When you have Nigerian parents, you often have pepper put in your mouth as a baby. They say it gets you accustomed to spice. It's also put on your thumb when you're sucking. I can't remember that, although I know my mum gave it to my younger siblings. I presume I cried too. But we all lived to tell the tale. And When I have children, I guess mum'll come over and make it happen for them.

Mum used to wake us in the middle of the night to go to Smithfield market for wholesale meat. Me especially, as the oldest child. Seeing all the dead animals, the chopping and blood at 4am was quite traumatic.

When I was a child we went to see relatives in Nigeria and I've since been back on business. There they serve marinated and spiced bushmeat. It's meat found in the wild, but they don't tell you what. Hedgehogs, I'm guessing. I tasted a load and it was lovely and very earthy. You can taste the ground; that it's been out in the wild.

Recently, on my album Lover Not a Fighter, I rapped "I just tripled my cost of living / Steak, salmon, lobster, chicken / That's made in my Boffi kitchen". So things have changed. I remember back in the kitchen in the council maisonette in Peckham. Mum would cook meat, adding curry, thyme, garlic and other things into industrial-size pots and my job was to stir with a wooden spoon Sometimes I'd get fed up, thinking, "Oh rice and stew, again and again and again." But she'd ration us to one piece of meat each per meal. So I'd fight with younger siblings, over any chicken drumstick particularly.

Mum used to cook a lot with stockfish [air-dried, unsalted white fish], quite a West African thing. Sometimes it would go on my clothes and other Nigerians in school in Peckham would take the mick, saying, "You smell of stockfish, man." A little inside joke. I didn't realise until later that it's from Norway.

I used to love school lunches. I was one of those. Breadcrumb chicken and smiley faces - how I loved the smiley faces. And the sausages, fish fingers, chips, peas. That was my equivalent of McDonald's. I'd had the desire for fast food from an early age but it didn't happen. When I was seven, mum said she'd make me a homemade burger from best minced beef, served between two slices of bread soggy from thousand island dressing. It was probably amazing but I thought it disgusting and there was a little riot. Nowadays, wherever I go in the world, I have to try any gourmet burger worth mentioning. But the best is at Shake Shack. It's so good it tastes like a dessert.

When I'd invite friends round I felt weird about them seeing in our freezer section. The thing about Nigerians is they tend to store raw meat in the freezer for ages and blood flows out and is frozen. I'd tell friends, "You don't want to see in there – because it's not packets of Birds Eye fish fingers like in your house. This is some deep shit"

I stole a Chinese once. I was with a friend, we were 13 and we didn't have money to pay. He ordered it and we took it and ran – and ate it in the park.

During my first ever show in Belfast, I downed a pint of Guinness in one go. It had been passed from fan to fan to fan and onto the stage and I thought, "I'm having an amazing time, why not?" It's the worst thing I ever did. I immediately thought "Oh God, what have I done?". The crowd stayed with me even though the rest of the performance felt very woozy.

I've never made a romantic meal for someone. It's shameful. I've got a place in Shoreditch with two kitchens and I've set the fire alarm off a few times.

Half of me being very British, my ultimate meal is a roast dinner. There's a pub called The Marksman in Hackney Road and for me they do the best roast – beef always cooked really well, with swede, red onions, Yorkshire puddings, always amazing. But for my last, final meal – I'd probably want pounded yam and egusi soup made with melon seeds, pumpkin leaves, stockfish, beef and even prawns.

Tinie Tempah's new album Demonstration is out now and he tours from 25 March