EVER watched the movie Julie & Julia? I did and I couldn’t help but fall in love with the characters, played by Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, as they allowed their passion for turning out mouth-watering dishes to consume them.
Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith certainly imbue the same fervent qualities. However, they tend to whet appetites in their unique style.
And, now, Sophie Dahl enters the cooking fray with her own inimitable approach in The Delicious Miss Dahl.
She’s a former model who, since severing ties with the catwalk, has channelled her love of cooking into her writing. And it became the catalyst in her being offered her own cooking series.
Bemused somewhat by the development, Dahl smiles: “I’m not even pretending to be a chef. I love cooking and I’m passionate about it. It’s a by-product of my writing, I think. Because I love reading cookbooks. And I like thinking about food, talking about food, writing about food and cooking food.”
Married to jazz pianist Jamie Cullum, Dahl has created a sensation in writing about food. Her inner chef, though, is no doubt also a manifestation of fond childhood memories of her mother’s (Tessa) gooseberry fool on hot summer nights, her father’s (actor Julian Holloway) scrambled eggs on toast, and the inviting whiff of her grandmother Gee-Gee’s Victorian sponge, which always came out light as a feather and went down a treat with homemade raspberry jam.
Interestingly, through her nomadic teenage and young adult life, Dahl became a vegetarian.
She explains: “Of course, I grew up in an ashram, don’t forget (her mother took her to live at one in upstate New York). Actually, I’m not a proper veggie eater – I eat fish. But I hate the word ‘pescetarian’. I stopped eating meat when I was 11 and never ate it again. It’s not a big problem, frankly. Jamie is a proper carnivore, but I don’t indulge.”
On whether her amiable style to cooking, which also lends itself to her sampling her dishes, borrows from Lawson’s approach, she clarifies: “I’m not copying Nigella, not at all. There is a real compulsion in this country (UK) to pit women against one another, particularly in cooking. I don’t know why it has to be some big competition. I think we have very different styles of cooking and our shows are very stylistically different.”
In her series, the foxy Dahl cooks up a storm – going on themes that vary from the romantic and the nostalgic to the melancholic.
And she sends those taste buds into overdrive with, among other tempting culinary offerings, her notorious buffalo mozzarella bruschetta with shaved fennel and courgette.
Coming from a modelling background, does she always watch the waist line?
“When I started modelling, I got a bit fatter because where I went, people threw food at me. You know, those women who only ever eat salad when they go out? I was never that girl. I now eat three meals a day.
“My relationship with food has always been uncomplicated. How I view my body hasn’t been uncomplicated, but that was because my body was discussed and dissected at great length in a public forum when I was at a formative age.”
She continues: “I love watching men eating too much. Whereas with women, there is such self-flagellation and self-shaming, and it’s really exhausting. I think if you’re going to have a piece of cake, eat it. Move on and simply don’t have cake for the next meal.”
Given her earthy disposition, with quirky comments and laughter served up in healthy doses, Dahl proves she has the right ingredients to churn out a show that is as tantalising to the eye as it is to the palate.
lThe Delicious Miss Dahl airs on BBC Lifestyle on Wednesday at 8.25pm.