Berkshire


<p>Well, one thing&#8217;s for certain: Clodagh McKenna is living her most delicious life. While you may recognise her from the glamourous studio lights of ITV&#8217;s <em>This Morning</em>, she&#8217;s no stranger to muddy wellies (and stilettos!) From her idyllically gorgeous Broadspear Farm, just over the border in Hampshire, Clodagh spends her days cooking, dancing, and taking care of her two dogs, 22 chickens, 5 cows, 3 pigs, 7 ducks, and 25,000 bees. Yes, really.</p>



<p>Between all that, she&#8217;s managed to find the time to release her brand-new cookbook, <em>Clodagh’s Happy Cooking</em> &#8211; a beautiful hardback stacked with over 100 nourishing and anxiety-relieving recipes that&#8217;s all about easy, feel-good flavours. Couple that with the dreamy new Caramel &amp; Honeycomb Linen Collection from her lifestyle brand <a href="https://www.honeybyclodagh.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Honey by Clodagh</a>, and she&#8217;s practically making this season her runway, her kitchen, and her stage. We caught up with the fabulous chef to get the full inside scoop. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/BUTTERY_CROQUE_BAKE_CLODAGH_1330.jpg" alt="Clodagh McKenna this morning chef new cookbook happy cooking" class="wp-image-121837" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-so-a-new-cookbook-do-tell-all">So, a new cookbook! Do tell all&#8230;</h3>



<p>I wanted to write this book because about 10 years ago, I decided to really focus on looking after myself, both physically and mentally. As I&#8217;ve reached 50, my energy isn&#8217;t the same as in my 30s, and I still have, if not more work to do and more responsibilities, so the book is really an authentic journal of everything I do. I&#8217;ve been juicing every single morning without fail for the past 10 years, so all the juices I make are in there &#8211; some are packed with lots of greens and are great for my gut. Others are focused on skin or energy, then there&#8217;s immune boosting ones too. There&#8217;s also a section on teas. I drink a lot of turmeric, ginger, honey, and lemon which have really helped with my bloated tummy. All that, plus lunches, breads, soups, and treats. </p>



<p>I am never going to be that person doing headstands at night and living 24/7 obsessed with healthy food. I love food so much and I love living, I love entertaining, I love having people around and I like food as a comfort at the weekend. The book is all about that life balance of healthy eating in the week &#8211; making sure I get pulses, lentils, vegetables, spices, herbs and everything into my body &#8211; but at the weekends, being able to eat whatever I want, whether that&#8217;s my Moroccan orange cake or my mum&#8217;s Irish stew. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-mindfulness-also-seems-to-play-a-big-part-in-the-book">Mindfulness also seems to play a big part in the book</h3>



<p>My mental health has really improved because of my healthy eating in the past decade, and I can see an absolute 100% correlation between the two. So, yes, that mindfulness aspect is also a huge part of the book too. I&#8217;ve shared my rituals of what I do, my daily meditation, cold showers, sitting with my headphones on, forest bathing that I do at the weekends. It&#8217;s all really simple things. If my team, who I love so much, get stressed out, I take it very personally. I stop everybody and go, &#8216;okay let&#8217;s turn on the music, let&#8217;s have a dance off&#8217; or we&#8217;ll go into the woods and have a walk. It&#8217;s so important.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-have-you-got-a-favourite-recipe-from-the-book">Have you got a favourite recipe from the book?</h3>



<p>Oh my god, that&#8217;s so hard! Well, the ribollita soup is so gorgeous. We made a huge batch of it last week and it&#8217;s a beautiful base of celery, garlic and onions with tomatoes. You can put any greens you want into it, so it&#8217;s a great fridge clear out one where you could put chard or spinach in. And then I always put beans in there too &#8211; whether it&#8217;s cannellini beans or chickpeas, lots of herbs, and a bit of chilli too. That is so good as you can batch make it and you&#8217;ve got everything you need to keep you going for the day. </p>



<p>I also love the Guinness bread, and at the moment we&#8217;re also obsessed with the parsnip cake. That being said, if anyone comes and stays at our house, my most requested recipe is my granola. It&#8217;s so easy to make and to put in big Kilner jars. You can have it with honey and yoghurt, plus add all your seeds and nuts.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/PARSNIP_CAKE_0940.jpg" alt="Clodagh McKenna recipe new cookbook farm" class="wp-image-121841" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-where-s-your-happy-place">Where&#8217;s your happy place?</h3>



<p>Definitely right here at home on the farm.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-the-first-thing-you-do-in-the-morning">What&#8217;s the first thing you do in the morning?</h3>



<p>My favourite task is definitely first thing in the morning because I&#8217;m such a morning girl. I get up every morning at six, throw on my wellies and go straight out and let the chickens out of their little houses. I give them their feed, fill up their watering can, and watch them have their breakfast and run over the garden. Then I go down and see the pigs in the woods and give them a little brush because they love scratches. I check on our cows before going to feed all our ducks. That&#8217;s my favourite thing in the morning when it&#8217;s so quiet. It&#8217;s a little bit dark and it just feels like I&#8217;m ahead of everything. It feels like the world hasn&#8217;t even opened up yet. And I have this whole moment with my animals which I really love.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-the-task-you-always-dread-on-the-farm">What&#8217;s the task you always dread on the farm?</h3>



<p>Weeding! I hate it. It&#8217;s like a Saturday afternoon job and it&#8217;s not my favourite thing. That or cleaning out the chicken houses &#8211; that&#8217;s not very nice either.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-am-i-right-in-saying-you-grow-your-own-veggies">Am I right in saying you grow your own veggies?</h3>



<p>Yes, we have a one acre, 300-year-old walled garden that we restored about seven years ago. Throughout the whole year we grow every vegetable under the sun. I usually have over 60 varieties or more of vegetables growing, and fruits and herbs. Then beside it, I&#8217;ve restored a little shed which I&#8217;ve turned into a pickling shed. And all the pickling recipes are actually in the book as well. When we have lots of different vegetables, I either make them into jams, chutneys, or I pickle them and then that keeps us going through the wintertime. It&#8217;s like squirrelling for the winter. It&#8217;s lovely growing your own vegetables.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-nights-are-drawing-in-you-re-knackered-and-you-ve-had-enough-what-are-you-making-for-dinner">The nights are drawing in, you&#8217;re knackered and you&#8217;ve had enough, what are you making for dinner?</h3>



<p>I&#8217;ll tell you what I made last night, which was the red lentil curry with sweet potatoes. It&#8217;s so gorgeous because it feels like a big warm hug and really comforting, but it&#8217;s so incredibly good for you. I&#8217;m really interested in food that I can eat in the evening, and I wake up in the morning without a bloaty tummy which is something I&#8217;ve suffered from my whole life. It&#8217;s been a real thing for me, especially if I&#8217;m getting photographed or on telly every week. But with things like that, I wake up, and I feel really good having slept well. It&#8217;s not expensive to make. It&#8217;s all shop bought ingredients.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/malverleys.jpg" alt="malverleys farm shop in berkshire" class="wp-image-121448" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Malverleys Farm &amp; Dining</figcaption></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-your-favourite-local-foodie-spot">What&#8217;s your favourite local foodie spot?</h3>



<p>Malverleys is a farm nearby with an amazing farm shop. I love going up there on a Sunday morning. Once a month we&#8217;ll get one of their organic chickens, we get really amazing organic milk up there which is directly from the farm, and they also do great butter. There&#8217;s a really gorgeous restaurant too. That&#8217;s my favourite spot in the area.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-would-be-on-your-fantasy-dinner-party-table">Who would be on your fantasy dinner party table?</h3>



<p>Oooh, my dream guests would be Ronnie Wood from The Rolling Stones who is a friend of mine and one of the kindest, loveliest men in the world. Bob Geldof and his wife Jeanne, who are also good friends of mine. He&#8217;s one of the biggest world changers of our generation. Goldie Hawn &#8211; I absolutely love her. I find her outlook on life and how she consciously decides to try and be happy every day so inspiring. Then Bono, again because of what he&#8217;s done through his music and his philanthropy, Gwyneth Paltrow (I&#8217;d love a conversation with her), and Beyoncé. You&#8217;ve got to have Beyoncé. She&#8217;s the artist, the Michael Jackson of our generation. That would be a nice dinner party, wouldn&#8217;t it?!</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-biggest-kitchen-disaster">Biggest kitchen disaster?</h3>



<p>The biggest thing that&#8217;s gone wrong is when I was making a cocktail on <em>This Morning</em> and I forgot to put the cap on the shaker. I was shaking it about and it just went everywhere. That was definitely my biggest blunder on live TV. The minute it came off, it was all over the papers.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-favourite-chef">Favourite chef?</h3>



<p>Angela Hartnett!</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-favourite-type-of-cuisine">Favourite type of cuisine?</h3>



<p>Oh, it has to be Italian. Just how they cook, their approach to food, their approach to cooking, and the fact that it&#8217;s also convivial. When I lived in Italy, I used to fly home to Ireland, but when I&#8217;d come back, my favourite thing was the taxi driver from the airport would always bring up what they were cooking. I always used to think it&#8217;s so incredible that foodies aren&#8217;t just a certain group of people in Italy. It&#8217;s everyone. It&#8217;s so inclusive. I love their simplicity, their passion, and love of sharing. It&#8217;s just so simple.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/CLODAG-CHILLED_BEETROOT_SOUP_0511.jpg" alt="what does Clodagh McKenna do new cookbook happy cooking" class="wp-image-121838" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-your-ultimate-date-night-dish">What&#8217;s your ultimate date night dish?</h3>



<p>I&#8217;ve actually got a date night tonight with my husband! We&#8217;ve got so many eggs at the moment, so I was thinking of doing a homemade pasta. So tagliolini, and because we&#8217;ve got a lot of sage growing right now, a crispy sage bread and butter. And then also a crème caramel. Plus, it&#8217;s a Friday night, so I can eat whatever I want!</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-if-you-weren-t-a-chef-what-would-you-be">If you weren&#8217;t a chef, what would you be?</h3>



<p>A dancer. My mother was a professional Irish dancer and one of the best in Ireland. She even danced for three American presidents. I went to dance school as a child, but I&#8217;ve kept dancing throughout my whole life because she kept us dancing all the time in the evenings with the music on. It was quite extraordinary what she did. I feel like I got a better dancing school at home! </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/9781804193372.jpg" alt="Clodagh McKenna cookbook clodaghs happy cooking recipes" class="wp-image-121836" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>Clodagh’s Happy Cooking</em> by Clodagh McKenna. £25.00. Published by Kyle Books.&nbsp;<br>Photographer: David Loftus</figcaption></figure>



<p><strong><a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/clodaghs-happy-cooking/clodagh-mckenna/9781804193372" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Clodagh&#8217;s Happy Cooking</em></a> is out now.</strong></p>



<p><em>Words by Ellie Ball</em></p>



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-hungry-for-more">HUNGRY FOR MORE?</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://berkshire.muddystilettos.co.uk/life/people/liz-felix-hats-caversham-berkshire/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Muddy meets local hat extraordinaire Liz Felix</a></li>



<li><a href="https://berkshire.muddystilettos.co.uk/life/people/chef-wesley-smalley-seasonality/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">What’s Cooking? Wesley Smalley of Seasonality in Maidenhead</a></li>



<li><a href="https://berkshire.muddystilettos.co.uk/life/people/interview-james-bye-eastenders/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Why, hello Mr Darcy! Muddy meets soap star James Bye</a></li>
</ul>


TV chef Clodagh McKenna dishes up the kitchen goss

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