Saturday kitchen
Rochelle Humes tells ELLA WALKER why she wanted her new cookbook to make feeding the entire brood child’s play – even the littlest ones
DINNER round at Rochelle Humes’ house sounds fun. The This Morning presenter and singer, 32, is married to JLS star Marvin Humes, 36, and together they are a kitchen dream team.
Rochelle – who has written her first cookbook, At Mama’s Table – tends to be on food, while Marvin is on drinks.
“He is indeed master of drinks, he can make a mean cocktail,” says Rochelle proudly.
Sunday is the day you’d really wanted to be invited over. It’s Rochelle favourite time of the week to cook, when there’s “no rush” and she can take her time over a roast dinner – there are always Yorkshire puddings.
“We’ll have people over for Sunday lunch, but it’s all very relaxed,” she says, “no rushing out to work or anything. And then I will have the tunes blaring out.”
Barking-born Rochelle got her first showbiz break in S Club Juniors before hitting the big time with girl group The Saturdays.
“My mum was quite that cook where she was very good at making us try different things and not say we didn’t like it until we’d tried it, which is exactly what I do to my kids – but my mum was quite regimented,” she says, recalling the food she ate growing up.
“[Mum] was busy and she was on her own with us, working lots of different jobs, so it was very like: on a Wednesday, we had shepherd’s pie.”
It was when Rochelle left home that she really got into cooking.
“I learned a lot of recipes when I moved out,” she remembers. “I realised the world’s your oyster and I just find cooking so therapeutic and it was nice. I think it’s the first thing that makes you feel like you can run a house, if you can cook a meal.”
Now a mum of three herself – to Alaia-Mai, eight, Valentina, four, and one-year-old Blake – as well as being busy with her work on TV, Rochelle cooks to relax.
“I love nothing more at the end of the day,” she says, “I do it to unwind.”
A combination of family life and her love of food motivated At Mama’s Table.
“I just love flavour. I love food that’s well seasoned, well thought about,” she explains, with the idea behind the recipes being that they’re nutritious, family-friendly and not a time-drain.
The singer believes involving children from a young age helps discourage fussy eating.
“My middle one [Valentina] is probably my fussiest,” says Rochelle.
“She’s very particular in what she likes. But the minute I involve her in the cooking process, she’s a lot more likely to eat her meal.”
Recently, Rochelle cooked salmon for dinner and “it was so funny because Valentina ate it all and was like, ‘Mummy, this is so yummy’. And then after, she walked in the kitchen and said, ‘Oh my goodness, it smells of fish in here’. And I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s because you just had salmon’. She’s like, ‘But it smells. I don’t know if I like salmon’, and I said, ‘Well you do, because you just ate the whole bowl!’
“You have to constantly keep up with kids – she just ate the whole thing and then decided it smelled!”
Rochelle was never a fussy eater herself, however.
“Still not now – there’s not really much I won’t eat to be honest,” she says.
She’ll happily order a takeaway and there’s always room for pudding in her – even if it’s just a piece of fruit or a yoghurt.
Food is the “heart of the family”, she says: “Everything I do, socially, even work related, I always just do it around food.”
Rochelle even enjoys weaning. At Mama’s Table is filled with tips for making meals work for adults as well as tiny babies.
“It’s my favourite part,” she says. “It just always feels like such a fun process and a fun time. I really miss it when it’s over. Introducing them to flavours and different things they’ve never had before always just feels so special.”
“It’s just such an exciting time introducing them to the world of food,” Rochelle continues.
And the funny faces make it worthwhile: “The first taste of solid food in the little one’s mouth, they’re always just a little bit baffled as to what on earth’s going on.”
While she makes dishes adaptable, she doesn’t go in for making three different meals to suit each of her kids.
She also has short shrift with people who say about a meal: “’This is a little bit grown up’, or, ‘This is mummy’s food”’ – especially when it comes to spice.
“I think that can actually sometimes put [children] off trying [something],” she says.
“[They might say] ‘Oh no, I don’t want to eat that, is it spicy?’ And it’s not spicy, it’s just flavoursome – I think there’s a real difference.”