Do Me A Flavour

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday June 21, 2008

Valerie Khoo

Nowadays Miranda Farr switches on an oven, not a computer, to start the day, writes Valerie Khoo.

Miranda Farr swapped the world of finance to become a freelance home economist and couldn't be happier with her creative new career.

"I'd been saying for years that I was going to do it," says the 37-year-old. "Then it just came to a point [three years ago] when it was time."

Farr developed a passion for food from her mother, who grew up in Hong Kong and had a love of Asian cuisine. "I was always interested in food and buying magazines such as Gourmet Traveller," Farr says.

Her early career path took her in a different direction. Farr completed a bachelor of economics at Macquarie University and then joined ANZ Bank, where she worked for two years. This was followed by a job at Macquarie Bank as a credit analyst, then working on the strategy for floating a company.

"After that, I was in the professional and business banking area," she says. "I was a relationship manager who looked after a portfolio. So I had about 50 high net worth individuals and small business owners. I looked after their lending needs and investments."

During her time with Macquarie Bank, Farr's interest in food didn't wane. "My clients knew me as the food person, so we would go to all the nice restaurants and they'd ask me more questions about food than about the business side of things."

Despite being in a successful senior management role, in July 2005 Farr finally decided to throw it in. She enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Ryde. "It was a very hard decision," she says. "There was a lot to weigh up. The course was three months' full-time and I had to fund my existence for that period. I needed to have the guts to take the risk and not know where I would be working. Having reached that level at Macquarie Bank - with maybe more promotions ahead - it was difficult. But the managers at the bank could see what a passion it was for me and always said I could go back there if it didn't work out."

However, three years on, Farr doesn't think that returning to banking is likely. Only a month after finishing her course, Farr did some work experience in a test kitchen for a magazine. "Someone left and I ended up getting a full-time job there," she says.

She is now a freelance home economist. "I work for a few different magazines including Good Taste, Super Food Ideas and Donna Hay magazine. When we have a photo shoot, I'm the one who buys the ingredients and cooks all the food at the shoot. Then the photographer and food stylist will take whatever I cook, place it nicely and shoot it."

Farr's career change meant she had to say hello to a different level of income and goodbye to a regular pay cheque. "I saved for a couple of years so I could do this. I earn about a third of what I earnt before," she says. "When you work on a freelance basis, you have to work out your cash flow and have money behind you before you do something like this."

With the dip in income, Farr also had to adjust in other ways. "I got a flatmate because I was living by myself but couldn't afford to do that any more," she says. "There was no more eating out at nice restaurants. People think that you will eat at the nicest places. It was like that when I was at Macquarie - but not now. I used to buy Chanel but it's not quite like that any more. I've had to pull back on expenditure but I'm enjoying my lifestyle more."

Farr's transition seemed to work seamlessly yet she says she researched the industry for years. "About five or six years before I left the bank, I did a cooking course with [food editor] Kathy Snowball," Farr says. "I had read that Kathy was a merchant banker before she moved into the food world."

An informal mentoring relationship followed and Farr says the pair caught up once or twice a year. "She advised me on what courses to do and which people I should talk to," says Farr, who says that networking and getting to know people in the industry has also been important.

Financial products have given way to fancy menus and, while Farr admits she misses the camaraderie of working with a team at the bank, she doesn't miss the work itself. "My day consists of turning on an oven - not a computer," she says.

Farr already has her sights set on the next phase of her culinary career. "I wanted to learn how to cook food properly first, so I could write authoritatively," she says. "I'd like to get into food writing."

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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