Being a chef is not just a profession. You have to love cooking as an art before becoming a chef. And for Phionah Ninsiima, this is something that started early on. 

The chef and author who recently unveiled her first cookbook dubbed ‘Memories at the Table’, says it started at a very young age for her when her mother, back in Uganda, started to expose her to the kitchen.

The 32-year-old started cooking at the age of seven or eight and by nine, she prepared her first meal. She describes it as a long journey. Growing up, her mother, who was a single mum and couldn’t afford house helps, taught them how to cook.

Ninsiima at the launch of the book. 

"By the time I was maybe nine or 10, I could make a meal for the family. Then, I didn’t know that I loved cooking, but I later recognised the passion as I grew up when my mum had already passed on,” Ninsiima recalls.

Upon her mother’s passing, she was adopted by a maternal aunt, who was also a foodie.

"She gave me a platform to just try anything I wanted in the kitchen. So, during that time I was exposed to different ingredients, just to experiment with things,” she says, adding that some worked out and others didn’t but that is when she realised that she had the passion.

In 2010, she got a scholarship to go to the National University of Rwanda where she started her first degree, pursuing a four-year course in economics.

Upon graduating she got a job as a banker with Bank of Kigali but one year down the road, she realised banking wasn’t her thing. She later travelled to South Korea to pursue a second degree, this time in culinary art.

Ninsiima at the launch of the book. 

In 2015, when she was already a mother, she got to start a culinary school, even as challenging as it was—as they say, the rest is history.

Writing a book

Ninsiima, who this week released her first cookbook "Memories at the Table” has never looked back.

"‘Memories at The Table’ is a beautiful cookbook, which is mostly a pictorial book,” Ninsiima says, adding that her mission was to strike a balance between encouraging more people to cook and also promote the reading culture, which is still low in Rwanda. The book was inspired by her late mom.

In the book, Ninsiima reflects on her childhood, looking back at the time she used to enjoy family meals.

From those memories, she realised the table was a very important place for the family to bond but also, for her, a place to grieve and have fond memories of her mum.

"For me it was those memories that took me through that grieving time. So, I realised that the table is a very crucial place,” she says, adding that table time is not just to eat but also a time when humans engage all their five senses, according to research.

The book also carries memories from childhood, right from Uganda where she was born and later Rwanda as a child, capturing all the struggles to eat as well as stories and experiences of people from different backgrounds.

Through cooking and documenting her work, Ninsiima is creating not just memories for herself but also for her children, whom she hopes will also go through the same learning process and pass on the knowledge they will acquire to other generations.

The book explores everything about food, touching every subject, from recipes to types of food, nutrition as well as preparation of meals at different times of the day, for families or groups of people. It has it all and is a must have for all households.

"Although I’m a chef, I wrote it as a mother and made sure that this is something that any person can actually create or relate to,” says the mother of one, who is expecting her second child.

A meat lover

Ninsiima’s speciality is meat. She loves meat and she is very particular when it comes to spices and other additives, and at the same time hates artificial stuff. If it is cinnamon or turmeric, they better be natural organic ingredients. 

With her two degrees in other fields and other forms of education, many were pushing her to go into other jobs because cooking is not a ‘lucrative job’, at least in Africa, but when you are after your passion, it is not the money that comes first.

For her it is all about changing perceptions and making people understand that cooking is not what they think it is—a simple task. In fact, elsewhere, being a chef is one of the most lucrative careers.

In doing what she does, Ninsiima hopes she can change mind-sets and improve the way people cook and eat. Luckily, she has a supportive husband and a family that came to terms with her career choice.

She believes her book will leave a lasting impression on how Rwandans cook and eat because food is an important, if not the most important, aspect of life. As they say, we are what we eat.

To learn more on what to cook, how to cook it and the tools you need, buy her cookbook which is now available in book stores near you at Rwf20, 000 only.

You can also directly place an order by sending an email to phionaninsiima89@gmail.com or by calling her directly on 0789904109.