Cook & Chef Interviews
An interview with Claudia Polo (Soul in the Kitchen)
Claudia Polo is a gastronomist and teacher. Through her project, ‘Soul In The Kitchen’, she teaches conscious gastronomy and sustainable food.
This is Claudia and she always dances in the kitchen. In 2018, she began a degree in Gastronomy and Culinary Sciences at the Basque Culinary Center (BCC) and, at the same time, she created her project “Soul In The Kitchen”. What started as a way of sharing her recipes and favourite songs on Instagram, is now a platform with more than 80,000 followers. Through this platform, she teaches conscious cooking and food, based on the respect of the body, people and the environment.
Teacher and entrepreneur, in 2022, this girl from Aragon was among the ‘100 talented young people in gastronomy”, a list drawn up by the BCC which recognises people who are working to bring about positive change in the sector.
In recent years, she has been a speaker, worked as a cooking teacher, created content for the media and companies, and developed a variety of projects promoting her vision of food; among others, the book “Mañanitas”, a manual of breakfasts and self-care that she wrote along with the illustrator Blasina Rocher; conscious cooking retreats in the Aragon Pyrenees (Spain) and her own brand of artisan sandwiches, Pan Soul.
- When was the first time you felt that spark for cooking and what it represents?
At first it was very emotional, very much from the home. My father loves cooking and as a family we have always spent time together preparing food and enjoying the long chats at the table afterwards. It was after starting to train that this way of seeing cooking as something with an impact awoke within me.
- What made you teach about conscious food in ‘Soul In The Kitchen’?
- How do you feel about the evolution and welcome your project has received?
- How do you manage the interaction and time required by social networks?
- On your account, you have stated that you are “sick to death of all things healthy” and reflected on how this term has been distorted. How can we, not eat more healthily, but develop and maintain a healthier relationship with food?
- How can we enjoy cooking more and stop seeing it as something we “don’t have time for”?
It can be a real pull seeing the kitchen as something that looks after you, ecosystems, the people who sell you the food...It makes me sad to see that children of our generation won’t have the memories and bonds with food that our grandparents and parents have given us. The industry pushes us towards foods in a very disconnected way, but I want to convey that cooking doesn't necessarily mean spending 5 hours stood at the stove, it can be simpler than that.
- Would it be worth starting to teach about food and cooking in schools?
One hundred percent, yes. Not all children see someone cooking at home and not everyone can go shopping in an organic market. Why not undertake this passing on of knowledge - of where food comes from and how to transform it...- in education? On a public level, people need to suggest and demand another type of system and platform to help them to eat consciously, healthily and sustainably.
- If you had to explain to an alien that came to Earth what cooking means and involves, what would you tell them?
Cooking is about taking natural foods and transforming them into something delicious. In this transformation, there is implicit knowledge that we have spent hundreds of years configuring based on trial and error; but also a wisdom that belongs to each specific place and what is grown in their region. Food is something that penetrates us as individuals, it generates lots of bonds at the dinner table.
- What song plays in your kitchen on a Sunday in summer?
