KOSHER COOKING WITH MOTHER Historian Simon Schama's mother Trudie was a force to be reckoned with, in and out of the kitchen

It was when my mother minced the tip of her forefinger into the klops that I realised her cooking owed more to enthusiasm than finesse. No, I'm wrong. It was when she decided not to bother to search for the little piece of alien flesh amid the beef but carried on kneading the meat with the onions that I got a sense of her priorities, at the top of which was Just Getting It Over With. I was nine. The kitchen intrigued me, for it seemed some sort of battlefield in which my mother laid about various ingredients until they surrendered and accepted their fate in a long, hot oven. She would never have used the term "batterie de cuisine", but she took pride in the more fearsome of its implements, in particular the heavy-duty steel hand mincer which, after it had been polished to military brilliance, was attached to the kitchen table. All kinds of food went down its helical screwmouth: translucent cod and haddock fillets on Thursdays for the gefilte fish; unusual extra chicken breasts for fried balls served up sometimes on Sundays, and the mid-week jumbo meatballs, the legendary klops of her strenuous attack. Into the screw were also fed lashings of onion and, if she was in a mood to lighten the fish or chicken, a beaten egg or two.

I don't remember her crying out in pain when she pulled her slightly chewed-up finger out of the mincer, though there was a hearty Yiddish curse or two sent in its direction. Like Basil Fawlty scolding his Mini, she had Warned It Before and now it would just have to take the consequences. Into the sink went her finger; on to the slightly drippy wound went an Elastoplast and on she went with the klops. At nine I could (on select occasions) be a sanctimonious little perisher and knew that I could put a stop to the inexorable grinding by asking her whether the ground fingertip was, in fact, kosher and if not, would it write off the whole dish – one of my father's favourites? I also knew that she would brush the objection aside with one of her more devilish laughs and that would be the end of it other than swearing me to silence as Father and my older sister tucked into the klops.

Later, when she worked as the field-marshal of kosher Meals on Wheels in the Jewish East End, getting up before dawn to travel across London to see all the housebound got their lunches, and relished every minute of it, I realised that it was not the food that was my mother's foe so much as the domestic kitchen itself. A bundle of animal energy in a pretty little package, she just was not cut out for the middle-class housewife role in which she had got somehow stuck, and all the displaced, ferocious energy, and slightly manic, often comical action drama just needed a bigger stage to operate on. As far as I could tell, Trudie had always been this way. As a little girl, Chaya Gittel – the name she went by in Whitechapel and Stepney – had the startling looks that made people want to chin-chuck her, or (for her) worse, pinch her cheeks: black curls and cobalt-blue eyes; a killer combo. But when she was made to dress up, and the curls were trained into ringlets, people found out in a hurry she was more spitfire than angel. Her father Mark, the only one of a gang of Lithuanian-Jewish brothers who stopped in Stepney rather than moving north to Liverpool to catch the New York ship, was a butcher. So when Chaya, over furious protest, was forced to dress up in silks and satins imported at great expense from my grandmother's Vienna relatives for Special Occasions, my mother's way to make a tomboy statement was to take the butcher's shears and slash it to ribbons. The thrashing she got made her repent not one bit. She set her jaw and swore she would do it again.

Perhaps it was the butcher-shop childhood that did it, but my mother grew up seldom relishing food; and certainly holding herself apart from the fatty wallowing in the joys of the Jewish table, which she looked on, often, with undisguised contempt, even, or especially, when she was forced to cook it. Food and its relentless preparation was somehow a chore, an enemy of life. During the war she worked for De Havilland aircraft as a Girl Friday to test pilots, one of whom used to take her for spins in his roadster, a bottle of scotch handy in the glove box. She got to like un-Jewish things: Thames Valley pubs and good hard cheddar with the odd dark vein running to the rind. My mother thought the test pilot an ace and always laughed at the memory of his fine madness. He ended in a ball of flames, but that only made the story perfect as far as she was concerned.

In her girlhood Chaya befriended a turkey whose lame strut had saved it from the slaughterer's knife. She called it Loomie – the Lame One – and taught it to limp up and down the stairs. Girl and bird bonded with terrible intensity and spent much time in each other's company. Then, inevitably, one day Loomie disappeared, sold by my grandfather to a gentile colleague for a destiny with Christmas. My mother threw one of her majestic tantrums, barricaded herself in her birdless room, emerging only to grab her younger brother and attempt to run away south, dragging her teary-eyed little sibling all the way past London Bridge and the road she hoped ended in Brighton before being picked up by an amazed but kindly copper. All her life she stayed wary of butchers, and had the insider's knowledge to make their lives miserable should she suspect they were overcharging for poor cuts and stringy quality. Burly men in stained aprons from Stamford Hill to Temple Fortune would hide behind the wieners or hurry to the cold room when they saw Trudie barrel through the glass door. I sometimes thought the curse of the Lame Turkey hung over her entire treatment of poultry, especially the terminally overcooked Friday night chicken whose ghastly pallor was enlivened by a coating of Marmite so that it emerged from the oven looking like a society matron who had been mistreated at a tanning salon. Within its cavity rattled a lonely duet of garlic cloves, an exotic concession to my father's savoury cravings.

My father belonged to a different Jewish food tradition – Rumanian with a dash of Sephardi ancestry – so that rice, dried fruit and stuffed vine leaves (with the more Ashkenazi sweet and sour cabbage substituting in my mother's version) were dishes that made him happy, and above all other things, I think, aubergines – still not easy to find in the 1950s. My mother eked out the joy of the aubergine, sometimes making a purée laced with more garlic than she usually found acceptable, and stuffing them with minced beef (without, so far as I know, the addition of human parts) in which the spices of my father's mother's kitchen – cinnamon and allspice – played a dangerous, appetising part.

When she felt she was not Under Obligation, Trudie could turn out some good simple things. Her pride and joy, a thick, glutinous lamb and barley soup she called Ta'am Gan Eden – the Taste of the Garden of Eden – never quite lived up to its billing as far as I was concerned; the muttony pungency of kosher lamb somehow obliterating the stewed vegetables. But she made wonderful egg noodles to go with the chicken soup that preceded the Poulet à la Marmite; and I would help her slice the egg rolls into quarter-inch strings and lay them out on greaseproof paper. Every so often I would steal one, popping it in my mouth before the high-speed hand of my mother slapped it away. Then there were the fried fish balls: Sephardi Jews' gift to Britain (for everywhere else in the Jewish world, gefilte fish is poached). Whatever the precise mix of egg, matzo meal, onion and spices that went into the devouring mincer, my mother got it right, and the smell and sound of the discs, going tawny brown in their bath of hot oil, was when I wanted to be in the kitchen. She never made enough, for though they were fried on a Thursday, I would gobble one down for breakfast the next morning, and by Saturday somehow they had taken on some mysteriously enriched flavour that was, for me, heaven to the palate. In synagogue that morning, my hair slicked up into a pompadour hardened with a secret recipe of Brylcreem and Uhu glue, deep in discussion about the fortunes of Spurs and the fabulous Valentine twins up in the gallery, whom we ogled from below, I knew that I smelled faintly of haddock beneath the Old Spice. But you know what, dear foodies, I didn't give a damn.

Simon Schama is contributing editor of the Financial Times

Diane DeGale
Manager to her son. She has three other children

She says: James is the laziest of all my kids. I'm his cook, cleaner and his manager. He has never been interested in cooking but he loves his food. When he gets home from training I make him a meal – pasta with chorizo for lunch, and something healthy like chicken and couscous in the evening. The only time he doesn't eat my food is when he's on his two-week junk-food binge after a fight. When he gets back on the diet, he's back round for dinner and I make sure I give him smaller portions. I don't watch his fights, not since I saw his first bout when he was 10. I couldn't bear it – I thought I was going to have a heart attack. When he went to the Olympics last year none of the family went because he didn't want the pressure.

Food runs in our family. My nan was a chef at Fortnum & Mason, and my dad ran a café. My husband Leroy trained as a chef – he's the Gordon Ramsay to my Jamie Oliver.

I was brought up on typical British food: bubble and squeak on Monday, casserole on Tuesday, liver and bacon on Wednesday… In those days spaghetti bolognaise was exotic!

When I got married I started to cook West Indian food, which is ironic because when Leroy was a child he would only eat English food. I think it was because a lot of his friends were white and he wanted to be like them.

James DeGale
23, middleweight boxer, Olympic gold medallist

He says: Every boxer puts weight on in between fights. Right now I'm fat – you can see it on my belly, but by the end of the month when I fight I'll have a six pack and my face will be gaunt. Until then it's all about making the weight. It's so hard, because I love food. Every day I go to my mum's house to eat. I did sort of move out this year, but my flat's only down the road so I go there for most of my meals. She makes gorgeous roast potatoes – crispy on the outside, fluffy in the middle, and I love the burnt ones. Every single dish she does is beautiful: fried rice with prawns and chorizo, or West Indian food, saltfish with rice and green banana, avocado and a bit of coleslaw – it's wicked.

The week before a fight I'm on fruit and cereal only. I can't watch other people eating. In fact I don't see anyone because all they do is nag me about making the weight. The last few days, apart from training, I just think about what I'm going to eat once it's over. I prepare meals in my head: Nando's chicken and a white chocolate mocha, and a Starbucks frappucino. .

On the morning of the fight I eat scrambled egg and beans, and jelly beans for energy. After a fight I go on a mad one, grub up and eat whatever I want because I know that two weeks later I will have to begin the diet again. So I eat McDonald's, KFC, Chinese; I love Nando's – my mum says I should get shares in it. I eat so much food I end up with a bad stomach because it has shrunk from all the dieting. I can put on a stone and a half. As a kid I liked to eat rubbish. I used to save up 60p for chips on the way home from school. When my granddad Charlie looked after us he would make fish and chips and battered Mars bars. I was fat as a child– that's why my boxing nickname is Chunky.

I got a taste for junk food when I was a teenager. I went through a phase of staying out late, getting into trouble, spending my £30 pocket money on takeaways. That's when my mum had to get strict with me, and I started taking my boxing seriously. Now I'm the breadwinner and I can give back financially, but my mum still does everything for me. I'll have to start cooking for myself at some point. I might even like it, you never know. Anna Kessel

Helen Ramsay
Lives in Somerset with her second husband

She says: My first husband was my first boyfriend. I was 17 when I got married, and I had four children within five years. We were married for 22 years but I never knew what it was to take a wage off him. I used to take little jobs, cleaning or cooking, anything to put food on the table. But it was hard, because if he owed money or he got in a fight because he'd gone with someone else's woman, then we just had to up and go with the four children and some carrier bags in the car. We were always moving.

You never wanted the children to go through more upheaval, but I was petrified of the man. He liked his tea on the table at six. He liked liver and tripe and mince and onions, but everything just had to be separate on the plate. If they touched each other then he'd throw the whole thing against the wall. Or if I ironed his shirt and it had a little crease I would get it. I was five months pregnant with Gordon's youngest sister when he met this women who wouldn't go with him, so he came home and tried to kick the baby out of my tummy.

I didn't know it was wrong at first. In my generation the man told you what to do. His mum and I got on really well, but she never acknowledged the violence even though I would be sitting there covered in bruises.

The children and I always ate together, and it was nice, especially if their dad was away with one of his other women or in America, trying to make it as a country and western singer. I remember I used to go to Woolworths Pick n' Mix on a Saturday night. I'd bathe the children and then set out little bowls of different sweets – that was our special night together. I tried to feed the children well. At the weekends I really tried to give them porridge and a boiled egg. In the winter I'd do a stew or a casserole in the oven, and below it I would do a rice pudding or an apple pie. Gordon was slim but he loved his food and he always had bread and butter with it. It didn't matter if you did a roast chicken – he always had bread and butter, cut in half.

I could never honestly say that at a young age Gordon showed signs of being a good chef. One night when he was older we sat down and I said: "By all means stick to your football", because he played for the English schoolboys, but I said: "You'll need something to fall back on." They had an open day at the college and he came back and said he was doing the catering course. I said: "That's nice – everybody's got to eat." And he used to bring these wonderful dishes home from the college for tea. Actually some of them weren't really nice but you had to say: "That was lovely, Gordon." I would never have not said that. At the parents' nights at college the tutors used to say Gordon was very good at cooking but he wouldn't do his washing up, so the girls queued up to do it for him. Some things never change!

There's nothing that Gordon would ever be shy of telling me. He doesn't try and tell me what to cook, though – he would never dare.

I can't take his success in. Like last night at Claridges – we stopped and I saw his name outside and I had to pinch myself.

I would never cook anything in his book when he comes home. I can't do that.

Gordon Ramsay
42, currently holds a total of 12 Michelin stars

He says: Food played a significant role in my childhood. I remember asking for more and there wasn't any, and that taught us all not to be fussy eaters, because you didn't have a choice. Tea was tea, and it was routine because Dad always wanted it at a certain time, 6 o'clock or earlier.

We used to eat in the kitchen, round a little table with four chairs, and Mum would be the last person to eat. It was really weird not seeing your mum and dad eat together. You would go out of the kitchen and then half an hour later come down and Dad's sat there, quite a lonesome silhouette. The atmosphere's intense and you can just see his back and he's eating his dinner on his own. So I hate eating on my own because it always resembles that. When I grab a sandwich on the fly I always eat in the car so no one can see me. I've got this scar about it; it's really sad and depressing.

Saturday night was a big staying-in night. F*****g ghastly if Dad was there. I was always dying to hear the football results but Dad would be watching wrestling. It was one of the most depressing sights, him sat there drinking and watching Big Daddy. I used to cringe. He'd also be sat there with his Vernons pools table, ticking the score draws, hoping to win, and there was this guy who used to come round selling Spot the Ball coupons. I remember I spilt something on it once and he went absolutely f*****g mad because he reckoned he knew where the ball was and he couldn't get hold of the guy again to drop another form off. Vernon's pools and Spot the Ball, these two things kept him chasing another false dream. If your life has to depend on winning one of those, you are f*****g sad.

You don't realise the kind of crap that you go through when you're younger, because at that age you don't know any different. We were gracious and grateful for the food that we were served, and we were really unspoilt children. Mum managed to cook on a budget that you wouldn't survive three days out of the week on today. I remember ham hock soup, bread and butter pudding, and gammon and egg. She always made something out of nothing.

When we used to go to the market she was always hunting round for vegetables. She knew the value of veg. When there was a bread strike she would bake it.

I remember watching her make chips and frying them in a little chip fryer with the net. Then you'd come down the next day and see this basket solidified with fat and you'd never think about changing it because that was used for three or four weeks at a time.

I was always a good eater. I was skinny, like a little runt – this gangly, skinny guy. I used to try and please Mum by clearing my plate. I wasn't a big liver fan, though: I couldn't get my head round the smell and the bitter taste. You would smell it from the other side of the council estate.

The only horrible memories were when we were really skint and we were using powdered milk. It was like eating the dregs of the dishwasher. Desserts were a real treat. At one point Mum worked in a bakery and the stuff that used to come back from there – custard slices, chocolate eclairs, apple pies – were a treat and quite rare.

We always had free meal vouchers at school too, and I felt a stigma having them. It was an embarrassment because it showed we couldn't afford to buy food. The value of the vouchers was never enough to get any of the new stuff like burgers, so we had to continue with the crap such as liver and a shocking chicken curry with bits of pineapple floating in it. I always said to my friends that I was too busy playing football to eat with them, even though I was starving, but when they were coming out to play then I would dive in, get the shit food, eat it very quickly and then run out, because it made me feel inadequate.

When I used to go down to one of the teahouses Mum worked in I used to love the excitement of the kitchen. Watching her cook was a serious time to bond, but catering came out of the blue for me. Mum feels uncomfortable in my restaurants. She hates being fussed. It does upset me, but then it's an incredibly charming thing because when she does come it's very special. She doesn't want to take advantage, wine and dine her friends. I just want to show off.

My mum has been a massive bedrock for me. Tana and I have had scrutiny in the tabloids, but I think back to what's been done and where you get your strength from, and it's off the back of the bond and the determination that Mum showed me, to deal with what we go through every day – family, business and pressure. My God, it is going to be the worst day of my life when I wake up and she's not there. Cath Rapley

Comic Relief and Gordon Ramsay have launched a range of Seriously Good Sauces for a Seriously Good Cause, available from Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons and the Co-op, at £1.89 per jar. The charity receives at least 10p from every jar of sauce; Gordon Ramsay does not get a penny

Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall
Author of The Good Granny Cookbook

She says: We had an old-fashioned country kitchen when Hugh was little, with a big kitchen table, and I remember Hugh with his little board and little rolling pin. It came naturally to me to have the children in the kitchen when they were little, because it was exactly how I had been brought up. When I was small it didn't seem like a chore to be given an onion to chop, and I hope it felt the same to Hugh and Sophie when they were growing up.

All children have a sweet tooth and prefer to eat or make sweeties and cakes rather than, say, vegetable soup. One Christmas we asked him what he'd like and he replied: "A sugar thermometer, please." We duly got him one and he used to make absolutely spot-on fudge. This also led to him developing his first commercial venture, a vanilla fudge ice cream, embedded with little nuggets of fudge, which he sold to one of my friends. But Hugh started making starters as well as puddings after a schoolmaster, who liked to give out thoughtful presents at the end of term and knowing Hugh was keen on cooking, gave him a copy of the Hamlyn Book of Soups and Starters. I don't think I ever divulged at my dinner parties that Hugh's starters, or the complicated puddings he made with meringues and whipped cream, were not my creations.

Whenever Hugh wanted to cook something new, I would direct him to my cookbooks, but he had rather too much physical energy to be one to sit quietly with a book, learning recipes that way.

He was fairly competent in the kitchen by the age of about nine, and I could more or less leave him to get on with it. There was of course the usual quota of burnt saucepans (perhaps he still leaves a litter of burnt pans) to deal with, but washing them up was a small price to pay if the kids were amused for an hour or two. He could also get upset if things went wrong – if the custard for an ice cream got too hot and cooked, then there could be a bit of a scene. But in the same way that you don't see him swearing on the television, he wouldn't shout in the kitchen. And if the air had turned blue, I think I would have had something to say about it anyway.

Considering Hugh's passion for food, it's surprising that he's not greedy. I am very greedy indeed, and would in fact rather not have sweets around because I can't leave them alone and would scoff the entire lot. Perhaps there is a greedy gene – my mother was also greedy – and I have managed not to pass it onto Hugh. He and his father are both very disciplined in their eating.

The Good Granny Companion and The Good Granny Cookbook by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall are out now, published by Short Books

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
44, TV chef and food campaigner

He says: I was a very, very fussy little child. I couldn't bear tomatoes or mushrooms, porridge, custard, rice pudding… anything slimy, really – which is odd because I love eating slimy things now. I wouldn't eat egg whites either, only the yolks. I was very frightened of everyone's cooking except my mum's. I went to a playgroup where the mums all took turns feeding the children afterwards and I lived in fear and dread of having to eat at someone else's house, with someone else's mother cooking. I loved my mum's spaghetti bolognaise, but I couldn't eat anyone else's. Anyone else's stew was also traumatic, since I couldn't tell what all the things in it were.

It became rather embarrassing, I thought as I got older, to be so fussy. Some time in my teens I started trying to force myself to like things like tomatoes – I would nibble tiny bits of the edges of mushrooms, until eventually I came to love them. In fact, a good tomato, mushroom or homemade custard is now among my favourite things to eat.

My mum's cooking for us was a sensible blend of homemade and convenience foods. My all-time heroes were Captain Birds Eye and Mr Findus. I loved nothing more than Findus Crispy Pancakes and fish fingers. If my mum was short of time, we'd have fish fingers and baked beans. And I had to have ketchup with absolutely everything. My youngest, Freddie, is going through exactly the same phase right now, and I have to say I'm being much stricter about it than my mum was with me.

Cooking for me all started with peppermint creams. I was a restless kid, and at some point when I was six my mum dragged a chair up to the kitchen table and put me on it with a bag of icing sugar, food colouring, egg whites and some peppermint oil. I had a very sweet tooth, so I loved to make sticky, gooey, sweet things.

I developed a repertoire of puddings that I made for my mum's dinner parties, and when there was fruit from the garden I made sponges and sandwiched them with fruit and cream. Meanwhile my mum was making 1970s classics: jelly tomato rings filled with piles of prawn mayonnaise, and lots of savoury mousses with haddock or mackerel.

I also made starters – tuna fish cream was a favourite, although now it sounds disgusting: mashed-up tuna with yoghurt, mayonnaise and capers, moulded and lightly set with gelatine. Nowadays my mother is quite a modern cook. When I was working at the River Café I came home at weekends a lot, all excited by things like salsa verde and pesto, and we exchanged lots of ideas. I do have to be careful though, both at home with my own family and with my mum, to restrain myself from interfering, because there is a fine line between that and helping, and I can, just occasionally, cross it. Rebecca Seal

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Every Day, is out now, Bloomsbury, £18.75

Kelly James
has two children, Alex and Deborah, and six grandchildren

She says: The greatest thing you can teach your children is survival. Alex has always been very practical, so when he moved to London I knew he wouldn't starve. There were things I was worried about, but not food. He was a typical student: he wasn't eating as much as he perhaps should be, drinking too much perhaps, but at that age you know it all.

We had a wonderful time during the 90s. Blur did a tour in America and the boys invited us to join them on the tour coach. We started in LA and went via Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. I've never known four lads to work harder. People don't realise just what hard work this touring is – it's a killer. They're up signing records until 3 o'clock in the morning.

For the boys it was like a family, growing up in the blazing spotlight. They've all kept in touch. And so did the parents. It was nice because we would tip each other off when we had press at the door. In the heyday it was amazing the lengths that some people would go to. It was lovely when they had the reunion – they were all still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but there with families.

Nothing surprises me with Alex. If he goes for a new venture, he goes at it whole hog. When he finished the music, he wouldn't stand still. He's got the farm, and boy do you learn fast with that. He picks things up so quickly, and now he just goes out into the garden and picks things to eat. I was delighted when he told me about the farm, but a bit daunted because I wondered if he knew what he was doing. I could see big wads of money having to be thrown at it. But it didn't matter if I didn't agree with it. He'd still go ahead.

I always remember one Christmas I asked the children: if you could have anything for Christmas dinner, what would you like? They both said fish fingers. So that's what they had, and they loved it. It's their celebration as well. And when they were little, they always, always had a cooked meal at breakfast. I thought: they've gone off to school and whatever happens at lunchtime, I know they've had a cooked meal.

The hardest thing as a mother is letting your children go, but you've got to. We've had a great life and I think I'm very blessed with the children we have. Alex has taught me how to enjoy food. He has a way of making things look less complicated, and he has no fear of it. When you get to an age where your children are better cooks than you are, it really is wonderful.

Alex James
40, Blur's bass player, cheesemaker and writer

He says: I was living in a squat after the first year at Goldsmiths, and I still remember the look on my parents' faces the first time they came to visit. Damon, Graham and I lived on pasta sandwiches at college. All you needed was tomato purée, pasta and bread. Then we started adding garlic. And there was a lot of fried cabbage. I think my mum worried about everything. Especially when I told her: "I'm leaving college to be in a band, but we're really good! This is Graham…" just as Graham fell over backwards. I've still got the bill from going to The Ivy with Keith Allen and Damien Hirst in the 90s. It was for £650, and in that bill, the only food was a bowl of chips.

I have to be quite demonstrative whenever I go to my parents house now. The food comes constantly, and I do have to ask her to stop making it. I don't think she'll ever stop worrying that I'm eating properly. We spent a week in Bournemouth with them this summer, and it's just a constant buffet, but it was all I wanted to do after the Blur tour and Glastonbury. I just wanted to go back to Bournemouth.

There is no hungrier man than a hungover man. I went fasting in Thailand, but after a week of not eating anything you don't get as hungry as you do with one hangover. Huge cravings for food. It was a different model for eating back when I was drinking – not one that I would want to impress on my children, but a famine/feast model. That's how wild animals must live.

The 70s is an underrated period in food culture. It was space age food. Marketing was being applied to food cleverly for the first time. All my sister and I wanted was Smash and a boil-in-the-bag curry.

When I was 21 my mum gave me some tapes she'd made of me when I was really tiny – there is one of me at 18 months asking for a cheese sandwich, so obviously I've always liked cheese. We had a Volkswagen camper van, so for holidays we used to tear off in that. Walking into the cheese aisle in a French supermarket, if your heart doesn't beat faster you've died.

My wife is very relaxed about throwing food away, but I have this fear of leftovers from my mum. My wife would throw the turkey away after the first meal, but my mum would be freezing turkey variations until there was nothing left whatsoever, which is the right way to do it.

Everybody had a vegetable patch when I was very young. They're not economically viable – you might as well do a paper round and spend the money at Harrods – but things do taste better. Nowadays it's lovely to send my mum off home with a string of onions and some pears. Francesca Babb

Fay Maschler
Restaurant critic for the London Evening Standard for 37 years

She says: I wooed Tom, Ben's father, with food. He wasn't that keen on restaurants – or he wasn't that keen on paying the bills in restaurants, so we had lots of people round to dinner, and the house was often full. Food was an easy way to show care and affection. I used it as a way of expressing my love and my concern and my care, whereas sometimes perhaps other ways might have been better.

I got married at 24. I had children straightaway. Cooking for children was not that challenging, and because of my job I could take them out to restaurants. I noticed that if we went somewhere grand, they would pick up on how to behave – you had to fall into line if you went to the Ritz.

When I was 12, my parents went to the States and I went with them. I was very lonely. I was born in India and my mother had never given up the habit of going to have a rest in the afternoon, so that's when I'd cook. I started cooking to occupy myself, and I realised that if you made something that was OK and handed it round, you got a feeling of control. And as a child it was nice to turn the tables on your parents and feel that they were obliged to eat what you made, rather than the other way round. I made complex things, like puff pastry and meringues. It was a way of control amid the loneliness of life.

When my own children were young, I'd make their supper and then go out to try a restaurant. My divorce was difficult. I started to cook less and go out more. It's very good, when single, if you can say to a man: "Would you like to come out to help me with my job?" It's a lot less loaded then saying: "Would you like to come out to dinner?"

Ben did quite a lot of cooking as a child, as I wrote books called Teach Your Child to Cook and Cooking is a Game You Can Eat. He's the one who's really integrated cooking into his life and made a career of it. I feel extremely proud. I don't see as much of the children as I would like, but I still love feeding them.

The London Restaurant Festival starts today, visitlondon.com/londonrestaurantfestival/

Ben Maschler
35, co-owner of The Drapers Arms

He says: When I was about 11, Mum caught me stealing money out of her purse. She was shocked and angry and sat me down and said: "Why do you need to steal money from my purse?" and I said: "To go to Soho and eat dim sum" and she said: "That's OK then." Because I was so young and on my own, the waiters used to make me pay up front because they didn't think I'd have the money.

Chefs often came round to the house. I remember once Peter Langan got so pissed that he passed out in the kitchen and my mum had to step over him on the floor. I suppose that has shaped why I went into the world of food. Anita Sethi

The Drapers Arms, 44 Barnsbury Street, London N1, 020 7619 0348