Vicky Mansfield's life is a blur of recipes and fine ingredients in the scorching heat of a working kitchen as she makes sure every detail of the food she prepares for her clients cannot be faulted. And she wouldn't have it any other way. More so since she so very nearly had it snatched away entirely.
The 26-year-old has been running her own firm Appetite! Gourmet Cuisine for 18 months from her kitchens in Hamble, providing mouthwatering dishes to corporate and private clients the length and breath of the south.
And there is little outward sign of the near fatal car crash just over three years ago left her with a severely fractured skull and broken collarbone – and no memory of the training and guidance she had received under the likes of top chef Rick Stein in Padstow.
Vicky was one of the country brightest young chefs after her training under two time Michelin starred chef Nathan Outlaw at Pescadou Restaurant in Padstow before moving on to work with Stein at St Petroc's Bistro.
Two years later she crossed the Atlantic and started working on super yachts owned bu the mega rich along the eastern seaboard of the United States and around the Caribbean Sea. She also had a stint as the head chef at the prestigious French restaurant Richards at the Catamaran Club Hotel in Antigua.
But just as it seemed Vicky had the world at her feet it all came to an abrupt end. On a return visit to the UK she was a passenger in a car that spun out of control and collided with a tree. She had to be cut out of the vehicle and had suffered a serious head injury. While the doctor said her physical injuries would eventually heal Vicky was left with no memory and that meant no idea how to cook.
It is still painful to even talk about it now, but Vicky said: “Everything that I had learned and the years of experience I had gained was just gone. I couldn't even remember how to boil an egg. It was very frightening at the time, and still when I look back at it. I had the physical injuries which were bad enough, but to not be able to remember anything about the profession that I loved and wanted to be my career was devastating. But I was determined that I would get back somehow, and thats when I went back to college to start again”
Amazingly as she worked at college parts of her cooking memories returned and she completed her studies in just six months.
“There is actually a lot to be said for going back to college and re-learning because you pick up on new techniques and new fashions” she said.
“I then had a decision to make whether to go back to the life I had or whether to do some thing else entirely. And having the experience that I had had with the car crash does bring a different perspective to what you want to do with your life.”
She was offered a job at a two Michelin starred country restaurant in the UK but the trauma she had been through had made he re-focus her ambitions and desires. So she started her own company it Appetite! Gourmet Cuisine.
Her reputation has gone before her and she has done a lot of corporate catering work for big accountancy and financial firms in Portsmouth and across the south, and has been much in demand in the marine sector for her popular “Meals on Keals” service of hampers and food for people on various sized yachts.
But as well as the corporate work she has developed a niche in providing personal catering services to private clients in their own homes – small, intimate dinner parties and will to do families who want to hire a personnel chef for their holiday home when they using it.
More recently she has been brought in by the RAF Yacht Club in Hamble to be their in house caterer, providing all the meals for their members from Thursday to Sunday every week. Add to that the wedding and corporate barbecues for the summer - suddenly after 18 months Appetite! Gourmet Cuisine is making quite a few waves in the catering world in the south.
That has meant more staff to be hired – including a new chef using a Masterchef style cook off to select the winning candidate and a busy time for Vicky.
But she is glad to be busy again after all, it is what she dreamed of when she was a little girl. “When I was 12 I came home from school and instead of doing my homework, I just want to make a three course meal for everyone every day.” she said.
“I loved to cook then and I just wanted to cook all the time, And I love it now too”