Chef Jeremy Lee: ‘I burnt my first tray of raisin cakes to a cinder’

1. What is your earliest memory?
   Hand-knitted jumpers, little red wellies and the bliss of being a toddler allowed to run riot in the countryside.

2. What was the first dish you learnt to cook?
   I burnt my first tray of raisin cakes to a cinder, having turned the oven on not realising there was a thermostat. I just put it on full; there were flames licking out, which caused immense amusement to all parties apart from mum, as I ruined her best patty tin. The real first dish was either a moussaka or a curry, when Madhur Jaffrey was doing her Indian series on television for the first time. It blew us all away. I was absolutely mesmerised by her.

3. Who was or still is your mentor?
   It’s a rich weaving together of my grandmother, mum and dad, and then the chefs who took me under their wing at the Old Mansion House hotel in Scotland, and their alma mater Keith Podmore, who was responsible for getting me to London, where I met Alastair Little and Simon Hopkinson and Rowley Leigh. These incredible, blazing stars of the new enlightenment in English cooking were formative in my professional career and also, delightfully, became great friends too.

4. How fit are you?
   I’ve got arthritis in my hips, and a couple of skewed discs . . . Oh, the boredom and tedium of wear and tear! But I’m still able to cycle everywhere and keep reasonably limber. I would say, on the whole, not too shabby.

5. Breakfast or dinner?
   I prefer lunch. On high days and holidays, when I’ve got the time, a great breakfast is a wonderful thing. But that’s very rare. So I would say dinner, either in a restaurant or at home or at a friend’s. Earlier rather than later. I don’t like eating late.

6. Which technique did you struggle to perfect?
   All of it! One I cherish most is baking and pastry. You never stop learning. There’s always another book or another recipe.

7. Which flavour pleases you most?
   I would dance between the first asparagus of the season and the first strawberries and raspberries. I can never resist an Arbroath smokie, great smoked fish and smoked eel, which I love and which so rarely appear on menus.

8. Which flavour can’t you abide?
   Star anise and liquorice. I can’t get to grips with them.

9. What equipment could you not do without?
   A blender. Most things that can be done in a food processor or a mixer you can do by hand, but getting something super silky smooth is the work of a machine.

10. What is your guilty food pleasure?
    There’s a brilliant Vietnamese shop round the corner from me with a fine selection of frozen Chinese and Japanese dumplings and chilli sauces that I succumb to probably more often than I should confess.

11. Do you see yourself as an artist?
    I like food on a table to be artless, just a big pan of something — and that requires great craft. But many would argue there’s artistry in it. I’m happy to take the compliment.

12. What would you have done differently?
    I hold dear to Audrey Hepburn’s line when they were doing her make-up and trying to cover up her lines and wrinkles, and she said: “You leave those alone. I earned every one of them.” Warts and all, here I am! It all goes into the big, rich recipe of one’s life.

‘Cooking: Simply and Well, for One Or Many’ by Jeremy Lee is out now, 4th Estate

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