Hello! I’m Sarah. I’m a cook. My culinary journey began in my family’s London kitchen. There, at the age of five, I became my mother’s ‘little sous chef’’, intent on helping to prepare countless dishes for endless dinner parties and family celebrations. Pitting dates, frying bacon, peeling apples, grinding spices, adding a little of this, a pinch of that, over the years, I learned the art of instinctive cooking.

In the pages of my mother’s recipe books, full of sauce stains and scribbles, lay whispered advice from grandmothers and their mothers. My mother taught me that recipes were stories.

The beauty of the kitchen is that where words fail, something special emerges. In every slow stir of a spoon, there is solace. With every pinch of spice, memories are evoked. During the quiet solitude of cooking, the rhythm of the kitchen becomes an unspoken language, almost like prayer. The tangible, palpable, tactile processes of cooking fill the home with aromas speaking of sustenance, comfort and life. Fire, water, salt, fat, acid, and heat, it is deeply reassuring to know these elemental necessities remain unchanged. I have always returned to cooking as reassurance, and remedy. Immersive, intuitive and wonderful.

When hopelessness threatens to overwhelm, just like words spoken in rhyme, the kitchen offers an escape as the comforting, meditative rituals restore a sense of purpose. Nestling into the bosom of the warm humming kitchen – what respite! Like a good book momentarily set to one side, no matter how long I have been away, the kitchen always seems to welcome me home. Words and flavors, flavors and words; my commitment is joyfully and evenly distributed betwixt pen and fork.

The turn of the spoon, the dig of the pen – my thumb and forefinger leave a scent of rosemary on the page. It is here I have finally found peace.

Put simply – a recipe is a set of instructions. Of course, the instructions should be accurate. If they aren’t, what is the point? But recipes are not simply instructions. Recipes are memories – moments of time contained within flavor pairings. Recipes are narratives and archives that contain deep personal histories – documents of the most personal kind. The best meals of my life have been from non-recipe recipes cooked in the family kitchen. My mother did not always measure or portion ingredients, but rather, added a little of this, a pinch of that, every ingredient included according to intuition. These meals remain time capsules of nostalgia and joy.

Finally friends, the recipes you will find here are not commands. These recipes are suggestions. I am not telling you how to cook. Take every word with a proverbial pinch of salt; discovery and understanding can only be realized through trial and error. You must find what works for you. Don’t take my word for it.

Read a recipe and then forget it! Be an explorer; a seeker willing to travel to parts unknown. Yes, that’s the spirit. You may be surprised where this leads you.