Food and recipe writer, winner of the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards, Restaurant Writer of the year and best Cookery Book for Crave.

 

You started out as a corporate lawyer in the City. What motivated you to swap your pen for a pan?

“The change feels a long time ago now – I left back in 2012! And actually the world of food and recipe writing (and, increasingly, content creating) has really evolved since then. But essentially I was working extremely long hours at one of the biggest firms and found I was not cooking or eating-out as much as I wanted to. I began a food blog (this was peak blog time, around 2010) purely as a creative outlet and a reason to cook new things and go to the openings I was telling everyone else about. In the course of doing that I realised there was an alternative world I would rather be involved in; whatever you do, you have to work hard to succeed, but it’d make sense to spend the next thirty years or so in an industry that truly captivated me. After six months at Westminster Kingsway catering college I gained experience in restaurants, pop ups, developing street food and cured meat business and even working in food TV. But what I gravitated to, and have enjoyed most, has been developing and writing recipes for publications, and of course my own cookbooks and newsletter.”

Who are your culinary heroes?

“Hard to look too far beyond Nigel Slater and Simon Hopkinson. Although I also have endless admiration for many of my contemporaries – Rachel Roddy, Meera Sodha, Olia Hercules, Anna Jones and more.”

What sort of music do you listen to when you’re cooking?

“Generally I don’t have anything on – if I’m really busy I quite like to hear the food as it cooks; or maybe I need to concentrate on writing. That said, I do occasionally enjoy words washing over me in the background. Typically Test match cricket commentary, or podcasts like Adam Buxton or The Rest Is History. God, I’m so old!”

What’s your latest book, Peckish, all about?

“Chicken! My last book (Good Eggs) offered a clutch of recipes all focused on eggs – it takes virtually no effort to make brilliant and endlessly varied meals from them. A book solely based around winning chicken dinners seemed like the obvious next step. Like eggs, there’s an infinite number of ways to cook and serve chicken. However that’s actually why a chicken cookbook – with an finite number of recipes – is necessary. Personally I find the choice provided by endless options online and in books a little paralysing. So this is a one stop shop. A book of recipes structured around the types of cuts that are sold to us (so wings, mince, legs, drumsticks, thighs, breast, whole birds). It’s lighthearted but should also, I hope, prove really useful.”

 

Buy Ed’s latest book: Peckish: An Inspirational Collection of Winning Chicken
Follow Ed on Instagram: @rocketandsquash
Discover his blog: Rocket & Squash