What ingredient makes any dish better?

I’ve been thinking about this, and I think I’d go with salted butter. If you look at Indian food, cooking with ghee makes the food taste so much better than just cooking with oil. Salted butter brings umami to the dish and brings out the best of the ingredients. Sometimes when baking a cake, even when you’re using salted butter as opposed to unsalted, I find putting a bit of salt in just elevates the bake, makes it a double winner. What would we do without salt? Cry probably! Some Rastafarian cooks making Ital food in Jamaica don’t use salt – it's a really strict version of Ital cookery – they rely on spices and stuff like that for flavour.

What’s your favourite comfort food?

Fried chicken. I do like making fried chicken though it’s a bit of a pain to make sometimes. I make a curried fried chicken and there’s a recipe for that in my book, and it’s delicious even if I do say so myself! I struggle going to chicken shops because I know the quality of the chicken isn’t great. Some more high-end chicken shops do source their chickens responsibly but that’s no guarantee on taste. I like to go out and eat it because then I don’t have to make it myself but I need to go somewhere where I know it’s going to be good. I like the fried chicken at Maureen’s Brixton Kitchen. It’s all gone mental – she’s gone viral on different accounts! I started going there a couple of years ago and now she’s got signage and seating outside – she never had that before, it’s all changed – so I need to go to see if it’s changed for the good.

What's your number one cooking hack?

This may sound obvious, but I would say using water to expedite cooking – and I don’t just mean boiling something! So for example, if I’m cooking a mirepoix as a basis for a stew or a ragout, and you’re wanting to cook it down to caramelise the sugars in the vegetables, I add water and turn it up really high which helps break down the fibres in what I’m cooking. Then once the water has evaporated, it starts to colour and gets that lovely, sweetened flavour but the addition of water helps break things down a lot quicker. If I’m roasting a cabbage on the barbecue say, I’ll rinse the cabbage but I won’t shake it before I put it on the grill so that the water inside heats up and steams it from the inside.

Eating in or eating out?

I’m going to say eating in because I get to eat out quite a lot with my job, and I’m at that age now when I don’t really want to leave the house unless I have to – I’m turning into a hermit! I’m quite lazy, I like my home comforts and my ideal situation would be to go to a dinner party that I can walk back from. I don’t necessarily want to host it, but if I can walk home from it then that’s my dream.

What's your food-related guilty pleasure?

I don’t really have guilty pleasures when it comes to food but I’m going to say pickled onion Monster Munch because I really like them and I don’t feel that great afterwards. They’ve got those massive Grab Bags now – not just the regular Grab Bags, the really big ones – and I will finish that in two sittings and then I don’t feel great because I guess it’s probably way over how much salt I should be eating in one go. But they’re so addictive and that vinegary hit is really tasty. It’s that sharpness of the pickled onion in the rehydration process. I‘ve made my own pickled onion crisps using dehydrated pickled onions and ground them into a powder, and then made crisps and coated them with it. Oh, they were incredible – like Monster Munch, yeh – but I felt a lot more virtuous eating them!

If you could only eat one type of cuisine for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Hmm, I stumbled on quite a few different ones here before I came up with an answer. I was thinking maybe South-east Asian cuisine – Thai, Vietnamese – but then I thought what about Mexican? But then there’s Nigerian with all the grilled meats, and different rice dishes and the way they use their vegetables which is just amazing. And Japanese. I wouldn’t want anything too stodgy so I wouldn’t be bothered about French cooking, but I think, partly out of a sense of loyalty – and I need to caveat this by saying if I had to choose any nation’s cuisine I would get bored quite quickly – but if I had to choose just one I would go Jamaican. There’s so much diversity in their cooking, and you can grow anything in Jamaica so it has an incredible repertoire to choose from.

Who are your ultimate dinner party guests?

First on my list, I’ve got Joan Armatrading. She did a talk at the British Library last week and I managed to get in and she was amazing. She’s weirdly modest – she does what she does because she has to, she’s like a channel for great music. Next up, Annie Lennox – ever since I was young I’ve thought she was very cool. She’s not afraid is she? Then there’s Skin from Skunk Anansie – they’re all musicians, so far, I know – and then James Baldwin who I think would enjoy a drink and have some interesting and controversial things to say. And my first ever editor, Denis, from my days on the Dorset Echo. He always let me crack on with it. Getting started in journalism, I’d done an internship on The Big Issue over the summer holidays, but he gave me my first permanent job, so yes, he gave me my first break into journalism.

What would you serve them?

I’d do something on the barbecue. I’d have grilled courgettes with ricotta and lemon which is one of my go-tos, and I’d do some jerk chicken with roasted scotch bonnet with some rice and peas, and some grilled cabbage served with crispy chickpeas and yogurt on the side. Also – and I can do this in the Magimix – I’d serve up a pina colada, freezing tinned pineapple and coconut milk into little cubes and then just letting it down with a bit of coconut milk. Obviously pina colada has rum in it which you can add, but just the coconut and pineapple is lovely and it’s really refreshing. The rum is optional!

What’s not allowed in your kitchen?

Brussels sprouts will not come in my kitchen. I think they’re horrible and they annoy me because everyone always tries to get me onto them – “you haven’t had my Brussels sprouts” – and I say, “I hate ALL Brussels sprouts”. Now I have my daughter and I do feel a sense of responsibility that I don’t pass on my own food issues to her. When she was first born, I did buy frozen broad beans because I wasn’t that keen on them, and I am slowly warming to them now. But I can safely say there is no potential for me to enjoy Brussels sprouts in any way. I’ve had friends who pan fried them with balsamic and bacon and I’ve put them in my mouth and there’s the sweetness of the balsamic and the softness of the bacon and then the sulphury grossness of the sprout hits right at the end.

What food tastes like home?

Curried chicken. No, not curried chicken! Ackee and saltfish. I really love ackee and saltfish but I don’t cook it that often because my dad cooks the best ackee and saltfish. I’ve cooked it here with him, but usually I go to my parent’s house in north Essex and my dad cooks the ackee and saltfish and my mum makes the dumplings. And that tastes like home.