When RADISH met... Suzannah Butcher

Suzannah is a British cookery writer and food stylist (as well as co-owner of LA based companies Crumpet LA and Carnaby + Vine ). We first met when we were at school together, but now based in LA, she is one of our favourite people to meet up with when we make it out to Californian shores. We asked Suz to shoot some of her favourite RADISH pieces at some of her favourite local spots, which included the farmers market (where she found some spectacular watermelon radishes to create a very special summer recipe for us). You can find the recipe below, along with a little on what led her to where she is now, what inspires her, her dream travel spots and how she ended up dancing around a fire pit and with a mariachi band in our Layla dress...

Can you tell us a bit about you, your background and how it lead you to what you are doing now?

I’m a British Cookery Writer and Food Stylist. I currently live in LA where, during lockdown, I started making irreverent recipe vids on Instagram. They’re really just a continuation of my food journalism as, before I moved out here (for my husband’s work) I worked in London as a Food Stylist and Food Writer at lots of lifestyle magazines, had landed my dream job as the Food Editor for the UK’s largest selling women’s magazine, Good Housekeeping, and also had a weekly recipe column in the Daily Mail.

Before working in food magazines I used to work in TV but due to greed, thinking about food too much and planning what feast to cook next for a crowd, I had this niggling feeling that I should really be working in food. One day I skived work to assist best selling vegetarian Food Writer, Anna Jones (who was then Jamie Oliver’s Head Food Stylist) on a food shoot for Jamie magazine. I couldn’t believe that people spent all day cooking and making food look beautiful for mags. I knew I had to do that, so retrained at Leith’s School of Food & Wine.

I loved working in food in London so truthfully I was pretty bloody furious about the move out to LA but I soon leant into my homesickness by co-creating Crumpet, a British events company (known for our authentic afternoon tea) and more recently Carnaby + Vine (known for our bespoke gift boxes).

We hosted our Crumpet tea for some incredible LA clients who I can’t talk about but some I can. When Julie Andrews was a guest on 'The Late Late Show' we were invited to create afternoon tea for her dressing room. She was lovely, real royalty. I mean we had tea with real live Mary Poppins! We also hosted LA’s first British ‘High Tea’ complete with cannabis-infused edibles to celebrate the first legalized 4/20 and styled afternoon tea on some amazing shoots too for the likes of Michelle Obama, Harry Styles, Benedict Cumberbatch and Prince Harry.

What inspires you in the everyday?

The seasons. Whatever the reason to celebrate a season I’m right behind it and it’s always what inspires me to cook up a feast. It’s why I loved working in food magazines in the UK - you have to be able to create the essence of each season bursting off the page in colours, textures and imagined flavours and to conjure up just the right recipes that people will want to be cooking in that month. I think that’s even more important to me now we live in LA when the seasons are all a bit warm and fuzzy. I need to properly live the seasons through food to really feel like the year isn’t passing me by. So a whiff of a fresh and chilly, misty morning in October will have me planning a full blown roast menu with all the trimmings. I’ll bomb it to the farmer’s market, be inspired by the new nobly squash available, get halfway through baking it off for some sort of sticky toffee pumpkin pudding and then by midday the LA sun will have burnt through and it’ll be a typical October scorcher of a day. I’ll probably be overheating in boots and a winter coat but will be feeling fully autumnal to my core. So I’m not sure if that’s being inspired or deluded but it makes me happy and gives me my spark for a feast.

Do you collect anything?

Can you collect people? Wherever I go or have worked I seem to collect the most amazing friends and carry them with me like souvenirs from different parts of my life. If not, then cookbooks. When I worked in magazines the most amazing cookbooks would land on my desk. I’d hoard them. I loved everything about their design and would read them like novels (except even better becaus the pictures). Their bright popping spines also made it very easy to have a kaleidoscopic rainbow - order book wall in our house in London but when we moved to LA I had to break up the collection and cherry pick the ones I was going to ship. When I cook from those books in LA now they feel like old mates who’ve come along for the ride.

What are you listening to at the moment?

The Moana soundtrack. Great album that and a big hit in our house. I’ve nearly got all the words to 'You’re Welcome' down. Or ‘The Night Garden Dance’ from 'In The Night Garden: A Musical Journey'. And when there’s a break in between those TUNES, we’ve had a blanket agreement during lockdown that radio 2 should be playing at all other times. It’s been so comforting and makes us feel closer to home when we’re so far away.

Where are your current dream travel spots? (For when we can or locally).

Well local to LA it’s Palm Springs every time a coconut. You can’t beat that dramatic backdrop of the San Jacinto Mountains towering over a palm-lined pool. In LA there’s just about every type of architecture you can imagine - it’s a mashup of International inspiration from everywhere which is great and unique in its own way - you’ll get a Spanish style villa, all wrought iron and white wash next to a English mock Tudor house with a turret. Because why not? But I love that when you go to Palm Springs you enter this otherworldly deserts-cape which is so authentically it’s own thing. It’s got the highest concentration of preserved mid century modern architecture in the world and feels like you’ve stepped back in time into a Slim Aaron’s photo.

We’ve stayed in some stunning Mid Century modern renovations and go back to the Avalon Hotel time and again (because it feels a bit special but also has a family pool…and the baby monitor stretches to the restaurant steps away from our room!). But for a fantastic getaway without the kiddos I’ve got my eye on The Highball House, designed by Claire Thomas, co-owner of LA’s Sweet Laurel Bakery. Oh and the Moroccan-style oasis, Korakia Pennsione.

What do you always find yourself bringing home from trips?

Calpol & kids Nurofen. I wish it were unique and frivolous treasures but most of our trips are back to Blighty so my suitcase is jammed with british kids pharmaceutical products. *News just in*, this question prompted me to do something about it and buy a trinket from this current summer trip back to London…I’ve just bought a massive bright, hand-painted tin jug from Pakistan with a tiger on it. I now just need to fit into my luggage somehow.

What’s the most important piece of advice you have been given?

Lean into the resistance as that’s where you’ll get the biggest growth. I recently did a public speaking course with mindfulness coach, Simone Tai, and that sparked me to make my recipe videos which I would never otherwise have done. Simone was so encouraging and taught me that resistance and the reasons we give ourselves for not doing things are (most of the time) just elaborate ways of protecting ourselves from trying something new and scary. It’s so true. Now I’ve heard that bell, it can’t be un-rung.

We love you in RADISH. Do you have a favourite piece from the collections, and why?
My marigold Layla is ever so special to me as I bought it when I was 8 months preggo at the start of lockdown without anywhere to go, then wore it to the two funnest moments of my lockdown life…

This sounds terribly LA, but towards the end of 2020 we went to the most incredible Palm Springs party in the desert. As Layla had been burning a hole in my wardrobe for so long, I knew I had to give her an outing. I frolicked around the fire pit with Mai Tais in hand, feeling like a marigold flame.

Then for my daughter’s first birthday we had a little Mexican fiesta themed party as her birthday is also Cinco de Mayo, a riotous celebration of Mexican culture and a pretty big deal in LA. Obviously a first birthday is always special but that tiny party meant so much more after the year we’ve all just had and felt like hope was on the horizon for fun times ahead. So I got carried away, booked a mariachi band and did socially distanced mum dancing in my Layla dress again. I thought it was just the thing to channel a bit of Frida too.

Any favourite independent shops/brands?

January Labs, incredible skin care at affordable prices. January who owns the brand has become a friend out here. She is such an inspiring woman who tirelessly prefects her beauty products and having heard her explain her thoughtful ingredient choices in detail and seeing how excellent my skin looks after using her products (in particular her Advanced Eye Technology) I won’t use anything else. Caroline Hirons is a fan.

‘Watermelon Radish & Pineapple Carpaccio’

This effortlessly easy platter is my go-to summer side for a BBQ. This unbeatable salt-sweet-acid-heat flavour combination comes from the many fruit vendors around LA’s Latino neighborhoods whose carts are laden with chunks of pineapple, jimaca, mango & watermelon, often doused in lime juice, chilli powder & salt. Watermelon radish (green on the outside and vibrant, cerise pink on the inside) has become so synonymous with So-Cal food but if you can’t find it where you live then I’m sorry but you can swap it out for sweeter candy beetroot (with the pink, stripy middles), milder jicama or peppery breakfast radishes.

You will need -

2 watermelon radishes

A couple of handfuls of ice

1 small pineapple

2 limes

A few sprigs of mint, leaves picked

A pinch each of chilli powder and salt

With a mandolin thinly slice the radishes. Put in a large bowl with the ice and cold water to cover. Set aside for 5min (the slices will start to curl into pretty, undulating shapes in the icy water).

With a serrated knife remove the fronds and bottom of the pineapple. Cut off the skin. With a little knife slice away the dark dots or ‘eyes’. Thinly slice the pineapple.
Arrange the watermelon radish and pineapple slices on a platter. Squeeze over the lime juice and scatter with mint leaves. Season with chill powder and salt just before serving.

@suzandfood wears RADISH ‘Pearl’ polka dot maxi skirt, ‘Dream On’ tee and ‘Layla’ dress and archive ‘Nova’ loveheart print shirt.

All photos by @amysmythphoto .