A Stranger in My Mother’s Kitchen

After her mother's death in 2010, Celine Marchbank started to clear out her mother's house, sorting through everything she had left behind. As she stood staring at the boxes in her home, still in a state of shock, she began to discover her recipes, beautiful handwritten notes. Her mother Sue Miles, had been a head-chef for 40 years; described in her obituary in The Guardian as 'the doyenne of the British restaurant revolution' She was also one of the first female head chefs in Britain.

Celine felt an overpowering need to do something with these, for her mother and for herself. Celine decided to cook her mother's recipes, to learn the things they hadn't got round to and photograph the process. She wanted to feel the warmth of eating her mother's food again, to feel the sense of being nurtured and cared for once more. The recipes were haunted with memories; the smells took her back to moments they shared like nothing else, and the more she continued the more she felt connected to her mother.