Speaker

Rosalind is a professional cook and teacher who’s been teaching cookery to people of all ages and abilities for over 60 years. Her devotion to education spans her whole career. Originally from South Africa, Rosalind taught cookery for the first time in 1969 in South Africa, where she used her own kitchen to show pupils, many of whom couldn’t read or write, the basics of cooking. Rosalind returned to London in 1972 to continue her training and her career in teaching in schools. She particularly enjoyed her role as head of the remedial department at King Alfred School where within the creative environment of the school, teens could opt for weekly cooking classes, and some of them went on to illustrious careers in the hospitality industry.

In the 1980s, Rosalind started Piemaker, a company that made and supplied wholesale pies and cakes to Harrods, Waitrose and the Orient Express.

In the 1990s she returned to teaching started a study skills practice. Through teaching children with learning difficulties, Rosalind discovered that cooking was an excellent vehicle for teaching reading and writing skills. She also used cooking as a tool for teaching children who did not enjoy or benefit from traditional education and found that it opened doors for them in terms of careers that they could follow for the rest of their lives.

In 2002 Rosalind opened Cookery School at Little Portland Street, based on the lasting principles of classic, simple cooking with classes and courses designed to give students a true understanding of the principles of cooking to enable confidence in the kitchen and a love of good food and cooking.

Rosalind is devoted to promoting and improving cookery education in the UK with a focus on sustainable food and diets for the future. Most recently she has launched a series of events: Conversations Around The Cookery School Table, bringing panellists and people together to discuss food topics including beans & pulses, chocolate, and cheese.

Throughout February 2024 she produced a National Cooking Programme providing live online daily cookery lessons, free of charge for 20 days.  The aim of the course  was to help people rediscover the joy of cooking and reduce the amount of ultra-processed foods eaten.  This programme was refined and extended in 2025  into Cook For Victory with the aim of having as many people as possible learning how to cook.  This programme is still available on the Cookery School Youtube channel.

Addressing the problem of ultra processed foods UPFs, the Fight Fake Food initiative emerged, where Rosalind led a small but highly significant march to Parliament.  A few weeks later, with a group of likeminded colleagues, they dropped of a list of wishes in Downing Street.  The wishes came from those in the country who were directly involved with growing and production of as well as health professionals, researchers and academics, all of whom were concerned about the obesity crisis and the role that ultra processed food and Big Food were playing.

More recently, with Cookery School having to go into liquidation after almost a quarter or a century of trading, Rosalind, with knowledge gained from previous programmes, is working to make Eat Real Food + Fight Fake Food CIC a practical reality.  With so much information available, it can be baffling and overwhelming to understand what foods are safe to eat.  The basic premise of this programme is based on what people CAN eat and how to identify this.  Understanding and knowledge, empower people to make correct decisions.   She is hoping to enlist the help of experts across the fields of food and medicine to assist in teaching the public the importance of eating real food and not putting any foods which they do not recognise into their shopping baskets.  Being the eternal optimist, she is hoping that if sufficient people in the country realise the importance of eating real food only, they will give up on UPFs and by doing so will vote with their feet against Big Food.