And after a short (ish) hiatus... we're back! The days are finally getting longer but there’s still a way to go yet before the growing season gets into its stride. In the meantime we’re thrilled to share the third instalment of our guest chef series, bringing you some new ideas to try if root-veg boredom is setting in or you're a Barcombe newbie finding it hard to eat all your greens! We hope you enjoy these heart-warming, mood-boosting recipes from one very talented local.

This time we welcome none other than...

Jacob Fodio Todd

We first encountered Jacob as part of The Groundnut, a pop-up supper club in London founded by three friends to showcase the outstanding flavours, ingredients and variety of food from their African heritage (shared in continent but mixed in country!)

The magical evenings this dynamic trio hosted culminated in their popular cookbook before Jacob returned to Lewes to found The Feature Kitchen, a (currently retired*) takeaway service and social enterprise which started after a conversation he had with Genet, an Ethiopian refugee living in Brighton who dreamed of cooking for the public as she had done before migrating.

Jacob's aim was to seek out exceptional cooks who lacked the means, confidence or platform to showcase their food and to produce innovative menus with them, often shining the spotlight on their origins. With little capital outlay, low overheads and minimal waste, he was able to provide reasonably priced, generously portioned and utterly delicious meals with immediate as well as more-long term benefit to the cooks themselves. Simultaneously, menus celebrated the concealed cultural and culinary diversity of people in our area, Sussex, and worked against mainstream nationalistic, xenophobic and anti-immigrant narratives.

The Feature Kitchen ran for a phenomenal fifty-seven months, featuring chefs from over thirty regions (such as Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Burma, Anatolia, Zambia, Trinidad, Libya and Thailand) and delivering truly memorable meals to dedicated (or should that be full-on-addicted) customers who have recently been thrilled to find Jacob once again donning an apron and sharpening up his knives for the Artists & Makers Fair and at the Depot late last year.

*Should we start a petition to demand it restarts?

Nowadays though, Jacob is more often found working in his role as a Research Associate for the Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme. This project's mission is to accelerate access to clean, electric cooking in the Global South by exploring the socio-economic realities of transitioning away from polluting fuels. It investigates factors and barriers that the average Sussex dweller might not even consider. For example, how in Ghana firewood is free (while the burden of collection falls largely on women and children) and charcoal also dominates as it is available in affordable quantities (though has serious health implications as well as planetary ones and can be deadly in poorly ventilated spaces). You can find out more about this nuanced and crucial work as well as download the Ghana ecookbook Jacob recently co-authored here.

Now, time for the recipes!