Interview by Mrs Rubbish

Photography by Emma Hardy

You could say the first thing I ever toasted was my fingers. When I was three, I crawled up to the stove and stuck my hand on the
gas burner. My mum said it looked like she had tortured me. It is my earliest memory of being in our family kitchen. 

I grew up in a small town with a population of 9,000, in-between Toronto and Montreal. Rural Canada as a landscape is all very well, but let’s just say I wasn’t really surrounded by great food. What’s Canadian cuisine, anyway? It doesn’t really exist. If it’s interesting, it’s European, so I didn’t have a big food upbringing and consequently I don’t cook a lot myself. 

When I was a kid, we used to eat out a lot and I always ordered a side of bacon. I was obsessed with thin, streaky, crispy rashers. It’s one of the tastes embedded in my mind. I do still love a bacon sandwich.

One particular place I remember going to regularly with my family was a cheap Italian restaurant called Gerbo’s. We nicknamed it Gerbils. The crazy thing is it is still going! I visited my home town a year ago while making a documentary, and I was completely shocked that it was still there, serving customers on paper plates.

Because my parents worked a lot, I don’t have big recollections of baking at home with my two brothers and three sisters. I do remember everyone trying to be creative with their cooking and sometimes the concoctions were a little odd. One of my relatives used to open a can of mushroom soup, tinned salmon and a tin of peas. All of these things I hate. She’d stir them up in a pan and pour it onto a piece of toast. It was absolutely disgusting. 

I do really like the creative process of cooking. It’s not difficult to cook, but it is difficult to cook really well. To be amazing at it is a kind of art. I find I don’t improvise at all as I’m not very confident with it. Because my whole day revolves around making endless decisions, when I do cook I just want to follow a recipe. It is so relaxing for me to let a cookbook tell me what to do. 

I have tons of cookbooks. They are the best presents. Nowadays the recipes are so easy to follow, unlike those crazy, over-the-top, old-fashioned cookbooks where you have to make gelées and endless reductions. Jamie Oliver and Nigella make you feel like you can actually do it. 

The couscous recipe I’ve cooked up is inspired by my latest show, as it’s based on a warrior desert queen from the North African Sahara. As with everything I do, it has a rock’n’roll twist, hence the Jack Daniel’

s in it. 

Left to my own devices, my biggest vice is ice cream. I used to work in an ice-cream store when I was a teenager. In fact, my first-ever job was at Baskin Robbins. We were only allowed to eat a small amount each shift, but my head was in the cabinet. I could eat barrels of the stuff. I could totally live off ice cream. And I eat it really fast. I have to confess I don’

t even mind when the ice burns the inside of my throat. I just wait 30 seconds and eat more. 

I’ve got an ice-cream maker at home. It’s good fun, but you actually don’t want to know ice cream is made from a container of double cream. You’

d never sit and drink that, so it just makes you feel guilty.

In the run-up to my show I can’t sleep, so a couple of nights ago I got up at 4am, crept downstairs, broke some cooking chocolate into a bowl of vanilla ice cream and ate it while watching MTV. I do get up in the middle of the night and eat. It’s so bad for you, especially recently, when I’ve either been not sleeping or practically sleepwalking. I think it’s a comfort thing. When I’m very stressed during the day I don’t eat – I’ll have one apple all day. Yesterday all day I just had an apple. When I got home at midnight I had supper. It’s not good for you but now it’

s all over until next season. 

Todd Lynn has created a special apron to celebrate Philips’ stylish new Robust Collection of kitchen appliances, launching next month. See www.philips.com/kitchen. Todd Lynn’s Spring/Summer 2010
collection debuted yesterday at Somerset House, WC2. To find Todd’s Desert Mirage recipe go to WWW.DAILYRUBBISH.CO.UK

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