Hussain Nadiya - Nadiyas British Food Adventure

As a first-generation Brit, born to Bangladeshi immigrant parents, I grew up in a household where family was not just your mother, father and siblings, but also the grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, first-, second-, third-, fourth-cousins and even the neighbours. Everyone was family. If you knew us or knew our father you were family. It was an open-door policy in our home. If my parents were cooking and the smell wafted out of the kitchen window, then you were welcome.

For me growing up, the food I ate was the only food I knew of. Forget shopping lists, or menus, or special events food for us was the excitement my dad felt when he walked through the door with a freshly bought tiger fish on his shoulder. It cost him a weeks wages but it reminded him of home. In our family, Dad was the daydreamer.

For me growing up, food was about my mother sitting on the floor with her sisters-in-law, parcelling samosas, heavy work for one day making light work for the month, thirsty work equalling thrifty work. In our family, Mum was the workforce.

For me growing up, food was about visiting my sick brother in hospital and watching him sip a dense, murky cocoa drink to build up his strength while the rest of us ate fish and chips at the end of his hospital bed. Him watching us with sad eyes, desperate to eat real food, dreaming of mums chicken and cabbage curry. Similarly, it was watching my poorly sister come round from her anaesthetic and knowing she craved the sweet taste of the fruit squash she wasnt allowed, while we sat by her bedside quenching our own thirst with flat, sugary Lucozade. The bitter with the sweet. She waited weeks to enjoy a spoonful of our sweet, scented vermicelli for breakfast. My brother and sister were the cravers of comfort and home.

The rest of us were lucky. Lucky to be at home, lucky to be able to eat whatever my nan cooked while my parents sat by hospital beds. My food shaped my world, like everyone elses does theirs, creating unique memories for each of us individually. My food was full to the brim with colour, bursting at the seams with laughter, waiting at the door in anticipation, overflowing with happiness, seasoned with a measure of sadness.

At home, we lived on rice and curries. Not just any old rice and curry, but some of the most beautifully cooked, elegantly spiced curries I have ever eaten. Always filled with Asian vegetables that had a carbon footprint as hefty as the receipts my dad came home with. Rice and curry after school every night. Rice and curry for lunch on the weekend and the same again for dinner. We didnt know any different so we never complained. We ate in congregation on the floor and we ate with our hands, all five fingers stained and scented with turmeric.

During term time, school lunches were a world away from the meals we loved at home. We used knives and forks to eat, filling up on pizza, chips, beans, burger, mashed potatoes and peas (not all at once, though sometimes I wished it could be!), followed by apple crumble, cake, tarts, biscuits and every colour of custard you can think of.

The food of my childhood was a collision of two worlds. The curry, the pink custard, the switch between hands and cutlery. British food to me was everything I ate, because I was British and therefore it followed that whatever I ate must also be British. It was only when I discovered the freedom of a driving licence and a clapped-out Renault Clio that I realized the world was bigger than my parents kitchen and the confines of the school canteen. I discovered food magazines, supermarket aisles, takeaways (real-life food that we didnt have to cook ourselves), markets, restaurants, food stalls, Chinese supermarkets and online shopping!

Since then, I have asked myself the same question I ask even now. What is British food? Is it a fixed set of recipes? Is it the curry I grew up on? Is something British if you pour custard over it? Is it British if you eat it with cutlery? Is it really just full English breakfasts, roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, fish and chips? Type what is British cuisine? into a search engine and it will tell you simply that it is a set of cooking traditions and practices associated with the United Kingdom. And yet how can something so vast and varied be described in just a few vague sentences, which barely scratch the surface of its depth and complexity?

British food today is a melting pot, a bubbling mixture of cuisines that have been stirred together as people from different cultures all around the world have settled here or passed through, introducing their own colours, their own recipes, their little culinary gems, their secrets, their flavours from far and wide. Over the years, Britain has welcomed Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Mexican, Caribbean, Chinese, Indian, Turkish, African, Arabic, Thai, Korean, Australian and North American immigrants, to list but a few, along with their ideas, influences and ingredients. This is the Britain I recognize, and the one that I set out to discover through the recipes in this book, a diverse land that I know best through the food that I have eaten and the dishes that I have come to love, and which I cook over and over again.

We never travelled much in the UK as children, but since having my own kids I have discovered nooks and crannies that I never knew existed, and so my childrens Britain is quite different to the one I grew up believing in. Writing this book has allowed me to travel even further, seeking out the hidden gems of the country I call my home, meeting exciting people who grow and farm our food, as well as innovators who have exceeded expectations, pushed boundaries and overcome adversity with their stories of imagination and hard work. These forward-thinking people are the true face of British food today, and youll get to know some of them in my TV series, Nadiyas British Food Adventure. Meanwhile, the recipes Ive collected together in this book will take you on a unique journey through the UK, celebrating the many culinary influences that have shaped us, and letting you taste for yourself the food and flavours that represent the real and diverse Britain that I know and love.

This book takes you through each mealtime of the day, with recipes for hearty breakfasts and brunches, speedy lunches and easy midweek meals, as well as dishes youll love to cook when having friends over, fun ideas for parties, comforting everyday puddings and extra-special desserts. Recipes such as Masala Eggy Bread, Ploughmans Cheese & Pickle Tart, Chilli Lasagne, Minted Lamb & Apple Pasties, Fish Pie with Cinnamon Sweet Potato, Easy Chicken Tikka Masala, Fennel Welsh Cakes, Malt Tiffin, Mango & Passionfruit Jam Roly-Poly, and Eton Mess Cheesecake are just a small taster of the 120 recipes that are proudly nestled in this book and which together reflect my food journey.

My Britain is many things. Its thanks to a father the daydreamer who worked tirelessly to bring a bit of Bangladesh to his growing expat family. Its down to a mother the workforce whose greatest skill, still, is feeding us into oblivion, no matter how hard she has to work to do it. It was shaped by a brother and sister who longed to be at home, craving comfort in a bowl of solid food, because mothers food, whatever it was, meant home. It is two culinary worlds that collided spectacularly to create a grey area that is more colourful than a rainbow, with a pot of sprinkles at the end of it!