Olivia Potts is a former criminal barrister who retrained as a pastry chef. She co-hosts The Spectator’s Table Talk podcast and writes Spectator Life's The Vintage Chef column. A chef and food writer, she was winner of the Fortnum and Mason's debut food book award in 2020 for her memoir A Half Baked Idea.
When I was at university, there was a cafe nearby that made the millionaire’s shortbread of dreams: slabs as big as your hand, with soft caramel that only just held its shape, and would yield when bitten into; a thick layer of chocolate, and a base that somehow defied physics by being impossible crumbly and
Meatloaf has some obstacles to overcome: it has an unprepossessing appearance, and an uninspiring, slightly off-putting name, which it shares with the famous singer. And it wasn’t a compliment when it was given to him: the singer’s father took one look at his newborn son and said he looked like ‘nine pounds of ground chuck’,
31 min listen
Melissa Thompson is an award-winning food writer and cook who started a supper club, serving Japanese food in her front room in 2014. In September 2022, Melissa released her debut cookbook, Motherland. It explores the evolution of Jamaican food, from the island’s indigenous population to today. On the podcast, she talks to Liv Potts about
Since 2011, black Africans have been the dominant black group in the UK. Many of them are the descendants of those travellers who came to London in the 1950s from Nigeria, Ghana and Somalia and other African countries, seeking education and prosperity, and found a new home. They now not only hold prominent positions in
I’m a sucker for a challenge. I absolutely cannot resist a little competition. Throw down a gauntlet, and I am compelled to pick it up. That’s probably one of the reasons that I love bananas Foster so much: it owes its existence to a challenge. In the 1950s, New Orleans was a major port of
23 min listen
Capri Cafaro was a member of the Ohio Senate for 10 years before becoming a political commentator. She can often be found on American television news channels and also hosts her own food podcast, Eat Your Heartland Out. On the podcast she talks to Lara and Olivia about memories of cooking Italian-American classics with her Grandma,
‘Come along, kiddie-winkies! Come and get your treacle tart,’ the Child Catcher trills in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, to lure children away. The youngsters are particularly taken with the idea of treacle tart, and it’s not difficult to imagine why: unapologetically sweet and sticky, it’s irresistible to small, greedy hands. It’s easy to dismiss treacle
Mussels were probably the first thing I ate as a child that I knew at the time was ‘an acquired taste’. They made me feel impossibly grown up, coming with a brigade of bowls, one for the mussels themselves, one for chips, one for bread, one for empty mussel shells, and a little lemon-scented bowl
21 min listen
Ayesha Hazarika is a journalist, broadcaster, stand-up comic and former advisor to three Labour leaders. On the podcast, she discusses memories of her mother’s chicken curry, navigating bacon sandwich-gate with Ed Miliband and why all cooked orange coloured food is ‘minging’.
If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, then a Trinity or Cambridge burnt cream must taste as sweet as its French twin, the crème brûlée. The two cooked custard dishes are essentially identical: an egg yolk-rich baked custard served cold and topped with a layer of hard caramel. Both are similar
24 min listen
Andy Burnham has served as Mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. Before this he held prominent positions in Gordon Brown’s cabinet, including health secretary and culture secretary. On the podcast he recalls Friday night ‘chippy teas’ as a child, the oddity of having food items named after him and discusses his work tackling food insecurity
How does the saying go? ‘Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.’ Well, if you’re looking for the highest possible status of breakfast, then kedgeree is the dish for you. Bran flakes just don’t quite scratch the same itch. Kedgeree cannot be casual; it requires time, both for
24 min listen
Oliver Woodhead is founder of L’Entente, the British brasserie in Paris. On the podcast, he tells Lara and Liv about what the French think about a traditional English breakfast, explains how he was inspired by London’s St. John restaurant, and asks what our hosts’ favourite ingredient is.
Laurie Colwin wrote: ‘No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.’ It is one of my favourite quotes about cooking, mainly because it feels true: everything you cook
I used to be a baked cheesecake sceptic: I didn’t feel they were worth the effort when other cheesecakes required you simply to stir together some ingredients and bung them in the fridge. My thinking was: why waste your time? Was the result really worth the extra effort? In turns out that yes, it was.
It’s possible that, like me, your first encounter with the Grande Dame of the Austrian pastry world, the apfelstrudel, was not in fact in one of the famed Viennese grand cafés, but rather from the freezer aisle at the supermarket. If it was anything like mine, it was probably a latticed, puffed version; the one
25 min listen
Al and Kitty Tait run the Orange Bakery in Watlington, and are the authors of Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives. On the podcast, the father-and-daughter pair explain how cooking changed their relationship, why baking helped Kitty out of depression, and why Watlingtons make such great customers.
Butter was not a major part of my childhood. In fact, I don’t remember it ever being in our fridge. My parents were subject to the saturated fat scaremongering of the 1980s, and consequently believed that butter was the enemy. Instead, we had spread: margarine, rebranded as a cholesterol-busting alternative to heart-clogging butter. But spread
One of the joys of writing about old-fashioned food is coming across dishes that are new to me, and turn out to be such a delight that they gain a recurring role in my cooking. Of course, some I’ve encountered were already among my established regulars – boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin. Others were childhood
25 min listen
Paul Feig is an actor, comedian and acclaimed filmmaker. He has directed films such as Bridesmaids, The Heat and the 2016 remake of Ghostbusters as well as episodes of Parks and Recreation and The Office. On the podcast, Paul talks to Lara and Olivia about growing up thinking food was bland, the secrets of on
