18 Sep 2025
Elena Hogg, founder of local culinary company FOOD by Elena, reflects on her career…
Before I set up my business, FOOD by Elena, nearly four years ago, I used to cook almost as much as I do now, but for friends and family instead of clients.
It was a real passion of mine, sparked back when I first left home for university armed with a recipe folder my brother (also a very keen cook) had compiled for me from his own university cooking exploits.
The folder contained particular gems such as hand-written instructions for how to make our grandma’s chocolate puddle (which is indeed as sinful as it sounds) and recipes from his school food technology classes (though it was called home economics back then), including the very first thing he ever cooked – a delicious lemon drizzle cake that my parents and I begged him to repeat with unwavering regularity.
This folder now also contains many torn-out pages from magazines that have inspired me over the years, and many of my own scribblings about kitchen mistakes that have resulted – somehow – in an improvement on whatever recipe I was following.
Some of the scribbles are from conversations with my mum over the years about things I grew up eating that I wanted the recipe for, like her ‘pork loin with apple’ one-pan wonder for autumn dinner parties with minimal washing up. Or the recipe borne of her panicked re-think after lunch guests arrived early (naturally never to be invited ever again) and the peppers she’d planned to stuff with rice needed to be filled with ingredients requiring less or no cooking, like capers, anchovies, cheese and tomatoes.
There’s also a recipe for torta di ceci – a kind of biscuity pancake made from chickpea flour and water heralding from Livorno in Tuscany, where my mum lived as a girl for 12 years.
As with so many Italian dishes, torta di ceci has slightly different incarnations all over coastal Italy, as pointed out in Rachel Roddy’s excellent column in The Guardian’s weekend food supplement back in August 2023. Its name translates as chickpea cake or tart and not only does it take my mum back to her youth and buying it after school to fuel the walk home, but it takes me back to my childhood spent hearing about it, wondering how something made of chickpeas (urgh) could possibly be so heavenly.
The folder documents the role food has played in my life up until the point where food became my business. Then things began to change.
Scribblings have been replaced with carefully tested recipes, filed and labelled on a hard drive instead of in a battered old folder. Rather than logging my culinary
adventures, I log fridge temperatures and cooling times as per the council’s food safety requirements.
Where I used to spend hours perusing the market stalls or supermarket aisles for something unusual or delectable to cook up that evening for dinner, I’m more often shopping for what’s needed for my catering jobs that week, following a prescribed list with very little wiggle room.
And rather than throw caution to the wind and try a recipe with an entirely different ingredient, say, cooking for clients sees me sticking closely to what I know for fear of wildly overestimating how well lamb really goes with lychee.
The element of risk and, therefore, to some extent, of fun is necessarily absent when catering professionally.
Sometimes, though, and not as often as before or as I’d like, I get to relive the old days. Last weekend, for example, was my son’s 14th birthday and we hosted (as has become the annual tradition) our antenatal group for food and cake. It’s quite special to see each year how much the children have grown, considering they were all in utero when we parents first met. And best of all, I get to return to my make-it-up-as-I-go style of cooking because no-one’s paying me and there’s no prescribed menu or delivery time.
Last weekend I decided to make beef brisket, which turned out very tender and tasty, especially with the addition of a gherkin and mango chutney mayo that got polished off so fast I had to make more. But it was all the accompanying salads and sides that I found most exciting to prepare – vibrant veggies with dizzying dressings, like roasted butternut squash wedges drizzled with a caper-raisin relish and pine nuts, then sprinkled with a some cornflowers for an extra pop of colour.
I also made a tomato dish that was incredibly simple, but socked you in the face with flavour. Pound up some coriander seeds, peppercorns and fleur de sel in a pestle and mortar, then sprinkle over a platter of halved vine tomatoes. Do this well in advance of serving so the flavour sinks in and, just before eating, add some chickpeas (I had some black chickpeas which made for an unusual colour contrast) and fling some ricotta at the whole dish like you’re Jackson Pollock.
Top with some fresh herbs like coriander, oregano or mint and you’re away.
Even the slightly unlikely flavour combinations got a look in, with a sugarsnap pea and cherry salad – this time not my own overactive imagination, but that of Joshua McFadden in his cookbook, Six Seasons. It fooled quite a few guests who thought the sliced cherries were in fact sliced olives. Tee hee.
This kind of culinary joy – even abandon – is exactly what made me fall in love with food in the first place. And much as the business way of cooking has its drawbacks and restrictions, it is all a necessary part of what is, essentially, a dream come true for me – the privilege of turning a passion into a career. I am a very lucky woman.
