Good Food
type: channel
link: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com
date: 2022-11-28T10:25:38.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Food Milestones - Angellica Bell
items: Food milestones - Shirley Ballas
items: Food milestones – Andi Oliver
items: Food milestones - Ade Adepitan
items: Food milestones - Tara Fitzgerald
items: Food milestones - Jenny Agutter
items: Food milestones - Sir Chris Hoy
items: Food milestones - Amy Williams
items: Food milestones - Mark Gatiss
items: Food milestones - Alexander Armstrong

Food Milestones - Angellica Bell
type: item
creator: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Information
subject: Angelica Bell
subject: Angellica Bell
subject: CBBC
subject: Celebrity
subject: Family cooking
subject: Food memories
subject: interview
subject: October
subject: Presenter
subject: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: showdown
description: The presenter of BBC Two’s The Big Family Cooking Showdown shares her foodie memories and her pride at winning BBC One's Celebrity MasterChef in 2017.
encoded: Angellica Bell presents The Big Family Cooking Showdown on BBC Two with chef Tommy Banks. She was previously the face of CBBC and has been a reporter on BBC One’s The One Show since 2007. Last year, she demonstrated her passion for food, winning Celebrity MasterChef. The mum-of-two is married to former CBBC co-presenter Michael Underwood. My first food memory is being in my gran’s kitchen in the Caribbean. I remember eating fried plantain, stews with dumplings and macaroni cheese. She was a cook at a school when she first arrived in the UK. I was a massive fan of school dinners. I loved fish fingers, chips and baked beans, and jam tart with custard – I never liked packed lunches. When my stepdad, from Yorkshire, joined our family, he kept talking about toad-in-the-hole. I was quite young, probably seven or eight, and I didn’t know what he was going on about. But then he made it and I loved it. My family were from the Caribbean and had settled in London and that area was all I knew but, because of my stepdad, we started to go up north and travel around the country. I think that’s when I started to love the countryside. When I got the job at CBBC, one of the first trips I did was to Lapland in 2000. I was filming Christmas links with Michael, but we were just friends then. I ate snails for the first time and reindeer, which is their traditional dish, and I remember everything being in aspic! The first meal that Michael cooked for me was shepherd’s pie. We’d only just started seeing each other and I was excited because it was the first time that someone I was dating had cooked for me. Michael is the sort of cook who has to follow a recipe step by step. I got to his flat at 7pm and the food didn't hit the table until 11pm. I was so hungry, I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to have to order a pizza.’ It was high-end shepherd’s pie – the vegetables were chopped beautifully and he did his own gravy. I was impressed, even though I was starving! Michael did MasterC…

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Food milestones - Shirley Ballas
type: item
creator: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Information
subject: Celebrity
subject: food milestones
subject: interview
subject: Strictly come dancing
subject: Tv
description: The Strictly Come Dancing judge on her journey from growing up in a low-income family to eating steak and lobster in Beverly Hills.
encoded: Shirley, 57, of BBC One primetime dance contest fame, is one of the most decorated ballroom and Latin dancers in the world. Nicknamed the Queen of Latin, she won the British Open to the World Latin American Championships with her first husband Sammy Stopford and took the title twice with her second husband, Corky Ballas. Shirley retired from competitive dancing in 1996 and became an internationally renowned coach and adjudicator. She replaced Len Goodman as head judge on Strictly last year. We lived on the Leasowe housing estate (on the Wirral) and I was eligible for free school dinners. The other kids laughed at me but all I could think was, ‘I’m getting a hot meal and you’re having a sandwich.’ I would eat everything. People didn’t like semolina, they didn’t like spotted dick – I loved everything. I will forever be grateful for the hot dinners at Leasowe Primary. Even though we were broke, we always had a Sunday roast. We’d have mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, two veg, meat, lots of gravy made with Bovril and there would be a pudding afterwards. I was two when my father left, so I wouldn’t know what it was like to be a daddy’s girl. I saw him sporadically but I don’t remember him even giving me a pound towards a pair of shoes. I was raised by a single mother who did anything and everything to provide for my older brother David and me – babysitting, delivering leaflets or working in a bar. She taught me to do an honest day’s work and to stand on my own two feet. When I was 16, I headed for London and the bright lights of dancing. My mother worked at Cadbury’s at the time and she’d make me up a goodie box of tins of soya mince, beans and Smash potato and send it down. I would wash hair, do gardens and scrub anything to earn a living and, after I’d been in London for eight months, I got the opportunity to dance with Sammy Stopford. I married Sammy when I was 18 and we lived with a man called Bob who had a dog called Kiki. Bob would boil liver for …

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Food milestones – Andi Oliver
type: item
creator: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Information
subject: Andi Oliver
subject: August
subject: celebrity interview
subject: Chef
subject: female
subject: food milestones
subject: Presenter
subject: Rosanna Greenstreet
description: The BBC presenter, chef and food judge reveals her favourite childhood treats, love of Mexican food and her culinary misadventures with daughter Miquita.
encoded: Chef Andi Oliver, 54, is a host on Saturday Kitchen Live and a judge on Great British Menu and BBC Radio 4's Food and Farming Awards. She has a restaurant, Andi’s, in London and is a regular on Radio 4’s Kitchen Cabinet. Previously she cooked with friend, singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry in Neneh and Andi Dish It Up. She lives in London with partner Garfield Hackett. Her daughter Miquita is also a presenter. We were an RAF family When I was five, we moved to Cyprus where I was hit by an explosion of colour, culture and food. My mum used to work on the base and she would take my brother Sean and me to a little van just outside her office which sold loukaniko – Greek sausage in a hot dog bun with melted halloumi. I absolutely loved them. We came back to England when I was 10 I missed the sun and outdoor living. We were the only black children in Bury St Edmunds, and I vividly remember being stared at and people whispering behind their hands. The one thing I liked were the puddings at school – spotted dick, jam roly-poly, chocolate sponge with chocolate custard. Steamed English puds and custard are still heaven to me. I met Neneh Cherry when I came to London and joined my brother Sean’s band Rip Rig + Panic Neneh and I have always cooked together – we used to do dance routines to the Jackson 5 while cooking. Food is the glue that holds our families together. At Notting Hill Carnival last year we cooked at Neneh’s house in west London and it was beautiful. We made trays of chicken, which we finished off on a barbecue in the garden, and a huge Mexican black bean salad with smoked chilli, avocado and red onion. We barbecued fish, too, and did rice and roast potatoes, and for the vegans we made smoked tofu, seared and coated with turmeric and toasted fresh coconut. Nothing makes us happier than a big table heaving with dishes. We like a banquet. My dad used to make amazing roasts These included chicken or lamb with perfect roast potatoes, rolled in seasoned cornmeal to get t…

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Food milestones - Ade Adepitan
type: item
creator: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Information
subject: Ade Adepitan
subject: basket ball
subject: Celebrity
subject: Childhood
subject: dating
subject: disability
subject: Elle Exxe
subject: Food memories
subject: food milestones
subject: interview
subject: Rosanna Greenstreet
description: The TV presenter and Paralympian on the food that shaped his life, from Nigerian party food to pre-basketball match carb loading.
encoded: Nigerian-born Ade Adepitan moved with his family to the UK when he was three. He began to play wheelchair basketball at the age of 12, and went on to become a Paralympian, winning bronze in Athens in 2004. As a presenter, Ade has been all over the world with programmes such as the BBC’s Travel Show and Channel 4’s Dispatches and Unreported World. He has also hosted countless sporting events and co-presented the BAFTA award-winning coverage of the 2012 Paralympics alongside Clare Balding. This year, he published his first children’s book. My first food memory is making beans on toast for my younger brother and sister. When we were growing up, my parents both had two jobs and went to evening classes, so I would be in charge of cooking. When you’re six and seven and your older brother’s made you a cup of tea and beans on toast, and Danger Mouse or ThunderCats is on the TV, it’s not bad! I can’t remember the main courses we had a school, but I remember the desserts. These included bread and butter, semolina and jam, pink custard with chocolate cake. Sometimes we had blocks of ice cream in paper that you unwrapped and put between wafers. At school, there was a black girl and a black guy and a few Asian kids, but I was the only disabled person, so I was a novelty. On special occasions, mum and dad made Nigerian party food: spicy fried fish with rice and plantain. I was born in Nigeria, and contracted polio at 15 months. It became apparent to my parents that I was going to struggle in Lagos where, in the 1970s, people didn’t really know what to do with someone with a disability. They made the decision to bring me to the UK: it was heartbreaking because my older sister, Omoyile, had Down’s Syndrome and they couldn’t afford to bring us both over. They thought because I couldn’t walk, they would bring me over first. It was seven or eight years before my parents were able to afford to bring Omoyile over. By that time, we had a younger brother, sister and a cousin living with u…

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Food milestones - Tara Fitzgerald
type: item
creator: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Information
subject: Celebrity
subject: Food memories
subject: food milestones
subject: game of thrones
subject: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Tara Fitzgerald
description: The Requiem, Game of Thrones and Waking the Dead actress shares her memories of her mum’s legendary cooking, and reveals why she adds bacon to her porridge.
encoded: Star of the BBC drama Requiem, Tara Fitzgerald, 50, made her name in the 1991 film Hear My Song. She went on to appear in Sirens with Hugh Grant and Brassed Off with Ewan McGregor and, in 1995, she won plaudits for playing Ophelia opposite Ralph Fiennes in Hamlet in the West End and on Broadway. On TV she is known for playing Dr Eve Lockhart in Waking the Dead and Selyse Baratheon in Game of Thrones. My mother is a very good cook, and her lasagne is famous throughout the land. She soaks the pasta and makes her own béchamel. She almost burns the sides of the lasagne so the outside is crisp and the inside is chewy. I had my first McDonald’s with my father. My parents split up when I was four or five and then my father died when I was 11. By then, they’d both remarried. My stepfather was the actor Norman Rodway and we lived in Primrose Hill. My mother is a photographer who also paints, and my father was a painter. On my mother’s side there were artistic people – actors, directors, writers. I had already decided I wanted to act but Norman reinforced the idea. I met his friends from the Royal Shakespeare Company – they were all eating my mother’s lasagne – and he was very helpful. He thought it better if I wasn’t a child actor because it would be harder to be taken seriously as an adult. My first food memory is of cocktail gherkins – taking them out of the fridge and helping myself. I must have been three and we were in the Bahamas, where we lived for a while with my mother’s parents. My grandfather was a lawyer there. Later, I was fastidious about keeping a diary, and I still have some from when I was eight and nine. The entries are all about food: ‘I had a lovely day, we had spaghetti.’ When I was 12, I went on a school trip to Switzerland and we stayed the night in Paris. The food in the restaurant we went to was inedible. I had a little escalope – I suppose it was veal – and I didn’t want to eat it. It was exactly the same size as the salver for oil and vinegar, so I…

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Food milestones - Jenny Agutter
type: item
creator: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Information
subject: Actress
subject: call the midwife
subject: Celebrity
subject: column
subject: Food memories
subject: food milestones
subject: interview
subject: Jenny Agutter
subject: railway children
subject: Rosanna Greenstreet
description: She spent a lot of her childhood eating exotic food abroad but, nowadays, the Call the Midwife star much prefers roast beef at home in Cornwall
encoded: Call the Midwife star Jenny Agutter, 65, was born in Somerset and rose to fame when she was 14, playing Roberta in the TV adaptation of The Railway Children and, when she was 17, starring in the 1970 film. Her other movies include Walkabout, Logan’s Run, The Eagle Has Landed, An American Werewolf in London and Equus, for which she won a BAFTA. Since 2012, the mum-of-one has starred as Sister Julienne in the BBC’s Call the Midwife, now in its eighth series. I lived in Singapore from the age of three to six. My father was stationed in the army there and my mother, older brother and I went out by boat to join him. The food sticks in my mind because it was often rice wrapped in lotus leaves. It was fragrant, different and lovely. At boarding school the food was really bad. I was at Elmhurst Ballet School in Surrey from the age of eight to 16 and they gave us steamed fish with crisps on top, which was a lovely idea but the crisps were always soggy. We also had pork belly which was chewy and still had hairs on it and grey minced beef. We were dancers so we were hungry and ate whatever we had, quickly. My favourite meal there was hamburgers which we had at summer weekends. It wasn’t so much that they were great, but more that we were allowed to eat outside, sitting on rugs, which made it more of an occasion. When my father was stationed in Cyprus, my mother always used markets rather than the army stores. She made a wonderful dish with a large sea bass or bream. She would cook it with herbs, olive oil and lemon and it was absolutely delicious. But my favourite meal was ‘chicken in a basket’ which my father used to make – chicken and chips in a basket lined with paper. In Cyprus we used to go up into the mountains and have meze. I was never keen on the okra, which always seemed slimy, but I loved the aubergine and tomato and the goat skewers. I’ve done lots of travelling and for me, a different culture is all about the food. After I made the film of The Railway Children, I …

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Food milestones - Sir Chris Hoy
type: item
creator: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Information
subject: Celebrity
subject: Chris Hoy
subject: cyclist
subject: Diet
subject: food
subject: food milestones
subject: interview
subject: memories
subject: olympic
subject: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Sir
description: Britain’s all-time greatest Olympian reveals the unhealthy lifestyle he had to ditch in his quest to become a gold-medal winner.
encoded: With six gold medals and one silver, Sir Chris Hoy is Great Britain’s most successful Olympic athlete ever. Born in Edinburgh, he won Olympic gold at Athens 2004, three at Beijing 2008, and his fifth and sixth in London 2012. He was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2008 and knighted in 2009. Since retiring in 2013, he has launched Hoy Bikes and co-created the Flying Fergus children’s books. He lives in Manchester with his wife Sarra and their children, Callum and Chloe. My first food memory is trying to get out of eating school lunches. Teachers would stand at the end of the table and, if you tried to throw food away, they would make you sit back down and eat it. I would finish my little carton of milk, pop the lunch inside and shut the carton. Then I could smuggle them into the bin. When I was a child I was obsessed with the film Jaws, and I couldn’t believe it when I saw shark on a menu in Spain. I went on and on until my parents let me have it. It was lovely, and I wrote a thank you card, with a picture of Jaws, to the chef. During my first term at St Andrews I lived on takeaways. It was only when I had pictures taken with the family at Christmas that I saw how much weight I’d put on. I’d barely touched my bike or done any training for three months. I’d been at the union every night having a brilliant time, but it wasn’t healthy. After university I moved to Manchester to be near the velodrome. I met Sarra in 2006 – she’d come from Edinburgh on a Friday and I would pick her up at 9pm after I’d finished training, had a massage and dashed to the supermarket. Dinner would be Walker’s Sensations crisps, a Pizza Express pizza and a bottle of red. I could have made more effort but I didn’t want to set the bar too high! The worst meal I’ve ever had was in Mauritius. Sarra and I had a tasting menu – the chef was trying a bit too hard. He had a liquidised caesar salad in a shot glass. I saw Sarra put it to her lips and try to swallow it, her eyes watered and I t…

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Food milestones - Amy Williams
type: item
creator: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Information
subject: Amy Williams
subject: celebrity interview
subject: February 2018
subject: food
subject: food milestones
subject: memories
subject: Olympics
subject: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: skeleton
subject: sled
subject: Winter
description: The winter Olympian on her mum’s special macaroni cheese, dietary restrictions and her obsession with honey.
encoded: Olympic gold medallist Amy Williams, 35, started her sporting life as a 400m runner in her hometown, Bath. While studying at university, she switched to the skeleton sled, which is essentially a tea-tray that hurtles down a frozen track at 80mph. She went on to represent Great Britain at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and won gold in the skeleton race. Her triumph saw her become Britain’s first solo Winter Olympian in 30 years, the first woman champion in 58 years, and also set a double track record in the sport. Following her success, she was awarded an MBE and named Glamour magazine’s Sportswoman of the Year. Since retiring as an athlete, she has become a television presenter and commentator, and taken part in the adventure shows 71 Degrees North and Alone in the Wild. In 2015, she married Craig Ham, who is in the army. They have one son, Oscar, and live in a village outside Bath. My mum would make all of our bread, so we had fresh rolls for our lunchboxes. She would never buy cakes or biscuits – if my brother, sister and I wanted something sweet at teatime we had to make it ourselves, so we were always in the kitchen baking! My dad – a chemistry professor at Bath University – would play with us in the garden and take us out for Sunday afternoon walks. All of my siblings loved sport at school, and I started training with the athletics club. Mum is the cook; I haven’t seen my dad cook anything more than beans on toast. Her speciality is macaroni cheese, which I used to request before I went away to compete. She'd make a massive one with a crisp topping, and add tuna and random things like boiled eggs. When I was a competing athlete, I was really strict with myself. Whatever went into my body had to help me win, and if I was going to train all day in the gym, I only wanted to fuel it with good stuff. I would eat at least five times a day and added plenty of vegetables and protein to each meal. Like any athlete, I wanted to eat within five minutes, so I would…

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Food milestones - Mark Gatiss
type: item
creator: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Information
subject: celebrity interview
subject: food
subject: food milestones
subject: Mark Gatiss
subject: Rosanna Greenstreet
description: The Doctor Who and Sherlock star shares his memories of ghastly school dinners, preserved sausages and what he eats when the nights draw in...
encoded: After studying drama at Bretton Hall in Wakefield, Mark Gatiss, 51, created dark radio and TV series The League of Gentleman with Reece Shearsmith, Jeremy Dyson and Steve Pemberton. With Steven Moffat, he created the hugely successful and award-winning series Sherlock, in which he plays Mycroft Holmes. Mark has also appeared in Doctor Who, Wolf Hall and Game of Thrones. In 2017, Mark curated and directed Queers – a series of eight monologues for BBC Four to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which saw the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality. He lives in London with his husband, actor Ian Hallard. I have a vivid memory of being given a cake on my third birthday. It would’ve been a fruit cake, because that’s what I like. I used to love being allowed to scrape out the bowl after Mum made a cake. I'm the youngest and had to fight my brother, Phillip, and sister, Jill, for it. We always used to ask, ‘Why can’t we just have a big bowl of this – it’s much nicer than cake!’ At school, puddings like jam roly-poly, lemon meringue pie and bread and butter pudding were so ghastly they would bring me out in a rash. Many years later I discovered that they can all be lovely if properly made, particularly bread and butter pudding. At school I was a geek – even before the word was invented. I remember someone asking, ‘Are you going to be a professor when you grow up?’ That’s how I looked – my hair was all over the place, I had big glasses and I was obsessed with dinosaurs, astronomy and Dr Who. Dr Who and Sherlock Holmes have always been part of my life. To have made a career from things I love has been amazing. I grew up in the north east, where there was no concept of eating out. I didn’t eat at a restaurant until I was in my teens. Eating out was getting fish and chips. We made pasta pictures at school, and I had to buy pasta specially – canned spaghetti was the only pasta I knew. At home, we ate simple food. My favourite was corned beef hash, …

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Food milestones - Alexander Armstrong
type: item
creator: Rosanna Greenstreet
subject: Information
subject: Alex Armstrong
subject: Alexander Armstrong
subject: Celebrity
subject: comedian
subject: December
subject: Food memories
subject: food milestones
subject: interview
subject: Rosanna Greenstreet
description: The Pointless presenter, singer and popular comedian shares his festive plans and memories of '70s school dinners.
encoded: Alexander Armstrong, 47, presents Pointless on BBC One with Richard Osman. He found fame as one half of the comedy duo Armstrong and Miller (with Ben Miller). In 1996, their sketch show was nominated for a Perrier Award at Edinburgh Festival, and their TV show won the 2010 best comedy BAFTA. Alexander has released two top 10 albums, A Year of Songs and Upon a Different Shore, and has just released a Christmas album, In a Winter Light. He lives in Oxford with wife Hannah, and their four sons, Rex, 10, Paddy, eight, Edward, seven, and Henry, two. We are having an urban Christmas for the first time in our children’s lives... As we’ve just moved to Oxford to be closer to their school. Food, drink and music will be at the heart of it. A friend provides our turkey every year, so we know where it has come from. The food critic Giles Coren is married to my wife’s sister and is a central part of our Christmas scene. He’s in charge of bringing smoked salmon from a place in London that does fantastic lox. We always make festive drinks. After a few days, drinking at Christmas can be a slog, but if you keep the cocktails varied and fun, even the dog end of Boxing Day can be a party. I’m a fan of a White Lady, a gin and lemon cocktail. It traditionally includes Cointreau, but we also make it with King’s Ginger –a Ginger Lady. I’ve also made chilli sherry, which is great in cocktails. Put dried chillies into a bottle of Tio Pepe until they fill a third of the bottle – drink some of the sherry to make room for them! – then leave for a month. A tiny capful of it gives soups and casseroles a lovely warm kick . Our guests arrive on Christmas Eve. We put on carols from King’s Cambridge, and sing along to the last few with Christmas cake and tea. Then it’s time to wrap presents, pack children off to bed early and have a jolly supper. On Christmas Day... We open stockings and then go to church. Of course, the boys resent having to leave the tempting pile of presents under the tree, but a…

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