Destitute Gourmet Sophie 'IT'S BEEN THE HARDEST YEAR'

This cook knows how to put dinner on the table through tough times and tears

- Fleur Guthrie

Can you share a fond food memory from your childhood?

We moved from the UK when I was a toddler and I remember walking up to the post office with my mum, who was eagerly awaiting her latest Cordon Bleu cookery book. She also got the Robert Carrier's Kitchen magazines. My dad worked in advertising, so she would cook these phenomenal dinners for advertising people. Then my sister and I would be in the fridge on a Sunday morning, eating leftover rum pie cold out of the pan. I also still have the old dinner set I grew up eating from. It’s called Blue Baltic.

Growing up in a foodie household, when did you start cooking?

Not until my teens. Mum had missed out on an education, so she decided to enrol in high school - in her thirties - to get her School Certificate and University Entrance. Then she went to university and became an accountant. At which point, my sister and I needed to put dinner on the table when we came home from school. Mum died when I was 22. She's the one who should have gone to cookery school, not me.

So you didn't enjoy culinary training?

I had undiagnosed ADHD, so I was in trouble all the time at Carmel College and on leaving, in the absence of any plan of my own, Mum encouraged me to go to cookery school. Hospitality was then very male-dominated with a lot of alcohol and drug use. I wasn't happy, so I moved from the kitchen into front-of-house.

Part of your job involves helping to support people navigating hard financial times. What has been your personal experience of this?