ALTERNATIVE ROOTS
Cook Anne Shooter tells ELLA WALKER about putting a twist on her Jewish food heritage
ANNE SHOOTER’S cookbook career was triggered by her having to dress up as bona fide cookbook legend. The former journalist had to pose as Nigella Lawson for a feature, “which was hideously embarrassing – I had to wear loads of control underwear and a wig”, she recalls.
Anne ended up bumping into the real Nigella at a party (“She was fabulous”) and thought to herself: “If I was Nigella, I’d write a Jewish cookbook next.”
Having trained at Leiths Cookery School, Anna had noticed a real revival in newishJewish food (“People were starting to do slightly trendier things with old-school Jewish recipes, like putting wasabi in their cream cheese”). So her next logical thought was, of course, “Hang on, I could write that book!”
Cherish is her second book, following her 2015 debut, Sesame & Spice, but this is the one her 12 and 14-year-old daughters wanted her to write – so they’ll have all their mum’s recipes on file when they grow up.
“It’s the kind of food I cook all the time,” says Anne, flicking through pages of crisp chicken thighs baked with walnuts and pomegranate, roasted aubergines drizzled with tahini, and fried pitta pockets bursting with lamb mince. Food, memory and family are inextricable. Anne’s childhood food memories are largely of spending time at her maternal grandparents’ house in Elm Park, on the Essex/East End borders.
Her granddad ran a kosher chicken shop. Customers included the Krays (there was once a misunderstanding over a chicken), and actress Miriam Margolyes, who’d trade theatre tickets for wurst, a beef salami.
Anne’s own style of cooking, reflected in Cherish is “more of a mish-mash”, especially when it comes to her family’s traditional Friday night dinner – where having 15 people round the table is “quite standard”.
“It’s noisy, warm, there’s lots of chat, lots of eating – there’s always a lot of talk of diets within Jewish community, and I think that’s because we have Christmas dinner pretty much every week,” she laughs.