Meet Rachel
I grew up in a small rural town in New Zealand where I spent most of my teenage years wanting to leave and be anywhere else. As a young person I thought my parents were punishing us by making us live in the middle of nowhere.
Ironically, after having travelled all over the world with my husband, I can now appreciate the simplicity and the beauty of living in the country and would love to have a sustainable life living off the land.
I've always loved to cook. Ever since I was a kid I used to pull out my mum’s cookbooks and start creating.
Becoming a chef seemed the obvious career path to follow. I had my first taste of kitchens when I was still in school for work experience at 15 - I loved the thrill of it - the fast paced energy of service, the smells, the tastes; and the way everything seemed to hum.
It's fair to say I was hooked.
So I took my first job as a kitchen hand, dropped out of school and enrolled into chef school.
What I didn't realise at the time was how much becoming a chef would open up the world for me.
I was always itching for bigger and better. From the town to the city, from the city to the big smoke and from the big smoke to the world.
l've spent almost 20 years working in nearly every possible genre of kitchen there is. I’ve been incredibly fortunate with what I have seen and done, learned and experienced. I love food and the story it can tell, but for the vast majority of those years, cooking has had almost the entire focus on the indulgence of flavour.
It's only been in the more recent years that I have taken a more simplistic and healthier approach.
1 Eighty Kitchen is a reflection of that; it’s simple meals that let the ingredients shine for themselves. It is a one hundred and eighty degree turn towards a cleaner, healthier approach to food.
This is not a diet
I cannot stress enough that this is not a diet. We don't do ‘diets’.
Instead, I prefer to eat consciously, keeping it clean and fresh, avoiding packaged foods and refined sugars and limiting our intake of ‘bad’ carbs. We focus on ‘whole foods’ that fuel the body. And lots of yummy fresh veg with some form of protein (although we certainly don't eat red meat all week). I think about flavours first but I always think of the visual and nutritional aspects as well.
Delicious food that doesn’t leave you feeling heavy.
Side note - We are also largely a gluten free household. My husband by default (sorry babe).
My definition of ‘healthy’
What healthy means to me - simple, clean and fresh - mostly veg, not covered in heavy sauces or saturated in dairy.
It’s how I compose my dishes - I like to choose my protein then build from there. I think about flavours first but I always think of the visual aspect as well as, after all, more colour means a bigger variety of nutrients on your plate.