48LimitedEditionEssex
Fuss-free fare is
LEeating in
When it came to feeding her family, actress Fay Ripley took
inspiration from the Italian dinner table � then wrote a book
S
OMETHING dawned on
Cold Feet star Fay Ripley
while she was staying with
her husband's Italian parents.
The actress had always taken a
rigid approach to planning her
daughter Parker's meals.
"I wanted to be the perfect
mother, and would spend the day
whizzing organic fresh food. I was
exhausted by the time I got round
to cooking for me and my
husband Dan," she says.
But seeing Italian children
enjoying a meal with their
grandparents, giggling and eating
`grown-up food', Fay realised she
had been doing things all wrong.
"I got home and started to put
together food everyone wanted to
eat," she says. But she soon
discovered a gap in the market for
recipes that would work for adults
and kids.
"The book I needed wasn't out
there. Every recipe book I read
would have one suitable meal for a
family. You'd need a whole library
of cookbooks to have enough to
keep your gang fed," she giggles.
"Most recipes were either too
long-winded, too fancy or used
ingredients no one would eat. So
I went into the kitchen and
experimented."
Her second child, Sonny, was
born three years ago, and now
42-year-old Fay has written her
own collection of family recipes.
She says she's a self-taught cook,
claiming her skills come as much
from persistence as talent.
"Cooking is confidence. I'm
someone who loves food, and the
more I do it, the better I get at it."
She admits to trying short cuts,
making new things and fiddling
about with ingredients, in her
attempts to please the kids and
her husband.
"Some of it is luck. It depends on
whether your kids are good eaters
or not. Sonny was chowing down
on a leg of lamb at about six
months old."
Fay says other people paid
attention when she started
making changes in the kitchen.
"The more I cooked the same
for everyone, the more it made
sense to me. People noticed that
we ate really well, and asked how
I did that. Eventually, I started to
give out recipes."
Fay doesn't claim to be perfect,
and happily admits she
"burns things, and sometimes
throws away pans".
"Loads of things went wrong
when I started to make these
changes.And they still do.
Sometimes I'll offer up something
and one of the kids, or one of the
adults, doesn't fancy it. But that's
life � nothing's foolproof!"
Try Fay's recipes for no crust
salmon pizza, tossed lamb with
sweet potato and quick chocolate
torte on your family. Fay's no crust salmon pizza 50

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