Katie Stewart – Blackheath High School

Food is a very fashionable subject these days, shops are stacked with cookery books, every national newspaper and magazine has a food writer and television is awash with cookery programmes – food has become entertainment. Surprisingly food and recipes are constantly evolving. People travel and eat out more, farming practices have changed, new and exotic ingredients are more widely available  - supermarkets have much to do with this and the time available to cook is more limited especially with younger/married/partners both working. Today’s recipes need to be intriguing and reasonably easy to make. A food journalist has to keep up to date all the time.

There is no direct route into food journalism. You need the skills of a journalist, to make your writing lively and interesting and be good at sourcing information. You have to be a good communicator and, when dealing with a specialist subject, know your subject. All food journalists work freelance, I send my work in by email and go to the office only for meetings. I have to come up with subject ideas, develop new recipes and set them out accurately. I also have to prepare the food for the colour photographs that accompany my features. I took a two-year catering training at Westminster College in London in the 1950s. I then turned into industry and what was called home economics and I worked for 3 years, two of that were in America, in the test kitchens of a large food company developing recipes using the company products. On my return to Britain I fell into journalism by accident – through a school friend Sheila Battersbury (nee Watson) who was working as a food journalist for one of the larger publishing houses. To get into the food business you need to train at a school or college, preferably one of the better-known ones, or work your way up through the kitchens of a restaurant or hotel. To become a food journalist you need to get yourself noticed – through local radio or television, the columns of a county newspaper or by winning a national cooking competition. National newspapers and magazine like names, they only want to know you once you are famous! But there are jobs with supermarket magazines, in the development kitchens of food companies, in advertising agencies that deal with food products and many like working as food stylists, preparing food for photographs that go into books or advertisements.

The people in the food business are interesting and very dedicated. It’s a rewarding career and I’ve loved every minute of it!