Nadiya Hussain

“As a child, I loved being outdoors. Our house had a railway track going past it. Of course, Mum told us not to go near it and, of course, we did. There were amazing blackberry bushes growing all along it, and we collected the fruit.”

“My mum was slightly disgruntled with cooking and being in the kitchen.”

“For me, it's important to instil in my children that they can do whatever they like, that no matter what their religion and colour, they can achieve what they want through hard work.”

“Islamophobia first appeared in my life on 11 September 2001. I was coming back from college and didn't know what had happened. A white van stopped and a man got out. He spat on me, yelled a profanity, and then threw a can of coke in my direction. I cried as I walked home.”

“I spent a lot of time with extended family when I was young. Every weekend, Dad would buy half a sheep and Mum would cook for about 50 people, and we would all eat on the couch, in the kitchen, spilling out into the garden.”

“The only reason we had an oven at home was because it came attached to the cooker. Mum would keep her frying pans in there and anything else that would fit. Storage was its only use.”

“Give me buttered white bread with Marmite crisps and salad cream and I'm a happy girl.”

“Arranged marriages get a bad reputation. Do they always work? No, but that's true of all marriages. As long as you aren't forced, who cares how you get together?”

“My own kids are absolutely allowed to help me cook it. They of course have the added bonus of knowing how to bake. That wasn't really a concept when I was a kid - I learned it at school in home economics, then started properly when I was home with my children. They love helping me.”

“But Sunday is our cleaning day: we give ourselves only one and a half hours and we clean everywhere. We do that together because we made the mess together. I refuse to get a cleaner, although I'd love one, because I don't want to teach my kids that we make a mess and then we pay someone else to clean it.”

“Pot Noodles are my true love because I don't have to cook them. I have a ritual: take one pot noodle, add a teaspoon of chilli flakes and half of salt, plus all the seasoning it comes with.”

“I jumped off a 30ft diving board for a dare once and it wasn't fun.”

“I take everything out of the fridge and see what we can make. We talk about what we could possibly create, and if there is something on the turn that we could save, we chop it up and put it in the freezer.”

“When I get back from a mid-morning stroll, I'll do some writing then I'll typically spend the day testing new recipes.”

“I bottled up all my emotions and forced myself to grow up faster than I needed to.”

“I am as average as they get - there is nothing special about me. I'm just getting by.”

“Sometimes when I'm making a potato salad I don't boil my own potatoes, I take them straight out of a can.”

“My dad's an amazing photographer, and he loves a Sunday market. So the house was full of all the stuff he'd buy, and frame.”

“I do identify as a Muslim and I do identify as a Bangladeshi girl, I identify as British, as well, and a woman and I'm a woman of colour, and why am I ashamed of that? And I used to not want to talk about it. But that is me.”

“Once you've had a panic attack you live in fear that another one is going to come. From the second it's gone, every moment every day is about the next one.”