Introducing our new cookery columnist Paul James I
’m so pleased and honoured to have been asked by Completely Bromsgrove to write a monthly column
As a retired professional chef, it would be easy to just share recipes with you but I’d like to take readers on a journey beyond those recipes and dishes. I want to tell you about my culinary and cultural experiences about how these dishes came about, a potted history of the places I’ve been fortunate to have visited and a few funny stories along the way. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. A serious illness nearly took my life in 2017 and led to me having to give up the career I loved at the age of just 45. For the past three years I have been retired and, for the first two, I totally fell out of love for cooking and the industry - mainly due to feeling bitter about losing my career. Last year on a short trip to Kassiopi in Corfu, something connected - seeing the culture and beautiful scenery, but mainly the amazing food that was on offer, rekindled the spark inside me. I decided to get involved again and started my own Recipes From My Travels blog. To be honest, it started by just recreating recipes from places I’ve been fortunate enough to visit. To start with I wasn’t very social media or computer savvy but the blog has now grown to more than
3,000 followers and well in access of two million reaches in a year. My first book is due to be published soon with Austin Macauley and my first ebook, which is now available on Amazon/Kindle, is a day to day diary of my visit to New York last year with my youngest son Jay. The proceeds of this book will go to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Cancer Centre in Birmingham, which successfully treated my eldest son Mark last year. Recipes From My Travels blog continues to promote the hospitality and tourism industry. I love collaborating with individuals or businesses on projects within these industries, helping them to set up and progress further. The fantastic team behind Recipes From My Travels are now moving forward to make us one of the most recognised names in the hospitality and tourism industry worldwide. We have chefs, consultants and backroom help, readily available from a very close knit family and friends set up. On a personal note, without their help I would not have achieved any of this success so far. This is an amazing story from heartbreak to happiness so join us as a family on this incredible journey.
Completely Bromsgrove
33
