Rosie Birkett’s greens pasties

Lebendig beschreibt die Food-stylistin Rosie Birkett ihre fantasievollen Rezepte in ihren Kochbüchern.

Rosie Birkett’s writing is magical. Her enthusiasm for food will have you tasting the flavours as you read. Take a piece on summer tomato recipes for The Times. She remembers holidaying on the Greek island of Paxos and biting into “flaky spanakopita”, its “crispy layers slick with fat giving way to salty, sheepy cheese”, with bites of “fleshy tomatoes” in between.

Inspired by that meal, you might try her roast tomato recipe. As you eat, you’ll find yourself thinking that tomatoes never tasted this good.

Known for the passion that comes across so well in her writing, Birkett is about instinctive cooking with seasonal ingredients. It’s a rollupyoursleeves style that includes traditional skills such as pickling and fermenting.

Long based in east London, she recently moved back home to Kent, in southeast England. Her descriptions of collecting seaweed, growing beans and fermenting kefir sound idyllic. “I want to be much closer to nature and seasonality,” she says.

Birkett’s path to food nirvana has been unconventional. After studying

English literature at Leeds University, she took a job at a local events magazine. Noting her fascination with food, the editor sent her off to write restaurant reviews, an experience that started her passion.

“I loved it,” she says. “I was writing about something I cared about.”

Birkett moved to London in her mid20s. Without a job and in the middle of a recession, food writing did not seem like an option. But she found a job with a trade magazine called Caterer and Hotelkeeper,

standing in for an editor who was away having a baby.

What followed was essentially a crash course in the London food scene. Five months later, having interviewed a brigade of the city’s top chefs, she decided to work on her own.

Her latest book, East London Food,a

collaboration with photographer Helen Cathcart, is a kaleidoscopic tour of the area of London where she once lived. Birkett tells the stories of the people behind the places, from the Ghanaian supper club run from a flat to the Hai Café, a cult spot selling homemade Vietnamese food. It’s a book as special as its author.