The rapper and cookery teacher on the lyrics for his track Ottolenghi, table tennis with Heston and the karma of the kitchen
My mother worries about cows and methane. She’s been vegetarian since she was 20, for moral, global reasons, and I was brought up on amazing things like Mum’s Quorn mince risotto until I was about 14.
The first time I ate meat– jerk chicken – was at a barbecue for lots of relatives I didn’t know with my biological father, who had left when I was two. I threw up from all the spice. I was really embarrassed. At my mother’s parents’ house, down the road in West Norwood, I developed my love for meat in secret. My nan used to have little pre-cooked chicken strips and I’d creep into her kitchen, take some out of the packet, do a fry-up and then clean up and put everything back together again, like it never happened. My grand-parents knew, but I didn’t know they knew. Then one day I got caught by mum eating a bacon sandwich made by her father. It all gave me a moral compass, of sorts.
Continue reading...