Appetite: A Memoir in Recipes of Family and Food

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He approached the 2015 general election reasonably confident he would be the next chancellor of the exchequer. I definitely wanted slightly more detail on Ed’s life - events were briefly described and then we were moved swiftly on - but I really enjoyed this book. At 27 he took a job working on fiscal policy for Gordon Brown with another bright young Labour wonk, Ed Miliband. Ed now is the man who cooks the family’s Sunday roast beef and carves it and sends round the gravy; he’s taken on the mantle of both his father and his mother.

It is about facing up to your fears and misgivings, and tackling your limitations - on stages public and private. By contrast, his reflections of food in Westminster were somewhat cynical, where meals with the likes of Tony Blair or Peter Mandelson were almost weaponised as platters became political.

I spent years in a world where there was this drive and competition to get to the top and to feel the pressure of that. In his political career, Ed was an MP from 2005 to 2015 and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer between 2011 and 2015. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

On the night of 7 May 2015, Ed Balls thought there was a chance he would wake up the next morning as the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is making a documentary about social care, the latest in a run that has taken him around Europe and America.The tomato soup, French bread and green salad served by Mandelson were exquisite but Balls assumed they were the starter, not the whole meal. I haven’t actually tried his revolutionary sounding sponge cake which uses double cream rather than butter; let’s keep an open mind here. If food at home has been about love, connection and tradition, food in politics is inevitably about power.