Hello Sophia. Please tell us a little about yourself and your substack publication, Real Simple Food?
A. I was born in Essen, Germany - a city that is far from a culinary hotspot - but have spent the past 25 years dividing my time between a small village in Austria, London, Rome and Brussels, Belgium, which is home for now. I have my parents to thank for not only being exceptional home cooks but also for exposing my siblings and I to an incredibly broad variety of different ingredients, flavours and culinary traditions from a young age. In part because I was born just after my parents returned from living in Morocco.
It was no doubt my childhood, nourished by a world of different flavours, that planted the seed for my passion for all things food and the wish to share my own recipes. At first through a food blog, followed by freelance recipe development and food writing assignments, a series of supper clubs and pop-up events, and now my newsletter Real Simple Food on Substack.
My newsletter focuses on recipes for delicious baked goods and desserts that make the most of all the flavours seemingly hidden in our pantries. For example, Chamomile Financiers, French Toast with Miso Sugar and Umeboshi Plum Compote or a Preserved Lemon Drizzle Cake. I hope that reading my newsletter will encourage my readers to start looking at their pantries with a fresh pair of eyes and start seeing a whole new world of possibilities for delicious cakes and sweet treats with intriguing new flavours and flavour combinations.
Q. Can you please describe the layout of your kitchen, how much of a role it plays with your family, when writing for your ‘Real Simple Food publication?
A. My kitchen is a typical galley kitchen, although somewhat lighter in terms of the number of hanging cupboards on one side of the kitchen in a vain attempt to try and get more light into the kitchen.
When I first bought the apartment, I made do with the 20 year old somewhat ramshackle kitchen the previous owners (and no doubt those before them) had left behind - which included a temperamental gas oven which basically forced me to relearn how to bake!
After a year or two, I finally bit the bullet and had the kitchen redone with an interior designer. We shifted the appliances around a bit to allow for better flow and maximise counter space in close proximity to the stove and also added quite a few more outlets and a more powerful extractor fan. At the same time we also tried to make the most of the fact that while my kitchen’s square footage is small, the high ceilings do allow for tall storage cupboards. Although the joke is on me - to reach the two top shelves in my cupboards I need a stepstool!
Between initially running a supper club out of my apartment, feeding my husband and toddler and developing all the recipes for my newsletter, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Although I typically retreat to the dining room to take photos for my newsletter because there is simply not enough light in the kitchen most days.
Q. What are your most used kitchen gadgets that you cannot live without?
A. This is such a good question - I actually wrote a whole post about this a while back. There are a lot of kitchen gadgets I use day in day out, but I would have to say my favourite gadgets include my microplane (excellent not just for grating nutmeg, ginger or garlic but also small portions of spices like Tonka Bean or Long Pepper and when I don’t want to bust out my electric spice grinder or use my mortar and pestle), a heat-resistant spatula (there is nothing as sad as a ruined batch of caramel because your spatula has melted into it!), my electric spice grinder (which does short work of grinding whole spices but also turns my beloved hojicha, hibiscus calyces and fig leaves into a fine powder to incorporate into desserts), bench scrapers (not just an extension of my hands when it comes to manipulating sticky dough but also helpful for scraping up the remnants of my toddler’s dinner off the floor!), kitchen scales with rechargeable batteries (I used to go through an alarming amount of batteries until my husband bought a pack of rechargeable batteries - no idea why I did not think of that!).
Q. You have a ‘growing stack of Moleskine notebooks’, what do you use them for and what were the influences behind this collection?
A. I’m a big stationery nerd and love using notebooks for all kinds of things. The stack of black Moleskine notebooks is where I keep all my often hastily written notes (some admittedly more legible than others) with recipe drafts, menu ideas (initially for dinners with friends and family, later for the supper club), notes of tasty things I tried on my many trips abroad and numerous visits to restaurants. For example, the umeboshi plum ice cream I tried when visiting my friend Laura in Washington D.C. a while back.
These notebooks are also where I brainstorm different ways of using ingredients and flavour combinations to try. Because whenever I discover new-to-me ingredients or flavours I immediately wonder how else I could use them. Given my sweet tooth, that also means trying to figure out whether I can turn said ingredient or flavour into a delicious dessert or cake. For example, if preserved lemons lend pungency and a bright lemony flavour to all kinds of stews, marinades, garlicky yoghurt etc. then maybe we can also use preserved lemons to add a more complex lemon flavour to cakes, cookies or buttercream. In turn, all these notes fuel my recipe development and writing - first for my now defunct blog and today my newsletter.
Q. Your recipes and photos have appeared online and in print, ranging from The Guardian to Food52. How did this come about and do you have any tips for other food writers to be able to do the same?
A. I think a few years ago,it was probably much easier for someone relatively unknown like myself to get their recipes and photos into online publications, but luck no doubt also plays a role! In terms of how I did it, I followed the pitching guidance in Dianne Jacob’s wonderful book ‘Will Write for Food’ (shoutout to her wonderful Substack as well!) and then just kept on pitching to publications like Food52 until something was accepted. I also always send a follow-up email after a couple of weeks or so - you never know when a pitch might have simply gotten lost in someone’s overflowing inbox! The moment I receive a rejection, I then think about how I could repurpose that same pitch or idea for another publication.
I also participated in any recipe contests I saw, and for which I had existing recipes I could submit or develop a new recipe in time. That is how I got a number of my recipes into the Guardian and the Telegraph. And with Food52 I think having already participated in a number of their recipe contests might have also been what made them consider commissioning me for a few recipes.
To start it probably also helps pitching smaller publications that might be hungry for content and not quite so inundated with pitches as larger publications. And getting a few bylines in turn will likely also help win more pitches. It is also worth remembering that many publications plan their content 6-12 months in advance. So now might already be too late to pitch Christmas content but it is probably a good time to pitch Easter content, for example. Other than that, I think it helps to be persistent (while remembering that acceptance rates for pitches are probably in the low single digits) and making sure that your pitches are as tailored to a publication as possible.
Q. How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live in Brussels, Belgium? Are there fresh food markets, or farmers’ markets available?
A. Allegedly, Belgium has a higher density of Michelin-starred restaurants per capita than France. In short, Belgians care about good food, so it should be no surprise that similar to France, there is a range of excellent markets, and farmer’s markets moving from one neighbourhood to the next as the week progresses. In fact, there are at least 3 within walking distance from my apartment.
Typical Belgian food, while delicious, is quite meat and carb heavy. That being said, Brussels, my current home, is a truly international city so the dining scene is very diverse. I also feel like the Brussels food scene has come a long way in the 10 years I have lived here, and you can now easily find excellent sourdough bread and pastries as well as superb Ramen, Neapolitan pizza, Korean, Peruvian or Ethiopian food, both traditional and modern Vietnamese etc..
Q. Is there anything about your kitchen that you would like to change or improve on?
A. That is a good question. I worked with an interior designer to come up with the kitchen. Back then I was keen to maximise the light in what is a fairly narrow kitchen which does not get much direct sunlight. So I did not want to crowd the walls with lots of cupboards. A few years down the line with a toddler in the mix and another baby on the way, I think some more cupboards would have been great to tidy away some of our growing number of appliances that we don’t all use every day, be it the microwave, my stand mixer, the toaster etc.
Right when you enter the kitchen we also have a small area with two barstools - while I initially enjoyed sitting there in the mornings with a cup of coffee, those leisurely mornings are gone for now and I am thinking of converting that area into another cupboard because I think we need the storage space.
Equally, as much as I love the open shelf we have, it turns out I am not the kind of person with a talent for curating open shelves and keeping them tidy and dust free so I don’t think I will be going for open shelves in any future kitchen.
Q. What tips can you give us that will help keep our kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?
A. My biggest tips for keeping the kitchen tidy are (i) always having a rubbish bowl next to you while you cook or bake (to save you from multiple trips to the bin), (ii) tidying up and washing up as you go along and (iii) washing up anything that is left right after a meal or at least putting any pots and pans that need soaking to soak. Also, the luxury of having a weekly cleaner should not be underestimated!
Another organisation trick I find super helpful is that the moment my husband or I finish one of our staples, we immediately put it on our shared running grocery list.
Otherwise I like to keep a few staples in our pantry and freezer that allow us to assemble quick meals even when we are otherwise low on groceries - that includes things like rice, pasta, passata plus a few tinned foods like tuna, sardines, chickpeas etc., some frozen vegetables and frozen gyoza. It is nice to know that even when our fridge is bare we can have a tasty and nutritious meal on the table in under 30 minutes.
Q. How many cookbooks do you have and do you have any favourites? Have you written any cookbooks?
A. I am too embarrassed to count how many cookbooks I currently own, but suffice to say I have a large bookshelf in the dining room dedicated solely to my cookbook collection, and I fear we may soon run out of space for additional cookbooks.
Narrowing down my cookbook collection to my favourites is hard but the ones I turn to again and again are the two Flavour Thesaurus editions from Niki Segnit and the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen books Extra Good Things and Shelf Love. There is also a series of Italian cookbooks covering different regions of Italy by Maria Teresa Di Marco, which I first came across when I lived in Rome and which I adore - whenever I am in Italy and I see a new-to-me one, I have to pick them up. They are beautifully photographed and the recipes are all delicious and work great.
I have not yet written any cookbooks myself but it is a big dream of mine to write a cookbook and I hope to be able to realise that dream in the coming years.
Q. Do you have a favourite recipe that you would like to share with us?
A. It’s hard to pick but my Prune Sticky Toffee Pudding is definitely a favourite of mine. The prunes give the sponge such a beautifully velvety crumb with a slight fruity note. And then there is a tiny bit of heat from the Chinese Five Spice Powder which is added to the sponge. And to top it all off, you pour lots of Miso Butterscotch Sauce over everything. It is the perfect thing to have for dessert on a cold autumn or winter day and in some ways I cannot wait for temperatures to drop so I can enjoy this again!
Q. Have you had any kitchen disasters that you can share with us?
A. Oh god - where to begin? I think kitchen disasters are unavoidable when you cook and bake a lot. The most memorable was probably trying to bake a Bagatelle aux Fraises for my sister Helena’s birthday a few years ago. It’s her favourite cake in the whole wide world and consists of a genoise sponge filled with strawberries that is sandwiched with a French buttercream (and often topped with a decorative layer of marzipan).
While I had made it several times before, getting the French buttercream right isn’t easy and requires you to get the sugar cooked to just the right temperature. Otherwise, the buttercream won’t set properly, and you will end up with butter soup instead, which is exactly what happened to me on that occasion.
Undeterred, I still tried to assemble the Bagatelle. And when the buttercream, as expected, started running down the sides of the cake, I tried to scoop it back into the cake - first with a palette knife and then using my bare hands - it wasn’t pretty.
I was close to tears from having ruined my sister’s birthday cake before it was even finished - and my sister had tears in her eyes from laughing so hard watching me try (and fail) to scoop runny buttercream from my countertop back onto the cake.
Thank you for sharing your kitchen with us, Sophia.
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How lovely to visit your kitchen Sophia, I think you are amazing what you create in your life.