The last two years have seen Sarah Glover exploring rock shelves, paddocks and orchards throughout Australia’s East coast, while writing her first book, Wild Adventure Cookbook.
The 33-year-old chef spent her early years running between fruit trees and veggie patches in her family’s Lauderdale home. “I’ve always been able to walk out into my backyard and grab something with my two hands, brush the dirt off and eat it,” she says fondly.
It was not until she moved to Queensland when she was 21 that she realised she’d taken for granted the accessibility of Tasmanian produce and the state’s connection with the land. “In Tassie, you take for granted that every summer you’re going to have beautiful tasting raspberries and lovely apricots,” she says. “What I noticed in the move was that everyone affiliated food with the supermarket…as something that comes wrapped in plastic with a bit of Styrofoam underneath and there’s no land connection.”
In writing Wild, Sarah wanted to help re-establish the connection between nature, food, and people.
“This book is an adventure cookbook. It’s about going on an adventure with your family or your friends,” Sarah says.
“It’s about catching a fish or finding a fish monger and creating a moment around the food that you’ve gathered for the day and sitting down and sharing the meal. You can put your phones down and really be present with one another, which is rare these days.
“I wanted to inspire people to become creative again, to connect with the farmer and the producers because you don’t have to go too far to find that connection.”
Wild is photographed by Sarah’s friend Luisa Brimble. The pair began shooting together several years ago for what was initially going to be a magazine article about adventure cooking in Tasmania.
Luisa photographed Sarah cooking with friends at a rock shelf in Eaglehawk Neck. While the article was never published, Sarah says they found a format they enjoyed shooting which became the foundation of Wild.
When asked about how the recipes in Wild evolved, Sarah laughs, saying it all happened “super organically”.
“We would plan a trip and then I would find out what was in season in an area and I would go off to try and find some produce and not all the time would I find the produce I had in mind but I would get inspired by something else,” she says.
“The whole book sort of rolled from there so I would just start dreaming up locations and themes and all these doors started opening and people were offering different places to come and stay and it just snowballed.
“We went on this fantastic journey and we actually didn’t map any of it out from day one. It became about travelling around Tassie and the East coast of Australia.”
Sarah began exploring the Tasmanian landscape as a child alongside her brothers.
At midday each day when their home-schooling finished, they ventured off into nature for learning of another kind.
At 14 Sarah began surfing, a pastime through which she found a grounding connection with the ocean that continues to shape her life.
She says she is blessed to have the beach just a short distance from her current Bondi home where she starts most mornings with a run or surf. “Nature is quite a big part of my everyday life and I go a bit bonkers if I’m too far inland and don’t have access to water,” she laughs. “I think being a surfer has played a huge role in my love for the outdoors and appreciation of nature and being aware of the impact we’re having on our land and caring for that. “Also as a chef, obviously food comes from nature so that respect [for the land] is vital because otherwise you don’t have good land for your produce to grow in and your cooking will never be what it can be.”
Just days after we speak, Sarah is set to travel to Esperance with Luisa to begin shooting a second recipe book, Wild, Wild West, which seeks to capture the barren Western side of Australia. It will be a cowboys and Indians style, she says laughing, with horses and helicopters and boats. Like her first book, this will be a long-term project, shot over several years.
Wild Adventure Cookbook will be released in August 2017, and can be pre-ordered online via sarahglover.com.au
This article was first published in Lume Magazine, August 2017.
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