Angela Clutton, food writer and food historian
The cookbook that has most influenced your cooking?
Niki Segnit’s Flavour Thesaurus is one that I pull out more than any other when looking for ideas – or reassurance – on flavour combination possibilities. And I love her writing style, too – full of wit and personality
The food of love: what would you cook to impress a potential date?
I think perhaps I should rephrase this to be ‘to impress my husband’! I am not sure the ‘food of love’ is about impressing. It is about making someone feel good. I’d go for food you have to get stuck into with your hands – pizza, perhaps, or a blade of pork cooked with crackling that you have to pull at with your fingers
The perfect dinner party: which five people (dead or alive) would you invite to dinner and what would you cook for them?
Elizabeth David, Nigella Lawson, David Niven, Queen Victoria, Elvis Presley
Shepherds Pie
Fast food – your top snack tip
Fried egg on toast, with wine vinegar into the pan the egg cooked in to reduce and then poured over (page 142 of The Vinegar Cupboard, since you ask)
Most memorable meal in film/literature/painting
Cary Grant and Grace Kelly having supper in her hotel bedroom in To Catch a Thief. You don’t actually see the meal – just the trolley being wheeled away – but somehow you just know it was fabulous
Your worst kitchen disaster
Blending soup during a cooking demonstration and forgetting to put the lid on the blender….
The top five vinegars to keep on your kitchen vinegar shelf?
Pedro Ximenez sherry vinegar, blackcurrant vinegar, muscatel vinegar, red wine vinegar, light rice vinegar
What would you like your final meal to be?
So long as it finishes with madeleines that are freshly baked and warm from the oven I’ll be fine
What is your secret talent [in or out of the kitchen]?
Not sure I have one, but the one I’d like is origami
What did you eat for breakfast?
Toast and coffee
What’s in your fridge?
Pickled pearl onions, pickled cucumbers, piccalilli…. But away from the pickles: cans of Schweppes tonic, eggs, butter, bacon, several jams and marmalades, lemons, cavolo nero, fennel, loads of herbs
Your inheritance recipes – the one you inherited [and from whom] and the one you’d like to pass on to your children
I make mince-pies to my mum’s recipe and they are the best. Well, not as good as hers but still good. It’s the shortbread-pastry that does it
I will try to make sure my nephews head into adulthood knowing how to fix a good martini
The Vinegar Cupboard by Angela Clutton is published by Bloomsbury Absolute, £26, shortlisted for Fortnum & Mason #FANDMAWARDS 2020 (Debut Cookery Book)
