Throughout her career, renowned food educator, writer, cook and restaurateur Stephanie Alexander has established herself as Australia’s leading food educator. In addition to her extensive cookbook catalog—she’s written sixteen books to be exact!—Stephanie founded Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing food education to schools. Today, Stephanie passes along a few of her best tips on food writing, tells us what it felt like when she first became a published author, and explains why it’s important to learn about quality food at a young age.
You remarked that in 1985, after writing your very first cookbook, Stephanie’s Menus for Food Lovers, you had finally found your voice. Can you tell us about what it was like, as a trained chef, to put your years of hands-on culinary experience down on paper?
Important to note that I was never a trained chef. But I was a university graduate with an Arts degree, a love of words and a deep and abiding interest in everything to do with food. This of course included reading the best food writers. Once I opened my own restaurant, I enjoyed the opportunity of explaining the backstory of a dish; and I also loved compiling my weekly, later monthly, menus. So, choosing twenty menus to describe was an absolute pleasure and sometimes I surprised myself with the thoughts that flooded my brain once I started to write. I was delighted at the positive response to the book and nothing encourages one more than appreciation. I knew I would do it again.
In your opinion, what ways has the food writing landscape changed since you published your first book?
Food books have progressively become beautiful objects versus essays or thoughts or instruction manuals. Photography has become more and more important. The growth of ‘celebrity chefs’ and cooking shows has created a completely new audience for these beautiful books. Publishers have competed to produce the most beautiful and at least during the nineties and maybe the noughties, the most extravagant book that will become a ‘must-have’ object but will not necessarily be used often in the kitchen. At the same time other writers have delved into their ethnic backgrounds and written delightful and insightful books that record traditional mores—which maybe do not sell as well as the glamorous ones. Publishers have become less and less willing to take a chance with lesser-known or unknown writers.
What are some of the key ingredients to writing an engaging piece about food?
I guess this depends on who is reading it. For me I love a good story, I love an authentic voice, I like to learn something new, and I like to understand or be introduced to a place or dish I have never encountered before; or conversely, to meet again a familiar place or dish that strikes my memory, and is reinforcing of my love of personal style.
Fifteen years ago, you established the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to bringing food education to schools. Why was it important for you to start this project? What do you hope students will take away from your work in their schools?
Increasingly there is widespread concern about the rise of obesity in the population, especially children. I believe that good habits start young and if kids are raised in a family that models positive attitudes towards food, and which reinforces the pleasures of sharing food with others, it is likely that they will enjoy fresh, healthy food forever (maybe with a few lapses in the teenage years as they meet other influences). Not every child has this advantage. The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program offers students a program where every participating student is introduced to growing food, harvesting food, caring about water and sunshine and being out in the fresh air, then preparing simple delicious meals that they share with their friends. The program has many other benefits. Students make curriculum connections with biology, botany, environmental science, mathematics, art and design, history, cultural appreciation and so on. It also teaches personal independence and lays the foundations for being able to eat well forever.
You have written sixteen cookbooks, but it was your fifth book The Cook’s Companion that, in your words, “changed your life”. Please tell us more about this life changing experience!
This book was a publishing phenomenon. Published in 1996 it was expensive, had no pictures and had 800 pages. Success was solely by word of mouth. People needed this book!! It justified my belief that for many people it was lack of basic information linked with anxiety that prevented many from starting to cook for themselves or their families. It sold out in weeks and has been continuously reprinted since. It’s second edition has over 1000 pages, it sells for $125 and it still sells steadily after 22 years (more than 500,000 copies and 20 reprints later). It changed my life in many ways but let’s be realistic. It made me a lot of money. I was able to finish up Stephanie’s Restaurant at the end of its 21st year and start my work with the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. But it gave me authority regarding cooking and food, and that has of course helped my credibility with the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation.
