The food writer and TV presenter talks about finding fun in life, sharing the love for Caribbean cuisine – and her hidden talent
My first cookbook was Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes. It instilled in me the idea that food is fun. My parents probably weren’t so impressed because I’d use every piece of equipment in the kitchen! Cooking is all about experimenting, and I still do that now. Find that joy.
When I was young, I wanted to be a songwriter and pianist. It was my passion. I studied music and played concerts from an early age. But it wasn’t seen as a career so I practised law instead – until I was made redundant, which was a blessing in disguise as that’s when I started to immerse myself in food and cooking. But I still write songs and play the piano as an antidote to everyday life.
We moved around as children from Trinidad to New York and then to England. The constant throughout was my mum’s and grandmother’s cooking. Mum would send me to school with a tiffin box of Sunday leftovers when we lived in Leicester. The kids could be brutal – it was so different from what they were eating – and there were times I longed to have a cheese sandwich and a Wagon Wheel instead. Now I think I was the luckiest girl to have had that food. Leicester has an incredible Caribbean community and my mum would take us to a local centre after school where we’d have oxtail and all the food we had back in Trinidad. That was a huge
