Q&A with Good + Simple Author Sarah Graham

This entry was posted on 15 March 2023.

Building on the success of her previous books, in Good + Simple, Sarah Graham continues to celebrate an abundance of vegetables and natural, whole foods in the same simple and accessible style her loyal army of followers have come to know and love. Sarah chats here about working on the latest book, her hacks for a good and simple life and her go-to sweet treat.

 


 

Where does developing a recipe start for you?

When I am looking at doing a new book, I usually do an overview of what my chapters might look like, and what I want to do within those. Then I’ll start to look more specifically at what some of the ingredients are that I want to highlight in those chapters and ingredients that I want to celebrate.

 

What do you find challenging about putting a book together?

When you’re doing a book, it’s obviously a very intense process squashed into a small amount of time, so you can get a little burnt out during that process. It’s very full-on and it keeps you up at night – Ohmigosh, I need to do this with aubergines; ohmigosh, I need to include that ingredient, or ohmigosh I need to try that. So it’s a very busy time in your head, but it’s also so exciting.

 

What do you do to keep your recipes interesting and exciting?

I always have a list going on my phone of recipes I want to cook or ingredients I feel I want to spend more time working with in the kitchen. I love reading food articles and following my favourite chefs on Instagram, everyone from Jamie Oliver to Nigella Lawson to Stanley Tucci to some more obscure ones. Travelling is also a huge source of inspiration for me in my recipe development. I don’t think we take enough time to appreciate the incredible culinary landscape we have in South Africa. There’s a world class-level food coming out from SA’s restaurants, and an incredible quality of produce available in our local grocery stores.

 

What are your thoughts on food waste and portion control?

Having a menu plan also helps us to reduce food waste because we’re organised and fitting something into the bigger picture. I love finding more than one way to use ingredients, like make a big bolognaise, and turn it into a lasagne, and turn it into a cottage pie, stretch it out, and we’ll have a roast chicken, and then I will make chicken stock and chicken soup and chicken pie. So I love those simple old-fashioned recipes that have more than one life in them.

 

It seems as if with each new year comes a new diet fad. What do you think is the most important factor in creating a healthy and balanced diet; what does eating well mean to you?

It’s so easy to get sucked in by new diet trends, with a sales pitch that promises life-changing results but, to me, it’s really all about balance, and what you can manage in your own life. As a mom of three, I know my children don’t eat healthy all the time, and I’m not going to lose sleep over it. There’s no point in having this perfectly regimented healthy eating plan in your home if it doesn’t bring you joy. Having more of a balanced approach is far more sustainable.

 

What are some hacks you can share for a good and simple life?

Eating simple food, eating off a menu plan, cooking once, eating twice. Exercise for me is a huge thing to do, just to help keep my mind clear and balanced. I love exercising and being outdoors, and we’re so lucky to live in a country that has such amazing weather and beautiful outdoor spaces that we can explore. The last couple of years especially, I think since Covid, I’ve really re-evaluated my levels of busy-ness, and I’ve dialled back a lot from a work point of view. I’m so much happier for life being less frenetic, but there is that stage of thinking, well, if I do less, does that mean that I am less? It’s quite a big conversation to have with yourself. But it’s been a work in progress, moving from Joburg to Cape Town, and learning to be comfortable with slowing down. And I’m so glad that I have managed to do that.

 

What does your eating plan look like on a typical day?

I am one of the world’s biggest porridge fans. I have oat porridge every single day of my life; it is one of my ultimate comforts in this world. I’m not a huge breakfast eater, so I’ll eat a little later in the morning. And simple bowl food for supper, like my Happy Life Noodle Bowl

 


“If you go into food because it’s something that you love, it’s so much easier to put in the work.”


 

What’s your go-to sweet treat?

If it’s something I’m making, I love old-fashioned puddings like crumbles and pecan pies and malva pudding, things like that. I love cosy, wintery puddings. If it’s something that comes out of a packet, I love a KitKat. That’s one of my favourite sweet treats.

 

Does your family enjoy experimental eating with you?

Rob, my husband, and Sophie, my eldest are very good at being experimental eaters. My youngest two will hopefully become more curious eaters; they’re currently not exceptional at experimental eating. But they’re still little – Isla is eight at the moment and Emily is four and they prefer just very simple food.

 

For a big family get together, such as Easter, what does your menu look like?

I always have lamb on my menu at Easter, and probably something that is slow-cooked so that there’s less time fussing over the stove and more time being able to enjoy family and friends. So something like a very slowly cooked lamb shoulder that goes in the oven for four or five hours with simple sides – crunchy roast potatoes, a big bowl of green veggies and a couple of beautiful salads.

 

How did you get into this field? What was your journey like?

I started my food blog in 2010. A friend of mine had sent me a link to a food blog that she was following in the states called Smitten Kitchen, which is still a blog that I love and admire so much. She’s an incredibly talented food writer. I’ve always loved words as much as I’ve loved food, and I realised that a blog was a place to bring these two things together. I didn’t care who was reading my blog – though, at the beginning, I would force my mom and my husband to read my posts. I just loved the process of writing and creating and sharing on a platform that was effectively self-publishing. So I started my blog and I still had a day job in the travel industry, and I was completely enthralled from the very first sentence that I ever typed, and have just loved this space. I loved the people that I’ve met along the way. And soon after that, there was a very serendipitious moment of I just had this crazy idea one day where I thought Let me send a book proposal to Penguin to see if we could work on this concept from blog to book, and everything was going online at that point, and I wanted to bring something back to basics, back to paper, back to a good old cookbook to hold in your hands. And I wanted it to be a book that was conversational and very much a companion of convenience in the kitchen, and so that was Bitten, the first book and that was very much based on my blog.

And then I shot a pilot for a TV show, which got picked up by Okuhle Media, and then we filmed three seasons of my show, Sarah Graham’s Food Safari, which was the most amazing, wild fun, crazy ride ever imaginable. I loved every minute of producing the show with that team. Dotted between that were three children and five books, and now Good + Simple is book number six. It has very much been the focus, along with having children, of the last decade of my life, and I’ve loved it. It’s been such a privilege sharing recipes with people and inspiring people to get into their kitchens and get cooking.

 

What are some of the things you’ve held onto along the way, and others you’ve discarded?

The whole way through, what I’ve hold onto most firmly is my family and friends, and I’ve been so lucky that Rob has been so supportive of my work, and my crazy travel schedules when we were filming my show.

 

What’s the one thing you’d still like to do with your career?

I definitely at some stage want to be able to put food on people’s plates outside of my home, whether It’s a kind of a pop-up situation, or something more established, I’m not sure yet, but I would love to try that and for it to be a space where we mostly celebrate plant-based food.

 

Do you have any advice for aspiring cooks who want to enter this field?

I think if you go into food because it’s something that you love, it’s so much easier to put in the work. And never stop learning. I still have so much to learn, and that is the joy of cooking, that we don’t ever stop learning.

 

Good + Simple is out now.

 

 
 
 
 

 

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