Kerstin Rodgers

Kerstin Rodgers

Chef, author and blogger

https://msmarmitelover.com
Kerstin Rodgers is also known as msmarmitelover, the name of her blog and twitter. She is the founder, since 2008, of the supper club/underground/pop up restaurant movement in the UK. As a chef, she runs her own supper club The Underground Restaurant from her home in North West London as well as running pop up restaurants at festivals like Bestival. She also has an award winning blog msmarmitelover.com winning Food Blog of the Year for the Guild of Food Writers 2013 and The Fortnum & Mason’s Online food writer of the year 2014. She has written four books: Supper Club, recipes and notes from the underground restaurant (Harper Collins 2011); MsMarmitelover’s Secret Tea Party (Square Peg 2014); V is for Vegan (Quadrille 2015) and Get started in food writing (Hodder 2015). She is frequently in the media, radio TV and print, talking about food trends and issues. She is also a professional photographer, having exhibited in Paris, Chartres and London, having started as a rock photographer for the NME. Kerstin also runs a monthly gardening and cooking supper club The Secret Garden Club and gets inspiration for her food and writings through her extensive travels.

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Kerstin's collections

Consuming Passions: Artichokes

A selection of recipes highlighted in Kerstin Rodgers feature, reporting on her visit to Paestum, near Naples, for its annual artichoke festival.

Kerstin Rodgers

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Pescatarian selections

“Do not fear the fish,” advises supper club host and author Kerstin Rodgers, aka Ms Marmite Lover, who has some simple tips for cooking fish – and rounds up her choice of ckbk’s top books on fish and seafood in her guest post.

Kerstin Rodgers

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Features & Stories

Consuming Passions: Artichokes

Consuming Passions: Artichokes

Kerstin Rodgers, freshly back from Italy’s famous artichoke festival in Paestum, near Naples, celebrates her passion for growing, cooking and eating this delicious, but often overlooked, vegetable.
Consuming passions: Aubergine/Eggplant

Consuming passions: Aubergine/Eggplant

In the latest feature in our Consuming Passions series, food writer and supperclub host Kerstin Rodgers explains why the aubergine is much more than just a saucy emoji…
Q&A with Prue Leith and Peta Leith

Q&A with Prue Leith and Peta Leith

Prue Leith, a presenter of The Great British Bake Off, has partnered with her niece, Peta Leith, a professional pastry chef, to write The Vegetarian Kitchen. Kerstin Rodgers interviewed the pair over Zoom about their collaboration, how they handled lockdown, friendship with food-writing legends Mary Berry and Elizabeth David, and what life is really like in the Bake Off tent.
In praise of pescatarianism

In praise of pescatarianism

Cooking fish is easier than you might think, says supper club host and author Kerstin Rodgers, aka Ms Marmite Lover. Here she gives some simple tips for cooking fish and shares her top fishy finds on ckbk.

Kerstin's favorite cookbooks

Dough

Dough

Richard Bertinet

I love Richard Bertinet’s approach to bread. I’ve baked most of the recipes in this book and considering that most cookbooks have at most one recipe cooked from them, this is the biggest compliment I can give. All the recipes work. Whenever I read his instructions, I do it in a French accent in my head. Great photography by Jean Cazals also.

A Year in my Kitchen

A Year in my Kitchen

Skye Gyngell

I’m always interested in female chefs and Skye Gyngell is one of the best. While her food is beautifully presented it’s not the anally retentive control freakery with tweezers and droplets that you see in male chefs food. It’s organically plated, using odd numbers, height and deceptive casualness. Her flavours and ingredients are fresh, vibrant, creative and innovative.

How To Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food

How To Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food

Nigella Lawson

Nigella’s intimate, warm and humorous voice shines through in her writing. I love the fact that she so clearly loves eating. None of your Scarlet O’hara ladies don’t eat in public, have an appetite like a bird fastidiousness here. I’ve cooked extensively from this book. She’s a writer as well as a cook. Food is just the tool she uses to comment on what’s going on.

The Kitchen Diaries

The Kitchen Diaries

Nigel Slater

Whenever I feel uninspired, I love to turn to the same date in Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries and cook something similar. All of his recipes work. He has exquisite food instincts and a down to earth, seasonal approach.

The Food of Italy

The Food of Italy

Claudia Roden

Of course Claudia Roden is one of the great poet travellers of food writing, with fantastically detailed etymological research. Plus her recipes all work. If I aspire to be anyone it’s her but I’m much more badly behaved. She’s so elegant!

Available on ckbk now
Persia in Peckham

Persia in Peckham

Sally Butcher

Sally Butcher’s Middle eastern books have been slightly overshadowed by younger, more telegenic cookbook authors of late. But Sally is a true character, a red haired fiery whirlwind of energy, who spreads the word about great Middle Eastern food from the depths of urban Peckham. She’s a shopkeeper as well as a chef and writer and does all of them equally well. She’s funny too.

Je Veux du Chocolat

Je Veux du Chocolat

Trish Deseine

I discovered Trish Deseine’s classic chocolate book while living in France with my daughter. I was having health problems at the time and was in and out of hospital regularly which was difficult for my daughter as I’m a single parent. We gained comfort from the delicious, homely, original recipes in Trish’s book. My daughter and I would cook the recipes together, I’m sure it helped me get better.

Wild Fermentation

Wild Fermentation

Sandor Ellix Katz

Now fermentation is all the rage but I’ve been banging on about it for at least six years. I love a pickle, I like the taste of rotted foods, the sourness. Sandor Ellix Katz is an HIV survivor, he bristles with vim and vigour in part due to his pioneering proselytising about fermentation and its health benefits. He’s revolutionary and counter culture - after my own heart.

50 Great Curries of India

50 Great Curries of India

Camellia Panjabi

If you want to get a handle on how to cook an authentic curry, get this book. I’ve learnt so much from it and consider myself now to be a brilliant curry maker for an Englishwoman. She’ll explain the ingredients, the tempering of spices, the onion base, the mix of whole and ground spices, the use of kashmiri chillies which aren’t very hot but add depth of flavour. This is your handbook for curry making.

Pastry: Savoury & Sweet

Pastry: Savoury & Sweet

Michel Roux

This book by the great lion-maned French chef Michel Roux Senior is brilliant like all of his series on eggs, sauces etc. The recipes are back to first principles of pastry, reliable and true with clear instructions.