IN THE KITCHEN WITH TERRI MERCIECA

What ingredients make any dish better?
That’s easy – salt. I am such a salt person, it’s so funny. Everything needs seasoning and yes, I’m a pastry chef but I don’t like overly sweet desserts. It has to be Maldon – it’s true, and I’m not paid by them! I won’t use any iodised salt or anything like that. There are other salts I really like – the Cornish one or Fleur de Sel, for instance, but it’s all about the taste; you need to make sure that the balance is right and it works in your recipe.

What’s your favourite comfort food?
The most comforting thing is my Nan’s pasta sauce. If I feel a bit down or sad, I want that dish. It was just a red, Napoli sauce with tomatoes and basil and served with a mountain of cheese. She passed away in 2010 and we all miss her but I did get a good solid 32 years of her, so that’s OK. If I put oregano in it, my sisters say ‘that’s not Nan’s sauce any more’, but I think it’s about the spirit of the sauce. I’m such a hippy!

What’s your number one cooking hack?
I hate cutting corners but I like efficiency, so this is quite difficult. With making ice cream and pastry, it’s all about following a recipe but one thing I would say is I think observation is key in cooking. Sometimes people will take something out of the oven because the recipe says ‘cook for seven minutes’ and I’m like, ‘yes but did you actually look at the dish?’. Recipes are there for a guide, they are not the be-all and end-all. If you’re paying attention to everything and watching closely you get in sync with what you’re making, and it becomes much more instinctive. I’m not observant in all things, but I am in cooking.

Eating in or eating out?
Oh, I love takeaway. That’s another comfort food for me – pizza. I actually real love cooking at home and it’s a lot less expensive than going out. But if my girlfriend Ellie’s away, I’m having the pizza. It’s not that I don’t love going out to restaurants, it’s just after a long day I get really tired now. What I do love is going out for breakfast – that’s the Australian in me! There’s a café round the corner from my house called Potter & Reid in Spitalfields. They do a Turkish eggs dish where they pour the butter over it. It's so good, it’s unreal.

What’s your food-related guilty pleasure?
Biscuits. I love biscuits. If you get a packet of Tim Tams near me, that packet is gone. But they’re Australian and hard to find in the UK, so over here, I’d go for Pick Ups which you can get here now, or the Choco Leibniz. I got into Pick Up bars years ago when I used to work on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here – the British one and the German one. Every time they filmed the German one they had Pick Up bars, and that’s how I discovered them because they were only available in Germany then. They are so good.

If you could only eat one type of cuisine for the rest of your life, which one would it be?
Chinese. This is a bit of a cheat because there are lots of different cuisines in Chinese food, but I love them all. It’s such interesting food – there’s hot, spicy food, slow-cooked, there are noodles, dumplings – yum cha, dim sum – and the soups are great. There’s so much variety in Chinese food – it’s a no-brainer for me.

Who are your ultimate dinner party guests?
My nan Annie has got to be there – she was so much fun and so naughty. She’d swear, she’d even drop the ‘C’ word just to shock us and make us laugh! She was born in Italy and then went to Madalena, Malta and then Australia. My girlfriend Ellie also makes the list because she’s got great conversation skills and she’s lots of fun. Kylie would be cool, and we could talk about Australia, and I’d like to get the queer comedian Margaret Cho – she’d be rude, but rude in a funny way. Ken Hom can come and he can help me cook! I went to a talk with him a while back and he was so sweet – he has a crazy American accent. And Erykah Badu. She’s so amazing. That’s a bit of a weird mix isn’t it?

What would you serve them?
I think I’m going to serve them some kind of Chinese banquet with lots of different dishes. I’ve been to China so many times, I have a couple of really good Chinese cookbooks – I really love Fuschia Dunlop’s book. I’ve done it before where I’ve cooked multiple dishes from different cookbooks but I’d need some help cooking the dumplings – maybe Ken could help out? For dessert, if it’s a Chinese banquet you need deep-fried ice cream. You see a lot of that in Australia. The best way I’ve found is by rolling the ice cream in cornflour or custard powder, then into a crepe batter, a single dip, and then roll it in breadcrumbs – panko or fluffy white breadcrumbs. Then fry it really hot and fast for like 10 seconds, certainly no more than 30. And then you want to serve that with a really sexy chocolate fudge sauce, made with Original Beans chocolate, obviously.

What’s not allowed in your kitchen?
There’s a brand of cook’s chocolate that I will not have in my kitchen. I won’t use any chocolate if I don’t agree with the ethics – that’s one of the reasons I really like Original Beans – all the chocolate I use has to be ethically sourced. And it has to taste good. I’m really strict about it. I won’t even let my team bring that stuff in. I’ve been working with chocolate for a long time and I won’t have it. Cocoa farmers deserve better – they grow the stuff and they should be treated with the utmost respect. The same with eggs that are not free range: you cannot bring them into my kitchen either. I can’t be cooking with stuff I don’t feel passionate about.

What food tastes like home?
Home as in Australia? That would be a Golden Gaytime [a chocolate dipped vanilla and toffee ice cream lolly] or a Tim Tam. But for that sense of home, I would say bolognese. This is an adopted tradition from my girlfriend Ellie’s family – it’s such a nice thing – anytime someone is coming home, say they’ve been in hospital, or they’ve been away, they make bolognese. When Ellie came out of hospital after she broke her leg, we made bolognese. The first time we met Ellie’s brother Lewis’ new partner Renée, we made them bolognese. It's really sweet family comfort food and it’s such a nice tradition – I’ve really got into it. I like to cook mine for hours. I’ve a flexible attitude to eating meat so I’ve made it with plant mince and that make a really good bolognese.

At the Magimix Harvest Feast lunch last autumn, Terri created her fabulous Baked Alaska and her signature Popcorn Custard Tart with a little help from the Magimix Gelato Expert, Le Glacier and the Power Blender.

The Happy Endings Cookbook by Terri Mercieca was published by HarperCollins on 20 June 2024. Enter our competition