I’m making food anyone can really have a go at
Grime artist and chef Big Zuu’s debut cookbook has heart, flair and flavour. ELLA WALKER finds out more
GRIME artist, rapper and cook, Big Zuu, born Zuhair Hassan, is best known for hosting series Big Zuu’s Big Eats on Dave, which sees him cooking for and chatting with comedians like James Acaster (“he’s absolutely hilarious”) and Rosie Jones (“is a boss”), alongside his best mates from secondary school, Tubsey and Hyder.
The 26-year-old from London is also the self-proclaimed Roux King – “I’m just really good at making roux” – a cheese lover despite being lactose intolerant (“I’ve not accepted it”), and while his professional kitchen experience amounts to a “gruelling” stint on the grills at Nando’s, he now has a cookbook, also called Big Zuu’s Big Eats, to match the series.
“It’s a beautiful moment,” he says.
“Not something I expected to ever do in my life, is write a book! And I’ve done it.
“Oh, my god, I was gonna cry. I didn’t. But I had tears in my eyes,” he says of holding a finished copy in his hands for the first time.
“To see that final product, like, ‘Yes, I’ve done something here. I’ve put in some work to make this’. I was really proud of how far I’ve come in terms of the stuff that I do. Having a physical book in front of you, it made me feel like, yep, this is all worth it. I’m working hard to make this happen.”
That hard work started at home, supporting his mum. Mumma Zuu – Isatu Hamzie – who sought refuge in Britain after fleeing war in Sierra Leone in 1995.
“Basically, my mum was a good chef, yeah? But she wasn’t the best chef in the world,” says Zuu with an affectionate laugh, explaining how he got into cooking when his little brother was just a bump, and Zuu himself, still a kid.
“Mum was a preggers individual and I thought, ‘Ok, how do I help around the house? What can I do?’ One thing was cooking.”
It became an obsession, and although it’s ended in a show on Dave and a cookbook, Mumma Zuu doesn’t always appreciate him being so blunt about her cooking.
“Sometimes she’s like, ‘Does everyone have to always know your roots of life?’ She feels I tell people too much about myself. Which sometimes is true,” admits Zuu. “But she knows there’s a cause, a reason why we do what we do. So she has to come to terms with that a bit more. Before she was [like], ‘Everybody knows my business’, now she’s like, ‘Ok, Jonathan Ross show, eyy!”’
Fortunately, Zuu also pays homage to “the incredible individual she is”, sharing her recipes for jollof rice (“That recipe has energy!”), okra soup and fufu (“Beautiful”).
How and what he cooks can be traced in part back to her too, from always playing music in the kitchen (“It’s part of the vibe”), to the recipes that draw on his family’s African heritage.
As a child, he remembers wanting Western dishes but as he got older, getting “more in touch with my African roots, understanding what it meant to be African and what it meant to be from where I’m from”.
Slowly, he realised “African food is amazing. It’s crazy, I went from not having it all the time, to being upset when my mum would make [Western] stuff, being like, ‘Where’s the jollof rice mum? I’ve had enough of this spag bol. And then she just come through with the goods.”
Zuu doesn’t consider his food “typical”. The book is a delicious melding of myriad cuisines: African, Jamaican, Lebanese, French, Japanese, Kurdish, Mexican, Iranian, American, Italian and more, featuring dishes that are big, bold, Instagram-worthy and largely for sharing.
You get the sense Zuu is intent on taking everyone with him. “I feel like I’m making a change in my own way and doing what I can,” he says. “I’m not gonna turn around and say like, ‘I influence a generation’, but I definitely feel like I’ve played parts in making and changing the face of who is a huge chef and who writes a cookbook and who goes on Sunday Brunch. I definitely feel like I’ve made an influence in that in some type of way.”
Key to that is eagerly encouraging everyone to just give cooking a go. “We’re not making pretentious food that nobody can make. We’re making food that is possible to make, that anyone can really have a go at,” he says, adamant.
“That’s the main thing – we’re not the best chefs in the world. But we’re having a go, you know? No one can bring you down for trying.”
And you can’t argue with that.