FIVE years ago, I took a giant leap by following my passion over a lucrative career. I have not looked back. This journey through flavour has attracted many like-minded friends. Some have helped me get here, others merely inspired, but there are some that have opened my eyes to a whole new way of understanding flavour, and most of all, taken me on incredible journeys by sharing their own stories.

One such person is Ghillie Basan, a one-time Sunday Herald food writer who was writing about Middle Eastern and Asian food before it became trendy, and whose books I have collected since the 1980s.

Ghillie is many things: a food anthropologist, spice guru and cookery teacher in her wilderness retreat in the Scottish Highlands, where she has lived for over 23 years – but most of all she is a Scottish woman, who has not lived an ordinary life. When she was four, her parents moved to East Africa when her father was appointed professor of medicine at Nairobi's first medical school.

Describing her life in East Africa, she explains where her travel and explorative spirit comes from: “My father, who had an adventurous spirit, would take us on safaris, camping in the bush, whenever he could.” The seeds for discovering flavour, sowed from early childhood, have inspired her whole life of discovery of the region ,which has been the topic of her 40 books and many more articles over the decades.

Much like me, Ghillie’s obsession with food, recipes and cooking began from a young age. “I would learn from our cook who was from the Luo tribe from Lake Victoria," she tells me. "My parents probably got fed up with all the recipes I wrote, so they enrolled me in the Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London when I was 17. I later studied social anthropology at Edinburgh University and really the combination of food and anthropology has been at the root of all my travels and work since.

"While working as a journalist in Turkey and the Middle East back in the 1980s, I began writing about food for travel magazines and I wrote my first book, Classic Turkish Cookery, in 1997." While doing all this, she raised her two children on her own, in the Highlands. Her books include The Middle Eastern Kitchen (2001), Vietnamese (2004) and Mezze: Small Plates To Share (2015).

What I admire most is how she has taken pride in immersing herself in the culture, learning languages, travelling in areas that few people visited. To me, this identifies a person with real respect for another’s cuisine, unlike many who merely travel for holiday to a region and feel they know it enough to write about it with authority.

Ghillie and I met on a cold Edinburgh day, while making our first BBC Kitchen Café Curry Club, (which we host together on last Thursday of each month). The programme was recorded in a makeshift food market and we just had to wing it.

Having built a friendship on a foundation of mutual respect and admiration, we each feel we have found a "spice soulmate". Ghillie's passion for food and spice is, she tells me, "part of my soul, part of my life’s story. The passion comes from within and that is where you and I connect as our hearts and heads. We both love the written word and the stories we can tell, but deep down we are driven by food and particularly by spice, as it is at the root of every journey we have made and every story we tell. So, genuinely, I have a met a ‘soulmate’.”

Ghillie and I have found friendship through our common love of travel, of the Scottish Highlands, and as we are both single mothers, all is fuelled by the desire to do everything for our children.

Ghillie Basan's Bobotie

(Serves 5-6)

I have been lucky enough to eat this wonderful dish, cooked by Ghillie. The recipe is in her own words.

So many dishes remind me of my childhood, such as curries made with papayas or with green bananas. Although it originates from South Africa, Bobotie is cooked in households and safari lodges throughout East Africa and I learned this version from our cook. Sweet and not too spicy, it was a family favourite when my kids were growing up.

2 slices white bread, crusts removed and cubed

250ml milk

2 tbsp ghee

2 onions, chopped

2 tsp jaggery, or sugar

1-2 tsp harissa paste, finely chopped dried chillies, or paprika

1 tbsp ground turmeric

2-3 tsp Indian or South African curry powder

2 tsp ground ginger

2-3 tbsp raisins or sultanas

Around 900g lean minced beef, or venison

1 tbsp red or white wine vinegar

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp mango chutney

1 tbsp apricot jam

1-2 tbsp tomato paste

1 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 eggs, beaten

Handful lemon or bay leaves

Preheat oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Place the bread cubes into a shallow bowl and pour the milk over them. Put aside and leave to soak.

Heat the ghee in heavy-based pot or pan and stir in the onions with the jaggery, until they begin to colour. Stir in the harissa and spices then toss in the raisins and the minced beef and cook for 4-5 minutes to brown the meat.

Add the vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, chutney, jam, tomato paste, and tinned tomatoes. Bubble up the mixture, reduce the heat, and cook gently for 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent the mixture from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Squeeze the bread dry, reserve the milk, and beat the bread into the minced meat. Season the meat mixture with salt and pepper and transfer to an ovenproof dish. Beat the eggs with the reserved milk in a bowl and pour it over the meat mixture, dot the top with lemon or bay leaves and pop the dish into the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the custard has set. Serve straight from the oven.