Interview IT ALL STARTS WITH ONE... Community chef Sanjay Prosenjit Kumar tells Alice Ball how his culinary travels fuelled his passion for slow food, and how he’s working to eradicate food poverty one person at a time 30 OPTIMUM NUTRITION | AUTUMN <strong>2021</strong>
Interview S ardines weren’t born in “ Cornwall, they came to Cornwall. I wasn’t born in Cornwall, I went there. Cooking brought me here and gave me a passport. It is my role to give something back to cooking by teaching people to eat better.” Sanjay Prosenjit Kumar would compare himself to a sardine. Just like the small fish, which migrate from the Mediterranean up to the coast of Cornwall, the Indian-born chef has travelled far and wide throughout his career; from the royal kitchens of Saudi Arabia to training under Raymond Blanc in Oxford. Now based in Hertfordshire, Kumar has spent the past decade working as a food activist, using a skills based approach to tackle food poverty. In 2012, whilst living in Truro, he founded the aptly named School of Cornish Sardines, a mobile cookery school that teaches people to eat well on a shoestring. The enterprise came about after Kumar was asked to perform a cookery demonstration for a local school as part of Falmouth Oyster Festival. “I went into the kitchen and there was a big deep fat fryer waiting to fry sausages,” he says. “That was when my jaw dropped. [We’re doing] all of these demonstrations for people who can afford oysters. What are we doing for these children who are the consumers of the future?” Inspired to tackle the problem directly, he enrolled onto a social enterprise course. “In Cornwall there is this dichotomy where there’s lots of fresh produce, but there is so much food poverty,” he explains. “My idea was using cooking as the tool to educate and upskill people.” He quickly realised, however, that food poverty can take many forms. “I was asked to do a barbecue in Newquay for people with learning difficulties,” he explains. “I gave this corn on a cob to a guy who had a physical disability and he dropped it. That’s when I realised that all these classes and all this cooking is only for people who have the time, money and ability.” In response, he set up a weekly club where those with learning difficulties could come together over food. “Some would come just for the sound of a packet crunching or a fish frying in a pan,” he says. “But we’d sit and eat together. That is my vision of being a cook.” But like a sardine, he’s been on quite the adventure to get here. “For a while in the ocean you drift,” he says, “Then you drag yourself with the current and you swim a little bit. Then destiny takes you some place.” Humble beginnings Born in Kolkata, India, Kumar has fond memories of his grandmother’s kitchen, where food would be cooked over a coal and wood fire burner stove. “We would huddle around and fresh chapattis or rice and daal would be made and distributed according to your age,” he recalls. “You’d sit on the floor and you’d eat out of these copper plates.” Yet becoming a chef, he says, was a “complete accident”. Whilst most of his classmates went on to become doctors or engineers, he opted for a course in hotel management. “I was always a bit different from the pack,” he says. “Not looking for anything mainstream.” Having been given the opportunity to work in hotel kitchens, he quickly discovered that becoming a chef could open up “a world of opportunities”. “You could be getting salmon and caviar from Norway, and be eating white asparagus from India.” In 2000, Kumar was working in the Taj Exotica in Goa whilst the ambassador of Saudi Arabia was visiting. “In Cornwall there is this dichotomy where there’s lots of fresh produce, but there is so much food poverty...My idea was using cooking as a tool to educate and upskill people...” “It was a day when I was in the kitchen and the head chef was off,” he says. “I went to ask him how his [dish] was and he said he loved it. Then he said, ‘would you like to go and cook for the king?’” Within a few months, Kumar had a passport and was on a flight to Saudi Arabia to cook in the royal kitchens. “It was opulence to the bar of something you never see. During Ramadan, we cooked camels in pans and stuffed them with lambs and chicken.” Working with colleagues from the Philippines, Sudan and Pakistan, it was his first glimpse into how food could unite people. “Beyond all artificially created differences, human beings connect with food,” he says. “We would sit around a table on a floor and literally break bread. That’s the beauty of food; it unites the world and it unites people.” He also became aware of food shortages and excess. “The problem and the solution are the same,” he says. “You’ve got to channel that to someone else’s benefit. If there is less food, you have to share. If there is more food, you definitely have to share.” After two years he returned to the Intercontinental in Mumbai, before coming to England in 2003 with just £200 in his pocket. From Chelmsford onto Oxford, where he trained under Raymond Blanc (“I didn’t know who he was”), then on to Manchester and Tunbridge Wells before settling in Cornwall, where he gained an appreciation for fresh, local produce. “You could actually connect with the producer and understand where food Image: Zagzig © 123RF.com OPTIMUM NUTRITION | AUTUMN <strong>2021</strong> 31
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