S5 E1: Nadiya Hussain, chef

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07I'm Grace Dent and this is Comfort Eating from The Guardian A podcast where we pay homage to the lesser celebrated foods in life Because even as a restaurant critic I believe the food that matters most Is often that snack you cobble together when you're curled upon the sofa each week I ask my guest to lift the lid on what comfort foods have seen them through their lives because you can tell a lot about a person from what they eat behind closed doors hello friends you find me yet again in my kitchen gearing up for a new episode having a little snack beforehand. Now, when no one's looking, don't tell anyone.

0:56I eat gherkins straight out of the jar. They can't do you for it. Hang on.

1:10And this is Ellswood's sweet and sour gherkins. sometimes i wrap them in um that plastic square cheese quite sexy now today not going to put too fine a point on this i am welcoming cooking royalty into my house nadia hassein mbe is coming around for a snack and a chat i can hardly believe i'm saying that She's a TV chef. She's a presenter. She's a writer. She's a regular on The One Show. And she has written a bunch of the most gorgeous recipe books, including her latest one, Nadia's Simple Spices. Nadia's journey in the limelight began in the Bake Off tent in 2015, where we all, let's be honest, we just fell a bit in love with her, didn't we?

2:04as we watched her confidence grow week on week. Out of all those Bake Off star bakers, it is Nadia's star that has shined the brightest and the longest. I can't believe she's coming here. And I can't wait to discover what this woman, who is the byword for cosy cooking and culinary perfectionism, is actually wolfing down at home on the sofa after another busy day at the helm of Nadia Hussain Inc. when the kids are in bed and no one's looking. I cannot wait to find out.

2:43Very, very sharp, these ones. Very sharp. I'll only eat four or five. Probably have to clear my teeth.

3:02Nadia Hussain. Welcome to Comfort Eating. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I hear that you are a fan of the Milton Keynes roundabout system. Love is. I've been in Milton Keynes for eight years now. And I love order. I love systems. I love when something works. And in Milton Keynes, you are very rarely sat in traffic. You do not sit in traffic because we don't have traffic lights. You just keep moving, sometimes slowly, sometimes faster, but you keep moving. That's like a metaphor for life. Wow. Right? See, I've failed my driving test seven times. You haven't? I have. And I can't do roundabouts.

3:42As I'm getting towards them, you see, you say there's a system. I just tend to be in all three or four of those lanes. You just can't decide. Just going, but I don't like to commit. Okay. Which is a metaphor for life as well. I have a follow-up question. Can I just ask, when you're driving your car over these roundabouts, what is your favorite circular snack that you would have in the glove compartment? That is circular. But it has to be circular. It has to be minstrels. I like a minstrel. I love a minstrel. I think they divide people. I love, like, sucking it till the inside is soft and then it just kind of breaks under the pressure of your tongue and the roof of your mouth.

4:27I love that squish. What if when you're doing the actual, the inhaling sucking, but it could go down the wrong way and you'd be in the car by yourself, that's a health and safety hazard. That is, I should maybe rethink my circular snacks. That's the end of the podcast. That's it, we're done. Solved everything in the world. Every week, my guest shares with me their ultimate comfort snack. It's a dish that dulls out warmth and love when the world feels like a grey, soggy sponge, which you've never baked. Ever. Ever? I have. Nadia Hussain, what have you brought for me today? I don't know what's under this.

5:05Shall I open it? Unveil your snack, please. Shall I unveil it? This is like my... There's a lot of certainty about this. You're very certain as you're... Some people crumble at this point and start making excuses. Very confident. I like this. Go on. Okay. Oh! Okay, so... Hang on. Okay, yeah. So, mashed potatoes, like smash. Yes, thank you. Made with butter, cream and mayonnaise. So like lovely and rich. And then you put a can of cream of tomato soup on top. I'm not joking. And then you put grated cheese on top and grill that. I'm salivating. Yeah. Honestly, at the moment, I hardly even heard the last few sentences.

5:49I'm just like. get in get involved like mashed potato with with a with a topping of heinz tomato heinz cream of tomato soup that's all you need it's spicy chili flakes on top always with the chili flakes on top it's just magical why don't they serve this in restaurant i'm speechless Just, it's like proper comfort. This is the most delicious comfort food that I think that anyone's ever brought. How much of that could you eat? Oh, on a really good day? Yeah. I mean, my husband doesn't even get a look in. He does not even get a look in. I will just happily sit through that. You should not associate guilt and food.

6:36I don't care about, the two for me do not go together. Food should be comfort and food should be warming and food should be nostalgic. And it can be something out of a packet. It could be something that you make. It could be anything. And for me, that is my ultimate comfort. And I have zero shame in the fact that it came out of a packet and out of a can. What I love is there's just a big pool of butter there. That is the happiest sight in the world when there's too much butter in the dish and it's gone into, it's like a rock pool. Seeped. A rock pool of butter. Oh my goodness, we could live our best lives.

7:08Let's move away and find a rock pool of butter Just live our best lives, you and me. All we need is some crusty bread just to mop that little corner up.

7:23Nadia, you burst onto our screens eight years ago. Season six of Bake Off. You won the trophy and the nation's heart. To the 15 million viewers of the Bake Off final, we saw this picture of you and your young family, three little kids all under 10 yeah that time but they're now teenagers so this is a very different chapter of your life and your parenting what is the house like these days lots of size 10 trainers and size 13 oh god I know there's not even a shoe rack that you can fit them on honestly they're like boats I'm like every time honestly I'm like who has left his boats here and we know who it is but yeah we've got big shoes big clothes big big big attitudes and and big personalities it's very different to eight years ago um but we go with we go with it you know like it's it's a whole other beast raising teenagers the only thing that's really helped me to kind of move and grow with the children is to remind myself that they are human beings and they are people more than anything they're not just my children and they're not just children that I birthed they are humans and and by looking at them like humans makes me want to hate them less is all I'm saying everything you're saying so calm and so zen and you're saying it with your beautiful face your lovely eyes in secret do you have a good shout at them though oh god oh goodness yeah okay I'm not painting any I don't want to paint an image that we don't have shouting matches in our house we say things to each other that we shouldn't say to each other like just a couple of weeks ago my son said to me I hate you and I said you're an exhibitionist and we both just walked out that was it that was our conversation you're an exhibitionist I hate you fantastic we didn't see each other for the rest of the evening and by the end of it we were laughing and smiling but that is that is what it's like having teenagers is you can go from tsunami to still waters all within half an hour my husband and i have kind of come up with a trick of so we debrief you know we debrief oh we debrief otherwise my bloke is into the debrief i love a debrief so you do this as a family no just just my husband and i we debrief we start off with our scores out of 10 for that day i know it's really sad we do we've done this forever so on an evening um i'll text him and i say it's debrief time and then he'll come upstairs and i'm like so what do you give yours what are you giving yourself today out of 10 and he will give himself a nine and I'm like actually I think you're more of a six today because you did shout a little bit and he's like no and then we come to a compromise as to where we think he was we'll do the same for me and then we'll break it down and we do it in 20 minutes it's like locker room chat you know like we get in we have a strategy we debrief and then we're like right let's get back out there and it's like it's like going to war what's the lowest score you've ever given each other zero we've been to zero we've been to zero we have we we have been to zero there's been points where i wouldn't want to get zero off you that would be really heartbreaking i would because you tend to see the good i can see i do try my best to see the good in things but i there he's given me zeros i've given him zeros i'm like if the neighbors can hear us shouting it's a zero

10:49okay so you are a professional chef so does that mean that it's always you on for cooking at home it's definitely changing now that the kids are a bit older my husband can't cook to save his life awful he tried I think we've been married 18 years and um he's cooked I'm going to say three times What did he cook? He did a sticky lime chicken once. I don't know where he got the recipe from, but it was, let's just say it was stuck. It was stuck. He was like, we can eat this out the roasting dish. Of course we can. It was nonstick. I don't know what happened to the nonstick. It was that sticky. Do you think, though, that men purposefully do the thing badly so that we lose patience and then just do it again for the next seven years?

11:41there could be an element of that when it comes to cooking yeah because my husband always says well I can't I can't compete with you and I said I'm not asking for competition I'm not I I could because we know who would win in a competition I was like it would be me my friend but he he he he's but when it comes to everything else he's amazing like he'll do laundry he'll hoover he'll mop the floors like he knows the kids schedules so he's great with everything else so I don't care if he doesn't cook I sometimes think in all relationships there is one person that can open a fridge and see four ingredients and think okay that's what I'm gonna do it might just be the same dish dishes again and again but they can go right I can make that into a pasta sauce I could serve that with rice and then there's the other person in the relationship that just unless there is the meal sitting there they'll just go and sit back down on the sofa yes well that's that we haven't got any food my husband is um very much the kind of i don't we don't have anything to eat um and because i cook for a living often i've got things in the house that i've tested or need setting or in the fridge or need for the next day somehow he manages to always eat that and i don't i'm like you because we i don't know how it happens but i have sticky notes so anything with a sticky note is not to be eaten so not to be touched even the thought of that sticky note you would know that some underneath that is something really delicious that's just like red rag to a bowl isn't it do not eat this because i've made it specially for something professional if you ever hear that i've been arrested for some kind of assault it is because my partner has sent me a text while i'm at master chef working and asked me what we're having for dinner really yeah and i'm like what is your response to that i i haven't got a response i can say into the microphone i'm literally on set working testing food and he is clearly opening the fridge and seeing some spinach some eggs some onions, some veg, and thinking, I'm like, omelette!

13:55Frittata! Frittata! Frittata! Anything! Okay, thank you. I feel lighter now.

14:09So let's go back to 1984 then. You were born on Christmas Day in Luton. Band-Aid is at number one. with Do They Know It's Christmas. That song is, for a lot of people, one of their earliest memories. What's your earliest memory? Ooh. My dad ran Indian restaurants and he always kept the restaurant open on Christmas Day and Dad had the Christmas menu and he said it's the best night because everyone will pay through the nose for a Christmas dinner. He sounds amazing. He is, he is. He would make the most amazing Christmas dinner. so his turkey I remember he used to cover it in turmeric and garlic and ginger under the skin and he would make Bombay potatoes with carrots and tamarind lots of onions but on an evening making turkey actually edible yeah it's like my dad cooks the best turkey for sure 100 % cooks makes the best turkey but you're making paxos sound very like boring now you know like that chip that sage and onion stuffing i have seen that stuff like you see i quite like packs of myself because it's my birthday on christmas day my dad would come home and he would wake us up in the middle of the night and say come on i've got turkey for you and we'd sit there and we'd eat this cold turkey and it was it just became a tradition to just sit there in the middle of the night on boxing day early in the morning and just have turkey and and and cold bombay potatoes and downstairs around the table downstairs on the floor we'd put in your pajamas in your pajamas just sat there like a bit disheveled half awake hair pillow creases yeah I love it yeah disheveled half awake half naked sat there eating this turkey and then my mum would say why do you do this every single year I don't want them to break their sleep I want them to have a full night's sleep and dad would just like ignore my mum as he does and then we just sit there and eat it and And then we'd just go up to bed and mum would say, brush your teeth.

16:09And we'd never brush our teeth and we'd just go straight to bed. They were some of the happiest moments.

16:23You grew up as a first generation British Bangladeshi in Luton. You're one of six kids. And I've heard you talk about how the roles in your community, very traditional. the women staying at home doing the cooking raising the kids and the men went out to work tell me about your own parents your mum Asma and your dad Jamia Ali yeah he's um my dad's like he's he spent his whole life being called Jay because he felt like that's the British version of him so he's like an alter ego is Jay like everyone calls him Jay you know I grew up in a very um conservative family you know we were very my family they're very traditional not religious very very traditional in terms of how we ate in our etiquette in the way we behaved in the way we were raised so I wasn't allowed to call my dad dad up until I got much older he's like because we call him baba which is which is another word for dad and we weren't allowed to call mom mum we had to call her amma we had to speak Bengali in the house we were not allowed to speak um English in the house and if we did we got told off you know like really really told off my dad was never happy so it's like no only Bengali which I really appreciate that now I can speak it fluently and really well and I can communicate with my elders so I think it was it's a wonderful thing that they did you know my parents as immigrants they they worked really hard to maintain as much of their Bangladeshi culture within a British setting.

17:58You are a celebrity baker. So did your mum bake? No, my mum. No, no, no. Okay. So you didn't grow up at your mother's knee as she was doing the things? No, totally different to the complete opposite to the kind of, I suppose, the ideal English home that you might see on television or in the storybooks. My parents didn't read a book to me at night. They said, brush your teeth, don't brush your teeth, get to bed. I don't care. You know, like six kids, extended family, grandparents. It was hard. It was really hard. So I'm not surprised. But my mum didn't bake. no the oven was used for storage so my mom my mom my i said i asked my mom why do you have an oven and she said because it comes with the hob because you know it's like a standard you know the standalones it's perfect logic you can't argue with that hang on she used it storage so you open the oven what's inside the oven usually just frying pans so anything that can fit in that width so like in that height whatever can fit and it was always my mom's pans for the pans that she used to make paratas in the pranzas used to make all of her like sweet fritters in and the pan that she deep fried in she never ever turned her oven on to the point where the knob had got sticky and and i had to like scrape the grease off the knob and say this is this is it so she never used it still doesn't we went to chalney high school all girls comp in low 10 secondary school is just a really intense time in all of our lives, I firmly believe.

19:44Did you enjoy it? For anyone who's never been to an all-girls school, that is a wholly different experience because girls can be mean. Like boys. Really, really can. Yeah, I was not popular. I was definitely the teacher's pet. Like I was the kind of kid that didn't revise but got all A's. you know I was senior prefect I was on the school council I was a teaching assistant I was like I was a reading assistant I did all of that like I did everything I just what did they say about that I do when you're when you're a part of I just became a part of a group of girls who did those things and so I was quite comfortable um in that space because we were all just very we're just we were all just high achievers and um I'm sure they looked at us the way we looked at them Do you know, like we looked at them.

20:35I mean, I was a teenager too. I wasn't always level-headed or rounded. You know, like as a teenager, I looked at them and thought I was better than they were. And they thought they were better than me. There was one teacher who was particularly important to you. Tell me about Mrs. Marshall. The best human ever, ever, ever to ever grace this earth. And I've met her a few times since. And she's absolutely amazing. She still lives in Luton. And she was my home ec teacher. So she's my food studies teacher. I remember being in food studies and she said you are really good at this and I didn't think anything of it and when I when I'd done it as a GCSE she was like you're gonna ace this and I did I got top grades for it the only time I was able to practice was at school I would make up recipes and I'd ask Mrs Marshall Miss Marshall if I bring in my ingredients on my lunch break can I please practice this recipe like what cakes so like because for my GCSEs I had to make um a cake that was tailored to a five-year-old so I did a cake that was like a red marble cake I remember with fondant and a pokemon ball on top and it was like and I had to do the packaging and all of that but I couldn't practice making the cake so I said please miss can I practice and she said okay but as long as you don't disturb my lunch and I said absolutely you can make and she goes you have to do all the washing and said no problem and as a deal with her I said that I'd do all the washing and drying and so yes the class previous to her left it all and I did it all for her and I cleaned up and we'd have these lovely conversations and and she'd give me little tips what's the pokemon cake look like is it good i've still got my i have still got my coursework from when i was uh in high school it was just shove it out as a book i'd need another 99 recipes

22:19you've said that you were a good student straight a kind of pupil and you did well in fact you were the first person in your family to get a place at uni can you remember that moment when you received the letter I um yeah first girl to get into university also first person to ever get a place at university and I just thought it was a given I thought my friends are going to university it won't be I didn't even think that it would ever be a problem um because a lot of my friends come from immigrant homes so they they also first generation problem with your family Brits yeah so I then kind of said to my parents I've I've these are the universities and I've got places and I was I was going to go and study psychology in the hope to become a social worker um and so I said to my parents look I've got it all set like you know I've got the loan I've got you know I've got I've got the bank I've got everything sorted I knew where I was going to live all done uh and my mom said nope absolutely you are not going to university and uh that was like a massive blow at 18 because at that point I I knew the direction in which my life was going and it was education and I knew where I wanted to be at the end of that education and my mom just said nope not gonna happen you are not going to university what's her biggest fear I think they tried they've worked so hard to keep us closeted and and and in this box where we followed all the traditions of Bangladeshi culture and I think her fear was that I would become westernized and I would be living away from home girls didn't live away from home if they were not married if you were married you lived away from home but not while you were single did you just take it the moment she said no or did you think about just packing and going I was crushed like I can't explain it any other way apart from like internally I felt like she'd crushed me from the inside and I couldn't show it on my face and I and in the moment I remember being very quiet but I argued and in the end my mum said um I'll change the locks on the doors if you leave I will change the locks on the door and I at 18 when you've got very little money and when the only only only security financially that you have is is your family that's a tough one because I was really scared at that point that if I disobeyed them that I would never be able to I'd never be allowed back in my home and that really scared me and I said fine fine I won't go in the end I just decided that I'm just going to get two jobs and never really see them anyway and so I got two jobs I worked at a out of hours doctors at a call center at night and during the day I worked in a office where we hired out executive cars neither of which I enjoyed but I did them to stay away

25:18two years later 20 you're age 20 you marry abdel hasain yeah the man who would eventually encourage you to put in the application to bake off yeah how did you two meet i got to 19 and my parents are like you should really think about getting married and um they you know it was very much did they show you a few people before abdul or was abdul the first person no he was there were a few suitors so i am um i'm because i'm dark skinned so in my family in our culture when you've got dark skin there's a there's a element of are you gonna get her married off like if you've got if you get if you've got dark skin then there's a there's a worry that nobody will marry you I said I want to marry somebody from this country if you can find somebody from this country that matches what I want I'm happy to marry them if they're right for me hang on had you grown up feeling like that though had you heard whispers of that when you when you don't whisper enough no whispering no whispering it's straight so you're a child yeah teenager and people saying how are we going to get married off she's got dark skin she's got dark skin um yeah like it's a real thing and I think right okay there are lots of people who will listen to this and be like I get it I totally get where she's coming from but I know there are loads of people who listen and say that is horrific but it is not a it's not a secret it's not like it's not a big secret in our culture and even to this day colorism is rife I'm one of six and um we're all different shades of brown my elder sister is really pale to the point where she goes blue with your elder sister were they oh find somebody they were lining up they were lining up they were like we'll have no problem marrying her off but my second sister and myself I'm number my sister's number two I'm number three my parents were like oh my goodness like how are we gonna get them married off the only thing my second sister had going for her was that she was also very slim I'm not naturally like super super slim they're like oh god she's fat and she's black like that's like double whammy so where did where did your husband's appear from yeah well because so we my husband uh my dad and my father-in-law were mutual friends my father-in-law said oh I've got this son that I want to get married and my and my husband is number three in his family and I'm number three and my dad kind of stayed really quiet because he can't it's like flogging a dead horse he was like she's dark I can't really like I can't how can I even suggest my daughter my dad's like look I'm just gonna put you straight I do have daughters but they are black so you then you see the son well we speak we actually exchange numbers and somehow manage to get each other's numbers through the mutual friend and then we actually talk to each other and I realized through his conversations that I said can I get a sort of month in I said can I see a picture of you and he was lovely really really like charm really see the photo I see the photo and he's very tall and very fair and I thought this is going to really piss my dad off because if I marry somebody this is going to properly vex him because if I marry somebody who he thinks I can't marry he will think oh my goodness like how has she done that so for me it was like yes yes I'm gonna marry him so you get together you move to Leeds together you have three children and then you apply to bake off and you're accepted yeah and you turn up ready to take part right okay take us into that tent day one day two around that time mary berry paul hollywood circling as you're starting to bake a cake and i think can quite describe the feeling of being in the tent because at the very beginning it's very um busy so you've got cameraman story producer you've got your directors and week on week it gets quieter and quieter you're more and more exposed and that's quite scary but the more exposed you become weirdly you become more comfortable and see the cameras less but it's it's scary because the judges don't talk to you so they're not there's no bias there's no relationship so it doesn't they are just still very much the judges where's the best place to cry in the tent so people can't see you into your hands but there is no real real good place because there's always a camera always a camera they will catch every quiver of a lip every teary eye um they know when you've messed up before you do exactly so they know something's burning yeah and they're just waiting for you to work it out yeah and sometimes you can hear them on their little intercom saying just just go to go to nadia she's she's she's panicking go get it

30:06you win and you give this incredible speech yeah you say and i quote i'm never gonna put boundaries on myself ever again never gonna say i can't do it i'm never gonna say maybe I'm never gonna say I don't think I can I can and I will yeah now unlike most Bake Off winners your celebrity chef career has bloomed long term has anything since then tested that pledge has your resolve ever wavered absolutely I would be lying if I said that it hasn't but life is not meant to be easy it's not plain sailing it never was going to be um and I I when I said those words someone said to me like did you really think about it did you have a speech written I was like absolutely no way if you watched me during bake-off anyone who watched will know that I did not think I was going to win and the thing is I never expected my career to take off the way it did so that for me was a pleasant surprise and serendipitous if anything But absolutely, you know, I am a daughter of an immigrant.

31:18I'm British, Muslim, Bangladeshi, brown woman. You know, I'm a woman of color who covers, you know, who has a hijab on. So proudly, I'm a proud Muslim. And I've suddenly stepped into this male-dominated arena full of middle-aged Caucasian men, some with egos. uh and and so there have been moments where I have felt like I don't fit in and that's not just my lack of belief in myself but that's also the industry itself uh the industry there are there are people there are people around people who will remind you that this isn't your space and that you don't belong here and that that your space is temporary and so yeah it has tested my resolve it has tested my confidence and it has tested those words that I said at the very end but it's actually those very words I go back to I can and I will I can and I will um and I tell my children I tell my children that all the time and my affirmation has changed quite a lot since then and I tell my children now like especially over the last eight years there's so many moments where I was like do I belong here do I get to call myself a chef am I just a cook and like I question every time a book is released I'm like oh my goodness nobody's gonna like it everyone's gonna everyone hates me or I feel like my career is just gonna get taken away from me the way it was handed to me but reality is my career wasn't handed to me I worked for it you know I didn't just get lucky I worked and I grafted but the affirmation that I tell my children now and I tell myself in those moments is elbows out I tell them create space for yourself so you can create space for others I am I like that affirmation there's another affirmation that I've heard you say that I like just as much I use foods people think of as snacks as ingredients such as Bombay mix yep pretzels chocolate mini rolls some of the happiest words yes cheese puffs and crisps yeah a chocolate tart with a base made out of crisps is one of my family's favorite recipes.

33:32Have you experimented with any other interest in snacks lately? No, but like you named them all. You named loads of them. Like I use, when I make mac and cheese, I blitz up what's-its and I put them on top of my mac and cheese. So you get that really intense cheesy flavor. Oh God, I love mac and cheese. Hang on though, base of crisps, a chocolate tart with a base of crisps. So good. Ready salted crisps. Yes, ready salted. Salt and vinegar sometimes too, if you want a tang. it's so, so good and it shouldn't work. But I think that's what I love about cooking. It's that element of people saying to me that that's never going to work.

34:08And then they eat it and they're like, she did it again. It worked. You know, like that doubt. I love a little bit of doubt. I love to see a little bit of doubt. But I grew up with that. I grew up in a household where everyone doubted you. They never believed you could do it. And it's like, then you do it and you're like, see, in your face, I did it. Nadia is saying you are an absolute force of nature. Thank you for comfort eating. Thank you.

34:35This episode of Comfort Eating was produced by Ruth Abrahams. The executive producer is Lucy Greenwell. The music was written by Axel Coutier. Mixing and sound design was by Solomon King. If you love comfort eating, then please go and leave us a review and a rating. It is so helpful to us. And you can follow or subscribe so you never miss a single episode. See you next week.

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