About Me

I was born and brought up in north Yorkshire, studied Spanish at Madrid University, and later worked for the Latin American edition of The Economist, where I met my husband-to-be (who still is). After various stints as directors’ lunch cook, tourist guide and secretary to a deranged MP, I forsook London in 1973 to follow said husband to INSEAD in Fontainebleau.

My first major French investment was in a Solex motorbike, which came in handy for fetching produce from the local market and scouring the forest of Fontainebleau for mushrooms. Later, to while away the time (and to give full rein to my market purchases and all those fungi), I began giving cooking lessons to a multi-national band of under-employed camp-followers around the kitchen table of our tiny flat on the rue Grande.

A short spell in Switzerland came next: time enough to get to grips with Rösti, and to have my first child (Sophie, born 1974). Afterwards I took off to Mexico, where I was (naturally) gobsmacked by the richness and complexity of real Mexican food. I started teaching Mexican cooking to anyone who was interested, and French cooking to Mexicans, and wrote a regular restaurant column for the local English-language paper. My son Oliver (hecho en Mexico) was born in 1976.

Alsace, just over the border, began to beckon. After extensive explorations of the area and internships in the kitchens of top chefs (Michel Husser, Emile Jung, the Gaertner brothers) I brought out A Taste of Alsace (1990). In 1993 I cooperated with Guy Jacquemont on a beautiful coffee table book on the wines of Alsace entitled Le Grand Livre des Vins d'Alsace. My third work on Alsace, Alsace Gastronomique, followed in 1996, published simultaneously in English, French, German and Danish. 

After years of cross-border raids into Alsace from Switzerland, we decided it was time to put down roots. We bought a field, built a house and created a garden on it. The land had until then housed a colony of bees, who had to move as a result. Partly out of curiosity for these wonderful insects, and partly to salve my conscience at their enforced eviction, I wrote Honey, From Hive to Honeypot, a history of apiculture and a celebration of bees, published in 1992.

The gorgeous beech forests and rolling meadows around our house turned out to be stuffed with wild foods – mushrooms, berries, nuts and herbs – which gave rise to Fruits of the Forest, published in 1995 in both English and French. The French edition was awarded the Prix de la Mazille at the Gourmand World Cookbook Fair in Périgord. 

My Swiss interests were still very much alive, and 1992 saw publication of A Taste of Switzerland, a study of the (many) good things to eat and drink in that beautiful country, and the only one of my books which has been consistently in print since publication, thanks to Bergli Books in Basel. In 1992 I was responsible for the chapter on Swiss wines for the Hugh Johnson Pocket Wine Book.

My most recent book, Eat and Two Veg, is for people who are passionate about veggies (rather than for vegetarians, who rarely are) and who want to celebrate the best of them in loads of creative ways.

Nowadays I write for FT Weekend (Financial Times) on both food and travel, and for the FT's How to Spend It magazine, as well as Decanter, Condé Nast Traveller, High Life and France Magazine. For the subscription-only wine-travel website Wine Travel Guides (www.winetravelguides.com) I compiled the sections on Alsace (three microregions).

I run occasional workshops in my country kitchen in Alsace, and recently completed a BA in Humanities with the Open University after 7 years of toil. I'm also involved with the local community on a number of fronts, including helping to set up an English-speaking cancer support group in the Basel/Alsace/Black Forest area.

Photo by Madeleine de Bruijn