‘I’d never do Strictly – I hate being touched!’
Bake Off champ Nadiya Hussain, 33, is back on TV rustling up her family’s favourite dishes in this yum series…
Your new series tells viewers how to serve up hearty meals for family and friends… This week’s episode is all about what to feed your family during the week, when everything is totally manic. If I stay organised, we can all still eat really well. Breakfast is wholesome and delicious with a Mango Lassi Bircher [muesli], and because I love having a freezer full of homemade savoury snacks, I’ve got a great recipe for Not Prawn Toast. I call it that because I make it with chicken. What’s been the highlight of making the series? Meeting Edna, my 102-yearold marmalade lady. Although she’s lost her eyesight, she goes by smell and the sound of the bubbles to tell when her marmalade is ready. I don’t know if I want to live to 102, but I want to be like her. She’s passed her love of marmalade onto her children and their children. That’s what I’d love for my own kids, for them to make a dish and say, “That’s what my mum made.” Is it true you only spend £40 a week on food for your family [husband Abdal, an IT consultant and kids Musa, 11, Dawud, ten, and Maryam, seven]? If you live like you’ve got an endless pot, you end up with a pot with nothing in it. Some weeks I go over budget, but other weeks I can have so much surplus that I don’t even have to spend anything, or I might just buy yogurts for packed lunches. We eat a lot of offal, too – the kids love tripe, and it’s cheap! Their favourite thing at the moment is fish head curry. There’s a lot of focus on the evils of sugar. Do you limit how much your kids eat? Never, because the second I give my kids a complex about food, it’s going to stay with them forever. Food is a joy and brings people together. I do show them what balance is, which is, “You can have a piece of cake, but let’s go for a bike ride.” I may be doing it all wrong, but I see my kids have a bar of chocolate and then eat a whole red pepper, and I feel like they are doing alright. Do you ever think about adding to your brood of three kids? I’d love to have another! As soon as I had my daughter I was like, “Let’s have another baby!”, because I felt that she would be lonely. And I’ve been saying it for seven years now, but my husband is like, “No! Where’s the switch for that maternal instinct? Because I cannot deal with you asking if we should have another baby all the time!” I probably ask him every week. He’s right – I am busy and he is realistic. We hear you’ve been asked to go on Strictly? They have asked me – and I said no. My daughter is going to kill me when she finds out! It will break her little heart, because our lives revolve around Strictly when it’s on. I’d like to learn to dance, but I’m not comfortable getting that close to anyone, and that’s the reason I don’t want to do it. I don’t even like my husband’s feet touching me at night in bed. Just saying! Are there any reality shows you would go on? I’d be fine in the jungle. When they eat those penis smoothies I’m like, “That’s alright. I could eat that!” But I’m very happy doing what I’m doing. ● The accompanying cookery book to Nadiya’s Family Favourites is out now (Michael Joseph, £20).