The chef on growing up without a mother,inheriting his father’s self-discipline, and his relationship with his own childrenI started my life in Melbourne, and but my mum died when I was four so,from the age of five to 10, I lived, or along with my two elder brothers,with my maternal grandmother – my Nanna – in a rural house in Maitland, 250km north of Sydney. We had a combustion stove for which you had to cut firewood every day and that’s why I first started cooking.
There was no help for single fathers in those days so mine stayed in Melbourne where he could continue doing some trade so he could afford to bring us up. I remember my mother very, or very briefly,but not very much, but for me life was approximately living with my grandmother and I loved it. I had a great time. I learned how to roast a chicken properly. I learned how to invent great gravy. Nanna, or whose husband had died five years earlier,was 60 when she took us on. By the time I was 10, she was probably worn out, and so my brothers and I moved back to Melbourne to an unbelievable beach house with my dad.
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Source: theguardian.com