Biography

Nell Nelson was born in Edinburgh. She has an honours degree in English Literature from St Andrews University and a Diploma in Nutritional Therapy from the College of Naturopathic Medicine. She first started writing about food while working as a copywriter in London; Nell took Afro-Caribbean cooking evening classes and on the strength of being able to make a mean goat curry, she became an Afro-Caribbean restaurant reviewer for the TimeOut Eating Guide. She then honed her cooking skills in France, when she cut her ligament skiing and found herself a job as a one-legged plaster-bound chalet girl, where she cooked Cordon Bleu three-course meals for fifteen people.

Lured by the magic of the East, Nell went to Hong Kong for a holiday in 1993 - and stayed for ten years, bewitched by the food, smells, tastes, colours and cultures of Asia. She quickly established herself as a food and travel writer; she was editor of Asian Home Gourmet and wrote a weekly food column with recipes chronicling her weekly forays in the food world of Hong Kong and beyond for The South China Morning Post. The recipes she collected were published in her first cookbook Eat Cook Hong Kong in December 2000.

Keen to expand her culinary and geographical knowledge, in 2003, Nell cycled from Hong Kong to Sydney, collecting recipes along the way. It took her seven months to cycle 5,000 miles through nine countries, eating and discovering recipes such as; Vietnamese spiced fish wrapped in banana leaves and Cambodian fried squid with fresh green peppercorns. Impressed by the quality and the passion for food she saw in Asia, Nell was sure her own country could rival Asia and proposed a television series The Woman Who Ate Scotland to STV who commissioned an eight part series and then another eight part series profiling Nell eating and cycling her way round Scotland.

When she was cycling in Asia, Nell was struck down by food poisoning in East Timor and she realised that food was not an annoying source of calories and she became fascinated about nutrition and exercise and on her return to Edinburgh, studied for three years for a Diploma in Nutritional Therapy. Nell practices as a nutritional consultant in Edinburgh. Her nutritional cookbook Eat Well With Nell:The Easy Way to Look and Feel Fabulous was published by Hachette in January 2011.