Mary Berry promises to serve up great comfort food in her new series

The queen of cooking is back with a new show to inspire us, writes Ella Walker

Simple Comforts sounds very autumnal and cosy. What is comfort food to you?

It’s the sort of food that the family want to come home to. The sort of food you prepare ahead – a lot of dishes in one pot. I encourage people to go with the seasons, but it’s quite difficult if you shop in a supermarket, because you don’t know the season – you get strawberries all year round. Personally, I go very much with the seasons. Now we’ve got an abundance of runner beans and we have carrots all through the summer; whatever I’m growing in the garden we use.

Do you find the cooking as comforting as the eating?

I do, because I cook what the family enjoy – and what doesn’t take too long. I don’t really want to spend hours in the kitchen. I’m not actually going to stuff a courgette flower – I’ll leave that to the restaurants. I don’t do things that take ages, I don’t do an awful lot of complicated icings on cake. I might very well put some rose petals over a cake that I’ve finished, I’ll crystallise flowers because that’s quick – primroses or something like that – but I’m not going to make a lot of sugar flowers, because that’s not me.

How did you find lockdown?

I found it OK. My cooking’s changed considerably because there’s only been two of us [Berry has been married to her husband Paul since 1966]. And I know exactly that it’s just two of us every week, so I don’t need any spare food for people who drop in. I used my freezer as my store cupboard. I made things like fish cakes and I did batches of minced beef and a fairly basic sauce, so I could take that out of the freezer and turn it into something with pasta, or into cottage and shepherd’s pies.

It’s just the right time to have simple comforts. I think we’ve all been worried. It couldn’t be a better time to have warming comforting foods that all the family would enjoy.

0 Mary Berry collects recipes on her travels in Simple Comforts

I love travelling, it’s another way of getting all different recipes. [In] Paris I went round the bakeries [and] tasted amazing, amazing things. I tried to make crepe. I’m not as quick, not as skilled [as the professional crepe maker] – but they tasted just as good.

It was a bit of a shock. And then I saw the crew. They were all girls, and they were all smiling as one, and there I was as the cox. They gave me such a good briefing as to what I was up to, and what my job was, I learned quite quickly. And then I realised we were in a race, and I had to shout very loudly – I rather enjoyed it.

And then you went up the river for lunch with Michel Roux Snr?

He died very shortly afterwards. What an amazing man, full of knowledge and of course his cooking was second to none really, so traditionally French.

It was nice to see French cooking there at [Roux’s restaurant, The Waterside Inn] Bray taking time, a lot of preparation. A lot of tradition.

That was really interesting; I didn’t know it existed. All these barges people live on, and they garden – they were growing butternut squash, fruit, all sorts of things. I thought, ‘How do they do that, in such a limited space?’ There was one barge I did my cooking on, which was

the social barge where they came for musical evenings, for dancing, and it was a great hub of community. Everybody knew everybody else. It was beautifully tidy, it was fun, and full of community spirit.

Of the people you met during filming, who really inspired you?

I met so many people, the ones I particularly remember are the ones who did their jobs with great enthusiasm and devotion [like] Graham, who was training huskies in Scotland – he loved his job. The huskies knew exactly who was boss. And you could just see these dogs, turning their heads and doing exactly what he said, the speed he wanted to go – and I was there at the back, wondering how fast we were going!

Were there any challenging moments?

When I was in Yorkshire, the weather was so bad I could hardly talk. The wind was blowing, and I was trying to make a pate on the quay [at Whitby], and the ingredients flew off the table!

It doesn’t bother me at all because I’m usually rather hungry and I’ve waited for it. And I am afraid I really love food – and I’m usually tasting rather delicious things.

● Mary Berry’s Simple Comforts starts on Wednesday, 8pm, BBC2. The accompanying book, Mary Berry Simple Comforts, will be published by BBC Books on 17 September