Czech IT OUT

LAUREN TAYLOR chats to Evie Harbury about her debut cookbook and the food of her heritage

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FOR most British people Czech cuisine is "kind of a mystery", says chef and cookery author Evie Harbury... "apart from the beer".

Czechia, or the Czech Republic, is probably best known for its capital Prague, but its food has gone a little under the radar. "People sometimes can't place it on a map," the 31-year-old notes.

England-born with Czech heritage on her dad's side, Evie spent her childhood summers visiting her grandmother in South Bohemia, an hour from Prague, making hot chocolate on a wood-fired stove and cooking spekacek sausages over an open fire. "She was in a retired flour mill in a little hamlet, very rural, really off grid."

Evie who started cooking 10 years ago after moving to Czechia and working in a kitchen there, before formally training at Le Cordon Bleu is on a mission to spread the word about this "small, unassuming" country and its food with her debut cookbook, My Bohemian Kitchen.

Food (and drink) is at the heart of Czech culture