Biographies of professional and amateur chefs:

This is a very short biography and if you want more information you can visit the contributor's website where you will usually find contact details. If you wish us to pass a message on email us.

I have had a passion for cooking for as long as I can remember.

My mother hardly ever cooked when I was a child - she always said that if you could read and tell the time then you could cook! My dad did the majority of the cooking in our house - still does to this day and makes a very good job of it.

My grandmother was the one who got me interested in cooking as a youngster. I would stand on a chair at the table (a big old oak thing which is in my dining room now) and bake pastries and cakes with her.

She taught me to make pastry as light as a feather and we used to go and pick blackberries and bilberries on the moors in Derbyshire behind her home to make jams and pies - we had a lot of fun and I think of her often when I pass my dining table.

Grandad and I would create weird and wonderful conconctions which were based on a can of beans and whatever else we could find in the cupboards - gherkins, pickled onions and the like - some were good, some not so good . . .

Over the years, I developed my own style of cooking - every Bank Holiday Monday throughout the year, my friends would descend for my 'buffet party'. I'd prepare loads of salads, meats, fish and cheeses with crusty bread and hot potatoes - we'd sit round eating, drinking and talking - swapping jokes and stories.

In 1984, my parents and I opened a wet fish business in Nottinghamshire. I used my passion for cooking to develop recipes for our customers. Every week, we would decide what was on promotion and I would create a few recipes, photocopy them and hand them out.

My husband and I bought another fish business in 1992 and the recipes came out for an airing! He and I are no longer together but my stepson now runs that business and I am involved again.

It was a conversation with David, my stepson, that prompted me to develop my fish and seafood recipe site.

The business delivers door to door in the Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire areas - he wanted to expand and so we got chatting about websites - here's his website www.bladesfood.com

I have been working on the internet for the last two years - with varying amounts of success - and really enjoyed building websites - I love the research and everything about the world wide web.

A light went on - I could combine two of my passions - food and internet.

These two could help support my third passion - music. I am a drummer, congas, full drum kit and cocktail kit - here's the website www.bluesmother.com - and the hours are very odd.

I had a job when I first started drumming but when you're getting in at 3.00 am from a gig, you don't want to be getting up to do an eight hour day in an office - something had to go and it was the J-O-B!

That's why I started to look at the internet to supplement the money - we're not in Elton John's league paywise - although our entertainment value is equal!

So www.find-a-seafood-recipe.com was born and I love doing it - I have great fun researching, testing, adapting and creating. My original creations have 'come out' again but with the passage of twenty years, tastes have changed.

I research what people are looking for currently with a variety of tools at my disposal and then build my website accordingly - it's very simple and straightforward. The fondue set has come back into fashion it seems - everybody had one in the 70s but never used it! Likewise, the crockpot is enjoying a revival. There are sections on my site for both cooking methods.

The really weird thing about all this is my own son, Rory - nearly fifteen years old. The music is a recent addition to my interests - I've played something for more than forty years, but it's only these last two years that I've become a 'gigging' musician.

Up until a year ago, Rory wanted to be a chef right from the age of seven. This last year, he too has made a shift - he wants to be a sound engineer and is learning the guitar with a view to being in a band himself - he still has his interest in cooking, mainly because he likes to eat, but it's a shift we've made as a family - and it's wonderful.

Have a look at the websites, sign up for my newsletter if you like - it's only monthly and it won't be boring, I promise!

These are some examples of recipes from the web site:

Frugal Seafood Bisque

Seafood Lasagne

Monkfish and Prawns in Tomato Wine Sauce

Baked Monkfish

Vegetable au Gratin

Tomato Rice with Tuna

Barbecued Salmon

Barbecued Salmon Steaks

. . . if you want to see more then visit Liz's web site <click here