by Ed Balls
These were months of loneliness, hardship and suffering for many, and there was more to come. But it was also a time of great camaraderie. On those Thursday nights when everyone went out to clap the NHS and care workers, it wasn’t simply the collective public gratitude which was so striking, but the fact that I’d never seen so many people out on the street waving and smiling at each other before. So when the footballer Marcus Rashford started his campaign to pressurise the government to do more to help low-income children to eat outside the school terms, he was tapping into something deep and powerful. Like many other nearby businesses, the local Magnet pub in Castleford had already organised itself to cook lunches for local children during the summer holidays. They were overwhelmed by huge donations of food from people without a lot themselves but who wanted to do more. That outpouring of generosity was repeated in cities, towns and villages across the UK. A collective determination to tackle food poverty and support people in hardship, which had been building in recent years with the growth of food banks, suddenly crystallised in the lockdown.
When the restrictions eased later that summer – temporarily as it turned out – it was such a relief that our two oldest kids could plan to go back to university. They were desperate for some freedom by then, and we were desperate for them to escape this unnatural torture for a teenager of being forcibly cooped up at home. Two nights before we dropped my son off for his first term at university, I woke up in a cold sweat at 3 a.m., not concerned about him flying the nest, but worrying about what would happen if Yvette or I got Covid symptoms which meant he couldn’t go.
My work also started to pick up again. In July we managed to complete the Who Do You Think You Are? shoot that had been cancelled in the first weeks of the lockdown back in March. And then a call came through asking if I’d like to take part in a new lockdown-inspired BBC production, Celebrity Best Home Cook. Well, I thought, I’d been practising all summer, and preparing all my life. Time to pull on an apron and have a go.
I didn’t know until weeks later quite how sceptical our kids were about me signing up to Best Home Cook. ‘Strictly was fine,’ they told Yvette, ‘because we all knew Dad couldn’t dance. But he’s good at cooking and he really cares. If the judges criticise what he makes, he’ll get so upset.’ They shook their heads. ‘You shouldn’t have let him do it, Mum.’ I will admit my first reaction when Yvette told me this was to be a little bit offended at their brutal assessment of my dance abilities. But the kids were right. I didn’t mind a jot what Craig or Bruno thought about my foot swivel or hand shape, but I did care what Mary Berry and Angela Hartnett, whose recipes I had used so many times before, would think about my cooking.
As ever, Yvette rationalised it for me. ‘It wasn’t dancing flair or talent that kept you in Strictly,’ she said, ‘but your willingness to have a go, to throw yourself off the deep end and not to be too worried if it all went wrong.’ That’s why these days, walking through the centre of Pontefract, she is often stopped, by women and men alike, who, with a chuckle and a shake of the head, say, ‘Saw him on the telly again. What’s he up to now?’ – the same question my mum would occasionally ask her carer in the home when they’d watch videos of my old Strictly dances. ‘But with cooking,’ Yvette said, ‘you really do care. You don’t just want to have a go and make people laugh.’ And I knew she was right. I wanted my cooking to be good. And deep down, if I couldn’t exactly make my mum proud anymore, I at least wanted to do her proud.
CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP
Serves 5
This is the recipe that my oldest daughter chose for her last dinner at home before going off to university. It’s an Asian-style chicken noodle soup made with whole garlic cloves, ginger, soy and – the magic ingredient – tamarind. It’s always been her favourite comfort food and I made an extra-large batch so that she could take a Tupperware box away with her the next day. It tastes and smells amazing, and I find that once you’ve served the soup, you can always add some hot water and extra coriander to refresh what’s left for second helpings or lunch the next day.
INGREDIENTS
3 skinned chicken breasts
4 tbsp sesame oil
20 whole unpeeled garlic cloves
4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 carrots, chopped
3cm piece of ginger, peeled and grated
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1 litre chicken stock
100g jar tamarind paste
500ml water
4 tbsp soy sauce
3 packs ready-cooked medium/thick noodles
A big handful of finely chopped coriander
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4.
Halve the chicken breasts, toss them in an ovenproof dish with the whole garlic cloves and 3 tablespoons of the sesame oil and then cook in the oven for 25 minutes.
Separate out the garlic cloves from the chicken and set aside; reserve the chicken juices; cut the chicken into smaller, bite-sized pieces and set aside.
Transfer the remaining sesame oil, plus the chicken juices, to a heavy pan, add the chopped garlic, onion, carrot, ginger and chilli and sweat on a low heat for 10 minutes until soft. Add the chicken stock, water, cooked garlic cloves and the tamarind and bring to the boil.
Add the chicken pieces and soy and simmer for 5 minutes before adding the noodles. Simmer for a further 5 minutes until cooked.
Ladle into bowls, and sprinkle with a generous covering of coriander.
BANANA BREAD
Serves 10
Like many people, I turned to bread-making and baking for comfort during the weird times we all lived through after the pandemic took hold. And, as many people discovered, there is no comfort food quite like banana bread for soothing the soul. I’ve experimented with many different versions over the years, and this is my favourite. It delivers a rich taste and a moist texture, bursting with banana flavour. You can make a single loaf or individual muffins in paper cases, as I did on Sport Relief Bake Off back in 2016.
I used spelt flour, which intrigued Paul Hollywood, but he was disgusted when I couldn’t give him a good reason for it, other than seeing it recommended elsewhere. I did my research after that and found that the spelt keeps the banana bread light as well as rich, but, in truth, you could easily substitute plain flour without noticing too much difference. On Best Home Cook, Chris Bavin said it was the best banana bread he had ever tasted, and it became a lockdown favourite in our house. If you make muffins rather than a loaf, don’t forget to halve the cooking time.
INGREDIENTS
280g spelt flour – white or wholemeal
60g raisins (or sultanas or chopped walnuts or pecans)
180ml vegetable oil
250g dark brown sugar
1 ½ tsp vanilla essence
3 eggs
425g ripe bananas, skinned
75g natural yoghurt
1 ¼ tsp baking powder
1 ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
¾ tsp ground cinnamon
1 ½ tsp salt
Half a banana and some caster sugar
FOR THE CREAM CHEESE ICING (OPTIONAL)
200g full-fat cream cheese
100g icing sugar, sifted
1tsp cornflour
75ml double cream
Half a banana
Grated chocolate
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 170°C/325°F/gas mark 3 and line and butter a 900g loaf tin or set out 18 paper muffin cases.
Sieve the flour into a bowl and add the raisins. In a second bowl, whisk together the oil, sugar, vanilla and eggs. In a third bowl, mash the bananas, add the yoghurt and then mix in the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and salt.
Combine the two wet mixtures and then add the sieved flour and the raisins and stir lightly until just combined. Pour into the tin or muffin cases.
If you have another banana, halve it l
engthways and lay one half carefully on top of the mixture. Sprinkle with caster sugar and bake for at least 50 minutes (25 minutes if making muffins), until a knife comes out clean.
To make the icing, whisk all the ingredients together in a large bowl until creamy and smooth, with soft peaks formed. Spread over the top of the cake or muffins in billowing waves.
If you have a blowtorch, you can sprinkle sugar over the other half a banana and hold the flame until the sugar has caramelised. Carefully lay the banana on the cream cheese and sprinkle over a little grated chocolate.
Chapter 15 CHRISTMAS COOKING
I have a strong and very visceral fear of rats. Just the thought of one makes my flesh crawl. Visiting my dad’s laboratory at the University of East Anglia, aged four, I poked my finger into a cage and was bitten by a white lab rat. Good for the rat, some will say. Later, as a child, moving bales of straw with my friend and his grandad at the farm next door to our house in Norfolk, a large brown rat ran out and scurried across the farmyard and I jumped out of my skin. Childhood frights which have left deep scars.
A few years ago, we arrived back on Christmas Eve having spent the weekend with my mum and dad in Norwich. Yvette’s parents were already there, her mum getting everything ready for arriving family, her dad stowing provisions he had bought and cooked. Our fridge wasn’t big enough to accommodate everything, so Tony had brought a cool box, which he put outside in the garden. He opened the backdoor to show me what was in there, at which point a huge brown rat jumped over his feet, ran into our kitchen and disappeared under the cupboards.
There was a rat in our kitchen and I didn’t know what to do. Yvette says I went white, grabbed my coat and left the house without saying a word. How was I expected to react? I had to cook the Christmas dinner with a rat lurking somewhere near my feet, poised to jump out at any point. As nightmares went, that was close to the top of my list, and the idea that I’d be carrying scalding-hot trays and pots around the kitchen while scared out of my wits sounded like something from the opening scenes of Casualty.
I joined the long queue at the butcher to collect our turkey and goose in a state of shock and trauma, while, back home, Yvette knew she had a crisis on her hands. She was less bothered about the rat, and more about the prospect that – for the first time in twenty years, if we didn’t get this sorted out – she might have to cook the Christmas dinner herself. Adrenalin now surging, she grabbed the Yellow Pages and started searching. After a few failed calls and answering machines – it was Christmas Eve after all – she miraculously found a local rat man who turned up an hour later. He searched hard but the built-in kitchen cupboards meant there were plenty of places for the creature to hide. He laid traps and said he would come back the day after Boxing Day, given there was nothing else he could sensibly do. We could, he said, put sticky strips across the floor in case the rat came out later that night. But he explained that the caustic glue in the strips would result in a long, slow and painful death, one which we might need to finish off ourselves. Yvette briefly considered the prospect of the children coming down in the early hours looking for evidence that Father Christmas had eaten his mince pies and instead finding a rat in the agonising final stages of life, and agreed that this was too horrific to contemplate.
I was by now sitting outside the house in the car waiting for Yvette to let me know whether it was safe to come back in. She came out to tell me the good and bad news. A ratcatcher had been and there was now a plan in place. But we did have an extra guest for Christmas and there was nothing we could do about it. The next forty-eight hours were every bit the nightmare I imagined. Every cupboard I delved into, every drawer I opened, every shopping bag I moved aside, I was expecting the rat to jump out and bite me. From Christmas Eve through to Boxing Day, as I stirred and whisked and weighed, I could feel the rat’s eyes watching my every move, waiting for its chance. Even now I feel sick just thinking about it. The rat man came back the day after Boxing Day and revealed that the traps had done their job. It turned out that the rat wasn’t quite the giant mutant-fanged beast of my imagination, but a rather small, scrawny thing. The ratcatcher said the poor thing would have been scared to death in our kitchen. ‘Not as scared as me,’ I replied. He laughed, thinking I was joking.
That dreadful Christmas is burned in my memory. Because of our uninvited guest, yes, but as much because the rat threw a massive spanner in the works on the one day of the year which should always be the same. I like a challenge, to do new things and meet new people, including inviting friends or neighbours and their families round for Christmas drinks. But Christmas Day is all about tradition, nostalgia, food and family. And rats in the kitchen have no part in any of that.
Every family has its rituals and routines on special days of the year. Yvette was surprised when she first learned that in our family we throw raw eggs over the house every Easter Sunday and try to catch them. She was even more baffled to learn that, every year, without fail since the arrival of the video recorder, my mum and dad have watched Where Eagles Dare on Christmas afternoon, a 1960s war film with Richard Burton in which he and his American compatriots pose as German soldiers to execute a daring rescue from a castle on a steep mountain. Every year we listened to Richard Burton, explain who was spying on who at the end. I still can’t keep track of it all to this day.
My mum always ran her Christmas cooking with military precision. She made a Christmas cake every November, just like her own mum had. However many relatives came to visit, though, there was always still at least half of it left over at twelfth night, alongside the lonely yellow toffies rattling around in the otherwise empty Quality Street tin. A few days before Christmas, it was time to bake – she was a big fan of mince pies and sausage rolls. Then, on Christmas morning, and after Father Christmas had visited overnight to fill our pillowcases, my dad insisted we had a full English breakfast and that all the plates were cleared away before we opened the presents under the tree. We then dashed to church before returning to the familiar smell of a big roast chicken for the main Christmas Day course, back in the days when – for a family like ours – chicken was considered an expensive treat. We did have a Norfolk turkey once, but it was dry and there was just too much of it. I say too much, but, of course, just a couple of hours after we’d finished that enormous dinner, it was time to set out the Christmas tea as we watched Where Eagles Dare. Baked ham and pork pie, sausage rolls and cheese, stollen and sponge cakes, and perhaps a trifle too.
Above all, I learned from my mum not to treat Christmas lunch as a chore, but as a performance: one you prepare for weeks in advance and deliver with bravado on the day – every home cook’s moment of maximum enjoyment, excitement and prowess. A family meal which, at least once a year, can extend long into the afternoon and evening without the kids rushing off to finish homework, watch a programme or just escape their parents.
One of the great challenges of life when you get together with a partner and have children is how to meld those respective traditions so that everyone is happy and, in my case, you don’t upset your mother-in-law too much. Indeed, it’s one of the great fascinations of life for me that every new family has these tremendous and often tense negotiations before a child’s first Christmas about what traditions to establish as their own even while the tiny infant has no idea at all what any of it means.
For us, there were heated debates about whether the kids should leave out a stocking or a pillowcase, and once that was decided, whether Father Christmas would leave their main present there, or down in the sitting room by the tree. We agreed on the essential, traditional staples of the kids’ stocking/pillowcase presents: a satsuma and nuts of course, and also a Terry’s chocolate orange. But could Father Christmas’s presents be opened whenever the kids woke up, however early, or should they have to wait until their parents were awake too? Must the Christmas English breakfast be eaten and washed up before the present-giving starts (my inherited obsession), or could it wait? And when it comes to handing out the
presents, is it a free-for-all (as my mother-in-law prefers), or are they opened one by one with everyone else watching, as I would prefer but have never actually experienced as an adult?
When it comes to the kitchen, however, there is no compromise. You can only have one person in charge, and they must call all the shots. And, for the first fifteen years after our children were born, much as I was itching to try my hand at a Christmas dinner, that person wasn’t me. In those years, we alternated between visiting mine and Yvette’s parents. It was confusing for the kids that the order of events changed subtly year by year, but they coped. Yvette and I were always so exhausted from work back then, as well as the usual crazy last-minute Christmas Eve shopping trip, that we just wanted to collapse. My usual routine of eating a big meal, then falling asleep, would come on even more quickly than usual.
Once my mum’s dementia became more serious, however, and after Yvette’s parents had downsized, we started to take over the hosting and, while Yvette decorated the house, the job of Christmas cooking fell to me. I love cooking the Christmas dinner: the most important meal of the year, as much a logistical feat as a culinary challenge, especially if the wider extended family is visiting. Deciding when to do the shopping; where to put everything; how to clear room in the fridge; when to start preparing different items and courses; which jobs to trust to which kids; what each pot, hob, tray and oven need to be doing, and when, over several hours; how to get everyone sat round one table; and bringing the whole extravaganza together at exactly the right time is an organisational achievement which should ideally be done so smoothly that everyone present takes it for granted, which they inevitably will – unless it ever goes wrong.