About Anna
Who is Anna?
Anna Colquhoun is a cooking teacher and food writer, based in London.
Having always loved cooking at home, I finally left my career in international development to become a cook. I trained professionally at the Tante Marie Cooking School in San Francisco, took more specialised courses at other schools, including the San Francisco Baking Institute, and worked as an intern at Alice Waters' legendary restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Here, I fell in love with simple, seasonal cooking and making everything from scratch — sausages, pizza, pasta, preserves, you name it ... Abby Dyson featured an interview with me on her blog, Eat The Right Stuff, if you're interested.
A year travelling for culinary research deepened my understanding and love of Turkish, Italian, Romanian, Moroccan and Senegalese cuisines, among others. You can read more about these culinary adventures here, and find lots of recipes too. Food’s place in history, geography, language, culture and society fascinates me; nutritional analysis and calorie-counting aren’t my thing.
More recently I have written my first book. Eat Slow Britain tells the stories of 88 wonderful British food businesses — pig farmers, bakers, cheese-makers, organic veg growers, restaurants and more — who share my commitment to Slow Food values.
I support sustainable agriculture, animal welfare and fair trade, and am a member of the Soil Association and Slow Food.
I work freelance in London offering cooking classes and more. Contact me to get yourself on my email list for monthly updates. And you can become a Facebook fan here.
Why the 'culinary anthropologist'?
- Food is not feed. The stories behind the dishes we create and the different perspectives on the foods we eat are as interesting as they are delicious to eat and fun to cook.
- I love food and I love travel. Food is a fantastic route into understanding a place's people, history, culture, economy and more. Everybody eats.
- In many parts of the world we are fast forgetting how to grow and make real food - food that is good for us and good for the planet. I want to find and learn from the people who still have this important knowledge.
- I did anthropology at university. I am now a cook. I like to glorify my new career by thinking of myself as a culinary anthropologist.
Who is Matt?
Matt eats very well. He is also a computational linguist who takes time off from the research he usually does for culinary road trips and other adventures. He has contributed much to this website.
Who is Barnaby?
Barnaby is our culinary bear.
