Lucy Dearlove

“Food has always been the cornerstone of our lifestyle.”

I’m obsessed with my next meal. I think about food approximately every 7 seconds. When I’m feeling anxious or sad I pore over recipe books then make detailed lists and organised missions to the supermarket before losing myself in dicing, steaming, chopping, seasoning.

I love all kinds of food. Meals mark occasions, moods, the passage of time. I remember all of it; the where, the when, the what. The Bun Cha I ate three meals in a row in Hanoi on honeymoon; my friend Zam’s spicy baked beans with green chilli that we ate at least once a month for the entire four years we lived together; the rare, coveted leftover confit potatoes all the waiting staff fought over at the Yorkshire hotel I worked at for a summer after my first year of uni; steak haché and fries with that delicious French mustardy mayo from the university canteen in Bordeaux; a cheese, cured meat & marinated aubergine toasted ciabatta from Rosie’s deli in Brixton where I worked for 18 months, each bite dunked into freshly made chilli jam; my mum’s Nasi Goreng, my dad’s barbecued steak, a whole plate of enormous, mouth-prickling caperberries from an aperitivo buffet in Marina di Pisa; paprika chicken in Budapest with a platter of pickles, sharp against the creamy sauce; jerk lamb from Smokey Jerkey in New Cross; homemade porridge with grilled plums, maple syrup and dollops of thick natural yoghurt; the perfect salty sweetness of a McDonalds double cheeseburger and fries with barbecue sauce; a vat of Laksa from Hare & Tortoise in the Brunswick Centre.

I grew up on Teesside, proud home of the Parmo and didn’t eat pesto, hummus or olives until I was 19. Now I love trying new things and finding new favourites (though I drew the line at fertilised duck embryo in Hoi An.)

I love talking about food. I love talking to people who love talking about food. And so my podcast Lecker was born.

Every episode will feature a conversation with someone who loves food even more than I do, recorded while they cook one of their favourite dishes. Maybe they cook for a living, maybe they write about food, maybe they’ve used it to enact social change, maybe they cook dinner for their family every night. Whichever it is, it’ll have had a positive impact on their life and there’s always a story to be told over a good meal.

You can listen to it HERE.