The Scottish Mail on Sunday - You
MY LIFE IN FOOD ‘I had a pig I loved, which put me off bacon’
In this series, famous food lovers talk to YOU restaurant critic Tom Parker Bowles about all matters culinary, from earliest memories and favourite dishes to things they can’t bear. This week actress Minnie Driver shares her stories
My mother always cooked, and it was something she loved to do.
A war baby, she could conjure delicious food out of almost nothing. Fussy children were often sent to our house to be cured of their food issues. I’ll never forget the child who, upon hearing it would be spaghetti for dinner, sobbed. Then watching him when he took a bite and seeing his scrunched-up face smooth out into wonder. My sister Kate is an amazing cook, as is my brother. I love cooking too. My mum gave us all this gene.
We were never served huge portions of food, so there was never anything left.
But if I was in trouble and had been forbidden from having pudding it was the worst punishment of all.
Mum could always use food to make a hard journey better.
She had no money, while Dad was wealthy. [Minnie’s parents separated when she was six.] So we had these two different lives. With Mum, it was stuff your things in a bag, get on a train or the cheapest plane. Which would invariably arrive in the middle of the night. We used to stay in a bed and breakfast in Ravello, near Positano in the south of Italy. The bakery would be open at three in the morning when we arrived, and the Nonna would be cooking for the next morning. We’d go in and she would make us calzones. I remember standing there, shattered but so happy to be eating this homemade pizza.
Mum wrote a cookbook for charity called
It had the favourite recipes of the famous models of the time, including Joanna Lumley, whose lap I peed on when I was a baby. I remember her testing them all out, and even the most revolting-sounding suet pudding – I guess models ate suet in the 70s – was incredibly delicious.
I’ll never forget the sweet-seller’s van that turned up on a tiny Hampshire country lane every Thursday.
He didn’t have a bell, but it was such an old motor that you could hear it chugging up the lane. He would just park it and sit listening to the cricket. I guess
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