Skip to content
Open menu Close menu

Feed your appetite for cooking with Penguin’s expert authors

What My Mother Taught Me: Rachel Khoo’s Food Memories

by Julia Pal

published on 13 March 2014, last updated on 5 February 2022

How did your mother’s cooking influence and inspire your love of food? And what are the dishes that remind you of your mum and the food she cooked for you? To celebrate Mother’s Day, we’ve been asking our authors to tell us all about their mother’s cooking, picking a recipe from their cookbook that reminds them of their early childhood experiences of great food.

We’re starting with Rachel Khoo, whose stylish brand of French cooking has inspired a whole generation of enthusiasts for simple Gallic fare. Rachel picked out her Roast Red Wine Chicken recipe as the one that most reminds her of her mother’s cooking, and here’s why:

“Even though I grew up with eating lots of Asian food (my dad is from Malaysia) and the odd Schnitzel or Strudel thrown in (my mum is from Austria), my mum would always cook a roast on Sunday. Roast chicken was my favourite, especially with all the trimmings. My mum would spend hours preparing it all and the delicious aroma of the roasting chicken would waft through the house. I would constantly be in and out of the kitchen asking my mum when it would be done. I’m still pretty impatient, so my roast chicken is a little quicker to make (you just throw everything into a pan) but just as delicious!”

Red wine roast chicken | Rachel Khoo

Check out Rachel Khoo’s Roast Red Wine Chicken recipe here.

Find out more about Rachel Khoo’s My Little French Kitchen or get your own copy here.

From the book

Share

You might also like


View all

Features

Ottolenghi SIMPLE TOO: 5 things we can reveal so far

In 2018, Yotam Ottolenghi helped us elevate our everyday cooking with Ottolenghi SIMPLE, the hit cookbook that went on to sell over 1 million copies and became a perennial favourite...

Recipe Collections

Recipes you’ll love from The Greatest Traybake Cookbook Ever by John Gregory-Smith

Minimum fuss, maximum flavour. These are the principles that make savoury traybakes the perfect solution for dinner at the end of a long day, feeding a hungry crowd, and even...

Recipe Collections

10 bakes and desserts to make this winter

There are days where we want speed and convenience with the food we make, with recipes that require minimal prep and cooking time. But there are other days where cooking...

newsletter

Subscribe to The Happy Foodie email newsletter

Get our latest recipes, features, book news and ebook deals straight to your inbox every week