On becoming a chef
I’ve taken a whole week off from all my work for a bit of a recharge. Back in my 9-5 life, taking time off wouldn’t seem like a big deal. Book it off, turn on the out of office and off I would go. But since going fully freelance a few years ago to say life has been full on would be an understatement.
In this pandemic era that we’re living in we’ve begun to use phrases like Before Times. Meaning before Covid-19 changed our lives. I have another sort of Before Times - a before being self-employed, before juggling several projects at once and before becoming a chef.
From retreat cheffing to private vegan catering to now leading a community kitchen, the past few years have taken my freelance life on an almost unexpected route.
In early 2016 I started a supperclub called Ruby & Pickles with my friend Jasel. This was our chance to work on our cooking passion alongside our usual 9-5. I’d always said that I would never follow my dad’s footsteps into the kitchen. The stress, the hours, the low pay. No thanks. But starting that supperclub unleashed something in me. The joy of cooking for strangers, creating my own recipes, researching and learning new dishes, showed me that there was an enjoyable way to work with food. After Ruby & Pickles naturally came to an end as our day jobs and real lives took over once more, I continued to work on foodie projects - from working in street food to catering for weddings and events. I had some challenging times navigating the food world, experiencing the bullying, misogyny and manipulating that I’d long know exists within the hospitality industry which definitely knocked my confidence and broke a bit of who I was. I was, however, also lucky to work with some incredible individuals and meet some inspirational people on the way. I managed to move away from the power and money-hungry part of the industry and instead focus my energy on where I saw the true power of food: connecting people.
After seeing Sarah Bentley, founder of Made in Hackney, speak at a Women’s Environmental Network event, I understood that there was a way to create positive change through food. I reached out to Sarah to find out more about their work and to get some info and advice on a potential project I was mulling over (which I still am!).
Sareta preparing for a cooking class at Life After Hummus. Credit: BB’s Photography
My 9-5 life had been mainly working with and for children and young people including creating and running a lot of training. The meeting with Sarah led to me becoming a Made in Hackney teaching assistant and volunteer and fast forward a few years and I’m now the head chef for the charity’s community meal service.
I’ve become an actual chef - a term I resisted using for so long as I didn’t feel worthy of it. I haven’t got any professional training, I didn’t work my way up through any renown kitchen or under a specific chef. I just did what generations of woman have been doing for years - I grafted hard in the kitchen and put love and thought into every dish I created. I learnt from role models such as Asma Khan that passion can get you there. Asma wasn’t a chef but used her skills to establish the incredible Darjeeling Express which serves incredible food and creates positive change. She worked hard and it paid off. When running Ruby & Pickles I came across events by Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen - run by Zoe Adonyoh who decided to sell her food from her West African hertiage at a market in Hackney. My good friend Charlie-May, who I met when we both worked in film education, decided to focus on her creative flair for plant-based food so became an apprentice chef and is now a head baker in Ireland. These are just a few examples of inspirational women who decided to embrace their passion and see where it took them. They’ve each faced challenges in the food industry but have proven to many others around them that there are many routes into becoming a chef - and that the best chefs are fuelled by their zealousness.
Despite catering for vegans, being a retreat chef, working in kitchens and teaching cooking classes, I still didn’t feel confident calling myself a chef. When writing a biog for one role I downplayed myself and said ‘maybe it should say cook, not chef.’ The response from my colleague - don’t be silly, you’re a chef! Google the difference between chef and cook and it often come down to training, or exactly where you work (hotel or restaurant apparently - so cafe, community kitchen or yoga retreat don’t count!), or whether you’re able to manage a kitchen inventory or do a clean up. A lot of chef terminology is very hierarchical and reflects a certain aspect of hospitality, which is probably why it put me off for so long. I now proudly call myself a chef - I even updated my Instagram biog to include it. I know, serious, huh?! And I’m sure I’ll still come across some stuck in the past men (sure, not all men but anyone working in hospitality knows exactly the type of men I mean) who claim that I can’t be a chef as I haven’t been in the industry for blah blah blah. Jog on, pal. Being confident in myself, what I do and how I do it has been the most important development in my journey of self-discovery of these past few years.
It is no coincidence that me embracing and understanding my heritage and roots has coincided with my journey into being a chef. Understanding food stories and the power of community and roots is something that I’m keen to explore in other areas of my work. As a typical millennial freelancer, I have my fingers in many (vegan) pies - as you can see on my work page. Taking some time off to reflect has given me the chance to connect with some of my personal (a.k.a. non-paid) projects. This is where I’m carving out some of the connections between everything I do to help create lasting and positive change and that I am eternally grateful that being a chef is just one of many things that I do - proudly - with my life.