Soul Food: Patricia Michelson on her mother's roast potatoes When my best friend Wiggy said we'd get a sweet at the end of drama class I was hooked. My mother wanted me to be this delicate creature and sent me to ballet classes, only to see me struggle until the improvisation bit at the end where I'd fly around the room, lost in my imagination. I loved the idea of creating different personas. At mealtimes my younger brother and I had a ritual of what to eat first, in order to get through the bits we didn't like. I would say to him, 'We've got to eat like we're royalty,' and then, 'We've got to eat as if we're tramps and this is our first meal in days.' My mother wasn't interested in cooking in the slightest but her roast potatoes were amazing. I always left them to the end. It was down to her using half Cookeen and half lard, first par-boiling the potatoes, then tossing them with slices of onion in the hot fat before roasting. I was rarely offered seconds (my mother was very conscious of the fact I ate a lot, while she was very thin), so I would wolf what was on my plate and say, 'Please excuse me from the table,' then scuttle off secretly into the kitchen where the leftover crispy bits were waiting. A few minutes later she would always call out, 'Patsy? Are you in the kitchen? We still laugh about it today.