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EATING OUT
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RECIPES
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There’s no stopping Nadiya 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 OPENING SOON: The new restaurant will cover more than 6,500 square feet
Date is set for launch of Grand Central restaurant A NEW American-themed restaurant is almost ready for action after the owner exclusively told go! when its doors will be swung open to customers. Grand Central will officially welcome punters into the rejuvenated Anne Knight building in Duke Street on August 8, as owner Steve Haslam explained the highly anticipated makeover is almost complete. Steve, of Beaulieu Park in Chelmsford, told go!: “Things are going really well and the plan is for us to officially open the restaurant on August 8. “The team is currently being recruited and trained and the
place has really come on leaps and bounds. We’re very excited to show everyone what we’ve been working to create,” added the father-of-three. The Grade II listed building is a Chelmsford landmark – once used for Quaker meetings between 1824 and 1957 – and is one of the first things people see when stepping out of the railway station opposite. Steve added that he has budgeted roughly £750,000 to renovate the iconic landmark and will initially be renting the property from developers Genesis on a 20-year lease, making it the fifth restaurant in the Grand Central stable after
Basildon, Ely, Colchester and Ipswich. The restaurant will be spread over 6,500 square feet, will be capable of delivering 240 covers a night and will be open for business for breakfast at 7am until midnight. Grand Central customers can expect to tuck into a Times Square Burger, any one of four United Steaks of America, or a Godzilla hotdog. ■ For a chance of winning a party at the restaurant to the value of £1,000, click the “I’ll be there” tab on the Grand Central Chelmsford Facebook page. For more information, call 07484 089815
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“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.”
75g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
Ingredients 175g plain flour 50g wholewheat flour 2½tsp baking powder 1tsp fine salt 1 medium egg 100g cottage cheese
50g feta cheese, crumbled ½tsp wholegrain mustard 2tbsp fresh dill, chopped 1tsp ground black pepper 8 sundried tomatoes, chopped 25g pumpkin seeds Method 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.
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.
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
ARTIST’S IMPRESSION: How Chelmsford's new Turtle Bay restaurant will look
275ml whole milk
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.
“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.”
Plenty of rum on the menu at Turtle Bay
Feta and Dill Savoury Muffins
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 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 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.
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mixture, along with the grated parsnips and orange zest. Mix everything together until you have a thick batter (about two minutes).
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.
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.
“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...
TURTLE Bay is set to open its doors to Chelmsford on Friday, August 5, bringing a new, vibrant, Caribbean dining and drinking experience to the town for the very first time. The 200 seat, £1m, 3,735 sq ft Chelmsford restaurant will be located in Exchange Way as part of the restaurant development at the top end of High Chelmer. As well as serving up blissful Caribbean food in the restaurant, the venue also features a stunning rum cocktail menu, which is the product of a rum collection that includes no less than 40 different varieties. The range takes in the full breadth of the Caribbean – from Mount Gay's Bajan to Appleton Estate's Jamaican rum, and everything in between, all at the same price. The resulting cocktail list is therefore as cool and credible as you'd expect from a culture that brought us Bob Marley. Chelmsford Turtle Bay general manager, Anson Bartholomew, said: "Turtle Bay's rum collection offers the chance to taste some of the most complex and exciting rum drinking experiences out there – where else are you going to find 40 different Caribbean rums under one roof? "Our mixologists are constantly honing and crafting our cocktail menu so there's a wonderful array of stunning flavours to try. Or customers can simply appreciate the rum itself with one of our rum boards. I can't wait to bring this experience to Chelmsford." The restaurant and bar's happy hour lasts from 11.30am – 7pm and then starts up again at 10pm. This makes it the happiest happy hour in town with all of their cocktails available at 241 during that time – it's a must for cocktail lovers and rum enthusiasts all week long. ■ Turtle Bay Chelmsford opens on Exchange Way on Friday, August 5.
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.
Parsnip and Orange-Spiced Cake SERVES 10 Ingredients 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
Method 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
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
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Welcome to our pub and restaurant, we have a great selection of home made pub food, freshly prepared with a range of daily specials and great Sunday roasts. Live music from ‘Redwood’ on Saturday 6th August from 9pm
CHATHAM GREEN, CHELMSFORD, CM3 3LE
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