Hackney Heroine has launched sauces based on dad’s recipe
Pauline Pearce with her home-made Grandads sauces. - Credit: Archant
The tireless Hackney Heroine is campaigning once more, using the launch of a business based on her father’s seasonings to further social projects.
Grandad's Seasoning - Credit: Archant
Pauline Pearce, who stood up to youths during the 2011 London riots, hosted a launch party for the new brand, called Grandad’s Kitchen, at the Dalston Eastern Curve garden earlier this month.
She said: “The garden is a lovely little hidden gem. It’s so quaint, quirky and under used in a way.”
The party promoted maximising use of the garden off Dalston Lane as a public space and an escape from the onslaught of construction projects in the area.
Ms Pearce added: “It’s just like someone’s back garden but some people don’t know what it is like to have one. All the space and trees and flowers – some aren’t fortunate enough to experience that.
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“The launch kind of went viral and we’re going to be doing a lot more stuff to get the garden in active use.”
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Ms Pearce and co-founder 22-year-old Sean Davey, a student at University College London, decided to market the seasonings after realising how popular they were among family and friends.
The sauces, marinades and dry rubs are faithful to traditional Bajan recipes that Ms Pearce’s father Wilbert has been making since the 1950s.
She said: “Basically my dad has been making this stuff since I was a little girl and Sean, my business partner, is the real foodie.
“One day I invited him to have lunch and made a simple curry chicken but he said it smelled amazing – so I opened up a butter tub and showed him the sauce I used. “My dad had sent it to me from Hertfordshire.”
As the brand grows Ms Pearce aims to involve the community in growing ingredients for the sauces and making, packaging and promoting them.
She said this could provide job opportunities for the unemployed and elderly in particular, to reduce isolation in the borough.
She said: “The project for me was always to try and get a united community centre erected in Hackney somewhere.
“I feel like a lot of post code issues are because certain estates have their own community centre and that is the reason why people are not connecting as children.”
Ms Pearce aims to establish such a centre, a ‘Grandad’s Kitchen’, for people to meet and eat.
She said: “It’s very much a community thing – people love food. It’s part of life and they do come together around it. We’re currently trying to find outlets who will stock batches of the sauce. Investing in us is investing in Hackney.”
n To find out more, visit: grandadseasoning.co.uk
