Lorraine Pascale walks into a canalside cafe in north London looking as if she has just come back from holiday or is about to leave: flip-flops, tangled hair, peachy shirt, minuscule denim shorts, sunglasses and orange earrings that stand out like orange peel in one of her recipes: zesty. And she is so tall – reminding one of the model she once was. Even casually dressed, she makes an impression with her dramatic presence, her gap-toothed smile. She is munching on a Marks & Spencer wrap: pomegranate, garlic and cumin. “I usually cook my own breakfast, but not today. They’ve improved, M&S…” For most of the last decade, she has been doing more than make breakfast. In January 2011 she broadcast her first BBC television series Baking Made Easy. She was an instant hit with her easy, streetwise perfectionism and virtuoso cake-making. Two further series followed and after a shelf’s worth of delectably diversified bestsellers, she hasn’t looked back.
It is interesting to catch her in an off-duty moment because her professional appearance is immaculate. In her latest book, How To Be a Better Cook, you leaf past shots of white sangria, flavoured ice cubes and Irish coffee with a Chantilly cream topping to pictures of Pascale looking radiant, pristine, happy. She wears her signature plain tops: snowy white, primrose yellow, palest pink with not an apron in sight – not a smear, stain or wayward garnish blemishing her. Even Pascale’s Eton mess is “neat-and-tidy Eton mess”. “Appearances are really important,” she says, “I like things to look tidy on the plate.” In her introduction, she advises: “The first thing you need to learn is my mantra. ‘It’s all fine!’ That’s the secret weapon. It’s all in your attitude. If you can relax and just take it easy, you’ll be fine.”
We are sitting on a rickety wooden floating structure, a wharf of sorts, next to a houseboat in Islington. In the rogue breeze, it keeps shifting. Every time it stirs, Pascale is overcome with giggles, like a schoolgirl amused by the idea of rocking the boat. Could she apply “It’s all fine” to her life? “I can try,” she says, laughing uncertainly. Her uncertainty will not surprise anyone who saw her remarkable BBC2 documentary, Fostering & Me, about the importance of foster care (there are 60,000 children in this country in care) and her own experience. She was born to an Afro-Caribbean mother on 17 November 1972 in Hackney’s Mothers’ Hospital. She spent her first 18 months with white working-class foster parents (“I can’t put into words what a joy you were to have as a baby,” her foster mother said on seeing her again). When they reluctantly gave her up for adoption to a middle-class couple from Witney, Oxfordshire – Roger and Audrey Woodward – they believed it would guarantee her a better education and future. Roger was an academic who had taught Spanish at Oxford, his wife a nurse.
The programme uncovered the devastating reasons why Pascale’s adopted mother was unable to bring her up and why, in 1976, she was put on an at-risk register and sent to a new foster family. Social workers’ records revealed that her adoptive mother, a secret drinker, failed to cope after her marriage broke down. She told social workers she was in danger of hurting three-year-old Pascale. She had tried to strangle and suffocate her and had fantasised about pushing her under the wheels of a passing lorry to “solve all my problems”.
Pascale protests, on camera, about the way journalists pursue this story: “Oh my God, here they go again asking about poor me.” Today, she is understandably braced against talking about fostering. I tell her that what bowled me over was that, after learning for the first time about her mother’s murderous fantasies, Pascale’s reaction was concern for her mother. She observed that her mother (now suffering from dementia) had needed more help than she ever received. Can she forgive her? “Forgiveness is one thing,” she says, “this is about understanding. When people have problems, it is because there is an issue within themselves. You have to acknowledge this and have empathy.” Does she understand her mother’s behaviour? “Of course,” she answers – her lack of hesitation moving.
And how did it feel to meet her first foster mother who wept with emotion? Did she seem at once a stranger and intimate?
“Stranger is a bit harsh – like someone has broken into your house. No, she is just someone I didn’t know but obviously there is a history. It is difficult to say what it feels like because I have nothing to compare it to. I have met my biological mother and you don’t really feel anything because you don’t know them. You can have feelings about what you learn through other people’s memories, but you can’t really feel. It is not like some long-lost cousin because they are people who, as far as you are concerned, you have never met before. So it is not like a reunion.”
Does she see her biological mother now?
“We are in contact a bit,” she says and the subject is closed. But the cause of promoting fostering is anything but closed and Pascale mentions she has been talking to the minister for children and families Ed Timpson: “I wanted to know ways I could help. We will speak again in a month. They did wonderful things with adoption. I’m hoping they can do the same with fostering.”
Pascale was 16 when she was spotted by talent scout Beth Boldt who discovered Naomi Campbell. She became the first black British woman to appear on the cover of American Elle and modelled for Versace and Donna Karan. You might suppose the salad-picking privations of modelling tempted her into cooking except that, in those days, she and her friends were healthy sizes 8 and 10. But she did have to curb her appetite, and confesses she could never be one of today’s super-thin: “I couldn’t have been that size. It is nice to have a bit of curve.” It seems amazing she is still so slim: she must cook a lot more than she eats? “Weight-training makes such a difference and I eat a lot of protein – protein shakes.”
Pascale quit modelling at 25. As a child, she had wanted to be a policewoman. Encouraged by the self-help book What Color is Your Parachute?, she experimented with careers. She trained as a car mechanic at a Skoda factory in Deal. “These days I’ve got a Smart car, like a Tonka toy. I wouldn’t know what to do if it broke down…” She tried secretarial work. And hypnotism. “I could put people under,” she says, but admits the training at the London College of Clinical Hypnosis put her in danger of nodding off herself.
Every account of Pascale’s life mentions her discovery, on a 2005 Prue Leith course, of cooking as her vocation. But she never explains why. “It was creative. I liked giving to people, and magic happens in the oven.” And you could say that, by the age of seven, she had a cook’s instincts. Her first attempt at cooking was unusual and she confidently believed she had invented it: “I discovered garlic and thought how great it would be to chop up cloves and layer them on to toast.” She laughs: “No one told me the smell would last five days.”
Her break came when – through Marco Pierre White, whom she knew from her modelling days – she was put in touch with Selfridges’ food director and commissioned to make 250 Christmas cakes. In her first book, she writes: “For me, cakes say cosiness and contentment, home, warmth, love. Most people’s first baking memory is of making a cake, side by side with their mother…” I ask if it is possible that, in her baking, she is creating the flawless childhood she never had – togetherness, contentment and security in chocolate, meringue and perfectly risen sponge? She says she prefers to give “therapeutic” bread-making the star billing.
She is quick to resist anything that might make her seem vulnerable; her books are full of boosting quotes. One attributed to Churchill is a favourite (“If you’re going through hell, keep going”), as is another, often attributed to Plato (“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”). And in the new book, an Arab proverb (“The mouth should have three gate keepers. Is it true? Is it kind? And is it necessary?”)
Kindness matters most. No wonder she resists Twitter at its most toxic (she has 120,000-plus followers, and has occasionally suffered racist abuse, resulting in her calling the police in 2011): “There seemed to be a lot of people watching my show at 4am sending horrible messages.”
“Pascale” is not her surname, it is her middle name, given by her adoptive mother “because I was adopted at Easter.” Her surname is Balinski. Her ex-husband, Kaz Balinski-Jundzill, was a Polish count, musician and businessman. When they met, he was a hippie, a New York socialite. They married in 1995. Their daughter, Ella, was born a year later. Four years on, they parted (she later told the London Evening Standard the split turned her hair grey: “I went straight to Boots and bought whatever was on the shelf in jet black. I don’t think I’d look good with a big white afro”). She talks animatedly about 17-year-old Ella, after whom Pascale’s Covent Garden cupcake shop was originally named. Ella wants to be an actor and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. Pascale is encouraging her to cook for herself – unsuccessfully so far (and who can blame Ella, with Pascale for a mother?). And Pascale is still single – she parted last year from fiance Ged Doherty, a film and music executive, when he wanted her to settle in LA.
What is next for Pascale? She is taking a break, she says. She loves to stroll with her rescue dog, Watson, whose neighbourhood friend, she laughs disbelievingly, is called Sherlock. At last, she relaxes into chat and it is a relief because she has been self-policing, seeing questions as potential snares. But now she is away: “I went to Primark yesterday, it’s amazing, they have this make-up range – everything for a pound. I got a bit spotty after using it… No, I’m joking, I didn’t! I like Primark. I’m about to start a vlog on YouTube – on fatness, fitness, beauty and makeup.” A new focus for her cooking? She won’t say. One last question then: what is the best and worst thing about her job? The first part is easy: “Being able to eat lots and often.” But about the second: “I don’t know if there is a worst thing. Is there a worst thing?” And she quickly changes the subject to her passion for Thai fishcakes.
How To Be a Better Cook by Lorraine Pascale (HarperCollins, RRP £25). Click here to order a copy from the Guardian Bookshop for £18.99, with free UK p&p
