Adventures in Cooking

Sofia Brandon, author of the Adventure Cookbook, on her healing journey

Diagnosed with an underactive thyroid and chronic fatigue, Sofia Brandon set out to heal herself by changing how she ate. The Adventure Cookbook takes us on her journey to an ashram in India, a solar-powered cabin on an organic farm in Australia, Thailand, the Middle East and a chateau in Provence. Here, she talks to WideWorld.

In her own words, Sofia Brandon “stumbled into the kitchen because her life depended on it - but it soon turned into her favourite room”.

In fact, Brandon's story is familiar to many. After ten years seduced by the frenetic energy of the corporate rat race - slaving behind a computer screen, rushing from one meeting to the next, drinking too much coffee and too much wine – she reached burnout, in a series of events that included two car accidents, ill-health and an emotional meltdown.

Not surprisingly, she quit her job working for an international cosmetics company and travelled the world, trying to find a quieter way of life that was kinder to her body. This year, with the support of California-based food and wine company, Life in Provence, she published The Adventure Cookbook which tells the story of her travels and how cooking became not only her passion, but the thing that improved her health and changed her life.

While the story may ring bells, the book is gloriously free of clichés and the romanticised style that characterises so many other tales about ‘finding oneself’. Brandon’s warmth and zest for life is evident – when the book reaches me from Louisiana where she is based, I turn over the front page and there’s a hand-written note inside wishing me “lots of fun on my adventures.” There’s also a short recipe at the end of each chapter, inspired by dishes Brandon has tasted on her travels and adapted to something healthier, simpler and fresher.

When we speak, I ask if she ever intended to write a book about her experiences. She laughs. “I had no idea I would end up completing a book. I went away and was just concentrating on what I enjoyed: meeting new people, learning about their cuisine, cooking with them and seeing these fantastic places. The idea for the book came later.”

She says she did a lot of writing soon after she quit her job and moved from Italy - where the company was based - to her family’s home in Florida. “I was in really poor health for about a year and found it hard to get out of bed. But writing was cathartic," she says.

Brandon’s ill health wasn’t a straightforward case of being stressed out and run-down. After working as a management consultant in New York for most of her twenties then moving to Italy where she was “completely addicted” to the pace of corporate life and “consuming vast quantities of coffee and cookies just to keep going” she was diagnosed as pre-diabetic, with an underactive thyroid and chronic fatigue syndrome – at the age of 32.

“I had to choose a different, less destructive path. So, for the first time in my life, I began cooking,” she says.

"I had strange symptoms for a few months, went to the doctor and once diagnosed I followed a restricted diet with vitamin and mineral supplements that healed my body in six months. I was excited and surprised that healing naturally happened in such a short time."

Her passion for good, healthy food eventually took her around the world. “I always had a plan to go away for a year, but when I did, one year wasn’t enough so it became two.” She went with her partner – who is also the editor of The Adventure Cookbook – and visited India, Thailand, Australia, Turkey, Israel, Finland and Italy, ending up in the south of France where she wrote the book.

“I came home deeply changed in ways I can’t even describe,” says Brandon. “While I was travelling I made an effort to cook with the local people and find out as much as possible about the food of the country I was in. But it was more than that. I made it a priority to start enjoying life again – and it was cooking that helped me do that.”

Brandon says she returned home with a greater clarity about what she wanted from life and a feeling that she had been given a second chance. When I ask her if she sampled any particularly unusual foods during her trip and whether it was this that had given the book its name, she says no – her “curiosity is not in the strange foods department”. “I went away to find out about the restorative properties of food: the ‘adventure’ was that I ended up finding out more about myself in doing so.”

For more information, visit: www.lifeinprovence.com

Recipes

Monkfish with Cherry Tomatoes and Capers

In the restaurants around our village, lotte is the most common fish on the menu. Monkfish tastes pretty delicious steamed and naked, as it is often served. Here I dressed it in Provençal colors.

4 monkfish fillets
2 small white onions, sliced
12 cherry tomatoes, halved and seeded
2 teaspoons capers, drained
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 lemon, cut in quarters
1 tablespoon rosemary, crushed
sea salt and cracked pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Rinse the fillets and pat dry. In an oven-friendly dish, center a sheet of tin foil about two feet long. The sheet will not wrap tightly around the fish; it will make a “bag” with air trapped inside, allowing the fillets to steam while they’re in the oven. Arrange the fillets on the tin. Cover with the olive oil, tomatoes, onions, capers and rosemary. Add a dash of sea salt and cracked pepper. Pull the long ends of the foil upward, bring them together and pinch closed along the top and sides, leaving about six inches ofspace between the fish and the top of the tin “bag”. Place in the oven and bake for twenty minutes. Open the bag and let cool for one minute. Gently slide the foil from under the fish, keeping the juice in the dish. Serve each plate with a piece of lemon.

Tartine with Fresh Figs and Goat Cheese

There is no need to speak of a “Provençal bruschetta” because the savory variations on toasted bread already have a name in the language of Provence, roustido, though nowadays the word most commonly used throughout France is tartine. Tartines can be sweet (with butter and jam they’re a French breakfast favorite), but in restaurants a tartine usually refers to toasted bread with a savory topping.

1 crunchy baguette, cut in two lengthwise then again three times to make eight pieces
6 ripe figs, sliced from top to bottom
5 ounces fresh goat cheese
4 teaspoons honey
cracked pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Dig out the softest part of the bread and feed it to the birds. Lightly toast the bread in the oven then take it out. Arrange the 0 gs on the bread. Arrange the cheese unevenly, allowing the figs to show through. Put the tartines back in the oven for five minutes. Add a pinch of pepper for contrast. Drizzle honey on each toast and serve warm.