My guest today is the Ukrainian chef, food writer and activist Olia Hercules.
Olia was born in the South of Ukraine and has lived in the UK since her late teens. After working in journalism she decided to follow her heart, her stomach and arguably her heritage, and become a chef.
She trained at Leith’s School of Food and Wine, worked in kitchens, including as chef de partie for Yotam Ottolenghi and as a recipe developer.
But her mission is to make people rethink their attitude to eastern european - and particularly Ukrainian - food. She has written three cookbooks, including Mamushka, which won the fortnum’s award for best debut.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, life changed forever for Olia and her family who lived in the Kherson region. As olia says, ‘They lost their homes and their livelihoods, but they are all still alive.”
Her brother signed up ti fight and Olia turned activist, launching Cook for Ukraine and raising over £1million for supplies for Ukrainians.
I was fortunate enough to visit Olia for lunch at home in East London to talk about her new book, Strong Roots, a moving portrait of the history of Ukraine through generations of her family, being descended from a long line of powerful women, making the decision to retrain as a chef and how it felt to discover she is a carrier of fragile X syndrome which meant that she was unexpectedly plunged into premature menopause (and everything that entails) at just 38.
* You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Strong Roots by Olia Hercules as well as the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.
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