, rather than, oh, I overcooked something. It's a big distinction, you know, in coaching and psychotherapy and all the rest of it, and bringing up children. I'm more aware of it than ever of, oh, I did a thing, not I am that thing, you know? Oh, I cooked, I, I cooked something and it wasn't great. Not, I am not great. what people don't realize. And if, you know, anyone's listening to this thinking about like, I can't people feel shame, like a failure. They don't wanna talk about it. You know, especially with food, it's the same with money. It's the same actually in any area of coaching and teaching and, you know, le like leading people to, to do something. People have so much shame and fear around failure. And if you go on a journey to learn to cook. It will take you on such a deep soul search if you want it to. You don't have to, you can just learn to cook and it's fine. Like, I'm not saying like, oh, it's, you know, gonna transform your life and it could transform your life if you let it. Because if you actually can forgive yourself when you know, overcook something or you can learn from it, or you can go, oh, I cook this meal and next time I'm gonna put a bit more salt, or I'm not gonna leave it under the grill for so long, you've just learned a mechanism for assessing what you did, deciding how to do it better next time, and then going back and doing it again. And then that can be applied to any area of life. So people think they're just learning to cook, but like a, it's just a world connection, freedom, of how we look at ourselves and then everything else. 'cause actually, once we have confidence to cook and the fear and the shame's gone, we probably invite people for dinner. We'll give, we'll give a go cooking for our friends. And then when we do that, they start to go, oh, how do you do that? I can't cook. I hate cooking. And then they learn to cook and like I could go the ripple effect. It changes the world and we think we're just learning to cook. And it's like, hmm. It is just learning to cook and it's everything and nothing all at the same time. It's just learning to cook, but actually... change the world.

I'm, with you all the way on that one. And for me, cooking is such a. a safe place to practice getting out of your comfort zone and and daring to, to do something and try something without being entirely sure of the outcome. Because, are, we are so afraid of Messing it up. But actually cooking is very forgiving. You know, it may not turn out perfectly, but it is very, very difficult to make a meal inedible. So you don't need to be afraid to try, you know, just change one little thing. That's, that's what, I teach. You know, start where you are. Just change, that meal that you know, or even that takeaway that you know, add some herbs, you a bit of lemon juice, see what happens. be aware of what it does and then, next time you change another thing, and this is how. you start figuring it out really, by trying something and, putting your awareness onto what, that experiment did do.

Mm. Yeah. And it's, there's a whole world there of being present, you know? 'cause actually most cooking that I mess up is 'cause I wasn't paying attention or I didn't set a timer. I always, people are like, why are you setting a timer? You're a chef. I'm like, 'cause I'm a human and I know that in 10 minutes I might not be present to the fact that it's 10 minutes and I need to check the rice or turn the rice off, or check the oven or whatever. it's massive. And I like what you said about just Just change one thing, like just take, just take the takeaway and add something or just start with eggs. Like depending on where people are that are listening to this. If you literally have never, ever cooked, of which the first thing to says you're not alone.

the funny thing though that I've noticed, you know, because I've tried that out of curiosity, what, what will spit out So, okay, so you say, I've got these three ingredients. It will spit out a list of ideas. Then you put in different ingredients. And it spits out another list of ideas and you know, another three ingredients, another list of ideas. But if you look at these ideas, it'll tell you, well, you can do a stir fry with these ingredients. You can do a stew with these ingredients. You can make a soup with these ingredients. You can do stir fried rice with these ingredients. So actually. It's all about the patterns. And the patterns are always the same. Of course, they're always the same because, you know, this is what, what meals are like. You know, they're either a soup or a roast or a stir fry or you know, a casserole.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. I mean, you, you shared a lot of tips already, but you know, if you had a couple of tips to share of, what is what you do that. makes life in the kitchen easy for you? What would be your top two or three tips?

good question. The first one is planning out the like planning out the week. And sometimes I, I don't do this and then I find I'm getting a bit bored. And also my they, I cook a meal and they latch onto it, and then they wanna have that every night. Like their favorite at the moment is a chicken korma recipe from the, um. Hairy bikers, although we have a joke in our house about recipe books. 'cause my husband will go, you never follow the recipe. You've got shelves full of cookbooks and you never follow the damn recipe. I'm like, yeah, well I just, I've got the idea from it, right. And then, you know, making it Um, so we do tend to get in a bit of a like, oh, I'm cooking this chicken coma. I've cooked this chicken coma for 10 weeks in a row now and I'm bored to tears of Um, The loose meal plan, so I know what to You can't cook if you haven't got ingredients in the house. So I think, you know, wherever anyone's at, whether they're already a really great cook or there's just starting out, or they want new inspiration, actually spending a little bit of time. And it's completely counterintuitive, right? So I'm a doer It takes a lot to get me to sit down and just get my recipe books out or Google, you know, autumnal recipe ideas. 'cause actually understanding what's in season when you go in the supermarket, there's no clue as to what's in season. Generally it's all looks the same, all fricking year round, so you're not gonna get inspiration from the supermarket. supermarket I love ordering from Riverford and you know, like local farmers 'cause then I know what's in season. Um. So having some kind of a plan and ingredients in the kitchen is a good start, but you can't cook if you haven't done Another thing that I do is I deal with what's going on in the day. So like Monday is my busiest day. I coach all day. I go and pick up the kids from school at three o'clock. We eat at five, which is, you know, to do with the kids' schedule. I used to eat Um, we eat at five and then I'm coaching again at seven till nine. I have zero time technically, but also I make cooking the with I make the activity cooking if that's what needs to be done, and I invite the kids into the kitchen. And if they don't, I don't make them come to the I say, I'm If you don't wanna cook, that's not, you know, if you wanna play with the big people, the big people are in the kitchen cooking. If you don't wanna play the big people's games, you're gonna have to, you know, do dealing with what I've got on is really useful. So I don't beat myself up if, if I've got a really busy day, I deal with that and I plaque accordingly. On the days when I've got more time. I think it's about changing our view of what cooking is. And you, you, you know, we started talking about this at the I think it's Michael Pollan that says: Evening isn't what happens after dinner. Dinner is the evening. When we change that from like, we've gotta get cooking and food out the way so we can... so you can what? Watch tV? when we get that? That is the evening or the afternoon activity. Depending on what time you eat dinner. We can be that. This is the hobby, this is the pleasure, this is the passion, this is the learning. This is the inviting friends over having a cook club and saying, well, I'll cook dinner on a Monday You know, you can I come to yours on a Tuesday night and understanding that that is the evening. It's not the thing to get out of the way. So, and you know, most people then do what? Go and watch telly. And if you're out being busy, it's like you're still getting dinner out of the way, like a thing that has to be done rather than it being the thing. And it took, and it took me, you know, I'm a chef who used to work 18 there, that societally we are so programmed without even realizing it have this thing that it's a thing to do to get out the way rather than, I think in Britain, I think probably mainland know, it becau it is more of, that's the thing you do for It is not the thing to get out the way, so you can do the thing, but the thing is actually like watching telly or scrolling on it's, it's not so much the tips, it's the changing the mindset about what cooking is and understanding that cooking. If you've got children or you've got a partner, cook with your partner, be in the kitchen together. Owen can't stand cooking, my He does the washing up and he's around while I'm You know, so it's not a burden to me 'cause I'm not doing all of it. This morning we had a delivery. We put it away together while the kids were having breakfast. I will cook, he'll start washing up. It's like it, it becomes the interaction. The boys will empty the dishwasher. It's hilarious watching and five-year-old wa empty dishwasher. When our cupboards are high up, take something to allow them to climb on chairs and stand on worktops to do it. It's the funnest thing I've ever So that is the act, the, the emptying, the dishwasher is the connecting with my children. I don't get it out the way so I can connect with my So it's shifting the

I really love that reframe. Yeah, exactly. The cooking is the thing, So or the, the sharing food is the thing, and cooking is, is part of that.

And then all of a sudden there's so much time. When the cooking becomes the thing and you've got all there's no rush anymore. You're not trying to get it out the cause it is the thing, including after the meal, it's like, what's for breakfast tomorrow? Do I need to soak some oats? Do I need to make a pancake mix? What's for dinner tomorrow night? Oh, it's a busy day. I'll take the food outta the freezer so that it's ready so that then on the day that it should be a rush. It's not a rush. 'cause I thought about it But being present to to it as we eat three meals a is big!

No way around that.

Yeah, it's big and it's everything and it's a journey into meditation, being with it, it'll change, you know, if people are listening to this, I'm saying, cook, it's gonna change your life. If you let it!

Amazing. That's a really, really wonderful point to, to bring this to a close.

Hmm.

Thank you so much for your. Thoughts and inspiration and that was,

pleasure.

That was so fascinating. Thank you very much. Alex.

Thank you. so much. much