SPECIAL SPARKLING PINKS OVER £20
WITH GUILT FROM COOKING
MELISSA HEMSLEY is quite probably the reason your kitchen contains a spiralizer. She and her elder sister, Jasmine, food caterersturned-Vogue bloggers and cookbook writers Hemsley + Hemsley (The Art Of Eating Well, Good + Simple), pioneered the thing.
Now, London-based Melissa is branching out alone, with her debut solo recipe collection, Eat Happy.
“Every time I say it I have to do jazz hands,” says the 32-year-old with a laugh.
What are her recipes trying to achieve?
THE crux of the book is to make cooking as simple and stressfree as possible. “What are people’s main objections to cooking?” she considers. “It takes too long: OK, I can make it take 30 minutes.”
She’s also tackling mountains of washing up (only one pan), soggy leftovers for packed lunches, having to shop around (ingredients you can get in a corner shop) and getting more veg in “without putting on another pan to boil a bit of broccoli”.
Ease aside, the book is underpinned by an acute awareness of food waste and its implications. “I grew up with an army dad and a Filipino-catholic mum; very, very thrifty and frugal, don’t waste a single grain of rice, always be prepared for a war, that sort of mentality,” Melissa explains. SHE reckons taking responsibility for wasting food is something we’re more conscious of than ever. “You way as its famous cousin. This is a pretty fizz, soft with subtle fruit notes of red fruits and dried strawberries.
(£9.99, the Co-op 11% abv) Light, refreshing flavours of strawberry and raspberry, with a hint of vanilla and velvety smooth bubbles (but neither linger long on the palate). The clear glass bottle, prettily presented in feel awful doing it. On the positive side, you feel amazing using stuff up. It’s really satisfying.”
She’s always looking for nifty ways to transform leftovers into dishes that are as “special” as their original incarnation.
“Say you have leftover sweet potato wedges or roast squash, you gift-wrapping, is helpfully labelled ‘pink’ so even the colour-blind can enjoy a co-ordinated Valentine’s Day.
Akarua Brut Rosé Central Otago
(Oz Wines, £22.99, 13% abv) What can I say, but this is a wow. As I write I’m three days into a visit to New Zealand and next week I’ll be in the home of this sparkling wine; Central Otago. It is made from hand-picked chardonnay and pinot noir grapes and blended with reserve wine which has been aged in French oak. It has notes of fresh and dried strawberries, a touch of creaminess and a delightful balance. Delicious.
For a super-classy sparkling pink fizz how about one from England?
Hush Heath Balfour Kent Brut Rosé 2013
(£35.99, Waitrose) A blend of the classic grapes are used in champagne – chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier. The grapes for this sparkler are grown in Kent in the shadow of a Tudor manor. It has aromas of rosehip, a whisper of strawberry and a peep of apple. Mouth-watering and elegant with a hint of stone fruit. a sparkler with love at its heart is the perfectly-named (£7.99, reduced from £8.99 at Bargain Booze until February 26, 11% abv) which has acacia flower aromas and subtle apple and peach flavours.
PS…
might think, ‘Oh, this is quite boring’, but fry them with butter and harissa spice and suddenly they’re incredible,” she buzzes. It’s part of what makes Eat Happy a Melissa book, not a Hemsley + Hemsley book, as well as the fact Melissa’s taste buds are firmly in charge. “For instance, I haven’t got a massive sweet tooth (although she does recommend her banoffee pie in a glass),” she explains. “I LOVE a takeaway. I don’t often feel great when I eat one; they don’t quite hit the spot, so I have recipes for a chicken katsu curry, a pad Thai, a buckwheat pizza.” THERE are, she says, still “lots of nods to Jas and my mum” in the book though. “I’m eking out, recipe by recipe, book by book, my mum’s secret Filipino recipes. She’s very proud when we reference her, but I’ve got to say, getting a recipe from my mum is the hardest, because she changes it every time she makes a dish.”
Why do we need to ease up on ourselves in the kitchen?
MELISSA is utterly opposed to the current culture of guilt around food. “We don’t always have to have Instagrammable food, we don’t always get our nine portions of fruit and veg and it’s important not to feel guilty about it.”
Hence she’ll happily post truthfully captioned pictures to Instagram: “I’ll say, ‘Before you notice, that bit is burnt’, or, ‘I overcooked my yolk there’.”
She doesn’t agree with cutting out food groups and depriving yourself, either. “I’m not a big fan of extremes,” she says. “I love a positive goal and things that make me feel happy - like, ‘Clear that cupboard out’, but I don’t say, ‘I’m going to change everything about myself’.”
Instead of going on a crash diet, or bullying yourself into a month without alcohol or meat, she says, why not make an effort to fill up your freezer with home-cooked meals once a month instead? Use your ingredients in a different way, or buy less to begin with and meal-plan – “and then go spend that money you’ve saved on a dress – that’s what I’d do!”
■ Eat Happy: 30-minute Feelgood Food by Melissa Hemsley, photography by Issy Croker, is published by Ebury Press, priced £20.