Alice Zaslavsky on Salad for Days, food as colour, and "the puzzle pieces falling into place"

As I talk to Alice Zaslavsky, a household name here in Australia, and with a growing profile internationally - following the success of In Praise of Veg and The Joy of Better Cooking - she’s racing across Melbourne signing books. It’s “all hands on deck” she says. To be honest, every time I speak to Alice she’s racing somewhere. She’s a perennial do-er of things, a culinary polymath. The reality of writing a book is that if you want to write a second, third, and on, then you have to sell them. Signings, talks and events, all part of the deal.

A week or so before we chatted she’d said in a message that she felt that “the various puzzle pieces were falling into place.” We got into that during the interview, along with tips on how professional chefs are elevating salad, and the basic pantry staples she can’t live without. There’s also the acknowledgement that she’s got a team around her that she can’t live without.

It all made me think of her constant juggling act between writing, TV and radio work, hosting events, the progression in her career, and very much of the Alice that I first met over a decade ago. Fresh from MasterChef she was this intense bundle of energy. It seems if anything she’s learnt how to harness that energy to power a career with longevity.