I’m on a culinary journey, and I want you to come with me!

By Marwa, Founder of YallaCook

To me, food is a journey. It can transport you around the world with its flavours, aromas, and textures. It excites me and fascinates me, and I’m always learning.

It’s for this reason that I left the corporate world and followed my love and passion of food to set up a food business in the UK.

My Egyptian/Arabic background and cuisine is not commonly known or eaten in the UK. But for diners and food lovers looking for something new and exciting, it offers so much. Warming, nutritious, tasty dishes steeped in fascinating history and many of which lie at the basis of family celebrations and hospitality.

I love cooking myself, but I want to do far more than serve food. I want to inspire new generations of cooks among our children, and I want to give other passionate cooks – whether amateur or aspiring chefs, a platform, and an opportunity to learn and promote their own skills.

This is what led me to my ambitious ‘Academy’ through which I run courses and look forward to collaborating with and supporting other chefs to share their skills too.

People who live and breathe food love exploring new recipes, trying new techniques, discovering new ingredients.

If this is you, I want to help you along that journey of discovery, because it’s a hugely exciting one.

If you want to expand your culinary horizons and improve your cooking, here’s some useful and fun ways to start;

  1. Pick a new country once a month and look up and try a new recipe from that country, order a takeway, or go to a restaurant. Imagine that – 12 countries’ cuisine experienced in a year!
  2. Attend a course. This could be an online course, a chef’s cook-a-long, or an in-person course (you can check out mine here.
  3. Go to the supermarket with a completely open mind and pick a meat, vegetable, pulse or even spice or herb you’ve never tried before. Look up a recipe and give it a go!
  4. Have a check of your kitchen equipment. Do you have a slow cooker languishing unused? A steamer sitting at the back of the cupboard? A barbecue outside that you only use a couple of times a year? Getting creative with this equipment may give you some new techniques and flavours you’d forgotten you could explore.
  5. Follow me on socials and sign up to the newsletter for upcoming new courses and inspiration.

This is the beginning of my journey, and by being a part of my food lover’s hub and academy, we can discover, share, learn, and inspire each other.