Marcus Wareing on his new book, ‘Marcus’ Kitchen’

Virgin Radio

29 Oct 2021, 13:37

Chef Marcus Wareing joined Gaby Roslin and Ricky Wilson on Virgin Radio this morning to talk about his new book, ‘Marcus’ Kitchen’.

Gaby is a big fan of the latest addition to Marcus’ bookshelf: “They’re so different from all of your others, because this is incredibly personal, the family are in it,” she said. “Are they happy to be in it?”

Marcus laughed: “They had no choice. They were all locked in with me. So it was either they ate or they didn't. We all went along with the flow of everything.”

The book is described as being a collection of his favourite recipes to inspire your home cooking with. Writing it during lockdown meant it was a very different experience than normal and required some changes.

Marcus explained that before lockdown: “Food shopping was going to the shop every day. Lockdown, we shopped once a week so we had to do meal planning.”

It wasn’t easy catering to everyone, he added: “We’ve got two sons and a daughter, two cats and a dog, some big planning had to go in our house because it's three meals a day.”

“I don't normally eat three meals a day! I'm normally a one meal a day, man when I'm out and about working,” he said.

Ricky laughed and said it was the same for him too: “Suddenly food became very important. I would also be having dinner at about 5.30, then we'd go bed at 8pm!”

Marcus had a sweet set up to make sure the whole family was involved with the cooking.

He said his kids would do a restaurant setup: “They'll do a three course meal with Chinese night, Indian night, fish night, we'd have rustic nights. We try to make things interesting!”

“You know when your family all say there’s nothing in the fridge? You’ve just done a huge shop, you’ve eaten a bit of it, but they say there’s nothing in the fridge,” Marcus said, which many families will probably relate to.

Marcus’ wife had a big part to play in helping the recipes come together: "My wife and family would all be in the kitchen, and we started taking notes because my wife is obsessed with me just doing things and not explaining it,” he laughed.

“For me, cooking is something that you just do. I don't follow recipes. I just do it!” exclaimed Marcus.

“So she started taking notes and tidbits, and she knows this anyway, because we've been cooking together for years, but as we started writing them down these recipes started to come to life as I was cooking them,” he recalled.

It’s this process that makes ‘Marcus’ Kitchen’ so different from his other books: “So normally you'd write the recipe and go in the kitchen and cook it. We did the other way around.”

“I love it!” said Gaby.

“That's why this book is so true to home cookery, because it is of the moment,” Marcus explained.’

Many people took up cooking over lockdown and showed off their banana bread and sourdough proudly, but there were also moments where we went digging through the kitchen.

“You’re in lockdown, and you're going to the cupboards and you find some weird things. Who bought it? Why did I buy this?” laughed Marcus.

Ricky admitted: “If I’d written this book, it would have been recipes with out of date Pop Tarts and those peas you find at the bottom of the freezer.”

Marcus confessed: “Even I've got those peas in the bottom of the freezer!”, which makes us all feel a bit better. 

‘Marcus’ Kitchen’ is out now.