Continuing with the Great British Baking Show

This season of the Great British Baking Show (in England titled Great British Bake Off) has been a lot of fun so far. I've watched 6 of the 8 episodes, and have seen lots of really appealing bakery goods, especially on the last one the frangipane tarts and vol-au-vents filled with fascinating and flavorful choices. I'm looking forward to the final episodes that will become available next week.

Screen shot of some of the Frangipane Tarts made on Episode 6. From the PBS website.

Nadia as she appears on
the show, from PBS website.

Because of the enormous publicity about the winner when the BBC show originally aired in England last year, I've known all along that it was Nadiya Hussain, child of Bengali immigrants to England. It's especially impressive to know in advance that she won, because there were so many early episodes of the show where she did rather poorly and even ended in tears. Though she always had wonderful ideas for flavor combinations (I wish I could taste them!) she often struggled with the very tight time limits on the show.

Photo of Nadiya from the Guardian article.

Nadiya has remained in the news ever since. I just read an interview about her background in the Guardian titled "Nadiya Hussain: ‘I have a senseless love affair with cheese’ --The Bake Off winner recalls childhood curries and explains why she didn’t get into baking until she was a teenager."

Here are some interesting things from the Guardian that I learned about Nadiya that I didn't know -- in her words from the interview:

• "Dad was a chef with his own Indian restaurant ... – although he wouldn’t admit it – [he'd] make quite Anglicised curries. Whereas for Mum everything was simple-simple, stripped back and traditional. She’d never do bulk cooking, whereas he’d buy a whole sheep every Friday."
• "The concept of dessert doesn’t exist in Bangladeshi cuisine.... When I got into baking it was a big surprise; no one could fathom it."
• "I also have a senseless love affair with cheese. My mother never bought any because there was none in Bangladeshi cuisine..... I seem to fall in love with things I wasn’t brought up with. Sometimes there’s nothing better than finding another cuisine and loving it differently."
• "I first met my husband on the day we got married, when I was 20."