How an egg changed my life - a memoir from Mikey Bell
Mikey Bell's touching and funny new memoir / cookbook 'How an egg changed my life' celebrates the impact good, home-cooked food and the stories that come with it can have on our lives. Mikey has answered a few of our questions about his life-affirming new book below.
In a nutshell (or egg shell) how did an egg change your life?
Ahh, that would be giving away the book! But what I will say, is that I truly believe the lessons we can learn in the kitchen serve as metaphors for how I can live a life outside of it. So, while an egg did certainly change my life, it was the lessons I learned while cooking one that changed my life, as opposed to the egg itself. Not that a beautiful, jammy egg can’t be life changing, because there are fewer joys in life than when you get an egg just right, I think …
If you had one useful kitchen tip for the home cook, what would it be?
Take every opportunity you can to cook, even if it’s just for yourself. Cooking is not a useless exercise just because it’s not serving crowds of people. The moment itself is reason enough. Cooking for yourself builds confidence in technique, gives room for experimentation with new ingredients and flavours, and connects you to instinctually follow your own appetites and preferences. I think some of the best meals I have ever made have been just for myself, even the ones that went wrong. Mistakes happen in the kitchen no matter how experienced you are, and cooking for yourself takes the pressures off of making those mistakes.
What is your favourite way to eat an egg?
It has to be scrambled eggs. I like them soft and wobbly – whisked really well with lots of salt, cooked so, so slowly in a buttered pan on a low heat, stirring constantly but gently, and then removing from the heat while still slightly underdone to allow to finish cooking in its own residual heat. Enjoyed with nothing but pillowy yet crunchy toast with lashings of unsalted butter and then fine sea salt flakes scattered on top. There’s no better way to start a morning. Ironically, scrambled eggs do not feature in my book, but it is a strange and joyful twist of fate that I was eating scrambled eggs when I signed my publishing contract for the book! So perhaps eggs feature serendipitously throughout my life more than I think.
What other cookbooks have you found most inspiring?
This list is almost impossible to write. I moved houses recently and filled 14 IKEA bags with cookbooks and the men who helped us move still curse my name to this day. Sorry boys. But to pick the books that I think have informed the way I cook, eat and live, to be honest, I would say:
Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat
Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Diana Henry’s How to Eat a Peach
Nigel Slater’s Appetite
Ella Risbridger’s Midnight Chicken
Kate Young’s Dinner at Mine?
Ruby Tandoh’s Cook As You Are
You can get Mikey's new book here - How an Egg Changed My Life by Michael Bell. Published by Calon.
