I’m having a little revival in my old age, it’s exciting
BAKE OFF JUDGE PRUE LEITH TALKS TO ELLA WALKER ABOUT RETURNING TO COOKERY BOOKS, AND WHY HER FREEZER IS FULL OF CAKE
PRUE LEITH had barely written a recipe in 25 years. For more than two decades, the culinary mind of the legendary Prue Leith – the woman who set up the prestigious Leiths Cookery School and London restaurant of the same name – lay pretty much dormant.
And then she found herself appearing on the Great British Menu, replacing Mary Berry on the Great British Bake Off, and “pinching” recipes from the contestants. Telly provoked her interest in cooking again, and she found a whole new audience interested in her.
“When I stopped writing cookery books 25 years ago, half the people who are now watching Bake Off weren’t even alive,” she notes dryly. These people, as well as faithful Leith fans, are fully catered for in her new cookbook, Prue: My All-time Favourite Recipes.
Packed with classics like roast pork and cottage pie with black pudding, the South African cook is also sharing fresher, zingier dishes, like baked sea bass with samphire and cucumber, Colombian chicken, and potato soup and burrata with kumquats.
While Bake Off has encouraged her to start inventing recipes again, it’s also triggered a new interest in cakes. “I’ve never been much of a cake-maker,” muses Prue, 78, who’d only bake them on special occasions. “There wasn’t cake in the house like in my grandmother’s.”
But now there is: “John, my husband, gets quite: [shouting] ‘Where’s the cake?’” Her freezer is now usually stuffed with fruit cake or a lemon polenta (“so there’s always cake for him”).
Prue is ever prepared with a quick comment or dry remark, however, her (somewhat accidental) catchphrase – “Is it worth the calories?” – might be an abiding principle, but wasn’t meant to be her personal slogan.
“I always judge things by, ‘I don’t care how many calories it’s got, it’s so delicious I’m going to eat it’, or, ‘It’s a special occasion, it’s worth the calories’. I won’t eat something which is high in calories and not particularly wonderful, because that’s just not worth it, you feel guilty after,”
There have been developments around eating and cooking over the past few decades that she does find encouraging though: She believes TV is beginning to prod people to pick up a pan but is adamant there needs to be more focus on learning cookery skills at school, and more support for people who aren’t adept in the kitchen.
“Life has got tougher and tougher for people on a tight budget, so people who have never learnt to cook, who have basically grown up on junk food, it’s really difficult for them to change unless someone will give them a hand,” she says, “because if you can’t cook, you’re not going to risk your benefit money on something the children won’t eat because they’ve never seen it before.”
Endlessly practical and committed, alongside her Bake Off role, Prue is a patron of the Chefs In Schools charity, which aims to get professional chefs into school classrooms.
“I have never managed to put my feet up, ever,” she notes. “I’m having a little revival here in my old age, a kind of renaissance, it’s all very exciting.”
■ Prue: My All-time Favourite Recipes by Prue Leith, photography by David Loftus, is published by Bluebird, priced £25.