As International Women’s Day approaches Catherine Whyte meets three Surrey ladies cooking up a storm
Brush strokes: Kate (left) and Helen decorating their Punchbowl Lane premises
How times have changed. The kitchen – once a symbol of a shackled and suppressed sisterhood – is now a fertile hotbed from which women are launching their business empires.
Take Kate Gregory and Helen Muncie from Dorking-based nano-distillery, The Gin Kitchen. “I was listening to an article on BBC Radio 4 about the gin renaissance and knew instantly that I wanted to create a distillery,” says Kate. A phone call later and friend Helen was on-board, swiftly followed by an order for a handmade copper still.
“We started distilling in my kitchen,” Kate recalls. “In the beginning we thought that it would be fun to get our gin, Gutsy Monkey, into a local pub and farm shop. But word – and sales – quickly spread, so much so that we moved out of my home and set up a distillery in a pub beer garden.”
That was late 2016. Two months later, Gutsy Monkey was gracing the shelves of Fortnum & Mason. Fast forward to 2018 and the Gin Kitchen team has grown to seven, along with the collection of spirits – another gin called Dancing Dragontail and a rose absinthe called Eternal Absinthe.
The company’s growth is matched by the pair’s enthusiasm as Kate reveals: “We often dance around the place giggling ‘we’ve got our own distillery!’”
To cope with demand, Gin Kitchen is now moving into bigger premises in a beautiful barn on the appropriately-named Punchbowl Lane near Dorking. Kate and Helen want the barn to become a destination for gin lovers, where they can host tasting experiences and hands-on distilling sessions. There’s even plans for a cocktail bar. How fabulous is that?
Surrey Spice is another local business on the rise. If you are a regular at local farm shops, you’ll have doubtless seen Surrey Spice’s range of ready meals in the freezer section.
Indian-born Mandira Sarkar is the brains behind the business. A former management consultant, she followed her heart and swapped her briefcase for a kitchen full of saucepans.
“Ever since I moved to the UK in 1998, I would always complain about not being to get ‘proper’ Indian food,” she says. So, when an exasperated friend told her to ‘put her money where her mouth was’, she did just that, first offering cookery lessons and themed pop-up supper clubs, and then catering. She launched her range of freezer ready meals just over a year ago, winning her first star at the Great Taste Awards for her Kaju Dhania Murgh (chicken in coconut, cashew and coriander).
Mandira’s the first to admit that it hasn’t all been plain sailing. “Setting up a food business is not for the faint hearted,” she says. “The hours are unsocial and the returns were meagre at first. Also, people said no one would actually pay to eat home-style Indian food because everyone already had their favourite Indian restaurant.”
How wrong they were. Mandira’s just emailed to say that she is launching what she believes is the UK’s first ever Indian meal subscription service – charmingly called Happiness Box. All meals are handmade to her family’s recipes, as well as being preservative and gluten-free. Mine’s coming next week. Can’t wait!
As the saying goes, from little acorns do mighty oaks grow…
Surrey Spice freezer meals stocked locally at: Kingfisher Farm Shop (Abinger Hammer); Secretts (Milford); Village Greens Farm Shops (Denbies and Ockley); Ripley Farm Nurseries, Hazelbank Stores (Ewhurst); Peaslake Village Stores, Crockford Bridge Farm Shop (Weybridge); Crossroads Stores (West Horsley). Or, direct from: surreyspice.com
The Gin Kitchen’s gins are widely found in Dorking watering holes but also further afield at Stephan Langton Inn (Abinger Hammer); The Jolly Coopers (Epsom); and The Talbot (Ripley). Buy online (gin.kitchen) or from The Wine Reserve (Cobham); The Vineking (Weybridge); The Godalming Food Company or Village Greens (Ockley).
Check out our Food Section for more tasty local morsels
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