[My father and I sitting on suitcases. My gran, strolling down the city streets.]

Here we go! So this is where it all starts…

I thought I should start off with introducing my father Ellis and grandmother Hilda. These are the two people that got me into cooking. I used to steal handfuls of chocolate-chips and tins of condensed milk from my gran’s cupboard (she lived in a cottage next to our house when I was growing up) and it was one day when I was caught red handed that she thought the best solution for her diminishing supplies, was to pass on all her Portuguese cooking tricks to me and teach me to cook every dish in her entire old, brown, smudged cooking book. I’ve never been the same since.

My father is an artist and lives day to day by breathing in the smells of freshly ground coffee, the simple flavor of marmalade on toast, sips his tea with his eyes closed as though it’s the last taste he’ll ever have, gets excited about color and texture and is an advocate for using ones hand wherever possible.

His passion and my gran’s all encompassing loud voice of love is where it all began…