Readers, influencers, cooks: I pray you hear my rallying call for female, celebrity chefs. Unashamed, hedonistic, free-eating women: your girls need you. In recent years, we’ve lost too many food-loving women to the dirty hands of clean eating and ground-up cauliflower and now the time has come to claim our sisters back. I am sick to death of the inevitable footnote that well-known female cooks seem to automatically adopt when discussing their personal culinary delights. A delightful tale of freshly battered fish and chips simply must be book-ended with at least one pathetic excuse; ‘of course I run every morning, though’, or ‘that was well before I decided to go vegan. Now I only eat raw, purple carrots and make my clothes from pondweed.’ And whilst the women cooks craft pointless recipes for beetroot brownies, their male counterparts present our Saturday morning cookery shows and repeat phrases such as; ‘you can never have too much butter’ without a care in the world. But amongst the courgette cake makers is one adorable woman who wouldn’t dare omit the sugar from her lemon drizzle cake and has created a banging recipe for pretty much the most decadent cheese sandwich any human being has ever eaten. Her name is Margie Nomura and she is a chef, writer and presenter of the podcast Desert Island Dishes. As part of the poddy, Margie interviews foodie royalty about their most treasured meals and picks up some secrets of their successes along the way. Name anyone, she’s had ’em – Ainsley Harriott, Jack Monroe, Mark Hix, Gizzi Erskine. Best of all, never at any point are the words ‘guilt’, ‘shame’ or ‘Lululemon’ so much as uttered. Instead, the Oxford University graduate focuses on the richness that food and eating has brought her interviewees. As she says: it’s never just about the food, but the people they’re with, the occasion, the memories.’ So, Mrs celebrity chef-turned-wellness-queen, read carefully. You could learn a thing or two from the marvellous Margie. As could we all, actually.
E: Let’s start at the very beginning. How would you explain your love for food and choice to get into food? Were you brought up around cooking and interesting flavours?
M: I’ve always loved food from a really young age and that has meant that I’ve always been in interested in cooking and finding out how to make the foods I wanted to eat. I think to be a good cook you’ve definitely got to be a good eater because every dish you eat is training your palate in a different way. I remember learning to cook as a child and it all just felt so magical. The fact that you can mix seemingly random ingredients together and produce something like a cake. It just blew my mind. I never thought about doing it for a living until I was studying for a Master’s in Law after graduating from Oxford. I was cooking all the time for fun and loving it and it suddenly just dawned on me that I didn’t have to pursue a career I didn’t really want to do, perhaps I should think about trying to turn the thing I loved the most into a job.
‘The answer is never just the dish – it’s about the people they were with, the occasion they were celebrating and the memories they were making’
E: You’ve had some AMAZING guests on your podcast. Why did you decide to do it? And who’s the best guest you’ve ever had?
M: I love talking about food and as a genuinely nosey (or inquisitive is perhaps the polite way of saying it) person I’m fascinated by people. What I love the most is that of there’s lots of talk of food and delicious recipe ideas come out of the conversations but really it’s about so much more than the food. Asking someone to tell you about the best dish they’ve ever eaten, for example, the answer is never just the dish – it’s about the people they were with, the occasion they were celebrating and the memories they were making. Talking about people’s favourite dishes is actually far more revealing and intimate than you might first imagine. There have been some really amazing guests so far and lots more to come which is really exciting but I really couldn’t pick between them! I’ve come away with something new from every interview and that’s another great thing about cooking – you never stop learning.
E: I’m very very very jealous. We live in a world where we’re bombarded with messages about what to eat and the effect if might have on the body, especially for women. How do you bypass the messages and eat what you want without worrying about it?!
M: It’s so difficult. The relationship we all have with food is so complex and unique. I definitely haven’t been immune to it and got sucked into the vortex of clean eating – both in terms of what I thought I should be eating but also in terms of what I thought I should be cooking within my business and the recipes I thought I should be creating. Thankfully that didn’t last long. I think it’s really about stripping things back and thinking about what is right for you. Take everything you read with a pinch of salt and just do what works best for you personally. For me, it’s striking a balance between what makes me happy and what makes me feel good. That middle ground is the sweet spot. In a world of no consequences, I would eat pasta for breakfast, lunch and supper but I do know that that doesn’t make me feel amazing, so it’s a juggling act.
Pictures: Margie Nomura
E: Do you get fed up with everyone asking you the question: ‘but how do you stay so slim’ How do you answer these questions?
The saying ‘never trust a skinny chef’, I think, is supposed to mean that if your food was really good, you might be larger because you would have eaten it all! But we all know that everyone comes in different shapes and sizes and it can have nothing to do with how much you’re eating. Also, as a chef you can’t just eat all the food you’re meant to be cooking for other people because you would literally be eating your profits! It’s really important to constantly be tasting the food you’re cooking so sometimes it does feel like you are eating all day but it’s just tastes, and a few chef’s perks (*looking at you chicken oyster).
E: What is the one cooking tip that comes in most useful or that you would pass down to your kids?
Ultimately that food is meant to be fun – it’s not meant to be taken too seriously and it’s not about creating something perfect. Experiment, have fun in the kitchen and learn what you like but just never stress about it. Unless you burn something to a cinder, every cooking disaster is rectifiable and if it isn’t? Order in some pizzas, crack open some beers and whack on the music.
E: Final question we ask to everyone: what’s your last supper? Three courses, with drinks… GO!
M: Ah this is an impossible question for me even though it’s the last question I ask everyone on Desert Island Dishes. Every time I have a new guest on and I hear their choice, I think, “ooh yes that’s a good one”. I know I would have many different courses and a lot of them would be pasta. My husband and I went to Limewood (Angela Hartnett’s restaurant) for supper just after we got married and we ordered three courses – all of which were pasta and it was pretty close to heaven. But then my mum also makes the most incredible pie (chicken and sweetcorn) which she has made for me at pretty much every important milestone in my life and it’s just the best – so I would have to have a pie course for sure. I do know that I would drink really cold champagne and G&T’s with a splash of St Germain.
Follow Margie’s glorious and easy-to-shamelessly-copy dishes @margienomura
