Food to feel good

WHAT does it really mean to feel good?

It’s a personal thing, but a big part of it for Melissa Hemsley is “about savouring the actual meal”, she says. “Not cooking for 45 minutes, washing up for 15 minutes, and only eating for 10 minutes.”

The 36-year-old – who first rose to fame as half of the food and wellness duo Hemsley + Hemsley, alongside her sister Jasmine – continues: “Feeling good is about feeling confident in your kitchen, with your own cooking – because nothing’s more important than making a delicious, nourishing meal for you or the people you love.”

She’s extended this ethos to entertaining as well, making a pledge to herself a few years ago to only host if it was easy and fun. “What’s the point of inviting people over if you don’t enjoy it?” she asks. “And people don’t enjoy a stressed host – then you get resentful if you’re stressed.” So she now only cooks food “I can feel kitchen confident about, that I’ll enjoy eating”.

It makes sense she’s named her latest book Feel Good – it’s her fifth, and things have changed since Hemsley + Hemsley’s first book The Art Of Eating Well was published in 2014. The sisters brought spiralisers into the public consciousness, and championed bone broth for overall wellness. Her new cookbook feels a lot simpler and more approachable, with Melissa saying: “I still stand by my recipes being easy five books ago – but I think now it’s all about ease, ease, ease. It’s one pan cooking, one tray cooking, it’s less ingredients, less time. I think feelgood cooking is so much about the enjoyment of the way you approach food.”

With this in mind, nourishing comfort food is something Melissa constantly thinks about. For her, comfort food “means different things at different times”, she says. “A lot of it has to do with temperature, and the temperature of my mood as well. Sometimes, without even realising it,

PRUDENCE WADE

I’m missing my childhood, or that safe feeling of nostalgia, so maybe you tap into the nostalgia. Sometimes for me, I go and slice some ginger and boil it in my smallest pan, then I’m squeezing lemon or lime in and I’m having a mug of that.

“That’s my comfort – a simple ginger tea. Not just because you’ve got a sore throat, but the smell of it and the slicing of it makes me think of my mum. Sometimes I’m cooking a noodle soup – I’m doing the same process with the ginger, but I’m adding garlic and spring onions to it, and that’s really comforting to me. Sometimes cheese is the only thing that will satisfy me.”

Even though Melissa’s job is all about food, she says: “I can suffer with quite bad anxiety at times – I know lots of people do, or maybe haven’t before and have felt it more in the last few years. And I find sometimes I don’t really want to cook at all.”

She has a trick for the days she might be feeling low.

“I try to make sure I’ve always got at least one portion of something delicious in my freezer. I would probably put an emergency bolognese that I could have on a jacket potato or a mashed potato, or it could be on toast. My boyfriend’s would be a creamy chicken and mushroom something that could go in a pie.”

Listening to your body and fuelling it properly has been drilled into Melissa from childhood – something she appreciates a lot more now. “My mum has always been about eating for your brain health, ever since I can remember,” Melissa reflects. “I’d be like, ‘I’m hungry, mum’, [and she’d reply] ‘Have some smoked mackerel’. It’s really annoying when you’re younger” – particularly when you want a packet of Wotsits, but are being offered walnuts instead.”

This isn’t the only way Melissa’s mother has influenced her life and cooking. Her mum is Filipino, and you can feel the country’s influence throughout Feel Good.

“When I was younger, I didn’t quite know what was Filipino and what was English. I didn’t know fish sauce was what made that dinner so amazing, and that it wasn’t English. Ginger is an absolutely key ingredient in my life – in drinks and curry (although Filipinos don’t really say curry) – any kind of stews or soups. It’s in drizzles over grilled chicken and beautiful sticky sweet potatoes, and barbecued broccoli. It’s in baking, it’s in breakfast muffins, it’s in my cookies – ginger is a really key Filipino ingredient.

“It’s half my heritage, and I really feel my mum’s influence in fully respecting food and all parts of an ingredient.”

Melissa Hemsley doesn’t want complicated dishes and lots of washing up, just easy, enjoyable food,, she tells