Me & You: 'As a little boy he was crying at the school gate. Now he’s a real success’

Ros picked up that I was slightly dyslexic, so she would give me extra lessons at her house and I had a real bond with her.

She was the first person who opened me up to food. She was a real foodie, so whenever I went there, it would always start in the kitchen. Ros had a very southern European approach to cooking and had a way of really making time to make cooking the activity. She always had this huge vat of olives and we would make pizza from scratch. I now cook with my girls because of Ros. If they are involved with the cooking, they want to try it. I always remember how to make Ros’s salad dressing with three simple ingredients and a pasta sauce that you could use either for pasta or for your base for pizza.

Even though Ros exposed me to healthy food, because of school, I was eating a little bit of junk and putting weight on. When I was 17, I was four and a half stone heavier than I am today, so I went on this mission to lose weight. I lost weight, but the food was terrible, so I thought: “How can I make this more exciting?”

Some years later, there was this competition called TV Chef of the Future on the BBC Good Food channel. I had written all these recipes in a book, so I sent it off and I also got a segment on another channel called the Carlton Food Network. Ros was the first person I called. I asked her: “What do I make? What shall I do?” She would give me advice and tell me my cutting skills on TV weren’t very good!

It was always a dream for Ros to run her own cookery school and she built it from the ground up with a lot of hard work. She opened it just as I was moving to the US. I would love to be involved and work with her on a project one day.

If you go back to 1977, I was an incredibly sensitive little kid, who didn’t do very well at school because I wasn’t there very much. I think Ros is proud that I have found something I love that I went into with such a strong work ethic. She’s definitely a part of that.

Ros on Daniel:

I used to see this little boy standing at the school gates, holding onto his mother and crying. He wouldn’t part from her, but eventually he started to relate to me. I was teaching in the remedial department in those days and Daniel would spend a lot of time in my classroom. I was fine with that — [with me] he was a happy little bunny.

His mother started dropping him off in the morning at my house in East Finchley, where he would have breakfast with our family. Then I would take him to school, and slowly, we got him back into school, as long as he was with me.

Cooking was a wonderful way of getting children to learn. Daniel would put pen to paper, but I had children who wouldn’t do that, so they would come to my house and I would say: “We’re not going to do any work. We’re going to cook.” I had a kitchen that overlooked the room that I taught in, so I would tell them: “I’m just going to get everything ready for our cooking and you just write a few ideas down.”  Slowly, we would take it from ideas to doing a plan, but there was always cooking involved.

When you spend a  lot of time together, you get to know one another. Daniel knew everything about me and my family and I knew everything about his.

I left the school when Daniel was around 13, but I was always in the background. I went to all the family weddings. If something nice was happening, I would be there to celebrate with them.

I have very strong views on what food should be. Daniel’s idea of food and my idea of food are completely different. My whole approach is teaching. Daniel’s approach is cooking a certain sort of food.

Daniel was always very determined. He wouldn’t do anything he didn’t want to do. He didn’t love academics, but if he was interested in something, he was really interested in it.

Maybe this steadfastness was a survival mechanism at that stage, but he’s now learnt how to sell himself and perhaps that comes from that determination to do what he wants to achieve. I’m a different generation, so I couldn’t even talk about myself on Facebook, never mind sell myself to the world. When someone asks me if I will appear on this or that, it’s going to take quite a lot of nerve.

I look back at all the children I’ve taught over the years — literally there were thousands of them. You see these children and you cannot predict what is going to happen in their lives later on.

I do have to take my hat off to Daniel because I am astounded at how brilliantly he has done to change from that little boy, crying at the school gates. He is a real success.

chefdg.com
cookeryschool.co.uk