Monica Galetti: 'My latest cookbook combines memories with recipes'

Samoan-Kiwi chef Monica Galetti spent her childhood checking on how the pineapples were growing and picking guavas and mangoes on her family’s lush plantation, filled with taro and cacao trees, with chickens running wild around her.

“A relative would show up, catch a fish, it was very much a sharing culture, my family lived in close proximity to each other,” says the judge on BBC’s MasterChef: The Professionals.

For her dad, everywhere on their land was an opportunity to grow food.

“My mum [grew] flowers, but I think over the years she just gave up because dad would throw cabbages in between her rose bushes,” says Galetti.

“The front yard and back garden were just covered with fruit and vegetables; he was such a green thumb. I think it’s where my love of gardening stems from.”

The family moved to New Zealand when Galetti was eight and her dad continued growing there. Galetti’s dad died in October 2024, and she’s reflecting on both of her parents’ influence on her cooking and career.

“It was funny, at dad’s funeral, a lot of his friends and people that I didn’t know said, ‘Oh your dad is so proud of you, he would tell everyone that he taught you everything you knew’.”

Cooking the food he grew wasn’t his strong suit though.

“He was the worst! My mum was the great cook.”

It was her mum who taught Galetti – who became the first female sous chef ever of London’s famous Le Gavroche under Michel Roux Jr – “how to chop onions, that was all mum. She also introduced me to cooking things like abalone [sea snails].

"Her chop suey is my favourite chop suey ever. I always cooked growing up, helping my mum in the kitchen,” says the 51-year-old.

“Being the oldest girl [one of five] I was sort of responsible for helping getting meals ready because my parents were both working. So I just had this natural flair and connection to it.”

Galetti’s latest cookbook, Gathering, takes readers back through her roots, beginning at her early childhood in the South Pacific island of Samoa, often fishing with her dad at the crack of dawn.

“There’s a lot of Asian influence in Samoan food.

"We use a lot of coconut milk and staple starches, like taro and yams as well, Cocoa [from Samoa], is more than just something we drink, I use it in desserts, I think it’s the closest you get to the most bitter chocolate you can get, I think you can even get 90 per cent dark chocolate.”

Samoan flavours, she says, include a lot of sweet and sour flavours. And fresh produce – particularly fish – is key.

The book is a “collection of memories and a collection of recipes and ingredients over the years,” including influence from her travels and life in Europe, she says.

Think tacos with sea bream oka (a Samoan-type of ceviche) and umu-style baked sweet potato with coconut mustard, alongside Crete-inspired beef shortrib with tomato and lemon orzo, although bringing all the memories together did make her “feel like, gosh, I’ve aged”.

Galetti didn’t speak a word of English when the family moved 2,000 miles away to New Zealand.

“It was tough, it was really quite scary having to go to school and learn another language, not understanding [the lessons].

“My sister and I were very tight because we didn’t have that ability to communicate [with anyone else].”

Food was very different too.

“I remember making bread for the first time and something like pumpkin soup – it just blew my mind how different the flavours were to what I had grown up with.” But the art of gathering was never lost.

“My parents always had us around the table, having great family gatherings – it was so joyful.”

Galetti later did her culinary training in New Zealand, worked in a small restaurant and competed in a cooking competition. Moving to the UK in 1999, she planned to stay a couple of years.

“I sent my CV to loads of places, Raymond Blanc, Pierre Koffmann… and Michel Roux was the first to reply and offered me a job at Le Gavroche.”

With a stint in Mauritius in between, she now splits life between the UK and France, where she also has a home with her husband, David.

Their daughter, Anais, is 20 now, and Galetti recalls concern over the impact motherhood would have on a professional kitchen career.

“I remember that being a real fear for me when we found out we were pregnant. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what do I do? Do I stop working?’

"Thankfully I was able to balance both, I went back to Le Gavroche as a sous chef and me and my husband just worked it out – you just do.

"We don’t have any family in the UK so that was tough.

"I was fortunate that Michel was able to adjust my hours to make it work, and so I had a couple of days off and work less hours so I could be at home with my daughter.”

An experience that many female chefs say can be rare. Roux Jr has been “an amazing ally”, she notes, having spent 12 years in total at his flagship restaurant, “I’ve left and gone back again and left again – I kept being drawn back.”

With her daughter now at university, Galetti likes to make her bread to take, saying: “I love that I can make it, slice it – I’m such a mum – wrap them up individually, they go into the freezer for her.

"When she’s away from me, I know that she’s got something that I’ve made for her.”

MasterChef, which she first began hosting with Roux Jr, before he left in 2014 to be replaced with Marcus Wareing, was never meant to be a permanent position, she says, even though she’s just finished filming her 18th series.

“I still get a thrill out of meeting new talent, and their stories are really what make it. I’m really someone who believes in sticking to something that is right – you know? It’s wonderful.”

Gathering: A Celebration Of Flavours From Polynesia & Beyond by Monica Galetti, Pavilion Books, £26. Photography by Yuki Sugiura.