Show Notes
Number 5 in 5 O’ Clock Apron Podcast hears Claire cooking alongside Principal Ballerina from The Royal Ballet, Yasmine Naghdi. Claire has never met a ballerina before, nor indeed cooked with one. Yasmine is everything (and more) that Claire could have expected of a ballerina. Confident and poised (of course), Yasmine is also an extraordinary cook.
Yasmine’s roots are Belgian Persian, but she’s a born and bred South Londoner. Yasmine attended the Royal Ballet school from age 11 and has danced her way through the ranks to the very top of the institution. Earlier this month Yasmine announced the exciting news that she is expecting her first child later this year and plans to return to performing next year.
Claire and Yasmine meet at Yasmine’s parent’s house, “their kitchen is better suited than mine” says Yasmine, and immediately the pair start cleaning clams, picking herbs and chopping garlic. Yasmine is a meticulous and passionate cook, teaching Claire her way to make her very favourite pasta dish, Linguine Vongole.
Remarkably organised, clearly very skilled, Yasmine cooks exactly as you might imagine a ballerina would cook, and Claire is in awe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
More from 5 O' Clock Apron
For this final episode of season 4 of 5 O’ Clock Apron Podcast Claire cooks with her 19-year-old daughter Grace, the catalyst for Dear Grace the cookbook. As many who follow Claire on instagram @5oclockapron will know, Grace left home for University last September and is very much missed by all of her family. Home for the summer holidays, and Grace’s suggestion, Grace wanted to cook with her mum for this podcast recording. This is a lovely listen, less Grace teaching Claire, more mother and daughter cooking together, talking about the year that’s passed and what Grace has learnt, about cookery and also life, since leaving home.
Lemn Sissay is a lifeforce. A poet, three times Sunday Times bestselling author, memoirist playwright curator and broadcaster. Lemn also has some of his poems embedded as landmarks in the physical architecture of Manchester, London and the British Council Offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Brought up in care homes Makerfield, at 17 he lived alone and worked as a gutter cleaner, personalising his gutter cleaning leaflets with his poetry. Sometime later, his ladder stolen, Lemn moved to Manchester and worked for a publishing house as an Asian & Afro-Caribbean writers development worker. The 1990s saw the city of Manchester, and Lemn Sissay, gain a global celebrity, with both the Manchester scene and Lemn’s poetry reaping widespread acclaim.
Gerald Stratford is a gardener and a gentleman. Claire drove to the Cotswolds for this episode of 5 O Clock Apron Podcast. Knocking on Gerald’s front door, Claire is quickly whisked through the house, past Elizabeth, Gerald’s wife, and their dog, Bilbobaggins both sitting in the living room, on through the kitchen and out into Gerald’s garden. And what a garden it is! Gerald’s garden is immaculate and stuffed full to bursting with untold fruit and vegetables, the garden is a maze of walkways and paths, shooting off in all different directions to various raised beds, and to what Gerald’s refers to as his giant growing cages, all shapes and sizes, because there are so many of these homemade structures. Marigolds dot the flowerbeds and pathways, “to keep the pests at bay, we are at one with nature you see Claire, we are part of it, we can’t fight it, but the pests hate the smell of the marigolds, so it does help a bit!”
Miriam Gonzaléz Durantéz is a force, and Claire loved cooking with her for this episode of 5 O’ Clock Apron Podcast. Worth noting here that Claire is keen to get the elephant in the room over with as soon as Claire and Miriam start cooking in Miriam’s immaculate London kitchen with Claire quizzing Miriam on her title of Lady Clegg.
In this episode of 5 O’Clock Apron Podcast, Claire drives to Oxford to cook with the Professor of Computer Science and Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, Michael Wooldridge. Michael’s field of work has been in Artificial Intelligence (AI) since 1989, a landscape which has seen wide-reaching change. Michael’s Wikipedia page, and in particular, the awards and honours section is extensive and hugely impressive. He has written over 350 scientific papers and contributed to many academic books, and his most charming, for the layperson, is the bite-sized Ladybird Expert Book on Artificial Intelligence first published by Penguin Random House in 2018.