Interview

Roshi Fernando gives readers a tasty recipe for octopus and briefly explains what cooking has come to represent for her culturally

A recipe for octopus by Roshi Fernando, author of Homesick

I love cooking. I love eating, actually. It's not a huge problem: I limit myself now to eat only foods that I love. Before, I had a habit of forcing myself to eat literally anything. It was a way of being a person of the world: adaptable and non-offensive. I wanted to feel accepted wherever I went. I guess it was the way we were brought up: we were trained not to leave a thing on our plates. My father told us that to leave even one grain of rice was a sin - and to this day, when washing rice, if I spill a single grain I think it an inauspicious sign.

We have traveled a lot as a family, and in all of these countries, I've picked up - not recipes - but styles of food, adding them to my repertoire of staple dishes that I make at home. We drink Turkish coffee at breakfast, eat many different paneer dishes, soups, and fish of every style under the sun. Today in my local supermarket deep in the olde English countryside, a surprise installation of a trolley displaying vegetables from around the world caused great joy to the burghers ...