Stay-at-home mum Nadiya Hussain won the nation’s hearts along with the Bake Off trophy last summer. Now, as she celebrates her first cookbook, she tells Ella Walker how her kitchen kudos has brought about a new lease of life
“I don’t do fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, because that means flavour-free, and I like flavour,” states Nadiya Hussain happily.
Of course, we already know this; you don’t go and win Great British Bake Off by presenting judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood with cakes made using chia seed egg substitutes – and arguably, no one has won in as much style as Nadiya.
“I love chips and I like carbs and I like to fry things every now and again – and I like green things, but it has to be with something that’s going to fill a hole,” she says, warming to her theme. “I’m all for being healthy, but ‘clean eating’ is not something I can ever see myself getting into, because I’m a cook and I love eating. I’m never going to start making green shakes and doing bone broth – unless it’s got pasta and been turned into a minestrone, no, I won’t be eating it.”
Characteristically frank and open, Nadiya beat fellow bakers Tamal Ray and Ian Cumming in the BBC’s 2015 Bake Off final, thanks to a combination of pure charm, fantastic facial expressions (“I didn’t know my face did that by the way,” she admits with a laugh), and a knack for inventive bakes that sent saliva ducts up and down the country into overdrive.
A year on, she’s celebrating the launch of her first cook book, Nadiya’s Kitchen (“My fourth baby”), has made the Queen’s 90th birthday cake, and has her own TV show in the pipeline – the brilliantly titled The Chronicles Of Nadiya – exploring her Bangladeshi food heritage.
“I don’t know,” says the 31-year-old, when asked why people so instinctively warmed to her, during Bake Off and since. “I don’t even get it! Maybe because I just rattle on, talking to anyone like I’ve known them forever.
“The one thing my husband said when I went on was, ‘You don’t want to go on there and not be yourself. You’re not an actress, you’re not a showman, just go on and just be yourself’, and that’s what I do – I’m only ever myself.”
The Luton-born mum-of-three, who wed husband Abdal in an arranged marriage when she was 19, struggles to get her shopping done these days without being accosted by affectionate fans.
“That’s what it comes with,” she says of the attention. “Everybody I meet is always really positive and somewhere in the sentence there’s always, ‘We’re really proud of you’, and for people I don’t know to say they’re proud of me, that’s a big deal.”
Most impressively perhaps, this is the woman who made Mary Berry cry on national television. “No one’s ever done that, but I have!” she beams, laughing. “I can’t believe she cried.”
Nadiya, who now lives in Milton Keynes, still talks to her Bake Off alumni almost every day (“We’ve got a group chat… usually for gossip”), and regularly sees Mary, while she often turns to Paul in times of bread-related need: “I’ll ask him advice on a sourdough that’s gone horribly wrong and he’ll help me. It’s not bad being friends with the best baker ever.”
Weirdly though, she might be the queen of Bake Off, but she’s not overly fussed by cake itself.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I love confectionery,” says Nadiya, who goes giddy over marshmallows and boiled sweets, “but when it comes to cake, I love making it because my kids and my husband love it, but I very rarely go for a full slice.”
She prefers savoury to sweet, but explains: “My family, they’re all into savoury cooking, but I’m the only one that bakes – I’m the only one that can give them that pleasure, so I’m not willing to give that up!”
Some things have changed, though.
“The biggest thing that’s changed is me,” muses Nadiya. “Before winning Bake Off, I’d lost my confidence. When you’ve got children, I felt like I was always just their mum – although I loved being a housewife, it was consuming me slightly, in a sense that it was all I was doing.
“My love of writing and books – I was losing a little bit of everything. I stopped wearing high heels because I was a mum and I’d stopped using public transport because I was too afraid of going on with a buggy and it not fitting, or – God forbid – if I couldn’t dismantle the thing and everybody would watch me.
“The stupidest things would consume me; I’d become afraid of everything,” she remembers. “But the old Nadiya isn’t about to reappear any time soon, no, no, no, I like this me.”
So do we, Nadiya, so do we.
If you’d like to cook like a Bake Off winner yourself, try one of these three recipes from Nadiya’s Kitchen…
:: FETA AND DILL SAVOURY MUFFINS
(Makes 12)
175g plain flour
50g wholewheat flour
2 1/2tsp baking powder
1tsp fine salt
275ml whole milk
1 medium egg
100g cottage cheese
75g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
50g feta cheese, crumbled
1/2tsp wholegrain mustard
2tbsp fresh dill, chopped
1tsp ground black pepper
8 sundried tomatoes, chopped
25g pumpkin seeds
Preheat the oven to 200C/fan 180C. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with cases.
Put the flours, baking powder and salt in a bowl, and stir everything together.
Now add the milk, egg, cottage cheese, melted butter, feta cheese, mustard, dill and black pepper. Mix it all together and spoon into muffin cases.
Top each muffin with a little chopped sundried tomato and sprinkle with the pumpkin seeds.
Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
:: COD AND CLEMENTINE
(Serves 2)
5 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 onion, diced
1tbsp tomato puree
1tsp fine sea salt
200ml water
1/2tsp turmeric
1tsp paprika
1tsp ground cumin
2 clementines, peel only, sliced
Juice of 1 clementine
300g cod fillets
A large handful of coriander, finely chopped
Basmati rice, to serve
Heat the oil in a medium pan over a medium heat. Once hot, add the crushed garlic and diced onion. Turn the heat down and cook gently until the onions are soft.
Add the tomato puree, salt and water. Cook for a further five minutes over a low heat.
Now add the turmeric, paprika and cumin, and cook gently for another five minutes. Keep adding small amounts of water if it starts to catch on the bottom.
Add the clementine peel and cook for 10 minutes, until the peel is soft and almost falling apart.
Use a potato masher to mash all the peel – breaking it up will intensify the flavour.
Add the fish, cover and cook for 10 minutes over a low heat.
Squeeze in the clementine juice. Once the fish is cooked, take the pan off the heat and sprinkle over the chopped coriander.
This dish is best eaten with hot basmati rice.
:: PARSNIP AND ORANGE SPICED CAKE
(Serves 10)
For the sponge:
230g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp ground cinnamon
1/2tsp ground nutmeg
2tsp ground mixed spice
200g caster sugar
100g walnuts, chopped, plus extra for topping
3 medium eggs
150ml sunflower oil
500g parsnips, peeled, ends trimmed and coarsely grated
Zest of 2 oranges, plus extra for decoration
For the frosting:
50g unsalted butter, softened
200g full-fat cream cheese
150g icing sugar
Zest of 1 orange
To make the cake: Preheat the oven to 180C/fan 160C. Grease and line the base of two 20.5cm sandwich tins with baking paper.
In a large bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and mixed spice. Add the caster sugar and chopped walnuts, mix through with a wooden spoon, and set aside.
Put the eggs and sunflower oil in a different bowl, and beat for a few minutes. Now mix all the dry ingredients into the egg and oil mixture, along with the grated parsnips and orange zest. Mix everything together until you have a thick batter (about two minutes).
Divide the mixture between the two cake tins, and level it off using a spatula. Bake for 25-30 minutes. The cakes should be golden, and a skewer inserted into the centre should come out clean.
Leave the cakes in the tins for 10 minutes, then turn out on to a wire rack and peel off the baking paper. Leave to cool completely.
To make the frosting: In a bowl, beat the butter with a wooden spoon then add the cream cheese and icing sugar. Beat until it all comes together, but be careful not to overdo it, or the frosting will become runny.
Leave the frosting in the fridge until you need it, if your kitchen is really warm.
Take your cooled cakes and sandwich them together using the frosting. Top the cake with lashings of frosting and sprinkle with walnuts, and some extra orange zest.
:: Nadiya’s Kitchen by Nadiya Hussain, photography by Holly Pickering, is published in hardback by Michael Joseph, priced £20. Available now
THREE OF THE BEST… Meringue nests
:: Tesco 8 Meringue Nests, £1.20 (www.tesco.com)
Crumbly and crisp, pile these high with whipped double cream and apricot compote for a summery treat.
:: Waitrose meringue nests, £1.60 for eight (www.waitrose.com)
As close as you’ll get to home-made meringue, these nests are still chewy and marshmallowy in the middle.
:: Sainsbury’s 8 Meringue Nests, £1.20 (www.sainsburys.co.uk)
Snap these into chunks and mix with double cream, raspberries and strawberries for a tasty fool pudding.
