IT’S ALL SHWEN SHWEN: Interview with Maria Bradford
Rainham author and chef Maria Bradford on her career and passion for the culinary heritage of Sweet Salone
Born and raised in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, Maria Bradford has had some journey.
From emigrating to West Malling from West Africa as a teenager to graduating as an accountant and releasing an acclaimed recipe book that focuses on her culinary and cultural heritage.
It’s hard to explain Maria’s story without a little bit of background into the world that she was born into. Freetown was founded in 1792 as a settlement for freed former slaves. It was also colonised by the British in 1808 before eventually becoming independent in 1961 after 150 years of colonial rule.
Its varied terrain, from sweeping beaches to rainforests and savanna grasslands, has led to the locals nicknaming it Sweet Salone.
While the national language of Sierra Leone is actually English, the local ‘Krio’ dialect is a mixture of English, French and Portuguese.
“You’re not really aware of how small Sierra Leone is, and then how nobody knows where you’re from, until you leave that place,” says Maria. “I wasn’t aware of the colour of my skin until I moved to England - I had a colour. All of a sudden, identity means quite a lot because when people meet you they’re interested in you, your colour, your accent and where you’re from.
“People assume I’m French,” says Maria. “My grandad had a British passport. The Queen was our Queen. We used pound notes. My education was done in English - in fact, quite a lot of my education was learning about Britain more than learning about my own heritage. And so that pushes you to learn about yourself and to learn about where you come from.”
Image Credit: Sweet Salone by Maria Bradford (Quadrille, £30), Photography © Dave Brown, Yuki Sugiura
While under the guardianship of a family friend, Maria attended West Kent College and then the University of Greenwich at Medway to study accounting. But making such a transition is rarely easy, so to avoid homesickness and to build new relationships food became a common ground.
“It was just this barrier breaker for me,” she says. “If I start talking about what sorts of things you like to eat. Or what do you eat for Christmas? It gives you that chance to talk about yourself and to share your heritage.”
“... African food is finally getting the attention that it deserves”
While cooking was never considered as a realistic career option to begin with, Maria’s fondness for being creative in the kitchen started to bubble when creating her own signature chilli sauces for colleagues during her years working at Medway Council. Sourcing a few ingredients from Peckham market stalls, Maria created a sauce that she finally believed “tasted like home”.
“My friends and colleagues would say I should sell it,” says Maria. “At that time, I hadn’t perfected it and sent it to a lab to make sure the shelf life was longer. I was just making it and taking it to farmers’ markets in Maidstone and Tonbridge and just selling it there.”
While this was the very beginning of the Shwen Shwen business - which is the Krio for ‘Fancy’ - it took a return to West Africa to make a final realisation.
“I thought my unsettledness was just me being in the UK, because I’m missing Sierra Leone,” she says. “But when I would go back to Sierra Leone, I realised that’s not really it – there’s something else that is missing. It’s actually the job that you’re in, what you wake up to do every day.”
SWEET SALONE
Maria left her job and began running private catering for events as well as a supper club. By serendipity, Maria’s husband enrolled her on a short course in food photography at Leiths Culinary School in London as a present.
“I saw the chefs and the kitchen and all the really nice produce we were using,” she says. “I was really excited by that, so I went to ask about it and booked an appointment to speak to the principal about doing a course.”
Completing the Essential Cooking Certificate in the evenings, Maria continued creating and posting about Sierra Leonean food. (See one of Maria’s Recipes here).
“Leiths was fantastic because I was able to learn classical cooking but then be able to combine it with my traditional training in Sierra Leone,” she says. “I’m then able to appreciate all the new and varied ingredients in the UK and mix it together with tradition and with the ingredients that we’re so familiar with from Sierra Leone as well.” Maria had found her niche.
Almost straight after finishing the course at Leiths, Maria was approached about creating a cookbook from her work online.
“I was still kind of finding my feet,” she recalls. “Well, why don’t we just meet up for coffee and she was like ‘I love everything that you’re doing. Why don’t we start with baby steps, maybe write a proposal, and then we’ll take it from there’.
“I was shocked. I came home and told my husband in a very sarcastic way that someone wanted me to do a book and he went ‘Yes, you should! You should have bitten their hands off!’.”
Sweet Salone launched in July 2023 through Quadrille Publishing, while Maria also created a cooking studio at her home in Rainham from where she can offer online cooking courses as well as a catering base.
“The book became the main focus for about two years,” says Maria. “I was eating, breathing and testing recipes.”
The book showcases Sierra Leonean culture and food, with many recipes inspired by the cooking of her family.
“We’re not known to write stuff down - things have been lost through lots of different reasons, which I’m sure everyone is aware of,” says Maria. “So many things about Africa have been lost along the way. So the book is just recapturing that - this passed-down information. I’m lucky that my grandmother, who is close to 100, is still alive. I’m lucky that my mother is still around and I’m able to get information and facts about my family and about Sierra Leone.”
Sweet Salone is the first book featuring Sierra Leonean food put out by an international publisher.
“I’m incredibly proud that I was able to do that for my country,” says Maria. “I’ve had so many emotional messages - it’s this thing where people find their voice in your work, saying ‘I’ve been trying to explain my heritage and my culture or showcase my food to people. And they’ve never really got it in the way that I wanted them to see it. And you’ve just managed to capture it’.”
The Shwen Shwen online shop continues to sell the chilli sauce, as well as a host of other products including the very popular drinks that pair ingredients from the UK with those of Sierria Leone, such as the Purple Haze, which features Kentish lavender with coconut water, or the Passionately Bissap with Kentish strawberries and hibiscus flower.
There is also the Shwen Shwen Prosecco sourced from an independent maker in Italy and often used to pair with her drinks at events. A supper-club pop-up at Fortnum & Mason is arguably the most high-profile moment of Maria’s career so far, but it is her dedication to promoting her culinary heritage that she is most proud of.
“Hopefully, it’s part of a massive movement where African food is finally getting the attention that it deserves,” she says. “For such a long time there’s just not been the representation of what our food is and what our culture is, and what our heritage is via food, which is so important.”
INFO: shwenshwen.com
