The Great British Sewing Bee judge on her mother’s first edition Elizabeth David books, Greek food, and cramming people into her tiny flat for dinner
I make porridge every morning – that’s from school. I went to a convent boarding school from the age of five. And they did do interesting food, actually. We’d have spinach and all sorts that was good for you and then on Sundays, because the nuns were going to church, we had bars of chocolate. We’d love that: we’d scrape bits off and put them on the bread.
At home, my mum did the cooking and she was a really good cook. She was Irish, but she came to England when she was two. I’ve still got all her cookery books from the 1950s: hardback first editions of Elizabeth David’s books on French and Italian cooking. In those days my mum used to use olive oil, but you had to get it from the chemist.
