About Chef Erin Baker

I’m a chef at heart. I’ve tried to change careers, to leave behind the unsociable hours and physical strain, but a deeply rooted love for food, and for cooking together to create memories has always pulled me back. I also love to teach, to share what I know about food and cooking, and to learn new things myself… so I feel perfectly at home here at the Natural Cookery School: this is where I’ve been heading all my life, perhaps without even knowing it.

After volunteering with food-sharing initiative Food Not Bombs and creating the Sweet Lilac Deli, a takeaway at a health food cooperative in Vermont, I knew cooking was for me. But it wasn’t until I went to catering college that I truly fell in love with the idea of being a chef. The sweat of the kitchen, the pressure of service, the creativity and freedom of knowing how to cook; I loved it all. But there was one sticking point that could potentially hamper my professional progress: I was vegan. As it turned out, though, one of my tutors had attended the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, and had learned the basics from the bones up, as you might say, before herself going vegan. Together we founded Sparks, an award-winning vegan restaurant north of San Francisco, where I learned to apply my foundation in cooking to natural, vegetarian food.

One of the places I cut my teeth as a trained chef was at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in California. This remarkable place, an organic, living laboratory, has been a major influence in my life and career. For almost four years I was lucky enough to be a garden-to-kitchen chef for the center’s workshops and events. Here began my lifelong affinity for seed to plate, farm to fork, plot to plate – call it what you will.

I’m fortunate to have been able to travel and sample dishes from across the globe, and I bring those influences to the cooking I do today, but with a sustainable twist… so I might be teaching people how to cook Thai food, but with locally grown, seasonal vegetables.

Whether I’m working at a community allotment or catering an event, I hope that my delicious, healthy recipes will inspire new ways of thinking about food and the way we eat from day to day. And wherever your food journey takes you; whether you begin to grow herbs on a windowsill at home, go foraging for the very freshest of natural ingredients, or decorate a dish with edible flowers, I hope that the Natural Cookery School will support you to gain confidence and creativity – to become a natural in the kitchen.