Along with long-time school friend Izzy Bougeard (26), who produces award-nominated podcasts for the Telegraph and the BBC, Helena heads into the home kitchens of famous chefs to talk about what they cook for their pals.
Pictured: The artwork for ‘Food For Friends’, designed by Hannah Robinson. (@robinsondraws)
With a successful first season now complete, in which the podcasting duo spoke to guests such as renowned baker Richard Bertinet and Ukrainian chef Olia Hercules, they have set their sights on a second season.
“We have been so overwhelmed with the reaction to this season”, Helena said. “We were just expecting our mums and our boyfriends to listen, so it’s been a massive surprise and a total joy.”
Helena works as a private chef, after training at world-class Leiths School of Food and Wine, but she has always wanted to work on a podcast.
She explained: “Once Izzy was on board with doing it for free, we started to develop a concept from there. There was a very long Zoom call. The initial idea was to interview professional chefs in their professional kitchen, but I realised that wasn’t going to work and we’re going to annoy all the other chefs at work.
“Then we thought: how about getting behind the scenes look into their home kitchen? What are they eating on a Monday night? How tidy is their freezer? What do they like off Instagram? We realised that we’d have to go to their houses, but they were very receptive and showed us around.”
Pictured: Helena recording with renowned baker Richard Bertinet.
Helena continued: “So what does a fridge tell you about a person? There’s no overarching theme, and you begin to realise that these are people just like you and me. They have frozen peas, milk that’s about to go out of date, a slightly messy vegetable drawer, half a bottle of wine. It’s really diverse. Some of them tidied their fridges up, and you can tell, but some of them left them as they were.
“Because we love it so much, we’ve loved the process of planning and researching and doing the podcast, it hasn’t felt hard. Plus, we’ve had some incredible food cooked for us, including a three-course meal from Richard Bertinet.”
“I hope the sky’s the limit for what we can achieve with this podcast,” she added. “We’ve pooled the costs between the two of us for season one, but we will be looking for sponsors in season two. It lends itself to a visual format as well, so we’d love to do a visual episode too.”
Pictured: Helena and Izzy at the podcast’s launch party.
Producer Izzy dreams of having Stanley Tucci as a guest on the podcast in future.
“I could probably recite his Lasagna bolognaise recipe off by heart!” she said.
“We’ve got some big plans for series two in terms of content and sponsorship. We’re currently in the process of narrowing down our very long guest long list. We’d also love to work with both small and large brands on sponsorship, in an alternative way.
“Sponsorship can be so much more fun than the traditional advert reads you hear in podcast and I’m keen to push those boundaries.”
Izzy added: “I’m also keen to give more air time to different cuisines and introduce people to new flavours and cooking methods through the podcast.”
“Having complete autonomy over this project, making our own decisions and taking our time with this project has meant I experienced a real feeling of pride when it came out.
“Being an independent podcaster has it’s challenges but the benefits of producing Food for Friends as an independent project has far outweighed those cons.”
You can listen to Food For Friends wherever you get your podcasts.
Pictured top: Helena and Izzy recording the intro in her kitchen.