What is it about food and cooking that attracts academics and high-powered government officials? In the 1980s, Oxford graduate Nigella Lawson was known chiefly by the London literati as the Spectator’s chief book and food critic, and later, the Sunday Times deputy literary editor. By 1998 however the rigours of literature and academe had given way to the sensual embrace of cooking, making Nigella a culinary superstar. In 1998 her first cookbook How To Eat sold 300,000 copies, followed by more best sellers, How To Be A Domestic Goddess and Nigella Bites. By 1999 she began presenting the first of dozens of cooking series, found fame in the USA and today remains the UK’s queen of cuisine. Her sales include over 8 million cookery books worldwide and her cookware range, Living Kitchen, has been valued at £7 million. As career changes go, Nigella’s has not only been been massively public, but spectacularly long lasting.
In the US there are more dramatic examples of women leaping from the ordered world of politics and finance to the inspiration and hit-or-miss experimentation of cooking. Julia Child, the original US doyenne of gastronomy who brought classic French cooking into the homes of middle class Americans after the Second World War, who died in 2004, remains an icon. Several years ago Meryl Streep starred as the legendary foodie in a Hollywood biopic; today she is portrayed by British actress Sarah Lancashire in Julia, Sky TV’s current series.
However, the early life of the woman whose cookery books and coast to coast TV series turned her into a celebrity is surprisingly shadowy. Few know that her first job at the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, was developing a formula for shark repellent. The OSS was home to the US intelligence services and, in wartime, protecting shipwrecked sailors and other military personnel from being killed by sharks was crucial. Since sharks could also set off mines planted by enemy submarines the repellent was vital to US navy defences. Once she developed the repellent, Child became Chief of the OSS registry making her privy to all classified documents including every top secret message coming in and out of the OSS. It was only when Julia married a fellow OSS official, quit her job and accompanied him to France that she tasted French food and enrolled in a Cordon Bleu cookery course. Food remained her passion until her death in 2004.
Equally dramatic is the career transition of America’s “Barefoot Contessa”, aka Ina Garten, herself deeply inspired by Julia Child’s books and TV series. Garten’s gourmet shop in the Hamptons, her TV cooking series and the Barefoot Contessa brand became multi million business – all because Garten gave up her previous career out of boredom. Not that it was any ordinary job – in her late twenties, she was employed as a budget analyst at the White House throughout the Gerald Ford and the Jimmy Carter administrations. First employed in the Office of Management and Budget, she was promoted to the role of budget strategist working exclusively on the US nuclear energy policy.
Boredom had begun to set in when, still in her thirties, she spotted an ad for a small grocery shop called The Barefoot Contessa which was up for sale in the chic resort of Westhampton, Long Island. Having recently taught herself to cook, she bought the shop on a whim and abandoned her Washington career to turn the venue into one of New York’s most widely publicised elite gourmet stores. After moving from the original 400 sq. ft shop to new premises measuring over 3,000 sq. ft and radically expanding the business, eighteen years later she sold the shop but retained ownership of the building and its name. Approaching fifty, she wanted to write and pass on her expertise: several years on she became a best selling cookery writer, carried out business on her high flying Barefoot Contessa website and landed her own Food Network TV Show.
Like her idol Julia Child, Garten pursued her passion despite a previous successful career. Interviewed by the New York Times she confessed: “My job in Washington was intellectually exciting and stimulating but it wasn’t me at all”. She also disarmingly, admitted being a novice in the world of retail when she began her business. “To say I knew nothing about what I was getting myself into is an understatement” she confided to a journalist. “I’d never run a business before, never even had employees working for me.”
I find such stories both inspiring and instructive. From becoming immersed in cookery or some other creative activity, to starting a new business, learning different skills and sharing them with others, becoming a professional and selling one’s creations privately, at markets or online, the opportunities to change one’s profession are greater in the 2020s than at any other time. Switching careers – and doing so successfully – is possible. Julia Child and Ina Garten became spectacularly successful and made millions. Not everyone will be as lucky – but they do show how us how far hard work, courage, passion and determination can lead us.