Throughout my life so far, food has played a number of different roles: lover, friend, and at times, also an enemy.
My love affair with food started from a very young age at home. Under my mother’s nurturing guidance, I learnt about food as an expression of affection, and how it brings the family together at the table.
During my challenging school years, food was a great friend – I found comfort in cooking, and took pride in being able to create something that I could then enjoy eating.
Where I lost my friendship with food was when I became a disillusioned teenager. The feeling of self-nurture changed, and that feeling of love that food normally radiated within me, disappeared. A short-lived stint in modelling during my teenage years caused me to see food as a body-image element, as opposed to a nutrition-based one. At that time I was eating purely to fill the void of not getting recognised in – what I now realise is – an industry that can be unforgiving and unrealistic.
The good thing was, internally, I had such beautiful, fond memories of my childhood and my love for food, and with a bit more guidance from my mum, I was able to rekindle that love again. Nothing better than a best friend and family in food!
With my passion for food happily reignited, I uncovered a sensual side to food when I moved to the south of France – one that involved touching, smelling and feeling ingredients that would later become the highlight of the dishes of that day. It invoked my desire for seeking out the best quality and taste (and not what was most expensive); embracing the freshest and most vibrant fruits, vegetables, and other wholefoods that one can find.
I recall being at the local farmers’ markets and standing at a stall selling what seemed like a hundred different varieties of fungi.
In spite of my limited French and the stallholder’s limited English, we managed to strike up a conversation about each and every single type of those mushrooms.
I realised then and there that food transcends culture and language; that it was, in fact, a universally spoken tongue and indeed, a language of love.
Food is the one dialogue that we can all have with each other, and that is what I want people to do: to fall in love with the romance of it, the cooking of it, and the nurture that you will provide yourself and those who are lucky enough to share it with you.
As we move through my childhood, education, travels, career and the creation of my own family, Falling In Love With Food is my ode to the decades of discovery, joy and excitement that preparing and sharing food has given me. It is a diary of the recipes and anecdotes I have learnt, written and adapted, that has turned food into nourishment for the body and the soul.
With this book, I invite you into my own home – where all the recipes you see here were born; where these dishes have been lovingly put together, and the text and images have been produced.
It is my hope that Falling In Love With Food will become curled at the edges, splashed with sauce and spotted with wine as you, my dear reader and my new food family member, create your own memories from my love-filled recipes with your family and friends.