Bitter: As Seen On Saturday Kitchen

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Is it weird to say a salad? There’s this raw kale and grapefruit salad in Bitter that everyone seems to be going mad for! I think it’s just a really perfect combination of flavours: bitterness from the kale and grapefruit, toasty notes from the almonds, sweetness from the dressing, a little punch from the spring onions and shallots. What is it about cooking and food that makes you really happy?

TRY: Alexina's recipe for salmon tacos with grapefruit - delicious! What are the components of a good meal for you? I find cooking quite meditative – a chance to use your hands and let your mind wander – but then, once you’ve had that moment of calm, you get to share something delicious with the people that you love: a magic combination! Meanwhile, crush the saffron in a pestle and mortar, then combine it with the yoghurt and boiling water until you have a gleaming golden-coloured mixture. Stir through a third of the cooked rice. The now 30-year-old works as Head of Frozen at Mindful Chef, which delivers 'the UK's highest quality recipe boxes' from its base in London, MyLondon reports.

When is the MasterChef 2021 final on TV?

The now 30-year-old (29 at the time of filming) works as Head of Frozen at Mindful Chef, which delivers 'the UK's highest quality recipe boxes' from its base in Wandsworth.

The BBC dropped their regular output on Friday across BBC One and BBC Two to instead air special coverage dedicated to the Duke of Edinburgh - with the MasterChef final rescheduled to Wednesday. Who’s the author? Alexina Anatole started her career on a trading floor in the City of London but had always been obsessed with food. In her late 20s – after years of watching the show – she decided to enter MasterChef, reaching the final in 2021. The competition, in which she came runner-up, led her to realise that she had a talent for cooking but, more importantly, helped her to better understand what it is that gives food flavour and meaning, and how our individual palates mean that we experience flavour and taste in different ways. Bitter is her first cookbook, but with more to follow (the second, Sweet, will be published in 2025), she is building an impressive career around her true passion: food.

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I was recently in Paris and popped into the famous ice cream shop Berthillon. I had one scoop of their bitter chocolate sorbet and one scoop of apricot: heaven!

Niki Segnit’s The Flavour Thesaurus is a chef’s dream, and a fantastic read too. I use it all the time when considering new flavour combinations. It lives by my bed. Can you tell us about your journey into food - were you always destined to cook?

Introduction

Fearlessly bringing together the best flavours and culinary strategies from around the world, Alexina Anatole will help you befriend bitterness - one flavour-balancing technique at a time. Using ten ingredients to walk you through every type of bitterness and how to tame it - from grapefruit and bitter oranges, bitter greens, tahini, beer, walnuts, cranberries, tea, coffee, cocoa and liquorice - each recipe will expand your repertoire and open the door to new worlds of deliciousness, using bitterness in both savoury and sweet dishes to elevate the taste of everything you make. I think innovation has to be based in tradition. I find “fusion” goes wrong when there isn’t some sort of organic progression or thought process behind a new combination. Scouting for Girls and MasterChef 2021 champion Tom Rhodes are among the lineup for this year’s Foodies Festival, dubbed ‘Gastro Glastonbury’, which had to be cancelled last year due to Covid. After three years at Cambridge I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. However, knowing that financial stability was important to me (the last thing I wanted to be was a burden on my mum, who had done so much for me and my brother) I found myself with an internship at one of the top investment banks, which led to a decade-long career in the City. It was — unsurprisingly — a challenging environment to exist in as a young woman of colour and, truly, I worked (and lived) to cook and eat.

Prior to MasterChef I had a different career, but once I reached the final I thought “this is it, this is your chance to give the food dream a go”. Samin Nosrat is an inspiration, not just because she wrote a phenomenal and very clever book ( Salt Fat Acid Heat ) about the art and science of cooking, but because her Netflix series (of the same title) was one of the few times I’ve seen a woman of colour present a food travelogue. She really broke the mould there. He said: “When I was younger, I watched a lot of Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater. I have met Nigella Lawson and have a signed copy of How to Eat, which has a special place in my growing collection of over 300 cookbooks.

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The food was so precise, so beautiful, so elevated, and yet the vibe was cool and relaxed and unstuffy: it was that perfect balance of special and comfortable. The Japanese influences in the menu were sublime and the wine pairings (usually something I find to be overrated) were creative and spot on. After attending a state school in South London I secured a place to read English at Cambridge University — a completely different world to the one that I was used to. At the moment, it’s probably yuzu kosho – I’m addicted to its zingy, warming and slightly fermented flavour. It’s wonderful used in a dressing to dress noodles. What makes a great comfort dish for you?