Hashika: So we’d love to hear a little bit about your background, where you grew up, what you’ve been doing and how you’ve got to where you are now.

Daen: I grew up in Brisbane, Queensland in a suburb that was 40 minutes outside of the city. I lived on acreage and was fortunate enough to always be surrounded by animals. I had chickens, cats, dogs and even two pet donkeys named Phoenix and Arnikka. 

My mother is half Sicilian and half Spanish. Her father immigrated to Australia when he was a teenager and her mother came here with her family from Sicily when she was a baby. I grew up with a Spanish and Italian cultural influence which is why food has always played such an important role in my life. It’s always been something that has brought my family together.

As a result, I developed a passion for food at a very young age and even though I have always had this strong passion for food, I went down a different career path in my earlier years and studied art history. I started a gallery with my best friend that offered a space for emerging young artists to show their work. I then went on to work in arts marketing and community engagement and have continued this work for the entirety of my career.

It was only about a year and half ago that I felt like something was missing and decided to start Daen’s Kitchen where my passion for food, recipe development and food photography has grown stronger and stronger. It started off as something so small from me sending photos of my dinner to my mum and close friends to growing my Instagram community, developing clients and expanding my blog. 

Nicole: That’s awesome. That’s so cool that you were able to change paths so often and continue to be a part of the arts and bring in this love for food into that.

Daen: I have always worked with creatives and in some ways I felt a little left out as I watched artists invest their whole lives into the performances or work they were creating. They would be in the theatre or studio from 6am to 2am the next day and as much as I could admire their dedication and passion it was something that I couldn’t really understand myself.

It wasn’t until I started my career in cooking that I had this lightbulb moment. I had found something that totally consumed and overwhelmed me in the most magical way possible and I realised I had become like the artists whose passion I had once admired. I was now the one staying up all night working on recipes and learning more about photography and how to best capture my food.

Nicole: That’s so interesting too that you also said that you grew up with food and it was such a part of your family’s culture of bringing people together. How has your conversation around food changed once it became this passion for you? You said you were spending so much time on photography and the little bits and pieces that you didn’t expect before. Is there a separation between normal day to day food and what you were putting on Instagram? How are you finding that balance?

Daen: There’s a separation to some degree. As much as I would love to say that I eat platters of hand rolled pasta and beautiful desserts everyday, I do like to maintain a balanced diet. It also gives me so much joy to give my food away to friends, family, colleagues and neighbours. I have made a lovely friend in my elderly neighbour who is always so happy to eat anything I bring by. Sometimes I can bring around 5 versions of the same cake and she will give me the most detailed feedback on every bite. We also have the most lovely conversations together that I do miss since COVID 19 has been around. 

In terms of conversation, I am always talking, thinking and even dreaming about food. I am always wanting to build on my skills set as a cook, recipe developer, photographer and videographer. I never thought I would be that person who is watching Youtube videos on what camera or microphone to buy. However, that is the exact person I am now and I surprise myself every day with what I learn. I have found such a lovely community through my cooking where I can talk with like minded people. 

Hashika: That’s so cool. She sounds great, this neighbor of yours.

Daen: She’s amazing! She’s such an interesting lady who has led an incredible life but she’s a conversation for another time! 

Nicole: That’s awesome. How have you found this community online? How have you gone about using social media as this catalyst for starting your business?

Daen: Coming from an arts marketing background, I had a lot of the skills that were needed to grow my community and engage with audiences. I have met some really amazing people online. I have friends that I have never met yet talk to almost every day and have become important people in my life. I’m constantly inspired by the people in my community and they have been so great for when I need some advice or someone to talk food related topics with. They have been extremely welcoming and helpful.  

Hashika: That’s so great! You’re definitely right. Even when we started putting together this platform, we’ve turned to people who we’ve never met and have only had conversations with them online. It’s great! I also wanted to ask you if you faced any challenges breaking into the industry and what is your favorite part about working with food?

Daen: My biggest challenge is my impatience as I want everything to happen quickly. It’s my dream to have a cookbook and I would fantasize about receiving an email from a publishing house offering me a book deal within the first few months of starting Daen’s Kitchen. Yet we all know that is not how it happens. There is hard work, dedication and commitment behind that and I am driven to get to that goal, no matter how much time it takes. 

My other challenge has been feeling frustrated with my photography skills. I look at professional food photography and flick through cookbooks and I admire their work so much yet wonder why my photos don’t have their lighting or composition. This would make me so frustrated within myself and when I feel this way I have a tendency to throw in the towel. However, because this is something I am so invested in, I sat down and taught myself how to improve on my skills set by educating myself through online videos, arranging phone conversations with photographers or asking friends for their advice. I have to have a laugh when I look back at the first few food photos I took as I have grown so much and will continue to grow as I learn something new everyday. 

I guess those being my two biggest challenges, it was just really with myself and it shows how much this passion has helped me grow as a person.

Hashika: That sounds SO good! My mouth just started watering! I noticed that you have international influences in your cooking. I know you’ve lived in Cambodia and Ireland so I wanted to ask where else have you traveled and what role does travel play in your recipe development? What have been some of your favorite travel stories and food travel stories?

Daen: I love to travel and experience food in different countries. Food can tell us so much about a culture and a persons life and family traditions. I really love exploring all a country has to offer with their cuisine when I travel. When I lived and worked in Cambodia on an arts festival and in an contemporary Khmer art gallery, one of my Khmer colleagues would invite me to her family dinners and I just felt so honoured to be there. I fell in love with a local Khmer food called Prahok which is a salted and fermented fish paste that is used to dip BBQed meats into. I would always get a surprised look by my waiter when I ordered Prahok. I was in Cambodia for a year and half and it will always hold a special spot in my heart. I would love to see their food highlighted more in Western culture and it’s something I have thought about working on

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel through my work. I have visited many parts of Rural Australia and visited somewhere called Arnham Land that is traditional Indigenous land in the Northern Territory. You require a permit to visit there. I was there for a month doing a volunteer internship for the Bula’bula Arts Centre. This was such a special moment in my life and I felt so lucky to be invited into this space and learn so much about Indigenous culture and art. When I was there, I was invited on women’s business which involved crabbing. We then sat around the campfire, cooked our crabs in a billy can and listened to stories about the land and their people. This was truly a special moment. 

When I was working in an Indigenous Art Gallery in rural Victoria, I was able to try my first egg when one of my colleagues took me out Emu egg hunting. I will ever forget watching him make a big hole in the bottom of the egg and then blowing the egg yolk out. It was delicious and I was so taken a back by seeing emus. Being Australian you would think I had seen Emus my whole life but this was the first time I had seen one in the wild and it was such a breathtaking moment.

Nicole: Oh my gosh, that’s a crazy experience. That’s amazing. I want to move to Australia immediately. It sounds fantastic.That’s very very cool and super special. I know that you do work a lot with local Australian ingredients and restaurants and ethically sourced food. Why is doing that important to you and how have you continued to do that? Are you seeing that as more of a common practice in the Australian food industry?

Daen: This is just so important, especially with climate change. It’s so fundamental to the way we live. There’s a really amazing book by Bruce Pascoe called Dark Emu that educates people on the importance of using native ingredients. I went to watch him speak and he was saying that 10 – 15 years ago he maybe had a handful of people listening to what he had to say and now these days he has thousands. And it might not be because they are choosing to listen but they are now in position where they have to listen as farmers just aren’t able to grow crops in the way they used to with our land and climate changing so drastically. I found it so fascinating and sort of daunting when he put it into perspective like that. 

Consumers are also thinking about where their food has come from and how it was sourced more than they ever have before. These are questions I am also always asking myself as I want to make as low of an environmental impact as I can. That’s something that is important to me. There are some lovely local native ingredients in Australia that I don’t see a lot of in our cooking and I would love for this to change. 

There is a recipe I’ve had in the back of my mind for a little while that utilises a local Australian ingredient called Lemon Myrtle. Lemon myrtle is an indigenous flowering plant grown in Australia that originated in Queensland. It’s got a kaffir lime taste to it. It’s so delicious yet I don’t think a lot of people would know about it, even in Australia. I am working on a fish curry recipe that uses it. I am also trying to be more proactive with the seafood I am cooking with and looking for species that are more native to Australia.

Hashika: Awesome. Now that we’ve transitioned into seafood, I know you’re the seafood editor for Feed Feed (@thefeedfeed). At least in my personal experience, I know that a lot of people who are just starting out cooking don’t really delve into seafood cooking just because it’s intimidating and can be complicated. What made seafood appealing to you and how have you been able to make these dishes affordable and accessible to the average home cook?

Daen: You’ve hit the nail on the head as I have found people are so intimidated to cook with seafood which was a bit of an eye opener for me since starting Daen’s Kitchen. I absolutely adore seafood and have grown up eating lots of homecooked seafood meals. From as young as four I have had an obsession for seafood. I would order fresh scallops instead of the deep-fried usual suspects like chips, dim sims or potato scallops. I didn’t have much of a sweet tooth growing up so on my birthday my parents would get me a whole mud crab that they would deliver with a bow on its head and balloon in its claw. I remember when my ex-boyfriend broke up with me just a few days before Valentines day and my birthday I was so heartbroken, so my dad went out and bought me all these crabs to eat. It really did cheer me up! 

It took me a little while to find my point of difference with my cooking. I cannot tell you how many times I changed to my bio until I got it to a place I was happy with. It started from identifying myself as a simple cook with home-style recipes however, I would see so many people using this language. Some people have got such a great hold of that market and are doing it so well that I wanted to stand out from the crowd. I love seafood and the more I would read about it and ask people about how they cook with it, I started to realise people are very intimated of it and don’t find it an accessible protein to cook with. They tend to associate it with special occasions like Christmas or anniversary dinners and then don’t turn to it for the rest of the year. It also has this stigma around it that it is extremely expensive to buy and this just isn’t the case.

Seafood can be extremely affordable. Touching on what we were speaking about before, living in Australia there is so much delicious and sustainably caught seafood that comes right from our backyard and we should be eating it more. I always tell people that if you can cook with chicken, lamb, pork or beef you can cook with fish. I find fish one of the easiest proteins to cook with as you just need to put some seasoning on it, pop it in the oven, throw it in a stew or do a quick fry and its ready before you can even blink! 

My partner is the perfect example of someone who would never buy or cook with seafood and now requests fish on a weekly basis! When we do Friday taco night he now requests my fish tacos over my chicken ones and I have to give myself a little high five.

Nicole: That’s amazing. I love that you have somebody you can experiment on too. 

Daen: Yeah definitely. Sometimes he’ll be like, “oh, I don’t know about that dish.” But I’ll say, “eat it, come on.” Then he will usually end up loving it!

Hashika: I want to ask about quarantine as well. What was that like for you? What was it like being stuck at home and how did the conversation around food shift then? How were you able to stay inspired?

Daen: I am still in lockdown. I am not sure if you know but where I live has gone into very strict lockdown. When we first went into lockdown, there was some sort of excitement around it. Everybody was loving life at home and I would see so many homemade sourdoughs or pasta doughs pop up on my Instagram feed. And I was victim to this too! I learnt how to make pasta during this time. It was great seeing so many new people on my page wanting to learn how to cook and learning with me when it came to making pasta dough from scratch. People were so interested and making my recipes more often than ever before. I like to think of the positives this challenging time has brought us because that feeling of excitement has worn off. I miss my family so much and wish more than anything I had my mum close by so we could be cooking together. We Facetime each other but it’s not the same. We were trying to figure out one of my Nanna’s recipe the other day and were watching one another cook over Facetime. It was quite fun but it would have been even more fun if we could have been in the same kitchen. 

I am also really invested in learning how to make cooking videos. Again, I have surprised myself with the skills I have developed. I absolutely love making videos and am really invested in creating more and developing this skill. Looking back at the first few videos I posted, you can see that development and growth. It just shows how much I am learning and when you are committed to something how far you can come. 

Funny enough, I am even filming cooking videos for my current marketing role in the arts. As we don’t have any events running they have asked if I can step in and assist with creating cooking videos that tie back to our events centre. There has been this really interesting interconnection of worlds!

Nicole: Are there any recipes you want to shout out?

Daen: Oh the pantry recipes! My puttanesca is an ultimate pantry staples recipe. Just using anchovies, tinned tomatoes, capers and olives. I always have these things in my pantry. And pasta! And then another one would be my aglio e olio which means garlic and oil. It’s literally just garlic and olive oil. My mom and I use anchovies in the sauce as well. Toss that with some pasta and it’s really yummy. And then if you’ve got chicken in the freezer or can get your hands on chicken, my one pan chicken dish is actually a really pantry friendly recipe as well. I just use all these dry herbs you have in your pantry. That’s a really yummy one too.

Nicole: It’s making my stomach rumble. Oh my gosh, these sound amazing. I can’t wait to share them with everybody. Other things on the horizon that you want our community to know about?

Daen: I am working on something really exciting with my favourite cheese brand Fromager D’Affinois so you will have to keep an eye for that!