‘It’s all very easy …,’ Sophie Dahl says about her new book. ‘I’m a home cook, not a trained cook.’
As far back as British model-turned-writer Sophie Dahl can recall, all of the pivotal events in her life have centred on food.
Her first Parisian photo shoot went hand-in-hand with a French lunch of heavy red-wine stew, crusty bread and dark chocolate pots. After being discovered in the streets of London by the late fashion icon Isabella Blow, the granddaughter of legendary author Roald Dahl stuffed herself with "a wealth of sushi and tempura." As a child, when she moved from "starchy London to svelte New York," she can remember munching on whole-wheat bagels with cream cheese and tomatoes, and noticing that "women in New York talked about food and how to avoid it all the time."
Ms. Dahl, now 32, was living in New York again as an adult when she realized that she too fixated on food. "I was endlessly having conversations about what I was going to eat next," she says from her home in London. "Following breakfast, I would plan lunch. It was the permanent conversation."
After quitting modelling and following in her grandfather's footsteps by penning two books - The Man with the Dancing Eyes and Playing with the Grown-Ups - Ms. Dahl decided to document her culinary voyages with Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights, out this week in Canada.
The new recipe collection cum food memoir and dieting manual chronicles her evolving relationship with food and recreates both family recipes and those discovered as a globetrotting fashionista.
Should readers be skeptical about food tips from a model? "Oh, I'm sure they will be," she laughs, while adding that her formerly plush figure and long-time Epicureanism may give her some clout as a foodie.
In her late teens, Ms. Dahl rose to fame with her zaftig form as the antidote to waifish Kate Moss.
However, after "a series of mini-epiphanies" - a raw food diet, a binge on powdered soup and dried pita bread and, finally, the realization that her grandmother's sensible eating advice was the way forward - she slimmed down.
Though she likens her weight loss to shedding the "freshman 15," a natural process that happened during her 20s, some of her fans felt betrayed by her newly svelte body and others accused her of having an eating disorder.
"It was very odd having been held up as a figurehead for some sort of movement. People were so thrilled to see a body they felt represented their own, I became a projection for their stuff," she says. "I met a journalist in Holland who said, 'I remember when you lost weight, I felt outraged and thought it was appalling.' I was 21 years old and I lost some weight! It was a very natural thing, not some political move."
Other followers would stop her - in airports, supermarkets, bathrooms - and ask about how she shed the extra pounds. "I thought there must be a way of addressing this in a bigger form, in a way that is gentle and straightforward. So that was also part of the drive to want to write the book."
On her newly formed food philosophy, she writes, "This kitchen is a gentle relaxed one, where a punishing, guilt-inducing attitude towards food will not be tolerated." Ms. Dahl rejects radical regimens, and believes, "the thing about losing weight is not doing militant diets. The moment you start saying, 'I will never have that again' and being forbidding is the moment you want to do it more."
For those who want to lose weight, she suggests eating three wholesome meals a day, refraining from picking in between, and doing a "bit of exercise. …
"If I look at the way my grandmothers looked at food, it wasn't a complicated thing," she says. "You ate when you were hungry, and you ate what was in the garden or at the green grocer. It was seasonable and sustainable before those things were fashionable."
The recipes in the book, which are organized by season, reflect what she eats now: simple, fresh and nutritious foods. "It's all very easy and sink to hand," she says. "I'm a home cook, not a trained cook."
Indeed, she takes shortcuts wherever possible, ingredient lists are trim, and no particular cuisine dominates because, "I'm such a greedy pig I could never pick any one."
Taking a cue from her grandfather Roald, the neophyte cook writes with a sense of whimsy, sharing, for example, her penchant for baby food (anything that's mashed or puréed) and eating breakfast (pancakes, omelettes) for lunch and dinner.
Most recipes come with an ode to an ingredient or family member, such as the delicious grilled bananas with Greek yogurt and agave, inspired by a snack of mashed banana and olive oil that her grandfather used to make.
Ms. Dahl, who was immortalized as orphan Sophie in The BFG, inherited other eating habits from Mr. Dahl. After meals, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory would share chocolate (one of his three food obsessions, along with borscht and burgundy) with family.
Now, Ms. Dahl says, she can't live without the rich treat. "I love love love chocolate."
In the new book, photos of chocolate and the other food that delights Ms. Dahl run alongside Vogue-worthy shots of the former model cooking and eating. The underlying implication: If readers follow her advice, they could end up looking like the leggy blonde.
But Ms. Dahl says she only hopes to add a reasonable voice to what she thinks is an unhealthy chorus about food. "Somewhere along the line," she says, "we got a bit lost."
Special to The Globe and Mail