Optimum Nutrition - Autumn 2021 - PREVIEW

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
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