My childhood home was in South Africa. My parents adored each other and life for my two brothers and me was loving and carefree. Mum was a well-known actor and producer, and my father was a successful businessman. We had a big house in a three-acre garden, complete with huge old trees to climb, a scruffy lawn to play football on, a swimming pool and a tennis court. Today that whole white, privileged, almost colonial life under apartheid is embarrassing to admit to, but my memories are deeply happy.
Christmas fell in midsummer, but we still ate turkey or roast beef, Yorkshire pud and Christmas pudding with brandy butter. My mother went to endless trouble to source brussels sprouts and the best she could do was imported tinned ones, which were unbelievably disgusting.
My dad sweated under Santa’s red woollen dressing gown and cotton-wool beard as he distributed “Christmas boxes” to our cook, gardeners, nanny and maids. This little ceremony took place on the lawn next to the apple tree, decked with cotton wool to resemble snow, which only my parents had ever seen. One favourite memory is of lying, replete from Christmas dinner, in a hammock under a pergola of wisteria, eating chocolates filched from the table and reading Orlando (The Marmalade Cat), a Christmas present.
It wasn’t until I was in my late teens that I realised that our pampered home life depended on our servants having almost no home life at all. They only saw their families, who lived in distant “homelands”, for maybe a fortnight once a year – and that was never at Christmas. At Christmas they looked after us. Johannesburg was reserved for white residents. Black people who did not have a pass were banned.
For me, “home” has always meant food, mostly eaten outside: we used to eat lemons and figs straight from the trees that surrounded the tennis court. We would float a bowl of loquats in the swimming pool and have spitting competitions with the big, brown pips. I remember picnics, barbecues and parties under the trees, with tables laden with colourful salads and that South African classic, bobotie (sort of a spicy shepherd’s pie).
All my memories are sunny, full of adored family, dogs and cats and, at one point, my pony, which I insisted on housing on our back terrace. (This didn’t work; the pony broke out and disappeared. We found him miles away in a field with other horses. He had crossed a motorway and jumped a fence to get there.)
I hope my own children’s childhood memories are of food. Certainly we always sat down to meals and cooked from scratch with good ingredients. We ate outside as much as the English weather allowed. I insisted on building a big stone pergola covered in vines outside the kitchen. My husband objected, saying we could fly our friends to the Côte d’Azur for an alfresco lunch for the money it was costing, and that we would never use it. Well, we ate under those vines many, many times, though I admit we sometimes had to grab our plates and make a run for it as the heavens opened.
But my children, now turned 50, work so hard they couldn’t possibly put the time in that I spent cooking. And their children’s agendas of playdates, sleepovers, sport, music, drama and extra lessons make leisurely family meals almost impossible. But I’m relieved to say that my son and daughter both cook from scratch and their fridges contain no ready meals or ultra-processed junk.
My last two books have been an attempt to help that generation feed themselves without spending hours in the kitchen. I think they have a real appetite for quick meals that look and taste great but can be assembled without too much fuss. My latest book even has QR codes to videos so I can show you tricks of the trade rather than trying to describe them, and hacks to simplify things without losing the quality. After all, for food to create happy memories of love, comfort, family and home, it has to be good.
Prue Leith is a restaurateur, television presenter, cookery writer and novelist. Her two most recent cookery books are Bliss on Toast and Life’s Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom
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