‘I’D LOST MYSELF... NOW I’m living my dreams’
She baked her way into our hearts and hasn’t stopped since! Nadiya Hussain tells us about facing her demons, planning a second wedding and loving British food
Since winning The Great British Bake Off in 2015, Nadiya has gone on to bake a cake for the Queen’s 90th birthday, write a children’s cookbook and a novel, and become a TV presenter. Now the mum of three is excited about her new TV series, Nadiya’s British Food
Adventure, and the accompanying cookbook that charts her love affair with British food. Nadiya, 32, lives in Milton Keynes with her husband, Abdal, and their three children.
My husband Abdal is my backbone. I couldn’t do anything without him. It was him who submitted the application for me to be a contestant on The Great British Bake Off. He is the one who noticed that I wasn’t the person he’d married 10 years earlier. Somewhere between being a teenager, a wife and doing Bake Off, I’d lost myself. I had to play so many different roles that it was hard to find the essence of me. Somehow, doing the show allowed me to look at my reflection and to find myself again. It was the best thing I could have done.
We’ve had to make adjustments to
family life since I won the show. Two years ago, my husband was that dad who came home and riled the children all up 20 minutes before bedtime, then handed them back over to me. Now he is the one holding the fort. He still works full time in IT, but his work has been really understanding, so he can drop the kids off and pick them up. It feels equal now – I’m so lucky. We’re planning our second wedding. We had our Islamic marriage, but we’d love to do it in this country, British-style, too. It was supposed to be this year but we've been too busy to arrange it. We might have to elope!
For a Muslim man to be as supportive of his wife as he has been to me is a big deal. Abdal let me go out into the world and he got some criticism for that, particularly on social media. But most of the feedback we’ve had has been positive. And I hope we’ve changed perceptions about roles.
I suffer from panic disorder. Before
I did Bake Off, I was forever protecting myself from anything that could possibly scare me. So doing the programme was by far the biggest thing I’d ever done. The audition process alone was a massive achievement – getting on a train and a bus, and being away from the kids for a whole day was a huge deal. I didn’t realise how much
I’d grown until I watched the show.
If you have panic disorder, the panic will stay with you forever. I call it a monster. Sometimes he’s in your face. Now he’s behind me and he taps me on the shoulder now and then, but the difference is that I can handle it.
My children are the most critical human beings I’ve ever met. When I’m recipe testing, I can try up to 14 a day. A food delivery will arrive as the kids are leaving for school and they come home to a kitchen full of food to taste. They give me feedback on everything. But children are far too honest. I once gave my son something with white chocolate and lavender and he tasted it and said, ‘Why would you do that to me?’
In some ways, I’m a better mum now. Before, looking after the children was my job. Everything was planned, and if it wasn’t all perfect, it would trigger my panic. I’m more spontaneous than I was. The other day we had half an hour free; they wanted to go on a bike ride and I said, ‘Why not? So what if we’re late to have dinner?’ I’m more relaxed and more confident: the world will keep on turning if they go to bed a little later!
I think it’s important for my children to see me working and doing something I enjoy. Someone asked my son what his mum did and he said, ‘She lives
her dreams’, which I thought was amazing. My daughter thinks it’s great. If we’re in the supermarket, she’ll sometimes say, really loudly, ‘Oh my God, is that Nadiya from Bake Off?’ to make people come and talk to us. She’s very cheeky!
I couldn’t have done what I’ve done without my mum and dad.
They live 30 minutes away and I see them a lot. Mum came over at the weekend with three curries and rice and stocked the freezer and said, ‘That’s the kids’ food taken care of for the week’, which is such a relief.
My family keep me down to earth.
There are times when my dad is silly and introduces me as ‘Nadiya, the one who baked for the Queen’, but they don’t think my job is more important than their other children’s. My big sister still saves up her dirty dishes if I’m coming round so she can take a photo of me washing them and put it on social media saying, ‘Not too famous to do my dishes!’
British food is a melting pot of different cultures.
Being British and Bangladeshi, I’ve always seen British food from a different angle. I grew up eating solely Bangladeshi food. Then I went to high school where I had school dinners and thought British food meant chips, beans and spag bol, but British food is multicultural. My new TV show is my take on British food and is full of recipes of what British people eat, with my own twist. One of my favourite recipes is for a tarte tatin made with vegetarian haggis!