My brother, a businessman, is the main cook in his home and my sister teaches cookery. Good food and good music were the mainstays of my childhood.
Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
The jambalaya of the American South owes a lot to the cuisines of the islands and western Africa, and it's my favorite of this type of one-pot cookery.
I don't feel my capabilities in cookery are as big as my desire - as with so many aspects of my life.
I think cookery shows have become so sophisticated, and everyone's so marvellous at it, but there are people like me who aren't into the cooking malarkey, who still don't know how to boil an egg for three minutes.
Jellies are to cold cookery what consommes and stock are to hot. If anything, the former are perhaps more important: for a cold entree - however perfect it may be in itself - is nothing without its accompanying jelly.
I was always drawn to the blues. Alberta Hunter at the Cookery was a life-changing experience. I only wanted to get enriched as a performer as I got older, to have an audience which got older, too, and would come to see me when I'm 80.
I'm always up for music shows such as Jools Holland, but news more than anything, particularly Newsnight. And cookery: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Rick Stein - it's down to him that I cook fish so much - and the great food alchemist Heston Blumenthal.
I love cookery programmes.
I like cookery shows much more than my husband, so I put them on the minute he goes away.
