Tom Powell
SPANISH cookbooks are the flavour of the month for celebrity chef Anthony Worrall Thompson.
Appearing at the Gibraltar Literary Festival, the TV star revealed his current number one recipe book is that of Juan Mari Arzak, owner and chef of the eponymous Basque Country restaurant.
“I find British cookbooks very dull,” he admitted to the audience at Elliott O’Callaghan hotel, having prepared a festival lunch earlier in the day.
“But there are some Spanish cookbooks I’m really loving right now, Arzak being the best.”
“I have about 2,000 sitting on my shelves in total, and from each one I get about two dishes.”
Worrall Thompson, who has a house down the coast near Mijas, began his talk by revealing his somewhat troublesome childhood, beginning from the moment his actor mother’s waters broke during the middle of a scene at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
“I was a rebel then and I’m a rebel now, without a cause, you might say,” he said, hinting at the 2012 incident which saw him arrested for shoplifting from his local Tesco supermarket in the UK.
“But I’ve learnt that you’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself and not regret your mistakes, just learn from them.”
