Hello!

Welcome to PomPom Cooks – a site that celebrates global cooking and eating, written by an ever-curious professional chef. Here you’ll find international recipes, photos and paintings of food, information on my Indian cookery classes, as well as long and short-form written pieces from my kitchen. I’m Roo, the voice behind it all and the face behind my catering company, also called PomPom.

I am a half British / half Gujarati, Indian living in the foothills of the Black Mountains in South Wales. I am also a professional private chef with a taste for flavours and techniques that I grew up with and have discovered on my travels. This platform is a mixing pot of all of those things; constant curiosity is what sustains my love affair with the kitchen. 

Here I hope to demystify the somewhat intimidating world of professional kitchens by showing you how to create some of the food that I cook for clients all over the world. I want to also share with you the food that speaks the loudest to me – food that my mother and grandmothers put on my plate. Expect to find anything from tips on how to cook like a seasoned pro, how to roast the perfect roasties for your Sunday meal or how to piece together the most gorgeous Indian feast from scratch for dinner with friends.

Food may not be the answer to world peace, but it’s a start.

Anthony Bourdain

Who’s Roo?

My natural habitat (aside from the kitchen) is in the bath with a book. Failing that, outside with the sun on my back. I like people who offer you tea, camper-van adventures, colourful trainers, snowboarding on Spring-slush, big breakfasts, getting muddy on a mountain bike and cooking outdoors. My taste in music is eclectic, I would like the smell of sun-drenched tomato leaves in a perfume, I can’t be trusted with a “sharing” bag of crisps or a pack of crumpets, my favourite herb is coriander and I’m named after a pomegranate! Roo is short for Rumaanah which means pomegranate in Arabic.

Roo Hasan

Graduatuating from Brighton University with a degree in Illustration, I procrasti-baked a lot with, and for people who would become friends for life. During my time by the coast, my love for food reached new heights as I ate and worked my way round the best places in Brighton, UK.

Working many busy years working in kitchens, my pencils and paintbrushes got put aside for a while. Now when I’m not armed with my chef knife or whisk, I’ve a paintbrush in hand and my world’s favourite subject – food! 

Having dual British Indian heritage, my foodie memories are a mix of clashing smells, tastes, textures, colours, cultures and traditions, but always rooted in the recurring theme of feasting. My recipes are a mixing-pot of traditional Indian recipes that my Grandma made for us, food I ate growing up and dishes that I have developed, tried and tested (many times) for you. 

PomPom Cooks is a celebration of my adventures in food. I am most interested in the connections that food enables and that is what inspires my writing. I hope in some ways to be a friend and guiding voice in your kitchen. 

Thank you for stopping by,

Roo x