SARAH TUCK

Editor

Editor extraordinaire Sarah sets the editorial vision and tone for dish, oversees everything from design to digital strategy, creates recipes for every issue and is somehow always full of beans. She tells us about her remarkable journey since taking the helm in 2019.

How long have you worked for dish? Sarah:

I started at the end of May 2019. I’d been doing freelance recipe development, styling and photography for dish, Cuisine, Stuff and a few other places for a few years before that, and I loved the creative side of freelancing – but my background is a bit more corporate and I missed using that part of me in my work. Also, working freelance was lonely! My kids had left home and my ex had also left, so it was quite a solo thing. I really wanted to be part of a team again.

What does your day-to-day job involve? Sarah:

There is no typical day for me. It can involve anything from planning content for the next issue or working on our cookbook FAST, to styling a shoot or checking the colour proofs for an issue about to go out – and I bloody love that. I love doing all sorts of different things and developing an overarching strategy to keep dish evolving.

What has been your vision for dish so far? Sarah:

I really wanted people to be able to open dish at any page and know which magazine they’re looking at. I always consider a couple of my girlfriends – who would buy the magazine but aren’t necessarily subscribers. They’re not wildly confident cooks, but they like to entertain. I’m always thinking of what we can do to entice people like them to discover dish, as well as catering to our beloved subscribers!

I’ve also been working to broaden our audience – that’s one reason I do things like appearances on TV’S Breakfast, or why we have a recurring feature, “The Plating Game”, where we talk to celebrities about the food they love. Once those celebrities share the article, other people hear of dish who might not otherwise pick it up – and discover what they’ve been missing! (And those stories are a fab read too.)

We’re also growing our digital presence. A year after I started at dish, I took over writing the emails that go to readers for a while. I felt the old emails were too commercially driven and I wanted to make them more personal. Liam [Carr, Digital Editor] writes the emails now but we’re still really committed to sustaining that close relationship with our readers through our EDM, with integrity and authenticity.

How do you and Claire [Aldous, Food Editor] come up with the food? Sarah:

It’s difficult to describe, but when we’re planning each issue, I try to get a sense of the country’s vibe or mood. That’s the starting point and informs everything else. Then Claire does all the heavy lifting, thinking about seasonal produce and food that would be easy to share with friends, whether that’s winter curries or a summer barbecue. Plus, we’ve always got Food Fast, our section of speedy, low-fuss recipes.

What’s your favourite part of your job? Sarah:

I find it ridiculously pleasing to come up with practical strategies for the mag. I love having the freedom to change things. I also really love shoot days, because they’re one of the times I still get to be hands-on with food. It’s kind of where dish all started for me – with food and photography – and I love still being able to get amongst it.

And your least favourite? Sarah:

I have a huge amount of freedom with the magazine, which I’m really grateful for, but every once in a while, I come up against financial constraints and that can be a wee bit frustrating!

Any stand-out memories of dish to share? Sarah:

One of my favourite memories is of the first recipe shoot I ever went on as editor. It was my first week in the job and when I got there, everyone who was normally on a shoot was there and there were just looking at me for direction, like, f*ck! And then they started doing things the way they had always been done – there were all sorts of self-imposed rules, like you had to have certain content in particular places, you could only do a layout with an overhead next to a three-quarter shot… that sort of thing. I loved being able to say, no, let’s just do what we want!

I also love the dynamic that Josh [Griggs, photographer] and Claire and I have on shoot days. It’s such a mutually respectful and enjoyable day – each of us has our own thing that we’re good at, and we all work together to accentuate each other’s talents. It’s bloody awesome.

We also just have lots of laughs. On one of our early shoots, we were styling up a shot and I said, “Just shove it up the noodles”, and “shove it up the noodles” has become a catchphrase ever since.

My other favourite memory is winning Webstar Supreme Magazine of the Year last year. We entered a whole lot of categories, including Best Editor and Best Covid Response, and I worked really hard on our entries, but when the finalists were released, we hadn’t come through in anything except Best Magazine (home, food and lifestyle category). I was feeling really bummed about the whole thing, thinking I hadn’t done a good enough job – so to win People’s Choice and Supreme Magazine as well as Best Magazine (home food and lifestyle category) was a total surprise. It was bloody fantastic.