Meera Syal A Taste of My Life

This is A Taste Of My Life, the show that serves up famous lives on a plate.

For the next half an hour, I'll be exploring the various ways in which food makes us who we are.

By cooking and tasting the dishes of their past, I'll

be taking another very special guest on a culinary trip down memory lane.

Today's guest has established herself not only as a comic actress

but also as a writer, with such hits as Bhaji On The Beach, Anita And Me,

and Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee.

'Naturally, she asked me to leave.

'Mentioned stuff about boundaries and me only being

'a glorified secretary, but I knew I could be a better lawyer than her.'

So can I have a leaving do, then?

She broke through to a much wider audience alongside

her future husband Sanjeev Bhaskar

in the smash-hit Asian comedy Goodness Gracious Me.

Thank you.

You like seafood, am I right?

-Yes!

-I could tell as soon as I picked you up.

How?

Cos you smell of fish, innit?

She is perhaps most notorious as the salacious and predatory grandmother

in the ground-breaking chat show - The Kumars at No 42.

Mr Parkinson, I just want to say what a great pleasure it is to have you on the show.

To be honest, you will never know how much pleasure.

Yes, today's guest is actress, comedian and writer, Meera Syal.

Coming up in today's show:

Meera Syal drools over the classic dishes of her youth -

crinkle chips, fried eggs and Black Forest gateau.

Cake's great, isn't it?

Friend and comedienne Jo Brand displays the full range

of her culinary abilities, making bangers and mash.

If it all goes wrong, I can just stab myself at the end.

-Then I'll be dead, and you can eat

-me.

And actor and buddy Richard E Grant lays down the gauntlet,

challenging us both to a bread and butter pudding cook-off.

Restaurants probably have a thing that does this, but I call this a finger.

Welcome to A Taste Of My Life.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Now, you were born, like many great people, in Wolverhampton.

-Yes, indeed.

-Which bit?

-I was actually born in New Cross Hospital.

-OK.

I think I slept in a drawer.

-I don't believe you!

-I did! I don't think my mum had a carrycot.

They hadn't been in England long, and I was unexpected.

So what was childhood like?

My childhood was quite schizophrenic, actually, as for, I think, a lot of first-generation immigrants.

At home, it was very Indian - the food we ate, the language we spoke, the way I spoke, very polite...

The minute I left the front door,

because it was quite a tough mining village...

(ADOPTS MIDLANDS ACCENT): I used to talk like that, I was a wench, I would scrap.

So I would swap accents and masks all the time, so I was a pretty good scrapper,

quite early on.

So at home, the cooking was always Indian, or principally so?

For me, food has always had quite an emotional connection, as it is a direct link home, Indian food.

British food was exotic, bizarrely.

Fish fingers - "God, we're having fish fingers tonight!"

Of the food at that time, is there anything that you specifically remember that was a favourite thing?

My favourite exotic English food was, um, occasionally when we went

shopping, a big treat was to go to basically, a greasy caff.

I thought that crinkle-cut chips and fried egg was the most exciting food.

I can remember crinkle-cut chips coming out.

How did they do that?

Were potatoes wavy? I don't know!

If you're brave enough to make your own, when it comes to deep frying,

the best oils are sunflower, corn and vegetable oil.

The joy of getting a chip and breaking the yolk,

and then the tomato sauce, that whole flavour sensation. It's amazing.

Frying eggs is about as simple as food gets.

But even this can either be done sunny side up,

with the yolk skyward, or over-easy, cooking them on both sides.

-Was your mum a pie maker?

-No, Punjabis don't bake.

I thought the oven was a storage unit.

Chips and fried eggs - Meera's taste of childhood.

OK, I'm going to be sophisticated.

You put brown sauce on?

I'm going to be sophisticated and use a knife.

That goes there, then I'm going to do this...

Meera's chip butty.

Yeah, it's very precise.

-Then you do this, you see.

-An open chip butty!

I can feel my arteries clogging up. It's fabulous.

Certainly, when I was at school in the Midlands, there were no Asian families at all.

I was only one of two or three Asians in all my schooling.

It wasn't round to Meera's for supper?

God, no, wrong size, wrong colour.

We were very Indian, we spoke Punjabi, we ate

Punjabi food with our fingers, and I notice that neither of us are using a knife and fork in this meal, good.

You're right!

And out of the house, I would talk like this, like a Midlands wench.

You were quite genteel at home?

Yes! Every weekend, a load of Punjabi families would come to us,

or we would go to them, so I had hundreds of uncles and aunties.

All the women in the kitchen, someone chopping, and someone doing this...

So everybody joining in.

Not men, obviously, they were sitting on their BLEEP playing cards.

You'd get someone knocking on your door saying,

"I've just cooked some dal, there's too much, can I come in?"

Now, Meera the teenager.

I was very shy, I was very studious, and I was very fat.

Those three things made me a huge hit with the boys from the boys' school,

and I had this nervous tic for a while, I used to go like that a lot,

blink a lot. Very attractive.

-I was gorgeous.

-Quite swotty?

I was, but I was Indian, so I was meant to be.

It's kind of genetic, you know.

On leaving full-time education, Meera quickly moved into the world of performance.

Like many comic artists, she found herself a regular at the Edinburgh Festival.

I've caught up with a friend of yours from around that time.

Uh-huh!

What I thought was, I would cook Meera

something to celebrate the fact that it's 25 years since we first met.

It's celebration fairy cakes to celebrate the fact she came down

to London from Edinburgh, that we were young, fairy cakes are young,

and they're slightly disgusting, because the Eighties were disgusting

and we were those sort of girls

with bright clothes and high hair, although she was always very classy.

How kind!

I think for us, the kitchen is just a place where we put the world to rights.

It's really that kind of women's friendship,

where you sit down with a pile of food, and talk about your life.

Typical!

She's helpful, she's friendly, she's deeply insecure, like all actresses,

and so that is great, so you always feel slightly superior in one area of your life.

She might do better in her career, her brilliance,

every other way, she is better than you but then you think,

"I'm more secure than you, so that's all right!"

I am so proud to have been your friend over the years, and I am particularly proud of the fact that

I have made you these fairy cakes as a celebration, because you know this would have taken some effort,

and there are times that I want to shake you, which is what we want to do with our friends,

and there are times I want to pull you to me and hug you,

and I love the fact that no matter how well you've done in life,

you have always found time for your friends,

us Asian babes, and you are a fantastic person,

and we probably don't tell you that often enough.

Oh, so sweet!

-Oh, look.

-Aren't they fab?

Aren't they fab? That this so Sharma, they're chaotic and creative.

-Has my mascara run?

-It's fine. Perfect.

Everything tastes good when it's made with emotion.

-Except bread.

-Does it really, because of the kneading?

Because of the fact that it could actually be somebody, or something.

So, as a teenager, was there anything in particular

that you would make that would make you feel a bit sophisticated,

and grown up?

I do remember the first meal I ever went out for with my friends from

school, and we paid for ourselves.

I ordered prawn cocktail, and Black Forest gateau.

-I know that era, yes.

-You know the era we are talking about?

And everything was just...

I was so deeply impressed with myself and my worldliness.

You can't underestimate fresh prawns.

Buy raw grey ones and cook them yourself.

Stop cooking as soon as they go orange. They can easily toughen.

When the wine came, it had ice crystals in it.

I thought that this was probably some new London trend that had come up to the Midlands recently.

For mayonnaise, beat the oil into the egg yolks slowly, making your sauce.

Take your mayonnaise base and add Tabasco, tomato sauce, Worcester sauce and lemon juice.

But you could add garlic, curry powder, chilli, capers

or mustard to take this simple classic into the 21st century.

That menu still has a strange air of glamour about it.

It still has an air of glamour, because prawn cocktail and Black Forest gateau are back,

in a trendy, retro kind of way.

Indulgence on a plate.

Black Forest gateau originally comes from Germany.

The surprising secret to making a good one is maintaining a sharp contrast between sweet and bitter.

What about ice crystals in wine, has that come back?

-It's on the way, it's on the way.

-Excellent.

-Absolutely.

When assembling the base of this dessert, be sure to add some rum.

But you could use kirsch.

Use sour cherries, as the taste cuts perfectly through all the surrounding cream and sugar.

Suddenly, it is the late 1970s.

Instantly. It is one of the instant recipes that takes you back to that.

Did you end up as a sort of impoverished actress?

There was nobody who looked like me that was acting, visibly, as far as I could see.

There just weren't parts, they weren't written?

The only time you saw an Indian on telly was when someone blacked up, which doesn't count,

or in newsreels, being swept away by monsoons.

There was a point when I was homeless -

I never told my parents as they'd have made me come home.

But you did keep the wolf from the door?

Yeah, through a mixture...

It is why I started writing, to be honest, because I realised

I wasn't going to get good work unless I created it, because no-one was writing for women like me.

Do I fancy some Black Forest gateaux?

I do!

Do ya? Go on, then.

No, that's mine.

Yours is coming in a minute. Cake's great, isn't it?

Oh, that is so good.

Still to come on A Taste Of My Life,

Meera's pal Jo Brand grapples with some spuds and lots of sausages.

That is kind of a normal amount that I would eat for my lunch.

Richard E Grant describes what dinner at Meera's is really like.

The food portions are very, very abstemious.

Tiny. You always leave hungry and it's a fairly miserable and tight-arsed experience.

And Meera Syal reveals a secret desire over her final feast.

On a purely selfish level, I really wish I could fly.

Oh, yeah!

Meera first found real success through her writing,

and throughout her career has turned her hand to books, sketchwriting, and even screenplays.

There are a lot of actors who do a bit of writing, and a lot of writers

who end up doing a bit of acting.

But with you, you are very much a success at both.

I could paper my bedroom with rejection slips.

You only see the ones that actually make it.

Ultimately, it's so I can write myself whacking great parts. Frankly.

Yes, of course, because you have done screenplay work,

and you have written yourself in.

Well, no-one else was giving me a job. I had no choice.

Especially with what was on offer. An arranged marriage...

You just think, you know what, I'm done with that.

Are there any foods or dishes in particular, or recipes, that you

associate with that point in your life when you became a success?

There are - one of them is a real cliche, which is caviar.

Oh yeah! Well, why not?

The thing is, I always associated with, "That's what snobs eat, because it costs a lot."

Blini.

The unsung hero that sits beneath the heavy financial burden.

Again, it's easy to make your own.

Traditionally these are made with buckwheat flour.

But for lighter ones, you could use half plain and half buckwheat.

And don't think a blini can only be used with sour cream and caviar.

Try them with jam, honey, or simply butter.

I was rather, kind of, petit-bourgeois kind of way,

"No, I will never eat caviar, I will eat dirt, before I eat caviar."

That was until I was at the Ivy with Ray Winstone - I will drop a name -

and he said, "Have you had caviar with all the trimmings?" And I said, "No."

And it came, and there were these fantastic blinis, and the idea of

caviar isn't great - fish eggs - it is not really what you want to eat.

We used to have a fried roe in Wolverhampton, in batter.

-Do you remember?

-Yes!

And it tastes great. It really does.

When you've done it the right way,

you've got the right trimmings and really good vodka with it.

Maybe it's the vodka that makes everything taste good.

-Thank you, Ray Winstone.

-Thank you, Ray Winstone!

And since then, that was probably fairly early on in your career?

I do remember one dish, which has always stayed with me.

I was in LA, doing the LA thing, on Sunset Boulevard,

with the palm trees, and you feel like you might be a little bit famous

just for five minutes, and on the menu was something called squid and banana salad.

It was one of those I-dare-you dishes.

It is an I-dare-you dish, isn't it?

And it was like somebody doing a samba on your tongue.

Squid. Seafood that must be cooked for either seconds or hours but nothing in between.

Squid can be shallow- or deep-fried.

Although obvious, always pre-heat your oil, or squid meat will absorb it and won't go brown.

I'm a bit conservative sometimes.

I should do an "I dare you", occasionally.

Squid and banana, most people would be conservative about.

I know, but I am telling you, it really worked.

Toast your sesame seeds.

Lemon or lime juice is a fresh alternative to vinegar dressing.

And the addition of orange and banana

softens and sweetens this dish almost to the status of a dessert.

Try replacing the banana with fried plantain.

This really is one of those bizarre creations that could only really

emerge from the mind of a Hollywood chef.

I can't talk when I'm eating.

We can't talk about your success without mentioning Goodness Gracious Me.

Yes.

-A huge, huge success.

-That was the show that did it, really.

Yo, pussycats. It's me, Smita Smitten, showbiz kitten.

Clawing her way through the showbiz litter tray to find you hot chunks of

fresh steamy gossip to chew over in the comfort of your own living room.

That was also where you met your husband.

-Indeed.

-How did that happen? Was it love at first sight?

God, No. No, it was creative love at first sight.

Is it true that at your wedding, you and Sanjeev danced to There May Be Trouble Ahead?

Yes!

The brass kicks in and everyone got up, as soon as Nat's voice started soaring over and the brass...

-Nat King Cole!

-Yes, so it was a really fun number, I loved it.

Now, the Kumars.

Surely, when that started, you couldn't have been prepared

for how that was going to take off and explode.

Not at all.

-Richard E Grant!

-Hi.

Sanjeev nothing Kumar.

Scrubbers!

I'm sorry, that's my grandmother.

Scrubbers!

A curious thing, when you feel you know people like that,

that Granny is going to be so embarrassing.

-Yeah!

-And actually, a bit rude, to be honest.

It was like a kind of therapy, actually.

You like being a bit rude?

Yeah! Who doesn't? But not as myself.

Because then I'm embarrassed.

But that make-up was like a mask.

There was a well-known executive at the BBC who asked who that new actress was.

Oh, fantastic!

Tell me, what sort of friend is Meera Syal?

Oh, that's really hard!

Persistent.

"Why don't you call me, why don't you like me, are you coming over?"

-You cook for your friends?

-Yeah, I really enjoy cooking.

I caught up with one of your mates, actually.

Aha.

< Right, hello, Meera.

Jo!

I'm not the world's best cook,

I don't like cooking, I don't like waiting for cooking to be ready.

Let's just repeat that old Joan Rivers joke about Elizabeth Taylor,

that she is the only woman who stands in front of the microwave telling it to hurry up.

She's not, I'm another one. I don't really know what herbs are.

I know what they look like, but I don't know what to do with them,

so I'm going to do something simple today.

-I'm going to make you bangers and mash.

-Lovely!

The reason I'm doing it is cos I'm a rubbish cook, and even cooking this,

actually, extends my skills way beyond what they actually are.

I'll just peel a few just to show you I can do it.

-If it all goes wrong, I can just stab myself at the end, I'll be dead, and you can eat

-me!

So I'll just rinse these under the tap, because obviously I've been strangling weasels

in my garden all morning, and my hands are a bit dirty.

What you do - this is so difficult - you bring them to the boil,

turn it down so boiling water doesn't spit all over you.

As you can see, we have an enormous amount of sausages here.

That is the normal amount I'd eat for my lunch.

The other thing about cooking is that because it takes a long time, you have time to go and get drunk.

I like them to be properly cooked, and slightly burnt,

and if you tell people you meant to do it,

it's like when you fall over at school, and say you meant to do it.

As you can see, I've got this enormous heavy chopping board here,

which is very handy for stunning burglars.

If you've got a few onions left, throw them at the camera.

Back on the heat.

LIQUID SIZZLES

Oh, that lovely noise.

As you can see, I've done a nice pattern on the plate, and it's taken ages.

I'm doing it in a rather arty way, with an M for Meera. I am indeed.

You are really clever, Jo.

Look at that, there you go - "Meera".

Now, a good bit of advice for serving mashed potato,

if you use a wooden spoon, it doesn't stick, so it looks nicer when it comes out.

I didn't know that.

No, I didn't know that.

Meera, yum, how about that? Isn't that gorgeous?

It is, Jo, and so are you.

That is fantastic, made with so much love! Fabulous...

-From Jo.

-Jo!

Jo Brand would prick a sausage, wouldn't she?

Jo Brand would circumcise a sausage if she could.

Or chop it off.

Jo, it's fabulous!

I am a big believer in karma.

My dad always used to say, what goes around comes around.

We had a friend of yours who phoned us up and said could they issue you with a challenge?

Meera as a host is, well, the food portions are very abstemious and

tiny, you leave hungry after you've left Sanjeev and Meera's house,

and you barely laugh,

so all in all, it's a fairly miserable, tight-arsed experience.

My challenge today is to cook something that I like more than

anything else on the planet, which is bread-and-butter pudding.

-Oh.

-You go along with that, yeah?

-Yeah.

-It is one of my absolute top-ten favourite puddings.

-Is it?

-Yeah.

-I have a rather unique way of doing it.

You might not like it. Have you got cardamoms?

Oh, of course we've got cardamoms.

Then I accept your challenge.

So, Richard E's challenge.

-His challenge is bread-and-butter pudding. I don't feel too unconfident about this.

-You've done it before.

I have. Do you put sultanas in yours?

I do. The world is divided, but I do.

Cinnamon and nutmeg.

Isn't that a great smell?

It is the best smell.

I am using chocolate-chip brioche.

Oh, yummy!

And the spices go so well with the chocolate.

This is what makes it into an Indian bread-and-butter pudding.

The cardamoms!

You did the screenplay for Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee, didn't you?

I did. I think it might have been the first time it that there was a drama,

peak-time at 9 o'clock, featuring three Indian women in the leads.

It's all about the terrible things that friends do to each other,

and women particularly do to each other when it comes to men, which

always shocked me, and maybe I've done myself. We all make mistakes.

God, that's heavy.

Do you get sent scripts, and think, "Here we go again. I'm being asked to play the same person."

Yeah. It was arranged marriages, and now it's terrorists, of course.

-Oh, of course, we've moved on.

-We've moved on so much.

You've collected quite a few gongs over the years.

I think you have an MBE?

I have, or it's an MEB, which my mother calls it. Which stands for the Midlands Electricity Board.

Which is one way of bringing you down to earth, isn't it?

That was in '97, I think it was.

I'm crap at this.

-Oh, Meera.

-How do you not?

What's the trick? Someone has to eat that now, I've lost it.

I've put chocolate in this, as well as the chocolate chip.

You can never have too much chocolate.

I'm going to have that on my gravestone.

What's the bit you get the most buzz out of?

The hordes of autograph-hunters that follow me around everywhere.

They take my picture. And think I'm great.

Yeah, that's better. Lovely.

See, restaurants have a thing that does this, but I call this a finger.

I can smell that, I can smell the cardamom.

Can you? Oh, that is great, that.

That's good.

It's really good.

It's gorgeous, because of the cardamom.

It's really good, really, you're not just saying that?

It's heaven. Absolute bliss.

Thank you!

No, thank you. Thank you, Richard E.

Time for Meera to sum up her life over her final feast.

Meera, your final feast.

My final feast, gosh, I do feel greedy.

And to get things going, it's a paella to start.

I love paella. It's kind of got everything in it that I really love - seafood, and rice, and garlic.

What are those over there?

Now, these are garlic and rosemary flatbreads.

Rosemary and garlic bread.

The knack is all in the kneading.

You know when you've kneaded enough when the dough is springy.

Bake until lightly golden and crisp.

The smell of rosemary and garlic together is probably my favourite smell... after my babies.

A saag paneer.

-That's good healthy stuff.

-This is very healthy stuff.

This is the dish my mum makes amazingly well.

This is a winter dish served to guests in Indian homes.

Paneer is a traditional Indian cheese and is a fabulous source of protein.

Gorgeous served with naan bread.

And the not so healthy...

I love meringue.

I just can't help it, and I know I shouldn't.

A lovely dessert to make, and here are a couple of quick tips on making meringues.

Use eggs at room temperature, they'll whisk more easily.

Don't over whisk the whites as the volume will start to decrease.

They have to be chewy. I hate powdery meringue.

I like meringues that are slightly undercooked, slightly chewy.

Crisp outside, and chewy and gooey in the middle.

Yes, yes, yes!

Whisk your cream and choose your topping.

Some of your work has had conflict in it, there is a theme.

I'm worried that perhaps she likes a fight.

Ha ha ha! What do you mean?

When you said you scrapped at school...

I hate scrapping. I'm a really non-violent person, but I hate bullying even more.

And I have heard you are a little bit of a mystic, Meera.

Mystic Meera. Mmm, I am interested in all that.

Was there an unhappy patch, and you thought, there is something in this?

Yes, there are times when I thought I would never work again, or when my first marriage broke up.

Those are the times when you want someone to tell you it's gonna be OK.

Whether that's your mum, astrologer,

a psychic or your best friend, but you want someone to say it.

Can you tell what you're going to do next?

Bearing in mind you've done so many things?

I'm going to eat some bread.

I thought you might say that.

You are allowed to have a last wish.

Well, on a purely selfish level, I wish I could fly.

Oh yeah. I'm with you, I am totally with you.

-I know it sounds silly.

-No, it doesn't at all.

I have dreams where I'm flying and I'm walking, and I just push off with my legs like that and just go.

I really got into Heroes, the American sci-fi series,

and the bloke that could fly, I so envied him, except he did it really fast.

He'd go... WHOOSH! I thought, no, I'd get a nosebleed.

I just want to go... oooh!

Do you find that thing about food, that it does

bring back things, when you smell something or touch something?

I don't trust people who just live on lettuce leaves.

And go to the gym all the time. You think - you look great,

but you're BLEEP miserable and crap in bed.

Cheers.

Meera Syal, thank you so much for being my guest on Taste Of My Life.

I've loved it, and don't show the last bit to my mum, she'll be really annoyed.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd