STACEY O'GORMAN & A PERFECT SPRING PLATE

think creamy wild garlic beans & a black sesame salt sweet potato mash

the freshest food I have eaten in a long time

Good morning sweet spring chickens!

The sun seems to finally have blessed us with her presence in London so I hope she is shining down on you too, wherever this email finds you. This week’s newsletter has been an absolute pleasure to put together, interviewing one of my favourite people in the world, Stacey O’Gorman.

A little story time for you: when I first moved to London, in 2013, I came to the city unemployed and with zero friends or community. It was a tough time, learning to live in a city as big and inhospitable as London, trying to make friends, find work, and simultaneously figure out who I was at 20. Stacey gave me my first job in London, as a baker at her then bakery Meringue Girls. What started as a part time job, baking meringue in a disused railway arch late into the night, turned into my longest and most stable commitment in London. I worked with the Meringue Girls team on and off for the next 8 years, during which time Stacey left the business and moved back to New Zealand. I made some of my closest and most treasured friends there, I learned pretty much everything I know about cooking and I got to travel the world with them. It was, in short, a life changing job and I am so glad that I met Stacey when I did. She was a huge part of my early London life and culinary journey, but has also become a dear friend and inspiration to me.

One of the best things about working at Meringue Girls, and actually my first encounter with communal eating / cooking, was the lunches. In a bid to eat better food for lunch and save money, we all used to bring £2 a day in for lunch and then one of the team would go to Broadway Market with the £10 budget and buy ingredients for our lunch - oh to be in the early 2010s, I can’t imagine £10 going very far on Broadway Market today. Stacey’s lunch creations were always the most inventive, surprising and delicious. Her creamed corn savoury French toast will live forever rent free in my head.

Stacey has gone on to start a podcast (Finger Food - check it out it’s one of my favourites), retrain and pivot into a completely new career as a S*x and Relationship Coach and is now back in London for a spring summer adventure. I can’t wait for you to learn more about her and cook this *exceptional* plate of food.

As ever, sending love, Rosie x