When I was young, whenever my mother [Prunella Scales] cooked kippers and the smell would drift through the house, it meant my father [Timothy West] was home, which he frequently wasn’t. Nowadays we probably only have kippers for Christmas breakfast, with a glass of champagne and orange juice.

My mother was a war baby, grew up with rationing, so was always very good with leftovers. She made a great cheese sauce, to add to chicken to great effect; less successfully to goose. So “cheesy goose” became a byword for things that shouldn’t be recycled in our house. But I remember her French onion soup and coq au vin. She had a French boyfriend when young. I think her idea of what great cooking involves has always been French.

I’m good at following a recipe and I like getting things right. But earlier this year I used powdered chilli instead of chilli powder in a dish. It was completely inedible. Failing in my attempt to create something made me feel sad; I went into a real slump that day.

Dad is the cake decorator in the family – it’s absolutely his thing – and we have a lovely family album of out-of-focus photos of beautifully decorated birthday cakes.

Cheese sandwiches have accompanied me on many outings. At 11 I took them trainspotting, as a teenager on CND marches and for most of my life I’ve taken them to AFC Wimbledon matches. Vinegar on hot chips on the way to a floodlit match in November is my favourite, happiest smell.

The first cocktail I made for my partner Laura was a cosmopolitan. For years I made a wicked one with brandy Napoleon instead of triple sec, which turns it an extraordinary orange sunset colour, instead of the light pink which everyone knows from Sex and the City. I add a few sprinkles of Fee’s [Fee Brothers] orange bitters, which is a good secret ingredient. I make white ladies and Singapore slings and other things popular in Raffles [in Singapore]. We really like gimlets, although try to keep ourselves to one or two at a time.

There’s a favourite cookery book by Delia Smith called One Is Fun!, for solo diners. That exclamation mark is absolutely deadening. I think: “You’re not fooling anyone, Delia.” That exclamation mark reeks of loneliness. I can’t bear it.

When up by 4am to go twitching [a branch of bird-watching] I have one double espresso before we leave and a second usually, and a third in the car. I’ll have eaten cereal and toast and be carrying “emergency flapjack” – a catch-all phrase for snacks carried in the field, like yoghurt, peanuts, chocolate and flapjack itself. Plus, Tunnock’s Teacakes, which are a reward when we see a bird we’ve never seen before. New Year’s Day is interesting because the number is re-set to zero again. At lunch we might buy fish and chips on Dungeness Beach. Laura jokes that the place there should be called “Fission Chips”.

I wouldn’t normally touch apple juice except in the recording booth, doing many talking books and narrations. It has an ability to get rid of phlegm and other catches in the voice. It’s sort of an anti-milk; an antidote to gloopyness. Although Kate Bush, who I’ve admired a lot, once ate one and a half pounds of chocolate to deliberately gum up her voice.

The only time I’ve seen my brother angry with my mother was when she called a pudding “sinful”. My brother and I both have daughters and we’re particularly conscious of not wanting them feeling funny about food. So, my brother says “If you want a pudding, Mother, just have one”, because we don’t want our daughters growing up with a complex.

For Mr Selfridge [playing Frank Harris], I wore a big false moustache, which I’d ask to be taken off for lunch, although it’d probably fall off when eating anyway. I tend to grow a real moustache for a role and it takes five or six weeks. I discovered my father’s collection of Edward VII commemorative pottery which includes a moustache cup – which has a hole in the rim for tea to pass through. I think it’s incredibly sensible.

I sometimes drink Caol Ila malt whisky. It’s very iodine, like medicine. Laura says: “One of your abstract whiskies.” I know exactly what she means. It’s interesting rather than delicious – but really interesting.

Falstaff is the Shakespearean character I’d most like to have dinner with. You’d get very drunk, but laugh your head off. Falstaff is the opposite of my mother in a way – he’d have no guilt about puddings. I’ve played Prince Hal with my father as Falstaff.

Since I started growing chillies about 10 years ago, I’ve enjoyed making a lot of my Christmas presents – 50 or 60 pots of chilli jam with home-smoked chipotle chillies and adobo, grown from seeds, which sounds sort of “Ooo, get me” but is actually not that difficult. This year I’m making my own chilli oil, using a big bag of crushed chillies I found in Islington’s Upper Street. It’s free chillies – what’s not to like?

We usually have Felicity Cloake’s Christmas pudding, with coins from places we’ve visited that year. Laura says we’re the only family frying leftover pudding in butter on Boxing Day.

I did a scene in All Creatures Great And Small in which my character ate bacon, eggs, tomatoes and black pudding for breakfast and I did 20 takes. In such a situation I follow certain rules. First, I don’t have breakfast at home that morning. Then, for continuity I’ll eat something on the first line and drink later in the scene. I had six full slices of black pudding that day. That’s enough. But don’t get me wrong, I like black pudding.

I hate paying £4 for a sandwich at a service station. I feel like I’m being laughed at.

I bought an apron from the Disgusting Food Museum in Malmö, Sweden, and I wear it when I make blueberry pancakes each Saturday morning, from a John Torode recipe. We used to have maple bacon with them, but since we’ve gone veggie it’s melon. It turns into a pyjama day and we sit on the sofa watching Marx Brothers with the kids. It’s really lovely.

My favourite things

Food
Café reale, which is figs in cinnamon and white wine-spiced syrup with mascarpone, served with a coffee. I first had it at Pizza in the Park (one of the first Pizza Expresses), where I attended my first jazz gig.

Drink
Single malts. Laphroaig 10 Year Old for everyday use. If I’m being extravagant, Lagavulin 16 – extraordinarily peaty; like standing near a wood-smoke fire while eating handfuls of charcoal. It’s the drink of choice of Ron Swanson in Parks & Recreation.

Restaurant
Anne-Sophie Pic’s La Dame de Pic at the Four Seasons Hotel in Trinity Square, London. I’m not a fine-dining sort of person for reasons of expense and habit. It’s the only Michelin-starred restaurant I’ve been to more than once.

Dish to make
For a special occasion, mole, from a Rick Bayless recipe that he made for Barack Obama (for a state visit by the Mexican president). It’s got about 35 ingredients and takes me a weekend. But for everyday cooking, I know five Felicity Cloake recipes off by heart. My current favourite is dan dan noodles with mushrooms rather than pork.

The Christmas episode of All Creatures Great and Small will be broadcast at 9pm on Christmas Eve on Channel 5