6 Questions - Tash // Avant Garden

What’s your earliest food memory? 

My mother was a vegetarian chef, my second home was the kitchen. I cant remember a memory where food was not the centre of my world.

What’s the first thing you remember cooking? 

I feel like I have always cooked, that I was born cooking. Cooking is a language that I have always spoken.

 Your dream dinner? 

Fresh food from the garden, with good friends on a warm summer night. What we eat and how we create it all together with intuitive ways of feeling what the food wants to be made into.

Your favourite piece of food writing/poem?

I have many, this one came to mind first: Maple Sugar Moon by Robin Wall Kimmerer 

“…One half of the truth is that the earth endows us with great gifts, the other half is that the gift is not enough. The responsibility does not lie with the maples alone. The other half belongs to us; we participate in its transformation. It is our work, and our gratitude, that distills the sweetness…”

Your favourite music to listen to whilst cooking? 

I am always shifting and changing but presently Vaganika Shamanika series of mixes by Alma ∞ Omega

An underrated ingredient? 

Beets, stinging nettles and yarrow flowers, as well as all the leftover sauces, syrups, dressing, marinades, which have bombs of flavours adding them to a new dish giving them a depth which would not have existed without them. (Oops that was a few more than 1!).

A dish that’s left a really good impression over the last 6 months? 

Caramelised roasted red beets topped with fermented Thai basil flower bud dressing sitting on a light fresh soft goats cheese infused with nettle.

Tash will be teaching the Food as Medicine herbalism workshop at the Women In Food retreat in May 2024.