The one lesson I’ve learned from life

JASMINE HEMSLEY, 38, is a cook, TV presenter and author, working with her sister Melissa as Hemsley + Hemsley. She published her first solo cookbook, East By West, last year. She lives in London with her partner Nick, a photographer.

HOME COOKING CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE

I WAS raised by a Filipino mum whose answer to everything was to eat something she’d cooked. If you had a headache, were upset, or even had a stomach ache, she would go: ‘Eat eat eat!’

Mum made something called leftover soup. We’d have that on Sunday watching the East-Enders omnibus.

It wasn’t just my mum. My dad was in the English Army — he’s not with us any more [he died of a rare cancer in 2014] — and his mum was a very good cook. I’ve got some of her recipe books.

When she married my dad, my mum fused Filipino dishes with British produce and she also learnt from my gran. My mum’s food was flavoured with ginger and garlic, while my gran’s food was more onions and bay leaves, but soups and stews were what they both knew.

I started cooking at nine, but it wasn’t until I went to university that I had the choice not to cook. I’d just grab a sandwich or microwave meal.

Soon I was crashing out, constipated, and my skin and mood were affected. My housemates and I bought 11p loaves of long-life bread — though we’d eat it in a day! Fortunately we eventually realised we should cook for each other.

At 20, I learnt about Ayurveda — an Indian holistic approach to healing. The principles kept answering my health questions, such as: ‘Why does my mum’s food make me feel better than manufactured health foods?’ It’s because it warms your belly and is easy to digest.

It’s important to create rituals around food, eat seasonally and have supper early so you have time to digest it before bed. Home cooking slows us down, but we need to balance out the speed of everything else. I work six days a week from home, so it’s hard to have downtime. If I’m in danger of burnout, the first thing I do is have a home-cooked meal.

The other day, we threw a birthday party for my mum, which had 50 Filipinos putting more food on the table, before everyone cried, as always, ‘Eat eat eat!’