The short version:

Elly McCausland is a British food writer currently based in Ghent, Belgium, where she also works as Assistant Professor of English Literature at Ghent University. She has won and been nominated for multiple awards for her food writing, including being shortlisted for best Online Food Writer by the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards in 2015, and winning the Guild of Food Writers Food Blog of the Year Award in 2016 for work published on Nutmegs, seven. In 2017 and 2022 she was shortlisted for the same award. Her first cookbook, The Botanical Kitchen, was published in 2020 by Bloomsbury/Absolute Press, and won the Jane Grigson Trust Award. It was also Highly Commended in the First Book category at the Guild of Food Writers Awards 2021. She has published work in The Telegraph, Yorkshire Living, Olive magazine and The York Press and has been featured in Delicious and Waitrose Food. She is always keen to take on new food and recipe writing projects, and can be contacted here.

The longer version:

I'm Elly. Until the age of seventeen I ate basically nothing except cheese sandwiches. Food had no interest for me and I was notoriously picky. When I had to go on a French exchange with school, aged fourteen, we were asked to send the family a letter advising them of what we didn't eat. I wrote 'pasta, and rice'. Yes, readers: two of the blandest foods imaginable. There was no hope for me.

Fate intervened. Aged seventeen, I got a job as a waitress in a restaurant that championed local, organic food. Every day at work was a voyage of discovery. Greengages, crème caramel, Tunisian citrus cakes, Moroccan tagines, lentils, feta, butterbeans - I had never heard of, let alone tasted, any of these things. Fortunately, I promptly fell head-over-heels in love with the chef. Desperate to impress, I forced myself to try these alien foodstuffs when he offered them to me (pickled fennel? Duck liver pâté?) and even to start cooking his recipes myself at home. Helped along by my mother, who started sneaking cookbooks into my Christmas stocking, I was soon producing plates of marinated feta salads, bean soups, north African stews, pasta carbonara, fruit tarts, sorbets and all manner of interesting creations that were about as far from a cheese sandwich as you can possibly get. 

I did a BA and a Masters in English literature at Oxford University, and spent those four years dividing my time between writing essays and cooking every weird and wonderful ingredient I could get my hands on at the market, apparently desperate to make up for lost time. Unlike some of my peers, I never had to resort to cooking pasta in a kettle by sellotaping down the 'on' switch, which I consider probably the finest achievement of my university career. My journey towards culinary aptitude was occasionally plagued by those hazards perennial in all student kitchens: food thieves, a lack of utensils, forgetful people who leave freezers open overnight and a constant film of grease on every available surface and appliance no matter how much washing up liquid is applied. Oh and yes, that standard bête-noire of all student houses: the housemate who decided his jugged hare had not been quite jugged enough by the butcher and somehow managed to spatter hare blood all over the worktop, walls, and even inside the kettle. 

I started writing a food blog while working for my Finals in April 2010. This was an ostensibly ludicrous move, but I think it helped to keep me sane during a three-month period in which I had quotations from Chaucer taped to the mirror above my sink and had to stop drinking any caffeine whatsoever because it was making me afraid of my own heartbeat. I started it as a place to document the daily bursts of mild euphoria that come from unleashing your creativity upon edible substances, to chronicle occasions like the one where I went out to buy a pint of milk and returned with a smoothie maker and six wood pigeon, grew and cooked my own lemongrass, or plucked and roasted two partridge from scratch. Food writers always get asked what exactly it is they love about food and cooking: for me, the joy comes from having a hobby that I can get excited about at least three times a day. 

I eat nearly everything, except parsnips (I've never yet found someone who shares this dislike; usually the revelation is met with fierce consternation). I am particularly enamoured with fruit - I love all of it, apart from a strange thing I once tried in Indonesia that is called a 'snakeskin fruit' and tastes every bit as it sounds. I try and sneak fruit into all my recipes, sweet and savoury, and feel it is my mission to show the world that fruit can and should be a part of every meal. Crisp slivers of glassy pear in a fennel salad, for example, or chunks of juicy mango in a chickpea curry, or wedges of apple tucked alongside roasting pork chops. This was the main inspiration for my first cookbook, The Botanical Kitchen, published in 2020. I sometimes meet people who say they 'just don't get' fruit in savoury dishes. I don't really understand these people and feel they must be somehow defective.

The previous subtitle of this blog was 'recipes inspired by fruit and spice'. I take 'spice' to be a fairly general category that covers all the little additions you can make to food to turn it beautiful. A dusting of cinnamon, of course, but maybe also a smattering of smoked sea salt, a trickle of gooseberry vinegar, a little dried orange peel powder, a few drops of mandarin-infused olive oil or a pinch of vanilla salt. I love the little things that enhance the main event; my kitchen cupboards are packed with flavoured salts, sugars, oils and vinegars. I'm also a breakfast fiend, an event that I hold sacred and is probably the meal I find most inspirational. Another inspiration for me is the great British pudding: I shun fancy French-style patisserie with all its swirly cream and piped chocolate in favour of big, hearty, stodgy puddings, the kind that isn't out of place after a huge Sunday lunch. I also love food that is frugal, that uses unloved parts of an animal, fish or vegetable or that turns leftovers into treats. I enjoy growing my own fruit and vegetables (tomatoes, courgettes, Swiss chard, red peppers, lemongrass, pandan leaf, kaffir limes, chillies...).

Closely linked to my love of food is my love of travelling. I collect recipes as souvenirs, hoarding scraps of inspiration from restaurants, cafes, and street food wherever I go. East Asia is my favourite destination, and in the last four years my cooking has tended to revolve around the cuisines from that part of the world. If I had to pick just one cuisine to cook for evermore, it’d be a close tie between Vietnamese and Japanese.

In 2016 I completed a PhD in children's literature at the University of York, and that same year I emigrated to Scandinavia: first to Aarhus, Denmark for two years and then to Oslo, Norway, where I worked for three and a half years as a Senior Lecturer in British and American Literature while simultaneously devoting my time to exploring Scandinavian baking cultures with anthropological precision. I now live in Ghent, Belgium, where I am on a mission to sample every Belgian waffle outlet in the city. I’m in the midst of writing my second academic book, focusing on adventure in children’s literature. (My first, Malory’s Magic Book, looked at representations of the King Arthur legend in children’s literature). Alongside books and food, I enjoy gardening and tending my ever-growing houseplant collection, hiking, cross-country skiing, fermenting various things, cats, yoga, crafts, fine tea, horse-riding and swimming (preferably in a cold fjord, followed by a stint in the sauna).

My first cookbook, The Botanical Kitchen, was published by Absolute Press/Bloomsbury on 19 March 2020. It won the Jane Grigson Trust Award in March 2019. (For a list of other awards & press features, see here).

And finally, a frequently asked question…

The title of my blog, 'Nutmegs, seven', is taken from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. The full quotation is: 'I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace, dates...nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four pounds of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun'. I chose it when I set up this blog; it encapsulated my three main interests then, and it still does now: literature, fruit and spice. And, most importantly, pie. 

I love hearing from readers of this blog - if you've tried the recipes, have any questions or just want to talk about food, please get in touch.