Diana Henry, one of the UK’s most cherished food writers, has sold over a million copies of her cookbooks worldwide. Known for her weekly columns in The Telegraph Magazine and Waitrose Weekend, her writing has also graced the pages of BBC Good Food, House & Garden, Delicious, and more. Next month marks the much-anticipated reissue of her award-winning debut cookbook, Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons. Here she speaks with Katto’s founder, Josh Roberts, about the book, her inspiration and how to feed young children.
We are speaking to celebrate the reissue of Crazy Water, Pickle Lemons. How have you found rereading the book all these years after publication?
It has been really interesting. It was the first book I had ever written and rereading it, I just sound so young and earnest. But it is still definitely me and I have really enjoyed revisiting the places. For my whole life leading up to writing the book I had been one of those people who, if I went away on holidays, I’d come back with my handbag stuffed with recipes. I would be talking my way into restaurant kitchens just to see what they were up to. Crazy Water was the first time I committed that obsession onto paper and going back to it has been a real joy.
Do you still cook from it?
Definitely. I used to be able to keep all my recipes in my head; but I can’t do that anymore. So I go through the books and remind myself of this or that. I actually have one of my other books, Simple, on the kitchen table at the minute. My children use it which is lovely. It’s something that we all use together.
Has your recipe development process changed over the years?
Mostly what I cook and write about is dictated by real life - where I am, and what I’m doing .
When I was writing Simple, for example, I had just had my first baby and he just cried all the flipping time. So I was always carrying him around and developed this very easy, almost one handed approach to cooking. You mix something, pour it over something and put it in the oven. I still cook like that a lot in the week; but I do like to do more complicated things on the weekend.
Having written so many wonderful books, do you ever struggle for inspiration?
Not at all. I still find food and cooking endlessly interesting and I find inspiration all over the place. It could be that I’ll have something in a restaurant - or I’ll read about a dish - and will go home to try and recreate it. Or sometimes I’ll just start with a single ingredient which I put in a circle on the middle of the page and then work outwards listing things that it would work with, and also things that it wouldn’t. You can get some really interesting results working that way.
I can get things and ideas stuck in my head and will lie in bed, drifting off to sleep thinking about what would and wouldn’t work with a grapefruit.
How much do you think about the end user when developing a recipe, versus just writing things that you would want to cook?
Sometimes I do write a book - Oven to Table is a good example - where I want to specifically empower the reader. It doesn’t necessarily have to be easy; but I just know that feeling when it’s five o’clock and you haven’t got a clue what you’re going to do and your baby is crying and you’re knackered and need something delicious to cook. I want to give people that sense that, yes, they can really cook. But then I also have more lyrical, more narrative books, too. There might be little essays about things or stories about ingredients which are more to be read than cooked. I love both types of book; but they are very different.
And what about food trends or fashions. Do they ever enter your thinking when you’re developing recipe or book ideas?
I’m just not interested in those things to be totally honest. I remember after Oven to Table came-out and found success, that the publishers wanted me to do a vegetarian or vegan version of it. But when you think about it, the idea of that book was simple combinations things which you put in the oven and look after themselves. If I had done a vegetarian version it would have just been various types of roast vegetables. It might have sold well; but I said it was too narrow and no thanks.
Is it the same with cooking on television?
I have done a bit of that; but, it really isn’t for me. Its just so dull to make - all the stuff about continuity and making sure the spoon is in the correct hand as you reshoot things over and over again. You have to do each recipe so many times for all the different angles and it’s so repetitive.
I also worked in telly for years before becoming a food writer which gave me a sense of what fame does to people. I have no desire for anything like that. Perhaps when you’re younger it can seem more appealing; but now I can’t see why anyone would want to be famous. Why would you willingly choose to do something which takes away your freedom? Money I suppose. But it’s just not me.
Interestingly, though, you are very active on Instagram?
I love it. This might seem pretentious; but I almost use it like my own personal magazine. I can go to my grid and see where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing which gives me a lot of pleasure. The other thing - which might sound daft - is that I really like the connection with other people. I take the business of replying to people’s message and comment very seriously. People will send questions or ask for cooking help and I happily spend hours in the evening going through them.
I was in hospital earlier this year with Covid and pneumonia in isolation without any visitors at the beginning. And Instagram almost became my way of chatting. Almost like going to make a coffee or going to the watercooler in an office. It really cheered me up - all these messages from people who I haven’t met; but have a relationship with. I thought that was incredibly rewarding - a nice side of social media.
One upshot of platforms like Instagram is that more and more people are becoming food writers, or thinking of themselves as food writers. Is that a good or bad thing?
It doesn’t bother me either way; but I do always encourage people to think outside of writing when it comes to food.
Sometimes young people will write to me and ask how they can get started. But when I ask what they’ve written before or who they read, they draw a blank. Almost as though they have to become a writer to be involved with food which absolutely isn’t the case. You could start a catering company, open a cafe, go and train under a great chef.
And that’s my advice because unless you really, really love writing this career will make you miserable. You put so much of yourself into the writing - particularly a cookbook - and there’s a kind of grief when it’s over and delivered.
Nevertheless you are working on a new book. What can you tell us about it?
Gosh, yes, my thirteenth cookbook. It’s certainly the biggest and most ambitious one I’ve done. I’ve had this thought for ages that our culture is far too focussed on the warm southern regions, rather than colder places in the north. We’re obsessed with the Mediterranean and that kind of cooking. Which is great - and I’ve written lots about France and Italy - but I wanted to do something totally different and focus on Scandinavia. So the is called North and I have been really loving the research and travel.
Fantastic. Finally, my wife and I are expecting our first child in 2025. What advice do you have on cooking for young children?
This is is an awful thing to say, but I’m just going to be completely honest. I think cooking for small children is one of the hardest things you have to do. I went through different phases. For a while I would do that very middle class thing of making a sweet thai green curry and freezing it into ice cubes. And then other times I just just gave up a bit which usually meant making scrambled eggs. I would ask them, “OK, what would you like?”. And the answer would always be scrambled eggs pasta with tuna and sweetcorn.
Nowadays they are fantastic eaters and cooks in their own right. If I’m testing a new recipe or ingredient they’ll say “this is too soft”, “this needs more texture” and so on which is wonderful. I just love that we can all sit down at the table - and it has to be a table - and eat, and chat. Actually I never had to persuade them to do that, they just willingly did it. I’m oddly proud of that.
Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons is available to pre-order now. You can follow Diana at @DianaHenryFood