Good Food
type: channel
link: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com
date: 2025-09-23T10:18:43.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Top 10 potato recipes
items: Watermelon piña colada cocktails
items: Edible cookie dough
items: Emma Freud meets Chetna Makan
items: Emma Freud meets Davina McCall
items: Emma Freud meets Nigella Lawson
items: Emma Freud meets Jason Isaacs
items: Emma Freud meets Meera Syal
items: Emma Freud cooks for The Rangoon Sisters
items: Emma Freud cooks for Sabrina Ghayour

Top 10 potato recipes
type: item
creator: Emma Freud
subject: Guide
subject: How to
subject: Chips
subject: Emma Freud
subject: how to use
subject: Mash
subject: Potatoes
subject: Recipes
description: Britain has a real love affair with the potato. Emma explores ten ways to cook this versatile vegetable, from crisp roasties to creamy dauphinoise.
encoded: On average, each person in Britain eats three potatoes every day – but they are so entrenched in the fabric of British food culture that I worry we don’t give them enough applause. From classic roasties, baked potatoes and dauphinoise, to chips, crisps and mash, there are no limits to the versatility of the humble spud. Make the most of your bag of potatoes with our handy guides and recipes. Learn how to store potatoes so they stay fresher for longer, and discover simple ways to cut down on waste, including how to waste fewer potatoes and how to turn one bag into five easy meals. Short on time? Our guide on how to microwave a baked potato shows you how to get fluffy results in minutes. Once it’s ready, try one of our top baked potato toppings to keep weeknight dinners fresh and varied. As the weather turns colder, explore our comforting potato recipes – hearty, family-friendly dishes that are perfect for cosy evenings at home. Then check out our collection of potato recipes for year-round favourites. Read on for 10 recipes that celebrate potatoes in their finest form... Next, learn how to microwave a baked potato with our useful guide. 1. Crispiest ever roast potatoes Transform a bag of Maris Pipers into something special with a fluffy middle and golden crisp exterior. Using a combination of hot rapeseed oil and butter is the key to this method, allowing the spuds to crisp up nicely. Cooking your potatoes with their peelings plus a hint of lemon thyme, garlic and sea salt also intensifies the flavour. Try this recipe and soggy roasties will be a thing of the past! Elevate your Sunday dinner with this recipe for crispiest ever roast potatoes and read our guide on how to make the ultimate roast potatoes. 2. Baked potato I thought it was impossible to improve on a simple baked potato. I was wrong. Steam the spud for 20 minutes to infuse with moisture, then bake for 40 minutes in a hot oven to get the perfect combo of fluffy inside and extra crisp outside. If you want a…

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Watermelon piña colada cocktails
type: item
creator: Emma Freud
subject: Drinks
subject: Recipes
subject: Alcoholic drinks
subject: Coconut milk
subject: Rum
subject: summer cocktails
subject: Watermelon
description: Scoop out the flesh of a watermelon and make these refreshing piña colada boats, with rum and coconut milk. Save the skins to serve your cocktails

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Edible cookie dough
type: item
creator: Emma Freud
subject: Recipes
subject: American
subject: cookie dough recipe
subject: easy cookie dough
subject: Emma Freud
subject: flavoured cookie dough
subject: ice-cream topping
subject: Indulgent
subject: safe-to-eat cookie dough recipe
subject: Treat
description: Our easy cookie dough mixture is totally safe to eat and can be made in minutes. Keep a batch in the fridge, eat it by the spoon, serve it with ice cream, or mould it, shape it and colour it with food dye

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Emma Freud meets Chetna Makan
type: item
creator: Emma Freud
subject: Guide
subject: How to
description: Our columnist cooks with The Great British Bake Off’s Chetna Makan and chats about her latest book, having nothing to lose, and why she uses her children as her camera crew.
encoded: Ten million people saw the moment when Chetna Makan’s masala chai baklava failed to take her into the final of The Great British Bake Off series 5, but since that dark day, her stunning cookery books and popular YouTube videos have kept her centre stage. Her latest book is Chetna’s Healthy Indian Vegetarian, and in reading and cooking from it, I’ve fallen in love with her writing. There’s something magical about the gentle way she communicates – she’s tender about the culture which created this cuisine and immensely respectful of the ingredients. There’s also a quiet optimism about her world view. I asked her where that quality came from. Chetna: Yes, I am optimistic. I think this is why I left home at 17 to go into the crazy Bombay world of fashion. But at 27, I had to leave behind everything I’d built up as a fashion designer overnight when I moved to the UK. I had nothing to start off with. I wanted to get into fashion here, but it would have been four or five hours travelling a day and I thought, I can’t do it. Emma: Did you have family in the UK to support you? C: No – I’ve got absolutely no relatives in this country, not even a cousin, which in Indian terms is shocking because you always find cousins. I worked for a while in a beauty salon, and then in retail, and I just tried to make this place as happy and comfortable as I could. I’ve had no training, apart from as a fashion designer, and I didn’t think of making food my career at all. But I don’t believe opportunities land in your lap. You have to go out and get them, and this what I’ve done all my life. That’s why I applied to do Bake Off – I had nothing to lose and thought, ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’ So I went in and just enjoyed it. That’s my optimism. E: Not every baker on the show ends up with a publishing and broadcasting career like yours – why do you think it worked so well for you? C: I think people can associate with the food I make because it’s genuine. This is how I eat. I’m not trying …

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Emma Freud meets Davina McCall
type: item
creator: Emma Freud
subject: Guide
subject: How to
description: Our columnist talks to the TV presenter about her childhood, her cookbooks and evocative memories baked into particular recipes.
encoded: When Davina McCall began working on TV over 20 years ago, she changed the game for female presenters. She’s professional and accomplished, but also honest, open, emotional, funny, authentic and relentlessly true to herself. Now in her 50s, she’s added a fitness business to her CV and written four cookbooks. Emma: You had a complicated childhood (her mother moved to France when Davina was three, so she was brought up in the UK by her gran, only seeing her mum in the holidays). What kind of food did you eat? Davina: My granny, Pippy, made lots of old-school home food. All the pies, roast everything, plus a smattering of 70s-style convenience food like canned ravioli and chicken noodle packet soup. My favourite was her boiled ham with parsley sauce and mash – such a lovely, old-fashioned dish. When I went back to France it was a three-course meal, every meal, of pure gastronomy! Rabbit, the best cuts of every meat, frogs’ legs, seafood (which I never really got to grips with), every salad known to man, and huge platters of cheese, plus expensive wines – I’d be given a little glass from age 10. E: Was food a comfort as you kept moving home? D: Food with my granny was love. After bringing up three young children in post-war Britain, cooking was how she could care for me. She wanted to lavish me with sugar and butter in a way she couldn’t with her own children. But in France, it was a bit of a chore really as every meal went on for so long! There was only about an hour after a meal before we had to eat again. My mum cooked for me sometimes – she was a good cook – but it was rare. My grandparents had a maid called Maria who was more of a mother to my sister and I than our mother was. E: What was the first meal you remember cooking? D: My dad and my stepmum used to come down to Pippy’s every weekend to see me. My granny would make a pie for Friday night and give me the leftover pastry to fashion into something. They would have to eat it and pretend it was delicious. E: You’…

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Emma Freud meets Nigella Lawson
type: item
creator: Emma Freud
subject: Guide
subject: How to
description: Nigella talks to our columnist Emma about her food philosophy, her zeal for leftovers, the joy of camp cocktail ingredients, and her newest cookbook, Cook, Eat, Repeat.
encoded: Nigella Lawson isn’t a trained cook. She creates recipes, but thinks as an eater and writes profoundly on the emotional significance of food. Her first book, How to Eat, became the most valuable food guide of the 90s. Now she’s published Cook, Eat, Repeat, which has changed the way I think about cooking again. Her vegan gingerbread recipe is, according to my son’s college flatmate, the greatest gingerbread of all time. Due to covid restrictions, Nigella has also taken the photos for this feature. Emma: Your twelfth cookbook! Why did you write this one? Nigella: The question ‘why?’ can be such an instant drainer of confidence, as there are so many cookbooks out there, and it’s so easy to think of the many reasons why not to. But, after accidentally becoming a food writer 22 years ago, I think I’ve only just now felt absolutely sure that it’s what I’m meant to be doing. I wanted – partly out of gratitude – to reflect on what I’ve learnt about food, what it means, what recipes can do, what cooking is. E: After all these years, do you still love encouraging people to eat? N: I love feeding people, and I have an evangelical need to share my enthusiasms and convey the deep pleasure I get from food. You know how when you’re eating something wonderful, you want to press a forkful into someone’s mouth so they can taste it too? That’s what I insistently felt writing this. It felt like the right book for me, and that’s a delicious pleasure. E: Did you start the book with a particular mission? N: I don’t think I have anything as highfalutin as a ‘mission’, but I certainly wanted to encourage people to investigate food and think about flavour, and to show how the practical and emotional reside together. I’m not sure it’s something that can necessarily be taught, but in showing the deep joy I get from cooking, I hope readers are led to some delicious wallowing of their own. I also felt a need to show how the fabulous poetry of the kitchen comes out of so many repeated mundane tas…

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Emma Freud meets Jason Isaacs
type: item
creator: Emma Freud
subject: Guide
subject: How to
subject: Acting
subject: Actor
subject: Director
subject: Emma Freud
subject: Harry Potter
subject: Hollywood
subject: Italian
subject: Jason Isaacs
subject: Jewish food
subject: movie star
subject: Movies
subject: Spagetti
subject: Star Trek
description: Our columnist chats to the actor about making movies, his Jewish heritage and the ‘mutant’ spaghetti bolognese he’s famed for among his family.
encoded: Jason Isaacs is one of the UK’s busiest movie stars. His films include Green Zone, Peter Pan and the Harry Potter series. He’s less well known for his cooking – but as our columnist found out, there’s an Italian chef inside him that longs to be acknowledged... by his children. Emma: Tell me about this bolognese. It’s brilliantly eccentric – how did it evolve? Jason: It started when I was a student living in a shared house in Bristol and the only one who cooked. I could entirely indulge my twin desires: first, that every bite must be a sensory overload of riches – sweet, savoury and spicy – and, secondly, that everyone must be left undoing buttons and groaning with equal parts regret and delight. This recipe wins on both those accounts. E: Do your children enjoy your food? J: An interesting thing happened in lockdown – my kids won’t let me cook. Anything. They want their mum’s dishes and nothing else. I’m hoping it’s less a vote of no-confidence in me, and more a reflection of their hunger for the familiar during this strange time. It’s been great to have this feature as an excuse to cook this over-garlicky version of bolognese that’s usually eaten for weeks afterwards on toast in our house. E: What role did food have in your home growing up? J: I grew up in Liverpool, one of four argumentative brothers. Mealtimes were a deafening battle zone and the anchor points for family life. We lived in a tight- knit Jewish community, but in our house there was never a mention of God. As far as I could tell, the Jewish rituals and festivals were a way to remind ourselves of the many times we survived, and to eat spectacularly unhealthy food to excess. My cooking owes so much to my late mum who made the greasiest, tastiest, heart-attack food in the western world – my dad’s two quadruple bypasses were evidence of that. E: What were her signature dishes? J: Her food fell into two categories: meals I couldn’t get enough of, such as roast potatoes that squirted hot oil across the ro…

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Emma Freud meets Meera Syal
type: item
creator: Emma Freud
subject: Guide
subject: How to
subject: biriyani
subject: Easy vegetarian
subject: Emma Freud
subject: Indian cooking
subject: Indian food
description: Our columnist chats to actress, writer and comedian Meera Syal about her Indian food heritage, and tries her signature vegetarian biryani.
encoded: Meera Syal is one of my favourite humans. Not only is she a brilliant actress and stunning novelist, but she makes the best vegetarian biryani I’ve ever eaten. Her culinary skills were taught to her by her mother, Surrinder, who lives with her in north London. We talked about her mum’s rural Indian childhood, and Meera cooked me her signature dish. Her husband – comedian and actor Sanjeev Bhaskar – took the photos. Emma: How did your mum become such a great cook? Meera: My mum grew up in a small village in the Punjab, and her family were farm owners so they cooked whatever they had picked that day. They didn’t have fridges, ovens or kitchen appliances, and never wasted anything. Mum grew up making her own butter and yogurt, and the whey that was left over was mixed with spices and drunk as a health tonic, or used as a conditioner for hair to keep it shiny. When she took her father his morning tea, she would swing by the goat, grab the udder and squirt the milk directly into my grandpa’s cup before delivering it. As they didn’t have easy access to doctors or pharmacists, they relied on the medicinal and nutritional value of foods and herbs. They used ginger to help digestion, garlic for colds and blood thinning, nuts to generate warmth in the body in winter, and turmeric as a natural antiseptic, which was often mixed with warm milk. E: She taught you that side of her food culture while bringing up the family in the UK? M: She taught us all these things, so food was always important to us. It was how we kept healthy, but also it was soul-food for my parents as it was a way of keeping their mother country alive. It abated homesickness as well as hunger, and through mum’s recipes I learned about my family history and her childhood. Hopefully I keep those foods and memories alive. E: How hard was it for her to cook when she first got to the UK? M: Mum said that when they first arrived in the early 60s, trying to find garlic, ginger and black pepper was like trying to sco…

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Emma Freud cooks for The Rangoon Sisters
type: item
creator: Emma Freud
subject: Guide
subject: How to
subject: best cookbooks
subject: burmese
subject: Emma Freud
subject: The Rangoon Sisters
description: Our columnist, Emma Freud, celebrates Burmese cuisine with Emily and Amy Chung, whose successful supper clubs led to their first cookbook.
encoded: The Rangoon Sisters are two young doctors whose Burmese supper clubs became legendary. They came to my house for mohinga – a rice noodle & fish soup described by food critic Grace Dent as ‘the most delicious thing I put in my mouth in 2017’. Emma Did you grow up on Burmese food? Emily Not really – we had a mix of everything. Mum comes from Burma (we still call it that, though it’s now known as Myanmar), Dad was Chinese, and we’re English, so we ate food from all three cultures and more. We often cooked for the family, and made the Christmas dinner while we were still at school. E Why did you both want to work in medicine? Amy We were both good at science, and there was a certain expectation and pressure at our school to go in that direction. But I have no regrets – it’s good. I’m doing psychiatry in east London, and Emily’s in south London working in sexual health and HIV. Emma So how did you end up with a supper club on the side? Amy We wanted to spread knowledge and awareness of Burmese food and what it offers. When we started the supper clubs back in 2013, there wasn’t much access to it and we wanted people to try it. People expect it to be like Thai food – and there are similarities – but it has its own flavours and textures that make it unique. Emily We also wanted to give ourselves a challenge. The food industry is so different to working in hospitals, and it’s quite nice for us to have that break. When you apply for medical school, you have to show you’re an all-rounder, so you’re encouraged to do the Duke of Edinburgh Award, or play an instrument. But when you start work, you don’t have time for any of that stuff. Amy In medicine, we know people that have become burnt out because they don’t give themselves time to do other things. Emma Anything that slows you down and encourages you to look in another direction has got to be healthy. I also cook for that reason. So how did your first supper club come about? Amy We went to an American supper club in Walthamst…

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Emma Freud cooks for Sabrina Ghayour
type: item
creator: Emma Freud
subject: Guide
subject: How to
subject: Baking
subject: Baklava
subject: Emma Freud
subject: Sabrina Ghayour
description: Our columnist chats with the Iranian-born Saturday Kitchen regular about her journey to becoming one of Britain’s best-selling cookbook authors.
encoded: Sabrina Ghayour, award-winning author of best-selling Middle Eastern cookery books Persiana, Bazaar and Sirocco, a regular on BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen and guest judge on MasterChef, came to my kitchen where I cooked her amazing baklava buns and we chatted till the cows came home. Emma Did you train as a chef? Sabrina No. Never. But I worked for 17 years in restaurants. I’ve worked in McDonald’s, Pret, I’ve done all the jobs in hotels from switchboard operator to running events and I spent loads of time waitressing when I co-ordinated functions, plus a lot of time in the kitchen. I can run front of house, back of house, I can look at a restaurant with bad service and know exactly what the problem is. There are very few roles in any hotel or restaurant I haven’t done. E Has not being trained ever made you feel ‘less than’ in such a hierarchical industry? S I don’t feel that way, because I know myself and what I’m bad at, and I’m perfectly open, because there’s no shame in not knowing everything about everything. They say that, in business, the people who are most successful are the ones that don’t have a paper education. Heston Blumenthal didn’t train and maybe, if he did, he wouldn’t be making spherical bubbles of salt and vinegar or whatever. E Where do you get this confidence from? S I’m a really hard worker, and I know what I’m capable of. I started work when I was 10, wrapping eggs in a Chinese supermarket for a pound an hour. I’ve always earned my own money and I’ve always cooked. E Why? S I had to – my mother can’t cook to save her life. We lived in Iran till I was two, but when the revolution came, streets were being commandeered and women were being arrested if they weren’t covered up. My grandmother is a glamorous, fierce woman who always refused to be told what to do, so me, my mum and my grandma fled to London. In the UK, I was the one who cooked every family meal. The only thing that was always instilled in me was ‘have your own ship’. When things aren’…

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