Sarah’s Kitchen Travels
Featuring my publication – Kitchen to Kathmandu
Hello and welcome to Sarah’s Kitchen Travels
From childhood comfort food to cooking on open fires in the Himalayas food has been my passport to explore a world full of wonder. Bustling street markets in Kathmandu to small fishing villages in Guernsey each destination inspires my creations, infusing my dishes with the rich stories and traditions of diverse cultures.
Travels in pictures
Travels in pictures
Nepal
Recipes
Recipes
A varied collection of recipes I like, and some I love. I’m still building there’s more on the way
Cooking and travel tips
Insights
Things I’ve learned along the way, often quite painfully.
About me
My first venture into the kitchen was when I was 3, it was a cold snowy day and involved a frozen rat, the cat and one of my mother’s favourite cooking pans. I had intended to cook a meal for the cat but once I was discovered the kitchen became a war zone, angry mother, terrified 3 year old and demented cat trying to find a way out. I avoided the kitchen as much as possible after that.
Several years later I summoned the courage and stepped back into a kitchen, lack of money during school holidays was the incentive. I had a string of holiday jobs in restaurants around Guernsey. Eventually holiday jobs became permanent jobs and I unintentionally fell into cooking via dishwashing. In one of my unplanned career moves I started working on a fishing boat running small nets, crab pots, and oyster farming. I loved that job until I couldn’t face another winter of freezing cracked hands and smelling of fish. So in the mid 1980s I packed a holdall with a few clothes and went off to London without a clue what would come next.
I saw an advert for an oysterman and chef at Bentley’s in Mayfair. I knew about oysters and I could cook but I wasn’t a chef. I’m still not sure how I managed to blag my way into getting the job but there I was rubbing shoulders with celebrities, gangsters, and the colourful characters of Soho. I learned a lot working in a fine dining kitchen, mainly that the toxic high testosterone world of chasing Michelin stars wasn’t for me. After 2 years I escaped, swapping my chefs whites for trekking boots and an open fire in the foothills of the Himalayas. That was where I really learned to cook, on an open fire, without gadgets.
When I was in Nepal I met and married Sera and I’ve been making him suffer ever since. After more than a decade of running expeditions in Nepal and selling Nepalese clothes at music festivals Sera and I decided to settle in the UK. In 2003 we sold everything we had (apart from the children) to buy our first restaurant. We opened Yak Yeti Yak in 2004 and 21 years later we’re still here. Travelling, meeting people, collecting stories and recipes is still my happy place, Nepal still teaches me something new every day.
YYY Foundation
YYY Foundation is one of those things that you start, then it takes on a life of its own, and you find yourself heading into the adventure of a lifetime.
When the first earthquake hit Nepal on the 25th April 2015, it felt personal; it was personal, and the television news made it painfully real. The temple steps where Sera and I would sit watching Arun and Mini play had become a pile of rubble, and people were frantically digging for survivors. The scene was played over and over again, each time I watched transfixed and living the what-ifs crowding my imagination. Then there was the line of small spice shops, where I bought Yak Yeti Yak’s spices, collapsing in a cloud of dust. In shock, I noticed the spice seller I knew so well wasn’t amongst those jumping to safety. Later that afternoon came the third blow. Sera managed to get a phone call through to our family in Pokhara. It was a relief to hear the area wasn’t affected until we learned that Sera’s sister had gone to Gorkha near the epicentre and was missing. Our family wasn’t alone; Yak Yeti Yak staff were all affected. It was the worst feeling, being so far away and unable to help. No one felt like working, and we thought about closing Yak Yet Yak for the night. Then the penny dropped, and I realised that rather than closing, if we opened as usual, we could use the evening to raise money to buy aid. With a renewed sense of purpose, we made notices telling customers we were donating 100% of the evening’s takings to helping Nepal, we put plates out for people’s donations. None of us was prepared for the generosity of our customers, by the end of that night, we’d raised enough for a lorry load of food, medicine and shelters. The lorry left Pokhara the next morning, less than 24 hours after the earthquake.
People kept donating, and we kept sending help until, after four months, we had reserves, and as the harvest started in Nepal, the days of handouts came to an end. With the help of Yak Yeti Yak customers, we became a registered charity, and I went to Nepal with a healthy budget to find projects to spend it on. It was an extraordinary time, so much devastation and thousands of small isolated communities that hadn’t seen any outside help. We began a 5 year project of rebuilding in the most neglected areas.
YYY Foundation is still going strong, and we’re still working in extremely remote areas, providing IT resources for schools and working to end menstrual discrimination. So far, we’ve helped 10,000 people, and I still can’t quite believe that a small restaurant in Bath could do that.
https://yyyfoundation.com
Oh, and as for Sera’s sister, she turned up the next day, shaken and dusty but otherwise fine. I also found our spice seller, his brother managed to dig him out of the rubble and he’s still supplying our spices today.