“I’m really excited,” says Melissa Thompson, on the eve of the publication of her first cookbook, Motherland, before slightly changing her mind. “When I was a journalist and had a big story breaking the next day, my anxiety levels would be really high.” Motherland’s arrival, she says, is even more nerve-racking. It’s about her Jamaican heritage and, because it’s such an underrepresented culture in publishing, Thompson can’t help but feel the impossible responsibility to speak for everyone, and cover everything. “I’m terrified,” she says.
Motherland is the culmination of a busy few years. Thompson currently writes a column for BBC Good Food magazine, cooks at food festivals, and this summer was the co-curator of the British Library’s annual series of food talks and events. She trained as a journalist and worked for national newspapers, but began to lose her passion for news, instead discovering one for food. In 2014, she began to host supper clubs and events, building a reputation for her riff on Japanese flavours, including karaage-style fried chicken.
