About

I love to cook. On days when I have a million other things to do, I somehow find myself in the kitchen. For years, it has been my ultimate procrastination station. Good food brings me joy.

I mostly learned to cook from my Mum, who has always been an inspiration in the kitchen. When I was 14, my parents encouraged me to enrol in weekly cooking classes designed for teenagers and run by a couple of chefs at a local Oamaru restaurant. I was instantly hooked; to the aromas and atmosphere, the process and product, the opportunity for endless creativity. My connection to food found a whole new perspective – it became more than what’s simply on the plate. For the final class, we were able to bring a whānau member along to taste our creations. As I presented to my brother the chicken curry I had cooked, I felt the most incredible pride seeing the enjoyment on his face.

In my second year of university, I was 18 years old and thrown into the world of flatting; five mates living off the weekly government stipend, where a box of beer might take precedence over dinner. My turn on flat dinners became a weekly highlight, an opportunity to try something new. The budget was lean, and you had to be resourceful, but I grew in my knowledge of basic techniques and developed an intuition for flavour. By my second year of flatting, the hours I spent in the kitchen had increased exponentially, and I became less reliant on recipes, bringing my own twist to the tried-and-true or just outright experimenting. It was here that my first venture into food-writing, Scarfie Kitchen, was born. What began as a blog for me to share the recipes I created for my flatmates became a self-published cookbook on a single print-run of 100 copies. As my interest in food expanded, so too did the food blog, with flavours and culinary influences broadening while maintaining the ethos I still carry - delicious, balanced, and creative recipes to share with loved ones.

A year or two went by. I was committed to finishing my medical degree, but my kitchen creations continued, including a major cake-decorating phase. As I began doctoring, I shared my recipes again through trEAT right., an holistic food and wellbeing blog that promoted moderation and being grounded in the food we consume, while keeping flavour at the centre.

Fast forward to July 2021 and I found myself at Parihoa Farm in the Great Kiwi Bake Off kitchen, testing my skills on national television in a pressure cooker environment. It honestly felt like an alternate world for the 3 weeks of filming - and when it all finished, I didn’t want to go back to reality. Against some incredible bakers, I managed to win the infamous ‘cake plate’, and it spurred me to push myself further into the world of food.

I had dreamed of creating a professionally-published, fully-realised cookbook for years, and winning the Great Kiwi Bake Off gave me the confidence to approach publishers with my proposal. The beginning of 2022 saw the creation of my debut cookbook, Good Vibes, published by HarperCollins NZ in August 2023. Made possible with the help of skilled Aotearoa photographer Aaron McLean, Good Vibes is about food and flavours that make us feel good, and the importance of food in bringing people together. Flavour is always paramount in my cooking, and it’s packed with globally-inspired modern veg-forward recipes to encourage you to get creative in the kitchen, in an accessible way. There’s also an underlying narrative around the importance of developing a positive relationship with the food we eat, one that’s not fueled by restriction or unhealthy negative cognitions, by connecting to food through whenua, whānau, and self.