Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - S13 Ep 9: Thomasina Miers

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

I’ve admired the wonderful chef Thomasina Miers for a long time so we were thrilled to welcome her to Table Manners. Tommi kindly brought pud, but before we devoured her delicious chocolate cake with tequila and chilli, we discussed food activism, the importance of soil, Chefs for Schools, eating seasonally, food education & how to cook the perfect omelette, along with her love of Mexico and chillis. Mum made a delicious Ottolenghi courgette frittata and it really was an inspiring lunch with this Wonder Woman. Thomasina's new book ‘Meat Free Mexican’ is out now (go make the choc cake) x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Table Manners. I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here on a breezy late March afternoon. Good morning. We're doing a brunch today, aren't we? Yes, darling. I'm really looking forward to this guest. I've never met this brilliant chef, but I know lots of people that know her. I like her books a lot. I've used her recipes. Her name is Thomasina Myers and you'll know her from, well, she started in MasterChef, didn't she? Yeah, I watched her on MasterChef.

I remember her, she won it. Then she started Oaxaca. Oaxaca, cooked Mexican food and she's often a guest judge on MasterChef. You know I watch MasterChef and The Great Mission. Yes, I do. We have Thomasina Myers, OBE, who is on today.

She's got a new book called Meat Free Mexican. I know, it's gorgeous. She's like perfect for you. I know, I've been right through it. It's really good. I was going to cook something from it today, but I thought I wouldn't do it as well as her, so I've done something else.

But so excited to have it and cook from it. You know what? Wahaka was the first restaurant group in the UK to be certified carbon neutral. Really? Yeah, she's pretty amazing. She's kind of, she's such an admirable woman. She's an entrepreneur.

You know, it's clever to be able to extend your love of food and open a whole chain of restaurants. May I ask what you've made for our brunch today with Thomasina? I've done an otolenghi dish, which I've worked out having put it all together. It's like eggy bread, but baked. So it's a frittata, but it's got ciabatta in it.

And you steep it in the egg and everything. So it's a bit like eggy bread, but baked eggy bread. Isn't this what he... Sorry to remind everyone of the brunch that we had with the otolenghi. Isn't this what he made us? No, I don't think it had... think it was much flatter for a tartar. This is like a deep dish.

I'm really surprised you didn't do something from Thomasina's book. Sorry. Jessie, I had my hair appointment at 8 o'clock this morning. Oh yeah, there was a whole thing about whether your hairdresser would have been gone. I've had to fit all this in. Your hair does look nice. Does look nice does it very nice color mum so I've cut it it's really eggs a lot of eggs

ciabatta bread cumin um milk and parmesan and a little bit of cream and baked in the oven I'm going to serve it with a salad because it's brunch, isn't it? I'm starving, actually. And as Thomasina is a chef, and because, you know, this is a thing that we always cheekily ask, we have asked, requested Thomasina to bring dessert, but she did say she would try her best, but she may not be able to. So let's see. I bet you she will bring something, and I bet it will be absolutely stupendous,

and I bet she'll go, oh, I just whipped it. Oh, God, I'm so sorry for this delicious. Well, worst comes to worst, I've got my olive oil biscuits and creme fraiche. Fine. And mascarpone and strawberries. So we'll be all right. We're gearing up for the tour. I know, darling.

I feel like you're just like you're settling into it now. Do you think? Yeah, you've worked out where you're going to be cooking your chicken soups and how you're going to transport this chicken soup. I wished I'd invested in skims. Skims? Yeah. Why?

When I'm on stage. I've got my best. I don't think your adoring fans will give a shit about what underwear you're wearing. Okay. We are so excited. We can't wait to see you around the country. It starts in edinburgh queens hall on the 28th of april then we go to manchester bridgewater hall birmingham town hall and then

london palladium for two nights and finishing the tour on the 9th of may let us know if you're coming we're going to try and find our super fan on this tour how many episodes are we on now al over 180 episodes so we've got plenty to talk about we want to know who knows more than us about our own podcast also i'm very intrigued to know if anybody is coming to the tour you can email into hello at table manners podcast.com maybe we'll include you within our show maybe if you've got a very important story that we need to know about food or family or drinks or dinners um we'd love to include you so start emailing over anything that you would like to have a discussion with us about on these tours and if you've got any questions for us that you want to ask us you know just email us at hello at tablemannerspodcast.com and let us know which show you're coming for.

You will be rewarded. You will be rewarded. Wow. What, mother? The wonderful Thomasina Myers coming up on Table Manners. Thomasina Myers, you are in our kitchen. You've bought gifts. Yeah. You've bought gifts. You've bought food. And I know you've got about 10,000 things you're doing today.

And you look fabulous. And you look glamorous and fabulous. Thank you for doing this. Oh, thanks for having me. So, I mean, I have a lot to ask you, but let's start from the beginning. We've heard about your grandmother from Tennessee as we walked in, who has the fabulous hat.

But where did you grow up? I grew up in Shepherd's Bush um and uh yeah I just grew up in London and but love food really love food got a really strong connection to the countryside I used to go and stay with my granny and grandpa in in one part of the country and he grew vegetables and that was like kind of Oxfordshire. And then my other granny, the one from Tennessee, lived in deepest, darkest Wales. And she was amazing. How did she end up there?

How poor, poor thing. How did she end up there? With her fabulous hats in the middle of Wales. Maybe she had a lovely time. Going down the con club. Well, we loved it because there are all these castles in Wales.

Oh, there are? Yeah, so we're always going to these amazing ruins, Carrie Kenan Castle. It's quite a foodie Wales, actually. Ingredients are amazing. Abergavenny. Abergavenny. I've heard about Abergavenny being like the food hotspot.

It is great, yeah. They've got a food festival, I think. Yeah, they've got a food festival, exactly. So your Tennessee grandma. Who ate cream and butter with everything. We grew up, she loved a cocktail. So we grew up with my memory of my father shaking cocktails in her fabulous kind of place in Wales. It was a small cottage, but it was pink, which was epic.

And then shaking cocktails and then making delicious food. What did she like? She loved a whiskey sour because she drank whiskey. That's why I drink whiskey now. Like my friends all drink gin, but dad caught me drinking gin when I was about 15. He was like, no child of mine is going to drink gin. You must try whiskey.

What's your favourite whiskey? I know nothing about whiskey really. I mean, I love all sorts. I mean, I like Balvenie, I like Highland Park. I like even a blend. I'm not, you know, I love all sorts. I mean, I like Balvenie at Highland Park. I like even a blend. I'm not, you know, I'm not... You're not snobby about your whiskey. I'm not snobby about whiskey because I like it with soda.

Is this presumptuous of me or are you a big tequila fan? I mean, I love tequila. Yeah, my experience of growing up was terrible with it. But now I'm learning more about it and it is such a great drink. I think it's like a sunshine happy drink it always makes me want to like dance on tables it's so how do you take your tequila uh well at Oaxaca we've got this phrase which is sip don't shoot because it's so delicious like why would you want to like knock it back yeah so um and actually tradition you drink it with something called sangrita which

if you like bloody mary which is also another late cocktail i love so tomato juice but also fresh orange fresh lime lots of tabasco worcester sauce bit of um grenadine and then you sit that alongside your tequila and you can sit so before lunch on a sunday you might have like three glasses of tequila with this little spicy slightly sweet citrusy sangrita and then and it's just delicious so good definitely give a hangover how did you fall in love with mexico uh i went when i was 18 thought all the food was tex-mex started traveling around yeah and and just thought this is nuts why is this food so good and and it and just noticed the way it changed everywhere i went with my backpack on you know sleeping in a hammock and just kind of eating everything I could.

And it just and it kept changing. And I just got fascinated. I thought, right, I've discovered that Mexican food is delicious. I can go back and I'm going to actually eat proper Mexican when I go back to London. And I just couldn't find any. And I realized that we all thought it was Tex-Mex. And it's nuts to think that Texas is a state in this state. Part of it used to be Mexico which is why they eat in that similar way but essentially it's it's American it's Texas you know it's Texan food and they've convinced the entire world they did convince the entire world that it was Mexican

and and I think that was so fascinating to me so I just had this thing in my head for ages and then I went back and lived there I opened a cocktail cocktail bar lived in Mexico City you're kidding yeah I mean it was quite mad but it was really fun how old were you uh I was quite old actually at this stage all my friends were settling down they're doing really well in their careers I didn't know what I was doing in my life I really struggled my 20s to find out what I wanted to do had you studied gone to university or anything I went to uni I came out with a not a great degree had a bit of a breakdown in what modern languages uh so I loved speaking Spanish Spanish yeah so my dad traveled around Latin America for work when I was growing up so he said you must speak Spanish it's great language

so that was so large part of it I could think thanks dad for that little push because I wouldn't have ended up in Mexico um so you're a bit lost after university I'm so lost and I think so many people are lost actually it's really hard in your 20s to know what to do um I was struggling I you know had a bit of depression all that kind of stuff so really not a fun time and I thought I should be doing something academic so I went to a really academic day school in London and then I was in a fashion show close to Dixon White that's one of the two fat ladies uh barber we're modeling barber I was in a barb bikini she was in a coat and backstage I just was like I'm I was by this stage I was actually desperate I was really felt total failure I'd done internet strategy at the height of the dot-com boom I'd failure I'd done internet strategy at the height of the dot-com boom I'd done I'd done so many things and I couldn't stick at any of them

thought I was kind of flawed and damaged and she just said if you love food why aren't you cooking for a living it just sounds so obvious but in those days food wasn't quite so no I mean that that the seismic shift in food's just been incredible in the last 15 years so um didn't really seem like it was anyway food i went off to ballymaloe in ireland which is the most amazing cooking school like groundbreaking cooking school darina allen who the one runs it was talking about soil 25 years ago and soil is this amazing like almost crisis like we 95 of our food grows in soil and we're getting rid of three football fields of good soil every minute it's like this global crisis that no one's talking about you

know we talk about all sorts of things we don't talk about how we grow our food um and you know insects depletion and and all this stuff is so important and you know we talk about carbon as well let's cut our carbon emissions but unless we stop putting nitrogens and herbicides and pesticides on our soil we're really doomed so that's what i'm really fascinated in is how food can save the world and what i love about mexico and the connection to it is that the milpa in mexico is this amazing way of harvesting so they plant the corn crop and the bean crop and the courgette plants and the chilies and the tomatoes all together and all the different plants give something to the earth so the corn provides a structure the beans can grow up and the beans fix the nitrogen in the

soil that feeds the courgette and the corn and then the courgette all these prickly like leaves that stop the insects crawling around and prevent kind kind of keep this moisture in the ground. And so you don't need to spray with all these oil-rich chemicals which destroy the earth. So actually, ancient, and that's why this, well, I've just written a book about Mexican food, but it's vegetarian. And what's so fascinating is the way the ancient Mexican tribes used to eat, the native mexicans the aztecs was largely vegetables because it's that's biodiversity this crazy amount of fruit and vegetables in this country 50 000 plant species compared with about a thousand and a half in the

uk it's quite full of incredible food um and that's mostly what they ate. The amazing protein-rich beans and the corn, which is this amazing superfood, and all the lovely fruit and vegetables. And then a bit of fish, a bit of forage birds. But that diet is just actually so healthy and amazing and nutritious. And the rainbow food that we all talk about now, the rainbow diet. Is this your first vegetarian cookbook? Yeah.

Congratulations. It's beautiful. Yeah, it really is. It is beautiful. And I would have cooked something from it today, but I was a bit shy. No, no. So I got nervous. So I made something for brunch that I felt safer with.

But you did bring pud, which is a recipe from the cookbook yeah which actually has got tequila in it right because chocolate tequila is like one of the perfect marriages and you know chocolate also being from Mexico there's something about those two flavors it's just so insane so like I'll go to when I go to my parents house I'll go to pudding it's always like ice cream from the freezer and then we just whip up a chocolate sauce with tequila in it. Tequila in your chocolate sauce? Oh my God, it's so good. It's literally the best.

When you do a chocolate sauce, do you just melt chocolate and put a bit of cream in? Cream, milk. If you don't have cream, you can use whole milk. And then you can put a bit of butter, but you don't have to. Salt, definitely a bit of sea salt. And a nice bit of golden syrup, whack in there. Oh, I know.

And then when do you put the booze in? Because does it make it split? Well, no, because once you've got the cream or the milk in, then you're safe. It won't split the chocolate. And then just pour in the booze then. And then to taste. I mean, I always start with one or two tablespoons of tequila and then add a bit more just kind of have the nice amount sometimes even drizzle a bit on top of the ice cream and chocolate

sauce at the end as well I remember you because I'm obsessed with cooking programs but only ones not main chefs so I remember you from MasterChef but were you on MasterChef the professionals or MasterChef just the ordinary one no because I was then those are my kind of that was my days of not knowing what that's what I thought I was doing that's quite brave to go and do that so you went and did Ballymalu like you went and did that and then straight after that was it well no because then so after Ballymalu didn't know what I was doing so I went and made cheese in west cork uh which was amazing uh uh gabine which is a kind of semi-soft uh rind cheese washed rind cheese delicious um and and there i mean tom and jona just imagine living imagine being really not knowing what you're

doing with your life and then ending up on a cheese farm in west cork it was literally bliss uh with the sea right there um and tom Jane, I just lived in their farmhouse. I met a girl called Clodagh McKenna, who's a cook. So we had a little moving market stand. She would make pasta, I'd make sourdough, and we'd travel around Ireland doing this little market. So it was really fun. Then my boyfriend got a bit cross.

When are you coming back to London? Also, I was a bit broke. Is he still your boyfriend? No, sadly. Yeah, yeah. Anyway anyway that's another story so then what happened then on a cheese stand in ireland i managed to get a job in london so then i was managing a shop called vlandry in london and they had a bakery underground in the basement which is extraordinary because in those days no one made fresh bread like we do i mean obviously some people made bread but they make they're making their own croissants and power chocolate all that stuff um

angus this amazing guy was making the food and so i started doing a stall for them as well because this thing about selling you know buying direct from a farmer i'm really into like cutting out the middleman who takes all the profit and buying from people actually looking after the planet looking after the soil you can go back to the soil and nature and looking after the insects and the bees and the earthworms and the birds like unless we actually buy our food from people who are taking care of the planet and their little farm their little patch of land and paying all the people around them a fair wage that feels to me that's proper ownership and and politically kind of like I'm going to vote with my foot I'm going to spend money at this guy I know his name I know he looks

after people I know he looks after the land that for me is um what you call food activism but like so for people that are listening to that and being like well how do I do that so what do you think would be the best start for people that want to support the farmers support people that are you know and want to be involved in food activism in where should they be shopping farmers markets or I think farmers markets get a massive bad rap of being overpriced and for the privilege and I think it's not true I think there's there are so many layers here like my the charity that i helped set up is called chefs in schools and that is about feeding kids in schools proper food my friend's a chef actually in it really yeah she's one in stoke newington she's yeah clara's doing

it yeah it's amazing clara she's been a catering chef and she's but um she was really disillusioned with her catering jobs and she was so she started doing this it's amazing and she's but um she was really disillusioned with her catering jobs and she was so she started doing this it's amazing and she's like the food is just fantastic yeah I want to get it in my kid's school that's your chat I'm so sorry I didn't know that no no no I mean I kind of put everyone in a room said come on let's do it and then I realized that I was beginning to like have sleepless nights because as always I was over back back I always take on too much, it's my classic, I think, ADHD thing, so, and I suddenly was like, look, I actually can't do this, I'll be a trustee, but I can't actually set up this charity, because I had no time, I was still doing Oaxaca, a lot of, you know, many

days a week, and so, we got it set up, largely they got it set up, but I'm still a trustee i've got a meeting this afternoon uh it's amazing so 50 pence per people per day cheaper than the massive contract caterers we feed the kids really incredible food fresh baby you divert that money you pay the the chefs and the school cooks a better wage and they become part of the school like the kids know their name they're the heroes of the school because they're producing food the But do schools still even have kitchens? A lot of schools still have kitchens. And do you know what? It's a real bugbear of mine.

Restaurants, the calories have gone on the menus tomorrow. They did it at Tolles Hill. They're doing the calories? Calories. Right. Guess what the roast was? 1,800 calories. I nearly died.

Roast beef in Yorkshire. I think I know how you beef in Yorkshire, good. I think I know how you're going to feel about this, but how do you feel about seeing the calories? Well, calories don't tell you anything about how healthy the food is, whether it's got fibre in it, how it was grown, whether it has chemicals put on it. Because of obesity.

Obesity. So food-related disease is killing more people than alcohol and smoking. So I get they're trying to do something, but why not do something in schools? Isn't it going to make more kind of... It can make everyone anxious. Everyone have like these weird relationships with food. So at the fish and chip shop, they're going to say when you have your cod and chips,

this is how much you're... Look, we all know that's calorific and it's not that great for you, but you do it once in a blue moon maybe. Yeah, I agree, I agree. And you get people get so anxious about food anyway. Food poverty is more important than... Food poverty is way more important which is why department education seems to think that food is not related to education and our thing is it is so we have uk has national food

standards but the department of education does not stick to them or does not make the school stick to them so 80 of secondary schools are failing their school food standards now this is like when we're looking at food prices for the next two years, Ukraine, all that, there are going to be so many more people struggling to eat. The school is the one place where kids can get a proper meal, a meal once a day. They don't give it. They don't offer it. But they're not offering it. So, you know, much better focus on the schools and get good food.

And we've proven chefs in schools you can do it you should sort out hospitals after that and hospitals police on hospitals she's she's she's it's really hard but but you've got to get the government you know come on boris food's important it's not a luxury food food is how we you, if you think about the survival, without food we're dead and without good food we're ill. So, like, why should only rich people be able to afford good food? Surely it's every person's human right to be able to eat well. And it doesn't have to cost a fortune. It really doesn't.

But it does depend on education and knowing what to do with the food. And, you know, yeah, we've got to eat more pulses and less meat. Obesity is more common in poorer people than rich people. So it's not about quantity. It's about what you're eating. Yeah, it's about what's in it. Tommy, this is, all of it is so fascinating. And, well, I can't wait to chat to you more.

But I want to start from what you, do you remember about your upbringing, your really memorable dishes from your childhood well so my i would so money was a real struggle so my mother was always trying to make the ends meet the end of the week that's why i really remembered and she was always buying stuff in season so we would have a supper in like kind of in a couple of months would be a glow bar shake and she'd burn butter so it was really delicious put loads of salt in and then we'd dip she was a really good cook and then we'd dip brown bread into it at the end and eat the cut up the heart and put it in the butter and put it all over

the bread and the bread would be soaked up with this burnt butter so food was really pleasurable but always on this kind of budget so she would only buy aubergine in the summer because it was affordable then and then she and the tomatoes so so it it was all about eating we'd have like sandwich competitions on a saturday or blts were like the treat where she gets streaky bacon and cook it and then she'd get the lettuce in those days it was iceberg and then she'd lather it in mayonnaise she'd probably make the mayonnaise and then you know we'd get the bread out and the tomatoes and she'd dress the tomato with salt and pepper a bit of brown sugar a bit of vinegar um and then you know and then we'd all assemble our own blts the way we wanted to i love this idea of a sandwich um competition oh yeah it was really fun so so why was she so interested in food well

i think i think she loved food because her her her grandmother was from south africa and just you know they cooked my father loved food because his grandmother his mother he worked uh he worked he just made omelets in those days he had his omelet pan and if you went near it you were toast i'm in serious trouble they were good omelets he made really good omelets like really good omelets uh really hot pan so you get the pan it was a really heavy cast iron flat omelette pan you'd have to get it smoke i still remember the lesson he gave me wait for it smoking hot before you put the butter in so literally you had to wait and i'd sit there with my head waiting to watch the smoke rise and then once it was smoking hot set on the flame for like good

couple of minutes then you add the butter sizzle and then you throw the eggs in which you know whisked up with herbs or what a bit of cheese if you want or whatever salt and pepper obviously and then you wait and then you scoop and you tilt and you scoop and you tilt and you scoop so you get a lovely kind of caramelized side whatever it's called you shouldn't i should know the name of that what do you call it when that lovely caramelization of food goes on and that's where you get the flavor from and then not overcook it and then flop it out onto your plate with a lovely simple salad and toast and that's delicious supper and that's not expensive so good food i grew up knowing that good food is not expensive but you do have to know how to cook it and what to do with the ingredients like the beans or whatever or the soup you must have understood seasonal foods at such an early age

which i feel like i probably and many of people i know probably didn't appreciate but i think things have changed jesse because i think we access food from all over the place yeah i mean if we actually look sometimes i'm horrified and I see you know fancy raspberries and they come from the Morocco this and it's your carbon footprint and everything is extraordinary but I think we're so used to now having it whenever we want it it's tricky we don't resist and wait for it to come into season it's so tricky you're right we are completely used to having whatever we want whenever we want but there's a cost to that yeah you know we're seeing that was the first um carbon neutral restaurant in the uk yeah we were did that was that was that difficult well do you know what

so my business partner said i think we should open more than one and at that point i got a bit nervous because I I'd only ever eaten in restaurants that weren't there was just one of them you know local neighborhood um someone's at the door yeah delivery no doubt uh so I always thought well if we're gonna have more than one we just got to make sure they're as green as possible and then I'll be happy so I remember starting off and getting in touch with kind of local producers and trying to get nice food on the menu. And I was obsessed with, I was slightly terrified about the fact it was Mexican food

because I didn't want to ship stuff over from Mexico. Avocados and stuff like that. I didn't want air miles and all that kind of stuff. So I got really fixated on trying to make it as green as possible. And then my business partner actually really got the bit between his teeth too so I was focusing on the food side but he started focusing on the build of all our restaurants and so he was recycling all the materials from the restaurants we took over and starting to so we get these amazing scar ratings for all our sites now because we divert the hot air from our fridges and freezers

and it goes to heat the water in our taps what does scar mean uh ska i don't know it's what you it's what i think retail uses a lot for like green build um but we started we were the picture that you've painted of your upbringing and cooking together i presume like your parents were allowing you to cook from an early age and teaching you and kind of well i was so i got so bored so easy and i was really bad at playing so my brun sister would be doing this creative play and be like in grace for hours and i'd be like within 10 minutes going i'm bored so then so then I started playing in the kitchen so yeah I was tinkering in the kitchen from the word go and I just I remember seeing my mother's side and her showing me how you get so much flavor out of onions by just cooking them slow and sweet

or how to make a white sauce and to cook out the flour first and get that caramelization going with the butter before you add the milk and and how to stir it without getting the lumps and and and you know she bought the same ingredients week after week because they were the cheap ones but she showed me how to get the most flavor out of them and and then the leftovers you know she would always show me how to make these epic leftover bubble and squeak things or whatever you know it would be really fun like the kitchen forage where you're reaching to the back and thinking what are we going to eat come on let's pull this out because this is going to be delicious and that's just how I grew up cooking um and I just always credit her with that just

understanding those real fundamental building blocks of food and flavor you have children don't you yeah and how are they in the kitchen? They are... I think it's more complicated when it's your mother always cooking because it's my thing, but they're getting more and more into it. And actually, when I go and cook

and do a demo at a food festival, which I do all the time, I now get them up on stage with me, which is so nice for me. Do you want to help yourself? Yeah, I'd love to. What is this? It's delicious.

It's an otolenghi. An otolenghi. It's a frittata made with eggs and ciabatta. Oh, my God, how delicious. I hope it is. I love otolenghi. I know. Me too.

So great. Well, it looks lovely, Mum. So great. Oh, my God. It looks golden and delicious and fluffy and light. So you get your kids up on stage? And then they help. So my proudest moment was when my daughter, like,

jointed a bird on stage for me to then, like... Yeah, I mean, literally... How old is she? How old was she? She was four. Stop! So the locals had given us a duck that someone had shot uh like a local farmer shot and she plucked the duck on stage and then i could just like cut out the breasts and pan fry them

by the end of the food demo i mean it was unreal that's my proudest moment as a mother i bet i mean literally i was like you'll be fine in the if you like in the wilderness if the world collapse you'll be fine that's amazing yeah it was pretty cool but they do cook i mean our my child minder is um spanish and she's vegetarian so she cooks a lot with them get some into veggies which i and then i realized the plate was going to be warm but it's all right i love that love a warm plate i love a warm plate i'm just tossing this because thank you and i'm just throwing salad leaves everywhere. Oh, it's fine. Your child mind is Spanish? Yeah, and she also cooks for them.

But I try and cook with them a lot, actually. And I try not to throw it down their throats too much, though. Because you know that thing where it's your mother. It's a bit annoying. They must be good eaters then, right? They're good eaters. They're definitely good eaters. Let's eat a little bit.

So thanks, Mum. This smells amazing. It looks delicious. It smells good. It really does. Thank you. Oh, it's courgettes. Forgot to say that. It's courgettes.

It's delicious. You can't taste bread, can you? No. It's bouncy. It's lovely. It's very light and fluffy. It's kind of almost like a souffle, isn't it? Was it quite easy to do, Mum?

Mm-mm. No. I had my hair done this morning. It was six eggs, a kind of a loaf of ciabatta, but you had to take the crusts off. He said save the crusts and make breadcrumbs. I wasn't life too sure. And it was just the eggs and grated courgette

so there's this is a really good brunch yeah I think it's lovely god I love eggs where would we be without eggs oh

I know this is heaven you told me not to make it I did I was like I think you should do one from Thomasina's book oh this is really good

but this is great I hate Thomasina Thomasina what I wanted to ask was, okay, so, Mexico is your, your love. For people,

much like, I guess, when people first got a Nottingham book or something, you know, a lot of the ingredients are alien to a lot of people that haven't cooked

Mexican food. You know, there's a lot of chilies in there, like, you know, things like hibiscus. Is it relatively easy to find these ingredients in the uk that's what i wanted to know it's really easy so um you know everyone does an ocado shop yeah lots of people do or any kind of supermarket shop and and they are basically you

can find them on any shop or go to the straight you know max grocer cool chili company is amazing it's got all the stuff. Cool Chili Company. Cool Chili Company is incredible. It's great. And you just get an order of chilies in and they last forever. I mean, I've got chilies in my cupboard that have been there for, you know, probably three years. They're still good to use because most of them are dried anyway. Yeah.

So then all you do is rehydrate them. You either just de-seed them come straight with boiling water or if you're really foodie you might toast them like a cumin seed you know you either grind it straight away or you toast it and grind it so but you can also buy chili flakes these days and what about soaking it when would you soak it so basically if you're using a dry chili and you want to put it in a mayonnaise or a sauce or a marinade you basically take out the seeds cover it in boiling water soak it for 10 minutes and then just blitz it with your tomatoes and your onions or whatever else you're blitzing does it affect the heat uh no because what because the

different chilies have the different heat so like an ancho it's like i want to call my dog ancho my children wouldn't let me it's like a lovely kind of soft sweet rounded flavor i've got some of those yeah they are delicious they are so good um and so that's brilliant you had another jalapeno one that i'd not heard of i mean i've just got old like chipotles yeah no it's no it's serrano yes serranorano jelly yeah yeah serrano is amazing so they're they're fresh chili but you can buy them well you can buy them pickled uh they're delicious they're harder to get a hold of i think the fresh chilies are harder to get a hold of the dried easy like caskabel is my new favorite and i use it a bit in the book and this is always that

tricky thing when you're writing cookbook you think do i try and make everything really simple so to get everyone cooking or some of the recipes i actually want to use this chili because it's so good so i make a chili oil with cascabel which is so delicious it's cascabel is really mild but it's got this fruity kind of deep rounded flavor and it's just insane and i kind of mix it sometimes with a hotter chilli, like Arbol, which is this really grassy chilli. But you can use any dried red chilli. And you think you can get these quite... Well, you must do because you've got them.

You can get all of them. You can get all of them. But you don't need to get all of them straight away. That's the thing, you can just... I think bit by bit, and I'm trying to... Okay, your first, like your starter pack, what would you say? Ancho.

Well, actually, Cool Chilli do a workout horse pack, what would you say? Ancho. Well, actually, Cool Chili do a workout horse pack, which I think has got ancho, pasilla, and chipotle in, I think. But I think ancho, chipotle to start with. And then if you want to go a bit more cask about Arbol. Arbol, A-R-B-O-L, is a great, just hot one. Great for chili oils okay so um we ask all our guests last supper you knew potentially this was going to come i mean it's so hard starter main i mean look but you can have a days of a day of food

we allow people you can do whatever you like with this interpretation my god let me the last meal i love this a whole day. I mean, I can eat quite a lot in a day. I did think about this. And I was really fixated on the starter. And it reminded me of when I did MasterChef, and I had to cook for Michel Roux, which was terrifying, by the way. He's so nice.

Was it? It was, even though he's so nice. It was in the Gavroche kitchen. I was with all his staff. They were all looking at me going, who's this? They weren't actually saying that, but was thinking he felt i was projecting you were anxious i was anxious um and he made me cook a souffle suisse which is actually really easy but it's one of the most delicious things so it's a basically a double cooked souffle yeah um so you

cook it once then you let it fall again and then you basically put cream in a pan and you cook the cream and you basically simmer it and reduce it. And it goes quite nutty, light beurre noir, like a kind of noisette butter. So it goes kind of nutty and delicious. You season it quite heavily with salt and pepper. Not heavily, but season it beautifully with salt and pepper. Maybe a bit of nutmeg. And then you cover your souffle, your little souff souffle your little cheese souffle with that cream and then you shave masses of gruyere over it and it's got gruyere already in it and you might put parmesan too and then you put it under the grill and it's puffed back up

it puffs back up but it's doused in this unbelievable kind of nutty creamy cheesy sauce and you have that with a little crisp delicious salad with lots of kind of nutty creamy cheesy sauce and you have that with a little crisp delicious salad with lots of kind of mustard leaf and crunch and maybe some but were you when you got given that yeah were you like come on or I know you were like a bit you were definitely nervous but were you like oh okay I can do this no that one I could do and I was and I was well I think because of mum actually I think as a mum and and I think I could do that and also they they they like now you've got to make the salad dressing that's very important and I was thinking I'm all over this I mean mum classically it was in my book home cook

we at home we always make a kind of gallon jar of French dressing so that whenever you want a salad your dressing's already made and so French dressing is like you know again my mother all about flavor dijon mustard lots of soft brown sugar lots of salt and pepper lovely vinegar whatever which vinegar do you use sherry i it depends on my mood so i've got my own red wine vinegar on my stove top so whenever we've got the the ends of a nice bottle of wine it just goes into the the crock um mom we should do that. There's never an end of a bloody bottle of wine before you're drunk yet, Mum. I've still got some white organic wine.

Hang on, can you tell, so how, of course people can make their own, but I've never really thought about this. Does it just, wine will just turn to vinegar eventually? Wine just turns to vinegar. So white wine I think is trickier, white wine vinegar.

But this red wine vinegar is so cool. So you get the mother online. There's a couple of people do it mine was from cult i think the mother being the like goopy like the sourdough starter like the sourdough starter it's so cool it's like a jellyfish it's like the kids love it they go show us show us the mother again also i love the fact it's called a mother you know where all things start women were the first farmers love that too anyway um so you get the mother and then you just feed it every time you've kind of got a little drop you know you're going away and you think i'm actually don't want any more wine you just throw it in not always you know if you're getting rid of your someone's bought a really crap bottle of wine that you

think i don't want to drink that don't give that to your mother because then your vinegar will taste nasty we're talking about the jelly mother not your actual mother or mother-in-law yeah yeah definitely not the mother-in-law either that would be bad um so yeah feed your jelly the same type of wine you'd want to drink i'm not saying really expensive wine but just normal wine crap on it yeah not crap wine and then and then you've got vinegar on tap because good vinegar is delicious and it's also really i'm gonna do and it's also really expensive like really nice vinegar it's really expensive um so in my it depends on my dressing uh it depends on my mood but sometimes red wine vinegar which i love share vinegar i love i've got really into um cider

vinegars not only brilliant for arthritis my parents drink every morning with apple cider yeah yeah so a bit of apple cider in apple juice is delicious and keeps lots of bugs and things away but um there's some of them are delicious there's one called umbro something that tastes like a kind of balsamic it's really sweet i've been getting into white balsamic yes also good diana henry got me onto that yeah white, white balsamic. So yeah, I'm basically obsessed with vinegar. And actually, really, Mexico. So in Mexico, all the housewives make their own vinegars. So from guava, from apples, from pineapples.

And the cooks in the villages, you see all these kind of bottles in the windowsill. So what happens to the fruit then? The fruit ferments and kind of gives off sugar, which ferments into yeah and then do they strain it uh they they they strain it some don't strain it some do strain it um but yeah so so pineapple vinegar is delicious i'm gonna you've got a window still there that you could just have loads of lovely kiln you know there's a great recipe in the book actually for pineapple vinegar or then tapache which is one of

those amazing you know fermented drinks that you drink um like a kind of shrub like a kombucha star which you just make with your um pineapple skins so eat your pineapple and then you keep your core on your skin how long does it take to make though like a week no less than a week four days there was us planting the tops of the pineapple thinking that was clever. I'm talking so much. No, I'm... No, so, okay, so I'm presuming that dish is your starter. That's my starter. The souffle is the starter.

Yeah, cheesy, delicious with a crisp salad and a really delicious dressing. Yeah. Okay. Can't have an undressed salad. Why would you do that? No. Next. Main.

Main. This was really hard. I felt this was really hard. But I decided I would go for lamb or mutton, whichever. But basically slow cooked, I thought. Yeah. I hadn't really decided, because I was thinking about this last night and on the way here. I hadn't really decided whether it was going to be a really good mutton curry or a really good mutton barbacoa or lamb. Are you doing mutton because you prefer the taste

or because you're being sustainable and thoughtful? No, no, no, just the taste. Because lamb's delicious, but then mutton's got even more. It's stronger. Yeah, it's like goat. I mean, not everyone likes lamb, but I think the flavour is amazing. And so I'd either slather it in a kind of adobo of ancho, cumin, garlic, onion, vinegar, maybe a bit of quince for sweetness. And I'd just shove it all over there with some allspice and cinnamon and just shove it all over there for 24 hours.

And then slow cook it, maybe even cook it on the barbecue to finish it, get it all sizzled and caramelized. Eat all that fat. How long are you going to cook it for and what temperature? I'm going to cook it either overnight, if I'm really busy and can't deal on the next day. So when you cook overnight, what temperature? 100 degrees or 110, but shoulder, not a leg, because the shoulder's got all the work.

And that really breaks down and then it's so soft. It's actually more relaxing, I think, to cook shoulder because you can just shove it in and forget about it and it tastes so it feels so magnificent when you slightly fattier it is fatty so it is fatty so you can drain off the fat which is true yeah do you drain off the fat uh i think not when i'm actually eating it but definitely afterwards you know you can see what the fat can chill in the pan you think don't wonder that so it depends it depends it depends how what would you have it with um so uh I would have a really if I was doing Mexican I'd do a really delicious slaw with loads of different crisp vegetables and lots of fresh lime and a bit of

olive oil you've got an amazing slaw actually that I've done years ago on the podcast it's like i don't know if it's your quintessential slaw but well i think you can put anything in a sort so good so it's fennel red cabbage white cabbage but did you do like a green goddess dressing or something like that oh yeah no i do have um yeah i i yeah i mean would you avoid the green goddess no i wouldn't necessarily avoid a dressing i always think dressing the more dressings you have the better i think though for a really fatty cut of lamb you probably want something quite sharp sharp dressing so maybe just well a bit of oil maybe a bit of tomatillo salsa probably get a hold of some can you get some canned tomatillos definitely you can get those cans of what tomatillos what are they they are amazing they're related to capeberry, but they're like green tomatoes.

And they're really citrusy and they're delicious. And people are starting to grow them in this country. Oh, tomatillo. Tomatillo. So what, and you get them in a can. So how would you... Just blitz them. You blitz them and...

It was their juice with half an onion, a clove of garlic, masses of fresh coriander and some jalapeno, and maybe a bit of vinegar or fresh lime, and that's it. So it's really sharp and citrusy. So I'd have my tomatillo, I'd have my really fresh slaw with lots of different colours, like sliced radish. It would look really pretty. So you'd have this quite big hulk of meat,

and then you'd have a very, very pretty slaw with chervil and coriander and tarragon or any herb you want. And then you'd have your tortillas. Why did you to us for lunch we should have gone there yeah definitely next time and then i mean indian also i am by the way also a mutton curry is very good and dad does this amazing banana chutney um but i think it's a madder jaffrey one and it's really good do your parents still live in london no they live in countryside now yeah with their dogs they must be so proud of you do you know what's so fun is that when we left home my mother said i am fed up with cooking every day from now on on saturdays you're cooking i'm not going near the kitchen and my father said fine and he got out mad at jeffrey

he spent all day in the kitchen he came out these three incredible curries and he cooks all the time now so over lockdown the woman running the local bakery said when I turn 100 I'm shutting this shop and everyone's like yeah yeah whatever Dorothy and then she turned 100 in April 2020 and in May 2020 they shut the shop because her son the baker was 76 and he said do you know what I've had enough too. And my father was like, what am I going to do? This bread that I've been eating for the last 20 years, I can't do without it. So I brought my starter over.

And I said, look, I'll just show you. I think you'll be able to do it. Because his pastry, he makes the best shortcrust pastry. Like buttery, flaky. Like his treacle tart is so insane. You must have cold fingers. Yes. Yeah, my mum is that. And deaf. I had cold cold fingers you have to have cold fingers my mum said to be able to make my sweaty little chimpalatas wouldn't

be very good you've got to have cold fingers so what did now is he a bloody amazing baker well as always he's really annoying annoying about it because he's like oh if i get in sunny when you make sourdough you get a bit of ruts of when you're it's not behaving so the other day I was like dad what are you doing about your turns and the length and what are you finding this he goes no I just you know I just turn it and I make it shove it in the fridge leave it for two days and I bake it when I want you know this kind of offhand devil may care I mean shame on you dad it was like the time when I was testing a recipe in the house and I was like

if you've got any pomegranate molasses I really need it to test this recipe for the guardian and he was like what bought pomegranate molasses I make mine oh I was just like some people dad have more time on their hands and others tired and you're not yeah of course you cook for the guardian every week is that a big chore having big chore, having to come up with something? Do you know what? I have a team of mainly girls. I've got a boy in now. Guy, sorry, Freddie.

And they're amazing. And it makes me so happy getting a team of... They're all younger than me. I always think they're the same age as me. And I realise I'm like 15 years old when they forget the kind of, or don't know the music references. But you know, they make me feel young and we have such a laugh and we talk about food all day and cook all day. I mean, it's just, it's just such a joy. It's actually my favorite job.

One of my favorite jobs. I need to go back to your main. So you've got the slaw, you've got the, you've got the lamb. Are you going to have any kind of carb on there or are you not bothered? No, definitely carbs. I wouldn't say layered potatoes because they always go really well with lamb. But I'm not sure. You could have, because I'm thinking we're in summer.

So you could have lots of like roast Jersey roll potatoes, roast with lots of olive oil and salt and pepper, squished slightly, like parboiled, squished, covered in oil, lots of garlic and salt and pepper and olive oil, put in the oven until they're crispy and crunchy. And then my favourite recipe at the moment is a charred jalapeno garlic mayo. Oh, come on. Is it in the book?

It's in the book. It's bloody good. Oh, yes. I tell you. And you dip those bad boys into that garlicky chilli mayo. And it's not very spicy, Lenny. I promise you. Good.

I'm going to make that for you. It's garlicky chili mayo and it's not it's not very spicy lenny i promise you good it's garlicky and then it's got this little light kind of like like black pepper just like little tingle on your tongue it's so good oh that sounds heaven do you sell produce at your shop you should no i know we should you know what i really because then we'd be able to get our have a nice meal and then buy all our chilies i keep telling people we should be making mayos well do an online one I know I should

do you know I should start doing it just even if you don't have a shop front do an online Oaxaca Lanny I think I'm going to do that

I think I've just got to start doing that because I think if you can access the stuff and you probably can get it all in from Mexico as well

the chili oils the mayos that little sugar thing the chili paste the hibiscus sugar. Oh my God, it would be so much fun. Yes. I don't know why you don't.

I mean, you'd be doing us a service. Yeah. Doing us all a favour. Yeah, think of it. I can. Just something to add to your many different hats that you wear. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do it. Pudding. Pudding. We've got a pudding here. Is this your favourite one? I think maybe you'll do this pudding. You might do a pudding here is this your favorite one i think maybe you'll do this pudding you might do this pudding i mean i love chocolate i basically i'm a chocoholic so because mole has chocolate in it too right i feel like chocolate carries they have chocolate in everyone no no no just means sauce sauce yeah a lot of them have chocolate, right? Yeah, like the dark mole's have chocolate because the richer ones for turkey or chicken or pork have chocolate.

But then the green mole's have, and the yellow mole's are much lighter, so they wouldn't have chocolate. So you only use the dark chocolate to get that really rich flavour going through. Because originally, hot chocolate was drunk without any sugar it was only the Spanish that found that when you put sugar to chocolate was even more delicious so the Aztecs would go into battle just drinking hot chocolate with spices almost like their kind of coffee yeah which I found really cool because I don't know what you feel but I think with kids it's really hard finding any headspace and time to think properly which is

my permanent so writing a book I found over the last couple of books I've written a lot of my book writing happens at night time not like I don't put an alarm on but I wake up at night I'm worrying about this book that I'm not writing and then after about half an hour of lying in bed worrying I think oh Christ's sake I'll just get up and actually write the book so then I make myself a hot chocolate with proper dark chocolate like really quite strong dark chocolate and then I'm buzzing and then I write for like an hour and a half straight this amazing focused and it's my best work time no one can disturb me not even the dog comes near me. So I've got no kids, no husband. I'm in this perfect, peaceful time. I think you're like Bon Jovi, I'll sleep when I die.

I'm telling you. No, I know sleep's important. And I do try. I do try and go to bed early. And those times I try and have lions. But then this amazing woman on my local high street does these eye averted massages. And I had one when i was pregnant with my last baby five years ago and i promised myself when i finished writing this book that i'd have

another massage so i booked it in and i was talking about this focus time in the middle of night when i'm writing my best stuff and she said that's really interesting there's a compound in chocolate that creates a creativity and a focus and she said in ayurvedic medicine before you meditate so she gets up at some crazy insane early hour she has her hot chocolate with all her spices and then she meditates and it gives her creative focus see this is where we're going wrong we all need to be drinking hot chocolate not with loads of milk but loads of chocolate some milk but yeah which chocolate do you use in yours? I mean, I don't, I'm not a chocolate snob, just as long as it's 70%.

Do you milk chocolate? Real proper chocolate? Yeah, yeah. I do cocoa, raw cocoa and chocolate. Okay. It's got to be really choxy. And what milk do you use? Whole milk.

Whole milk. Like, it's got grass-fed, because then it's got omega-3s, not 6s. It's amazing things that happen to cattle. When you're, why don't you want omega-6? Omega-6, the bad fat. Omega-3s, not 6s. It's an amazing thing to happen to cattle. Why don't you want omega-6? Omega-6 is the bad fat. Omega-3 is the good fat. So if you're eating beef... Where do you buy grass-fed milk?

Well, now Yo Valley says grass-fed on it. Or any local farm shop or your local farmer's market will sell you grass-fed milk. I'm going to buy Yo Valley milk now. So the amazing thing, you know people say you shouldn't eat beef because of the carbon yeah so beef are cattle are pivotal for turning around soil so we're losing all this soil which is really bad for the future mankind the mines died out because they killed all their soil so so we've got to turn around our soil as quickly as possible if you leave the soil alone it takes about 100 years to regenerate if you put cattle on soil it regenerates in five years why because they're pooing and they're snuffling and they're stomping and they're just creating all this biodiverse cultures and bacteria and it's

the fastest thing that turns like properly bad soil like we're talking nothing living in this soil to soil that is teeming with life and and fungus and microbiomes and stuff that's cattle so so actually having some cattle is pivotal for the future mankind so you've just got to eat none of this factory farm stuff just have a super mega special treat and really enjoy it knowing that you're doing actually good for mankind where do you buy your beef butchers do you have your local butcher my local butcher is run by flo shout out to flo brooks butcher she's so she's so brilliant and um she runs our local butcher and she loves food and she really cares about where it comes from and she's mega love you flo um so okay dessert it's not going

to be a hot chocolate no No, I think it's... It's going to be maybe this dish that we're about to eat. Should we get it out and then we can all just kind of savour it? Do you need a bowl or a plate to serve it to me? I think plate, I think plate, yeah. So, we're about to go on to Tommy's pudding. So, this is... It's flourless, actually.

So, if you've got a thing with flour don't need and this is in the cookbook this in the cookbook so it's got some hazelnuts in and it's not quite as gooey because i made a small one but um because i i actually divided the recipe in half because i realized my husband's uncle and aunt were coming for dinner tonight so yeah you're wonderful is that okay um that's sweet but um so normally it's a bit gooier because this is only half at half a recipe but basically it's got tequila ground hazelnuts lots of chocolate and some eggs so it's kind of like a kind of gooey um souffle like chocolate we're basically having a we've had a courgette souffle and now we're having a chocolate

tequila souffle hold on and we've got and we've got cream with it because I would never unwittingly eat pudding without cream. I love cream so much. So good. So good. Sorry, I'm just helping myself. I'm giving you a really small bit. No, no, that's absolutely fine. I'll give myself a little bit.

Oh my God, that's good. Mum, this is great. There you are. Oh yeah, you can taste the tequila. Oh yeah. It's just like... Mmm. I make these truffles too, like chocolate tequila truffles.

They're quite good. And it's got cinnamon, which I think can be really overdone. And I think you use the right amount. It's really good. This is heaven. Oh, thanks. Is that quite straightforward? Mmm.

Or not? What's the trick here? So it's got chilli in. See? I'm not against chilli darling. No but... I don't know if you can detect a tiny little light jingling. Yeah. So it's got... I ran out of anchos actually. This is the recipe in the book is using anchos. But this instead has got, I just pulled out a couple of chilies from my larder. But it is, it just adds a little background level of flavor in there. And would you always use hazelnuts?

You can use almonds easily. Almonds as well. Yeah. In fact, there's actually a pumpkin seed cake, a chocolate and pumpkin seed cake in the book too the other thing i really wanted to make you i couldn't decide between that or this one there's um there's do you like coconut so there's a coconut tart in there and the the the the the pastry is really easy and nutty and then and then the the middle is a fudgy toffee, fresh lime, fresh orange zest, coconut.

It's kind of a sticky, squidgy. It's so good. And it's basically this restaurant in Mexico City always has this coconut tart on. And it took me so long to try and get anything like it. And I think I finally nailed it. It's been a 10-year, basically, odyssey to try and get the same coconut tart as this Contre-Mort in Mexico City. And I think I've almost nailed it.

So you nearly had that. This is absolutely beautiful. Oh, gorgeous. I can feel the chilli. No. But it's a little caress on your tongue. It's a caress. It kind of reminds me that I've had something delicious.

Oh, that was so good. Did you soak the chillies with those ones? I did. Yeah, because I got a little chew of the chili. It was quite nice. But you don't need to put chili in this. It's just a lovely kind of extra. I think ancha and chocolate work really well together.

But because of the sweetness of it, it's a bit like that Spanish Nura pepper. But you could easily make that without chili. I love that. But with the tequila, it's good. So over the next 10 years will you carry on at this pace i mean because i think what's so admirable about you is not that you're only a great cook but you're a female entrepreneur really and you've activist you're

an activist you've opened frontiers for women which is for us great oh i could see that she got goosebumps thank you um um gosh i feel rather emotional about that thank you but you are um my next 10 years uh is going to be just following my passion i mean i just think i think farmers are the true heroes you know with the nurses of the the NHS. They grow the food we eat, so they need to be paid properly. But they're also on the frontier of climate change. And we've seen how all these forest fires and droughts are happening. We need to invest in the farmers and pay them properly so that they can look after the planet and the soil for us.

So I think really doing lots of work with that and the chefs and school staff, that is so much my passion. But also just cooking and feeding people is my passion I mean food is the greatest pleasure and just writing recipes that people cook is the greatest pleasure because that's why I hate the calories food is about pleasure and enjoyment and you know if you just cook from scratch a bit butter and cream and olive oil it's all good for you you know it's all great stuff and and indulgence is good so i think you should never say no to food you should always say yes to it but but just you buy the stuff whole ingredients and buy it from people who care it's the process rubbish that you don't need to have don't need the process rubbish they should tax that to pay for all the food in the schools tax out the ultra processed

yeah so um and then feed feed feed the kids who need the food that's why i say amen before we let you go on to a dancing i'd be doing lots of dancing too okay good good good good um i need to know your drink that would go with your last supper and i've got a few more questions for you i think i would sip tequila at the beginning which Which tequila? No, with my souffle I'd have a really delicious glass of white burgundy. Oh my god, I'm so into it at the moment. It's a big problem for me. Yeah. It's delicious.

Like a really crisp dry chardonnay or something like that. Oh yes. That's what I'd have with that. I've got wine. We could have had wine. I just didn't offer it because I thought you wanted tea. That's wine. Do you would like a glass now? Got any tequila? I'm not sure i've only got the sombrero one i can't get into the chocolate cake next um would i would i actually besmirch the chocolate cake if i use my cheek what a good word use my cheek tequila um do you know what i am a purist if it's got 100% agave on it I think it's fine okay so you like

dancing do you like karaoke I mean would you if you had to I have do you know it's so funny about karaoke because if you'd say to me karaoke a bit of me sinks but then I am the person you can't get the microphone away from at the end of the party which But I can't sing very well. But if you left me on the dance floor, I'd be there for six hours happily. What do you like to dance to then? I mean, literally anything. I mean, you could do grime, hip-hop, disco, reggae. What was your first dance with your husband? I think, oh my gosh, I should know this.

What was it? We danced till four at my wedding. It was really good. It wasn't in Mexico, your wedding? It wasn't. It was my parents' house. But my husband laughed because it was the only time he could visibly recollect me begging to leave the party by four o'clock. I was completely done.

I was like, please, can we go to bed now? He was like, yes, I got it at last. He was like, yes, I got it at last. I wanted to know what was, what is kind of the most nostalgic taste to you of your childhood or somewhere that means a lot to you? Gosh, so the two things that bring to mind is one, my granny's leek quiche that my father still makes.

My parents make it together. But, you know, my father makes the pastry, which on its own is so delicious that you kind of, you're desperately trying to steal the pastry off everyone else's plates and then and then the filling my mother makes is kind of slightly souffle leek and cheesy filling and it's golden and it's so delicious and if we come home on a Friday night and she's made that everyone's really happy and then my other side my granny, because she was from South Africa, made a baboti. Oh, it's fantastic.

It's a kind of meat loaf. I've never had it as a loaf. Have you not? No, I've only had it... So you can either have it as a stew or set into a loaf. And it's got kind of raisins and spices. And it's mincemeat, isn't it? Yeah, it's mincemeat.

Yeah, it's mincemeat. And that just, I can just, just when you said that, I i just it came into my head that that's what she'd make us so um before we let you have you got good table manners do you think have i got good table manners i think you have but what do you think i'm really self-conscious i'm slouching over the table with my elbows on the table i inherited a really bad habit of eating sad leaves in my hands from a very well-known cook in, I think Alice Waters did it, but I remember thinking it was the most,

like, suave thing, seeing this kind of heroine of the kind of food and farming and restaurants eating delicious sad leaves with their hands. And now I see my children eating with their hands all the time and i realize they've completely got it from me so that's awful when you realize your children

inherit that it's not the worst thing to do though is that no but i think it's sometimes when you see in your children something you've done and you slightly disapprove of and you realize it it's you i know because i'm always cooking and i use my hands when i'm cooking all the time that's what i love about cooking is how physical it is and so i'm always touching food and so i think that's also yeah thomasina myers thank you so much for spending the time with us teaching us so much and us enjoying your beautiful food good luck with um meat free mexican thank you and um you, thank you for being here. Thank you. And delicious food. I loved that conversation so much she's inspiring warm talented just like I I loved it and she

welled up when you said that to her I know but she is she's a trailblazer you know she's opened frontiers for women she she's a proper female entrepreneur but it's based on true true talent this is not someone that she knows so much about food I'd just like to spend a weekend with her and talk about chilies we're you know we're going to put it here again we told her but she needs to have her own cookery school so there we go let's yeah make this happen do a pop-up just a chilly weekend um I loved your meal you see I know I kind of could you I thought it was going to be quite kind of bready but actually you couldn't even tell there was bread in it I loved it it was great and then her tart I'm going to do that for my mates that I've got over when we get back it was delicious I loved it you couldn't eat very

much of it though I I don't know, I could have had another slice. No, I couldn't. It was really rich. Thomasina Myers, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. What an absolute pleasure

meeting her. I love having chefs but like, chefs like Thomasina Myers, wow. But she's so interested in food, where it comes from,

how to make things more sustainable, all of those things. I think we all learned something. Yeah, I did and yeah if you're interested in chefs for schools have a look at it and see if it suits your school

next week we have the beginning of our Californian adventure California dreaming yeah that's going to be us we'll see you next week for our LA adventure and who knows what