Carol

I describe myself as a farmhouse cook, having grown up in the countryside, and tend to prepare food that is flavoursome and fulfilling rather than fine dining. I eat meat and enjoy doing so, but I do like to know its provenance and would rather know that the meat I consume had a good life whilst it was alive and a quick death, even if that means that I look at the cows in the field opposite or the pheasants in the woods with a mixture of appreciation for their beauty and sadness for their eventual demise. I have difficulty with meat eaters who can only cope with the purchase if it is wrapped in cellophane with no acknowledgment of its origins, but complete respect for Georgina who is entirely consistent in her view that no animal should die in order to provide her with a meal. For me, one of life’s great pleasures is sitting down to supper with family and friends, enjoying sharing good food along with laughter and stories of the day’s events. Knotmeat recipes enable people with a wide range of dietary requirements to eat the same meal, thereby enjoying one of the oldest human cultural traditions of sharing food.

I work full time in the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Reading, enabling me to develop healthy meals whilst ensuring that one eye is firmly fixed on the pleasure derived from eating it. My research team works on improving the quality of fresh produce and understanding the relationship between food composition and the consumer’s perception of its flavour. The team includes people originating from six countries from all parts of the world, with a whole range of food cultural backgrounds, and many thanks to them for being willing taste testers for Knotmeat and for providing extremely useful feedback during its development. There is no point in developing healthy food if it doesn’t taste delicious – people make food choices firstly on the basis of appearance, then flavour, and very rarely just because it is good for them. Our mission is to make the healthy choice the easy choice, by developing recipes that deliver flavoursome dishes that everyone can enjoy.

Jerry

Growing up in a family with three older sisters meant that, like them, I was expected to contribute to mealtimes. Initially, as this was during the pre- dishwasher days, this required me to hone my  skills at drying plates and polishing glasses!  I progressed to peeling potatoes, then on to boiling water, and my signature dish became scrambled egg as I couldn’t break open the shells without damaging the yolk! My seasoning was often sugar rather than salt and pepper which may explain my fondness for sweet tasting morsels even today. My culinary skills developed further whilst at University and included macaroni cheese smothered in rashers of smoked bacon – occasionally I cooked a high cholesterol version with hard boiled eggs on top covered with extra cheese! Then I discovered a supermarket that closed its doors on a Saturday at 5pm and didn’t open again until Monday morning, so at 4.30pm on Saturday they sold off any produce that was passing its sell by date – this may explain my predilection for yellow stickers! As a consequence I learnt to cook a wide variety of meat, fruit and vegetable items brought home by me or my friends on a Saturday and tipped out on the kitchen table aka ‘Ready, steady, cook’ style. Over the years, driven in part by my good fortune to travel and experience a variety of cuisines, my cooking abilities have improved, although some would say that scrambled eggs is still my signature dish!

Georgina

Gee has been a vegetarian since the age of four years old when she had the following conversation with her dad Jerry in the middle of a well known supermarket.

Gee: “Daddy, where does ham come from?”

Jerry: “It comes from a pig.”

Gee: “What happens to the rest of the pig once we’ve taken its ham?”

Jerry: “Well, I’m afraid that by the time we take the ham the pig isn’t alive any more.”

Gee: “I’m not eating anything where an animal had to die to feed me.”

The four year old revolutionary was true to her young word and hasn’t eaten any meat in the fourteen intervening years. In the early days this meant eating different food at different times from other family members and it would be fair to say that Gee had a rather limited diet when she first met Carol, largely consisting of tomatoes, cucumber and cheese. This was accompanied by a horror of formal meals taken around a table, borne of memories of being criticised by an elderly grandparent for using cutlery incorrectly or tipping one’s soup bowl the wrong way. Happily, the relative realised that there are more important things about mealtimes than ancient conventions and developed an extremely close relationship with Gee. (K)not Fish Pie led to Gee since discovering how much fun meals taken as a group can be and, through a process of seeing food as something to be enjoyed rather than purely to sustain the body, she has also developed a much wider appreciation for different flavours and ingredients that led to the development of these recipes.