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  • Woman NZ

    Sugar & spice

    Oct 27, 2021 5 minutes

    Some career paths follow a certain recipe for success. Cookbook authors, for example, often start out as chefs, then open a restaurant or five, before hosting a cooking show and/or judging others’ efforts on reality TV.

    Not Ashia Ismail-Singer. The Auckland-based author, who recently launched her second cookbook, Saffron Swirls & Cardamom Dust, took a slightly less conventional approach.

    “I’ve always done things differently,” laughs the 51-year-old.

    Ashia’s route to cookbooks was via a nursing career, a food blog and sheer bloody-mindedness. “I kept approaching publishers until someone said yes!”

    We’re chatting via WhatsApp – Ashia from the Castor Bay home she shares with her husband Graham, who works for a medical company, and their children Adam, 20, and 16-year-old Zara.

    Auckland is still under lockdown when we speak, so instead of being at Westlake Girls’ High School where

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