interview with david loftus, photographer

I enjoy cooking in a sort of romantic sense.

To me, ‘date night’ might be cooking. I like to surprise my wife with a dish, but I always make it up. I never follow a recipe, though I might google how long to cook something for. I’m not the kind of cook who would sit and go through recipe books, which is ironic since I shoot so many. I used to enjoy cooking for the children, because they were quite an appreciative audience, in a way. Although Pascale, in particular, was a fussy eater - one day she’d love tomatoes and the following day she’d hate tomatoes. I think it’s the same with most children; they just make it up. I remember saying I hated green vegetables, but I had no reason to say I hated them other than that my twin loved them. I don’t enjoy the mess of cooking and I do make a mess.

If I’m cooking for other people, I make up a pasta dish.

I make my own pesto, which I love, and I make it depending on what is around. I’ll take a whole bunch of basil, stalks and all, I might roast some almonds or cashews - I don’t just do the classic pine nuts. So, I’ll make a pesto, and have that as dollops on the side, then I’ll make a pasta along with the heads of tenderstem broccoli. Basically, I make a green sauce - the whole thing is green. I slow cook onions, and only put the tenderstem in at the last minute - I literally just shave the tops off. Couple of anchovies, some petits pois and it makes this really nice green sauce. That’s my current favourite. I’ve just discovered I’m a coeliac, so I have to have gluten-free pasta now, which is great actually. I rejoice, because the things I was being tested for were far worse, and therefore coeliac is a relief. Luckily there are good gluten-free pastas - I’m yet to discover good bread.

I tend to have a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables, so when I really can’t be bothered to cook, I do a fresh, uncooked salad.

I just use a speed peeler and shave celery, carrots, beetroot, anything. A lot of things that people normally cook, I’ll just have raw. It’s one of my favourite things to eat. Then sprinkle some nuts on it.

If I had no fresh veg, I’d do scrambled eggs. I love scrambled eggs and they’re so easy and quick. Since having been diagnosed as coeliac, I’m struggling with bread. Someone cooked me a mini loaf the other day in Stockholm where they used rice flour and it was amazing. They said they’d send me the recipe, so I haven’t given up but I’ve got a feeling I’ll have to make my own bread.

I used to say my death row meal, if I was ever wrongly convicted, would be sourdough toast with scrambled eggs, and black truffles grated over it, Fontodi olive oil and a glass of Whispering Angel rosé. For pudding I’d have fresh papaya, a squeeze of lime, and maybe I’d invent a tart made from prunes, dates, almonds, cashews - all the things I love in a little sweet tart with some almond ice cream and some pistachio ice cream.

I’ve picked up most of my cooking ‘skills’, if you can call them skills, from Jamie Oliver.

Twenty years of learning how to hold a knife properly, temperatures, things like that - the basics, I suppose - watching Jamie be instinctive. He’s at his best when he goes to a market, looks for what’s fresh and goes off and cooks it in the street. His cooking is based around not necessarily having a kitchen, so if he doesn’t have a kitchen, he’ll make a little fire pit, and it’s no difference to him if it’s a £20k kitchen or a little camping stove. That is when he is at his most inspiring. I’m learning all the time, that’s the thing. I have picked up a lot about flavour. I don’t have a wide repertoire, but I can put something to together by taste. I have noticed that everyone adds salt to whatever I do, because I don’t use a lot of salt. I’m bad at gutting fish, though not because I’m squeamish. If I get fresh mackerel and it’s not gutted, I’d struggle. I like my fish deboned, which sounds like I’m being spoilt but I know I’m bad with fish and I tend to overcook it. The gutting, the timing and the bones - they scare me a bit.

My mother taught me a few things when I was young.

My twin and I both learnt how to make spaghetti Bolognese. It teaches you a lot about how to make sauces and soups, because it’s the holy trinity to begin with your three veg and you can do so much as a result of that. She also taught me how to roast a chicken. My mother was an early user of risotto rice, when it seemed terribly exotic to have risotto; she used to do an amazing sweetbread risotto which, nowadays, you might get at the best Italian restaurants. She taught me various basics, but she was a full-time doctor, so she often didn’t get home in time to cook. My father was a more basic cook; he worked in the City and could do the same as I could, in a way. My grandmother taught me how to make coconut ice. I felt very powerful that I could make coconut ice. Pink and white stripes of coconut and sugar.

I make my own vinegar, so I make a really good dressing.

I love it so much. I’m sure it’s because I make it myself, but it does seem to taste better than any other red wine vinegars I buy. It’s a really strange process, but so rewarding. You’re supposed to use the dregs of your red wine, so you have to be someone who doesn’t drink a full bottle of red wine. It’s your leftover eighth of the bottle, which you top up continually. You start it with a bottle of decent red wine; the better your red wine, the better the vinegar. It’s no good just putting cheap wine in it because you’ll end up with cheap vinegar, which is what you buy in a supermarket. It’s in a lovely little ceramic pot with a wooden tap - it’s very romantic. When clients shoot at the mews, where I work, quite often I’ll give them a little pot of vinegar to take home. Prue Leith took one home and she said, “That’s the best vinegar I’ve ever had.”

If the world was about to end, I would choose to eat the hottest chilli known to man because I am highly allergic to chillies and I’d rather go out my own way. The oesophagus closes and I start by choking. It’s only happened twice and both times an ambulance has, thankfully, been nearby. One time was Jamie’s father, at his pub and, as I lost consciousness, the last thing I heard Jamie say before the ambulance arrived was, “Dad, you’ve killed David!” with tears flowing down his cheeks. I remember thinking, “I need to see my children,” but I also remember seeing all the minutiae of dirt on a pub carpet, and thinking “Is this really going to be my last sight?”.

When I travel, I have to be really careful, but I’ve survived India and Thailand and Vietnam. The worst was New Mexico because they even stick it in the bread and it’s in the air quite a lot which really makes me struggle. It’s a bit like having the worst hay fever. I always thought I was the only one. I was once photographing this wonderful lady in Campo de Fiori market in Rome, and she is one of the few that has been there for decades. She must be in her eighties and she sells chillies; fresh chillies, dried chillies, and I always take a photograph of her when I’m there. I introduced her to Jamie when we were doing the first Jamie Cooks Italy, so she’s in there. I took her a copy of the  book when we were out there and presented it to her with Jamie and thanked her for being it. She told him in broken English that it was ironic that she has lived her life in Campo de Fiori selling chillies when she’s highly allergic! I discovered that Paul Smith, the designer, is too.

My favourite restaurant in the world is really hard to pick.  

There is a place that I’ve only been to once, but if I could go there every day, I would. It’s called Scoglio da Tommaso. It’s a place where every seafood that you love is fresh from the ocean and you’d see it come in - the food was extraordinary. This one, on the Amalfi, is about as idyllic as it comes.

In London, date night is The Delaunay. Colbert is my favourite local and it also does really good scrambled eggs, embraces the truffle season and does good rose. I have a thing about Sorella in Clapham at the moment, which is Robin Gill who has The Dairy, although I’m going to struggle being a coeliac there because it’s the best bread in London - it tastes like treacle. I don’t like to travel too far, I love places like Cornerstone but they’re so far away from me that half the evening is spent on travel. It makes you realise how big London is sometimes when you have to go to a restaurant in the East End.

Japanese is probably my favourite cuisine. Although, I’ve just found out that soy sauce has gluten in it. I love Italian food, particularly hearty Tuscan food, but if I had to choose, it would be Japanese.

Apart from chillies, I won’t eat anything that involves unnecessary cruelty.

I won’t eat non-sustainable fish. I’m anti foie gras. I don’t eat a huge amount of meat, but I need to know where it comes from. I know, for a lot of people, it’s a bit of a luxury but I wouldn’t eat a battery chicken and I hate the fact that everyone loves Nando’s. The cruelty that goes into it is so awful. I’ve seen it. I did an advert for German McDonalds and I have vowed I’d never do it again. They check the sex of the chick, if it’s a female, they pump it up for days until it becomes your chicken nugget. If it’s a male, they literally throw it through a tree shredder. Apparently the people who do this, get bored and drop kick them in there. It’s so depressing. The trouble with the food industry is that, if you really look into it - particularly that side of it - it truly is depressing. If you can afford to go to a decent butcher, it’s good for everyone; the animal, the farmers, employment, the environment. You’d have to pay me a lot of money to eat a chicken nugget or a Nando’s. I remember Jamie saying to the guy who runs Nando’s “You could be at the forefront of animal welfare,” and he turned around to him and said “Why on earth would I do that?”. It’s so short-termist and that’s what makes me sad about it really. And there’s Jamie who won’t even eat a Red Tractor welfare standard - it’s got to be better than that - and he certainly wouldn’t serve it in one of his restaurants and there he is, having tried to keep his provenance good and prices down and ultimately, it doesn’t necessarily mean bums on seats.

David Loftus’ memoir Diary of a Lone Twin is published on 5th September, 2019.