Swapping medical scrubs for a chef’s apron was a no brainer for Ruth Nieman (above right) and a career move which led to her writing an award-winning Israeli-inspired cook book.
“I was a nurse for nearly 18 years back in the late 1980s and 1990s. I’d worked my way up from training as a nurse to being a ward sister to NHS management, but I just didn’t want to be a manager in the health service. So I decided to do something different with my life — a complete career change.”
In September 1997, Nieman went to Leith’s School of Food and Wine, where she studied for its Chef’s Diploma. Her aim was to set up a catering company, which she did after graduating in 1998. Truly Scrumptious Catering was initially based at her home, until the business became too large and she moved it to premises in Potters Bar.
Her background (born and bred in north London) brought in plenty of work doing bar and bat mitzvahs and weddings. “People knew me, and although I wasn’t kosher licensed, I knew what they wanted in terms of not mixing milk and meat and all the dietary laws.”
However, in 2012, disaster struck when she slipped in the rain and tore some ligaments in her ankle. Surgery to repair the damage went wrong, leaving her in considerable pain and having to undergo a series of operations over several years. She was forced to give up her business. “I had no choice as I literally couldn’t even stand.”
When she started to recover, she knew she wanted to carry on working, but that it would not be in a kitchen. “I have a chronic pain condition so it wasn’t easy to do something around food — which I loved. I could no longer stand and cook and do all the things I’d been doing.”
So she went back to school again. This time she took a diploma in food journalism at the College of Media and Publishing. “It was online and you could take as long as you wanted. I completed it in five months and got a distinction, so I was really quite pleased with myself as I wasn’t sure how that was going to turn out.”
Around that time, partly to aid her recovery, Nieman was spending time in Israel. In her younger years, she had visited Israel many times, firstly on kibbutz with youth movement, Habonim Dror. “In 1982, after I’d spent a year in Israel with Habonim, I went back on my own to Kibbutz Amiad (which is in the Upper Galilee) for a couple of years.”
On that stay, Nieman worked in the kitchens, planning the menus for the dining hall, which were for 500 – 600 people each meal. “Even back then I wanted to be involved in food.”
It was being in the Galilee that inspired her to write her first book. “The idea for The Galilean Kitchen fell into my lap, and that’s how I got into food writing.”
The book, which she self-published in December 2017, shared home recipes from women of Christian, Druze and Bedouin Arab communities from across the northern Israeli region. It took her 18 months to write, during which time she spent time cooking with her subjects and collating their recipes. She also showcased the area’s locally grown ingredients, including wild greens, herbs, vegetables and spices.
“I went out to Israel about five times in the end for different seasons and different periods. I had to stay with friends as I didn’t have a place there then. I wasn’t as mobile as I had been so it took a bit longer than I’d wanted.”
It was worth the wait, as the book, won a prestigious Gourmand World Cookbook Award. The awards, founded in 1995 by Edouard Cointreau, honour the best food and wine books and food television. The Galilean Kitchen won an award in 2018 for culinary tourism for Israel, and also won a special award for “Cookbook for Peace”.
“It’s a cross cultural project — me being a Jewish writer, going into Arab women’s homes and the whole neutral platform of how food is shared across the cultures.”
To publicise that book, Nieman gave talks and supper clubs. “I met publisher Catheryn Kilgarriff at one of my supper clubs in Chiswick and we came up with my second book, Freekeh, Wild Wheats and Ancient Greens, which was published this month.”
This book, also inspired by her time in Israel, concentrates on a range of grains and grasses. Wild wheats include emmer — which still grows wild in northern Israel — einkorn and spelt; and ancient grains include teff and sorghum. Many of them are low in gluten or gluten free and have been grown since biblical times. Some even get a mention in the tenach — freekeh is in the Book of Ruth.
Nieman includes a range of recipes, many with a Middle Eastern twist such as the cauliflower spelt latkes and the apple and thyme tart with a freekeh crust and a freekeh, heritage carrot and Medjool date salad on these pages.
This book includes Nieman’s own recipes as well as those shared by prominent Israeli chefs like Erez Komarovsky (pioneer of the country’s artisan bread movement) and highlights grains that have huge nutritional benefits and are enjoying a re-emergence on modern menus.
Freekeh, Wild Wheats & Ancient Grains, Prospect Books
Find from Ruth on freekeh here
