Kate Young

Kate Young is a food writer who connects recipes with literature in her award winning Little Library cookbooks, which grew from a successful blog. She has written about food in a variety of publications, including the Guardian and Stylist. And she does events catering on the side too.

Kate speaks to QFAB about finding and opening up about her queer identity (despite warnings), writing and cooking for the pure joy of it, and staving off loneliness by finding your ‘collegues’ and friends. 

Introduce yourself….

My name is Kate Young and I am a writer, cook and caterer. I also work in a local bookshop in town. I am a lesbian whose pronouns are she/her. 

Where in the world are you? Where else have you lived and worked? 

I am currently in the Cotswolds, where I’ve been since 2018. I live in a town called Stroud. We have an extraordinarily good farmers market, which was a big draw to moving here. I had previously been in London for nine years, but I grew up in Australia before moving to the UK 13 years ago.

What does your average day look like? 

When I'm writing cookbooks, I spend half my day recipe testing and half my day writing. I try to balance it so that I'm not overwhelmed by one thing, so that I have the headspace to really consider what it is that I'm writing about, to think about the story I'm trying to tell with each recipe, and then also give myself plenty of time to develop. 

I live on my own. So I often invite people around for dinner, because there’s food that I've tested during the day that needs to be eaten. Work starts late because I'm crap in the mornings; I just want to read a novel and do some yoga or ride my bike and then do my emails before I get stuck in. Once at my ‘desk’/kitchen, I'll do a few hours of recipe testing and then I'll do three to four hours of sitting down getting stuff on paper. And then I will have people for dinner.

How did you get to where you are? 

I grew up cooking a lot; my family are very enthusiastic cooks! My granny did it professionally, and ran a catering company for a time. As a family we spent a lot of joyous time in the kitchen. When I was 14, and it was time for me to get my first job, I really wanted it to be in food. So cooking in a fish and chip shop in Australia was my first introduction into the industry. 

I trained as a drama teacher, then moved over to the UK as soon as I finished university. I had a job as a teacher for a few months, then worked as a theatre producer for seven years.

When I was working in theatre, I would have friends over and sometimes cook something I had read about it in a novel. One of my friends said, “you should put the recipes online and talk about the fact that it was inspired by a book”. And so I started blogging about food online, because cooking has always been a thing that would fill me with joy! As a naturally anxious person, I never really stressed out when cooking. I certainly do now that it's a job, but back when I started the blog it was the thing I did to calm me down. 

I spent two years putting a recipe up every week that nobody was reading at the start. I was doing it because it was fun and I loved it! Then I was contacted by an agent who thought there was a book in it.  I now write books which are food inspired by literature. It’s such a proper joy; I’m so lucky and I hope that I get to keep doing this. I also founded a catering company with my now business partner, Livvy Potts. We cater weddings and events around the country.

Photo credit - Lean Timms

What has your experience been of being queer in this industry?  

I first came out to someone in May 2018, and so for those first few years in the industry I was operating under the assumption that I was straight. I wasn't closeted, it was legitimately just that I had no idea. I was completely unaware of myself, had never really considered my sexuality beyond defaulting to heterosexuality I didn't start talking more openly about it until mid 2019, once I'd come out to all the key people in my life. So there have only been fewer than three years of my life so far of being open and out and queer in this industry. 

When I started coming out to people I was quite worried about the impact on my career. I had a few people in my life that cautioned me against coming out publicly and “making a thing of it”. It was all done with love, but there was a definite message of: “you don't owe anyone your story, you don't owe anyone information about your personal life, you write recipe books!” 

And it's true, I do write recipe books. And lots of recipe books don't have any space for that kind of conversation. But I write a lot of prose in my cookery books about my life and the people I feed, and about the sort of meals that I put on the table. So it felt more and more inauthentic to completely avoid talking about it. Those early cautioning  conversations had a real impact on me and I sort of worked myself up over time. I was really worried about it, but I was so relieved to find out that I  didn't need to be, because my publishers were amazing. They didn't even blink. 

The truth is that I often beat myself up about the time it took me to come out and to know this about myself. So now  I have this really tangible desire to talk about it. I always want to make it clear and explicit, because I know that representation would have really helped me growing up. It would have changed my life. 

But I didn't have anyone in my life who was modelling a domestic loving familial queer relationship. I knew I wanted kids and - it feels so ridiculous to say this now - I genuinely couldn't see how those two things would fit together. Growing up in a relatively conservative Catholic community in Australia, it just didn't occur to me to wonder why dating men was never a thing that I really enjoyed. I thought I was a person who just didn't really enjoy dating, didn't really enjoy sex, didn’t really feel attraction in a way that people talk about. And I just thought ‘Oh, well, I guess some people don’t!’

I'm learning to be better to myself now, but it makes me really sad to look back and imagine how happy I might have been in my 20s, in those years  when I felt really lost. I think if I'd seen more representation, it would have helped show me a version of that life that I could have. So now, as somebody who is queer in this industry, I want to be explicit about it. I want to make the possibility clear for people; that possibility of queerness and of happiness, and of those things adding to my life, making it brighter, making it better, rather than making it smaller or being a thing I ever want to hide away. I’m now in a position to have seen my work on lists of books by queer writers and I cannot tell you how moving that is. I truly can’t imagine telling that version of myself in 2015, who was just about to sign a book deal, who had no idea that she was gay, that she would end up on not only writing multiple books, but that she’d be on lists of queer writers! What a thing.

“If you can’t see your place within an industry, if you can’t see where you fit, it’s really difficult to carve out a place within it. ”

“I’ve been taught by cookery writers who I’ve always read and who I admire that what is so important in food writing is acknowledging the history of food writing and cooking that comes before you. There are so few truly original ideas in cooking!”

What advice would you give anyone who wants to get into your line of work? 

What I miss most when writing and cooking alone, is having somebody to bounce ideas off. A lot of the work that I did in my first few years in this industry; private catering gigs and writing on my own, was really lonely. Coming from a job that wasn't at all lonely, which was absolutely my experience of working in theatre, was quite overwhelming. 

So I think my advice is: find some friends. Find people in your industry who inspire you, who you're energised by, whose work you think is magical, and make them your friends. In 2014, I was reading two food blogs by women whose writing I loved and food I wanted to eat: Eating with My Fingers (Ella Risbridger) and A Half Baked Idea (Livvy Potts). 

I met both of them towards the end of 2015, and they are now  two of my dearest friends as well as, crucially, my work colleagues. When I need to talk about my career, and my work, they're the people I talk to, to bounce ideas off of. Liv is also (legally, we signed the paperwork and everything) my business partner, we co-own a catering company together (@foodbyfeast). Basically, my advice is to give  yourself colleagues, because writing is quite a lonely pursuit, and it’s easy to lose sight of what it is you’re trying to make.

What are the best and worst things about this industry? 

I think the best thing is how endlessly creative and inspiring and wide in its scope this industry is. I can go and eat a fantastic meal, or travel somewhere, or have friends around to dinner, or visit a market, or read about a meal, and there's a story to be found in that, and a recipe to be developed, a thing I want to eat again and again after that one experience is over.

There is something deeply prosaic about food and eating. We all do it, all the time, and so often for necessity rather than deep pleasure. And so it  feels like a real privilege and a joy to be able to write about the moments where it becomes a truly special thing, where a meal is something to linger over, to savour. And the thrill of putting something on the table in front of people, whether that's through my recipes or through catering, is just so wonderful. I absolutely love doing it.

The worst thing is… I mean, there are lots of interesting things about it. Publishing has been a strange industry to get to know. I knew nothing when I started. I didn't know how the process of making a book worked, and it was a steep learning curve. I assumed everything was my responsibility (it isn’t! publishing is a team sport!). I didn’t ask for help and advice nearly enough. I’m really lucky with my publishers, who are fantastic, but I don’t think that there is nearly enough transparency in the industry in terms of how food writing works, in terms of how books are commissioned or bought, made, sold, and promoted. 

But actually, the only thing I really genuinely feel is the worst thing is the sort of perpetual loneliness of it. There are months where I have felt like I was very much on my own. The joy of that is that I get to remind myself that that's not true. I've got a few friends in the same boat, who work in the industry, who sometimes struggle with the same thing. When I feel down about it I know that there are people I can get in touch with to feel better.

What advice would you give anyone who wants to get into your line of work? 

What I miss most when writing and cooking alone, is having somebody to bounce ideas off. A lot of the work that I did in my first few years in this industry;  private catering gigs and writing on my own, was really lonely. Coming from a job that wasn't at all lonely, which was absolutely my experience of working in theatre, was quite overwhelming. 

So I think my advice is: find some friends. Find people in your industry who inspire you, who you're energised by, whose work you think is magical, and make them your friends. In 2014, I was reading two food blogs by women whose writing I loved and food I wanted to eat: Eating with My Fingers (Ella Risbridger) and A Half Baked Idea (Livvy Potts). 

I met both of them towards the end of 2015, and they are now  two of my dearest friends as well as, crucially, my work colleagues. When I need to talk about my career, and my work, they're the people I talk to, to bounce ideas off of. Liv is also (legally, we signed the paperwork and everything) my business partner, we co-own a catering company together (@foodbyfeast). Basically, my advice is to give  yourself colleagues, because writing is quite a lonely pursuit, and it’s easy to lose sight of what it is you’re trying to make.

What are the best and worst things about this industry? 

I think the best thing is how endlessly creative and inspiring and wide in its scope this industry is. I can go and eat a fantastic meal, or travel somewhere, or have friends around to dinner, or visit a market, or read about a meal, and there's a story to be found in that, and a recipe to be developed, a thing I want to eat again and again after that one experience is over.

There is something deeply prosaic about food and eating. We all do it, all the time, and so often for necessity rather than deep pleasure. And so it  feels like a real privilege and a joy to be able to write about the moments where it becomes a truly special thing, where a meal is something to linger over, to savour. And the thrill of putting something on the table in front of people, whether that's through my recipes or through catering, is just so wonderful. I absolutely love doing it.

The worst thing is… I mean, there are lots of interesting things about it. Publishing has been a strange industry to get to know. I knew nothing when I started. I didn't know how the process of making a book worked, and it was a steep learning curve. I assumed everything was my responsibility (it isn’t! publishing is a team sport!). I didn’t ask for help and advice nearly enough. I’m really lucky with my publishers, who are fantastic, but I don’t think that there is nearly enough transparency in the industry in terms of how food writing works, in terms of how books are commissioned or bought, made, sold, and promoted. 

But actually, the only thing I really genuinely feel is the worst thing is the sort of perpetual loneliness of it. There are months where I have felt like I was very much on my own. The joy of that is that I get to remind myself that that's not true. I've got a few friends in the same boat, who work in the industry, who sometimes struggle with the same thing. When I feel down about it I know that there are people I can get in touch with to feel better.

What is the best lesson someone else has taught you in your years in the food and drink industry?  

I'm completely  indebted to other people in the industry. So many have been incredibly welcoming and kind. Over and over again, I've been taught by cookery writers who I've always read and who I admire that what is so important in food writing is acknowledging the history of food writing and cooking that comes before you. 

There are so few truly original ideas in cooking! Of course there are a set of people doing, you know, molecular gastronomy or working out new ways of utilising ingredients. . There are people developing new ways in which we haven't cooked before. But I'm never going to be doing that cooking. That's not the kind of cooking that fills me with joy. 

I cook in a way that is quite magpie-like often inspired by things I’ve learned from my mum, my dad, and my granny, from Nigella Lawson and Diana Henry, from Fuschia Dunlop and Olia Hercules and Claudia Roden and Benjamina Ebuehi, from Ella and from Liv, from other friends who cook. 

The best lesson that people have taught me over the years is that it is a valid way to cook. It’s great to honour the fact that you learned about a particular curry thanks to Madhur Jaffrey, that you hadn’t tried cooking pelmeni until you read about them in Alissa Timoshkina’s Salt and Time. . It doesn't take anything away from you as a cook, or a writer. In fact it enriches it, it makes it better and, and deeper to draw these threads between the writing and cooking you’re inspired by. 

“I started blogging about food online, because cooking has always been a thing that would fill me with joy! As a naturally anxious person, I never really stressed out when cooking.”

Who is your food hero?

Stephanie Alexander. She’s an Australian food writer and wrote The Cook’s Companion. It’s the most extraordinary encyclopaedia of food, so beautifully put together. Because it's so deeply Australian, there are so many ingredients in it that offer such a deep hit of nostalgia. . She has an extraordinary  knowledge of food and her recipes are fantastic, but she's also just a really lovely writer, really warm and engaging. The book could feel clinical, but it never does.

My other heroes are Nigella Lawson, Diana Henry and Nigel Slater, the classic British food writers I grew up reading and admiring. Their books are full of prose, about the food they love to make, and why they bring that sort of food to the table, and who for, and how they feel about that food. I am incredibly lucky to be afforded space in my books to write essays about food alongside the recipes, and I know that I am because they did it first, because of their writing, because of the way they talk about food. 

“ ...the thrill of putting something on the table in front of people, whether that’s through my recipes or through catering, is just so wonderful. I absolutely love doing it.”

Do you have a queer icon?

I wrote an essay a while ago about contemporary representation in pop culture and the lack of representation when I was a teenager. And so I am going to pick Dan Levy, who wrote Schitt’s Creek. The show came to me at exactly the right point in my life, just as I was coming out. It was incredibly important for me to watch something featuring queer people in a small community who fell in love and weren’t challenged or questioned or threatened. I’d become so used to seeing homophobia that it had become a default to accept the possibility of it, the reality of it. The world is still deeply heteronormative, often homophobic, and deeply transphobic. There are 69 countries in the world where homosexuality remains a crime. One in five people in the UK has experienced a hate crime in the past twelve months, and that figure rises to two in five amongst the trans community. Watching a half-hour comedy programme that showcased a world that could exist, where homophobia isn’t just challenged but is utterly absent, felt groundbreaking. And in researching the piece I wrote I read so many stories of how many minds have been changed by the show, so many families having conversations that they wouldn’t otherwise have had, so many people feeling safer to come out, knowing there is a community to stand with them. That’s extraordinary. It’s a view of the world that’s worthy of conversation and of aspiring to.

What advice would you give to your younger baby queer self?

I would tell her to listen to one of the people who was very gently asking her if she was gay, and tell her that maybe there was a reason that lots of people were asking. I'm thrilled I figured it out eventually, but God, what a time!

Do you feel it is important for the LGBTQI+ community within the food and beverage industry to have a network and if so why? 

I really do! It strikes me looking back that the food writing I read a lot of when I was growing up was very straight, and very white. I really do think that representation is key. If you can't see your place within an industry, if you can't see where you fit, it's really difficult to carve out a place within it. 

I have found it tremendously useful to speak with colleagues of mine who also had this experience, who didn't see themselves reflected back. I know that there is a potential that we can make things different for people picking up the pieces of food writing now, and that we change the fact that the default is still an assumption that you are straight and white and middle class and cooking for a nuclear family. There is a whole world of people cooking and writing about food, because food is literally for everybody. Everybody eats. I always want to read food writing by a range of different writers, by people whose lives and families and kitchens look different to mine. And so I think building communities that platform people who are underrepresented in the industry is so important.   

What is the best meal you have ever had? 

I think it might have been at my friends Alex and Kristen’s wedding in Italy. Most of the weddings I've been to I've had a job to do - I've either done the cake or been a bridesmaid or catered some part of it. For this wedding I flew out to Italy and had four days utterly chilling out. By the time we got to the day of the wedding, I had nothing to do but eat and have a really great time. 

Immediately after the ceremony there was this enormous wheel of parmesan with little knives and somebody was handing out fizzy wine. We just stood there having photos and bustling around, hacking bits off this massive wheel of cheese. I think about it all the time. Then we  ate a five course Italian buffet, where somebody was cutting meat off a leg of cured ham and somebody was slicing cheese and somebody was portioning up an amazing parmigiana. 

I can't even remember what I ate. It was probably close to 90 things! It was so extraordinary. The generosity was so amazing and we were just so jolly and drunk and chuffed to be there. It was magical.

What is a simple food pleasure for you?

My favourite lockdown food tradition was a really cold bottle of lager and a prawn cocktail crisp sandwich on soft sandwich bread.. I love really posh bread. I love sourdough. I love making my own bread. But I also really love white supermarket bread with butter and prawn cocktail crisps!

Give us your top places to eat and drink?

1. Noble Rot - I have been here alone, with friends, with colleagues. The bread plate, wine list and bar snacks are so good!. They have my favourite bread plate because it comes with three different kinds of bread,  all of which are extraordinarily good. I went there when my last book came out with Liv and we sat on the street outside the restaurant and had the bread plate and had a really good bottle of wine and the set menu lunch and it was just fantastic!

2. Dragon’s Delicacy - I adore cheung fun and could happily eat plates and plates of it here.  

3. Tomari-Gi - my favourite local place to eat, a Japanese restaurant in Stroud that does great ramen, amazing fried chicken, and really good dumplings. 

4. Royal China - I love eating absolutely everything at Royal China. I think dim sum was the meal I missed most during lockdown, and is the one I have eaten most since. 

5. St John’s Bread and Wine - I’ve loved St. John’s since I first moved to London and used to come on Saturday mornings for their (very reasonable) bacon sandwiches. Now I’m convinced that if I get married it will have to be at St. John’s because I want to eat their roasted bone marrow with parsley salad on my wedding day.  

6. Wright Brothers - This is my favourite place to go with Ella - we eat dozens of Happy Hour oysters, drink martinis, and dip chips in cod’s roe.

What are your top queer (food and beverage related) accounts you follow?

• Nick Sharma (@abrowntable) who's an American food writer and his writing is so beautiful. His photography is stunning;  it feels lit from within. He's also written a couple of really brilliant books that changed the way I look at food, and he's got more on the way as well. 

• Edd Kimber (@theboywhobakes) whose food I always want to be eating, and whose recipes work like a dream. 

• Dan Lepard (@danlepard) whose Short & Sweet is a proper bible that I’ve been cooking from for years. 

• Melissa Thompson (@fowlmouthsfood) whose food always looks terrific, and who shouts so loudly and enthusiastically about the work of other chefs and writers too.

• Ruby Tandoh (@rubytandoh) who writes really brilliantly about food and bodies and class and the emotions surrounding food.

• Zoe Adjonyoh (@zoeadjonyoh) who writes wonderfully, cooks amazingly, and did so much work feeding people during the pandemic.

Is there anything you would like to share with our community? 

I’m going to recommend a book called Queer: A collection of LGBTQ writing from ancient time to yesterday. It’s short stories, poetry and all sorts of pieces of writing excerpted from larger works, a perfect compendium of Queer writing. It gave me the most amazing reading list of queer writers to explore!