Do you have any processes or habits leading up to writing a cookbook?
I do. When I’m writing a cookbook I tend to – when I’m thinking about writing a cookbook – there’s a lot of scribbling and notes on pretty much anything I can get my hands on. Sometimes I have a little book on me, sometimes it’s the back of a bill – usually it’s about key ingredients I’m using in a dish for a creativity point of view or it’s about ‘this must go in’ these recipes, or it might even just be a bullet point of ‘got to cover a kitchen essentials’. For instance, it dawned on me that we needed a more expansive thought process around a glossary, that there needed to be a key.
Essentially, with this particular book, it was a cook’s brain dump. Like I literally wrote and wrote and wrote and I had someone help me compile into chapters that a sensible organised person would then utilise to cook.
Talking about ingredients, what is your all time favourite ingredient to use?
Fennel. Fennel seed, fennel flour, fennel pollen. Fennel, when it’s in season, is great – it’s sweeter, it’s plump, it’s juicy, it’s great roasted, it’s very lovely raw. There is a story about fresh fennel as a kid - I didn’t really realise what the fennel was. I just thought it was this anise-y flavoured water with chunks of white crunchy vegetable on the table and I didn’t realise that everyone else didn’t eat it. And we all used to drink the water as well from the fennel.
This might be a little like asking who your favourite child is – what is your favourite recipe from this cookbook?
My favourite child is always the one sitting on my knee – and my favoruite recipe is whatever I’m feeling like eating. I’m driven by my curiosity and I’m eager to learn all the time but it’s usually my hunger. So it’s whatever I’m feeling like at the time. Quite often when I’m travelling it’ll be the broths and stocks with simple noodles or poached chicken or something quite soothing because I get a bit of travel sickness sometimes. That is quite often what I love, and I love that chapter of the book because it really extends people if they haven’t made their own stock before. Even though there are a lot on sale these days I think it’s a great place to start, and to understand the fundamental flavours.
What is your favourite meal of the day?
Dinner. Cheeky lunch is great too, but I think by the time I get organised – quite often my husband will say to me ‘let’s just throw one thing on the barbecue and maybe have a salad’ and by the time I’m finished we’ve got – by the time it’s the end of the day, if I’m committed and I’m not working – there is whatever’s going on the barbecue but it might have been the chicken that’s been marinaded, and then there’s a separate sauce that goes with it, and then there might be some peppers that have been grilled that get dressed as well and then it becomes an elaborate meal to share, if you like. Very convivial.
What’s your favourite cooking hack?
Actually it’s one I saw just recently – it was on Instagram or TikTok, but I haven’t tried it yet so I don’t know if it works!
The other one I saw that I will be doing from now on to peel potatoes – because when you boil a potato and it’s really hot, especially a larger one, it’s really hard to peel all the skin for a great potato salad. But if you score the potato evenly all the way around quite deeply, then boil them – once they’re boiled you can literally just pull the two ends off the potato, and you don’t end up with little bits of starchy skin all over you.
The other hack – the one that I saw that I haven’t tried yet – was again peeling something. Being able to peel a tomato without blanching it and it was one of those supermarket tomatoes, quite hard. Where you get a chopstick and you rub either side of the edge of the tomato, and then turn it over and poke the chopstick through the middle, and the skin just slips off.
The potato one is definitely one I do.
