by Ken Hom
Chopsticks raised for the beginning of my TV career. It was 1984, and here I am with the crew, mostly male, on the set of Chinese Cookery, my first series for the BBC. The firemen stayed out of the shot!
‘When your book comes out, I’ll host a party at my house.’ Julia Child kept her promise, and here’s the evidence. She invited the press to come and meet me at her home in Boston in September 1984. Through her brilliant books, I learnt to master the art of French cookery. And, through immense respect, I addressed her as ‘Mrs Child’.
October 1985, cooking for my Hong Kong classes. I’d say the wok was probably hot enough.
All I did was say I’d like to meet Eric Cantona. Next, I was cooking for the Manchester United football team in the ’80s. That’s Eric on the left, Ryan Giggs on the right and Alex Ferguson stretching over for a taste.
Filming an episode of Hot Wok in my Berkeley garden with producer Kate Kinninmont and my dog Titoune looking on.
John Cleese tucks into my crispy vegetarian parcels in 1995. We met when he was filming Fierce Creatures at Jersey Zoo and I was filming the Hot Wok series.
In Hong Kong in 1997, to film the BBC series Travels with the Hot Wok. It’s a tough job but someone’s gotta do it.
A mutual love of good food and wine united us. Alex Ferguson and me enjoying yet another glass together, this time at the launch of my Yellow River Café in London in 2000.
In 2001, I cooked for Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac at my restaurant Pacific Oriental. The French President sent this photo as a thank-you.
Celebrating my mother’s 80th birthday in Chicago’s Chinatown, June 2002.
Before lunch at Château Lagrézette, 2002. I’m with Tony and Cherie Blair, showing them the wines we’ll be savouring with the meal. They certainly seem interested.
With Anton Mosimann outside his restaurant in London’s Belgravia. Ever the kind and gallant knight, he helped me get that confit of duck to the world leaders.
I’d paid to see her sing at the Cheetah in Chicago in the ’60s. Four decades later, Tina Turner and I were introduced by Alain Dominique Perrin at his seriously swell birthday party in Paris in 2003.
Memories… The wine cellar at my watchtower home in Catus, in south-west France. This photograph was taken in 2006, just a few months before most of the wine was sold at auction at Christie’s.
The cherished kitchen at home in Catus, featuring that enormous table that I acquired from the shepherdess of the Scottish Borders.
In 2009, I was appointed an honorary OBE for services to culinary arts. To celebrate the award, I held a party for my friends in London. Here I am with lovely June Whitfield. We had met years earlier when I cooked for her in the Hot Wok series.
There’s rarely a break from cooking at home in Catus. Here I am, in the summer of 2011, at my Maestro Bonnet hob. It took a dozen men to carry in the oven’s mainframe.
It could have been a joke about how I don’t like cold weather. The row of cooks, from left, Gennaro Contaldo, Antonio Carluccio, Giorgio Locatelli and me. We were enjoying Antonio’s birthday party in London in April 2014.
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First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
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ISBN 978-1-78590-036-5
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Set in Dante and BentonSans by Adrian McLaughlin
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