Rick Stein: The food I ate while in hospital for heart surgery inspired my new cookbook

A lightly fried haddock fillet he ate before his operation had TV chef Rick Stein dreaming up the simplest of dishes he wanted to eat. He talks to Lauren Taylor about how it inspired his new book and gave him a new lease on life

Now in his Seventies, Stein feels healthier than ever (James Murphy/PA)

TV chef Rick Stein says an operation to replace an aortic valve in his heart has given him “a new lease of life”.

The 76-year-old had been suffering from symptoms of breathlessness for five or six years when he was told he would die without the operation.

“The cardiologist said, ‘You’ve got to have an op, because you’ve got no choice. You have got a choice, you could die, or you could have the op.’”

Stein, who has just released his latest book, Simple Suppers, says prior to the heart operation, he “got progressively more breathless, got lots of aches and pains – which I didn’t realise was actually down to my heart”.

He says: “I was on a fishing trip with my boys in The Highlands. They sort of shimmied up a mountain and said, ‘Are you coming Dad?’ And I got about 100 yards up a very steep hill, and I just realised I was completely breathless.”

A checkup revealed he had a faulty aortic valve and eventually after there was “nothing more” cardiologists could do, he had heart surgery in June 2022. “He said, ‘It’s actually not more dangerous these days than having your appendix out’, which is a very nice thing to say – not that I’ve totally believed it.”

Now he’s free from breathlessness symptoms. “Lots of people have had the same operation and more or less all of them say that it’s completely rejuvenated them,” Stein says, who is famed for his acclaimed fish restaurants, six of them in Cornwall.

Stein was inspired to write his new book by the food he ate in hospital (BBC Books/PA)

It was actually the hospital food he was served during his stint at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London – the largest specialist heart and lung medical centre in the UK – that inspired his latest book.

The night before the op, Stein thinks he “got lucky” with a good chef at the hospital that evening and was served up a beautifully simple, lightly fried haddock fillet, with salt and cracked black pepper, olive oil dressing, spring onions, red peppers and lemon juice.

“That first dish when I arrived in hospital was fantastic,” he said (even including a recipe for it in his new book). In his “dizzy” state after the operation – and a less delicious meal of overcooked lamb – he began dreaming up the simplest of dishes he wanted to eat.

“You think a lot when you’re in the hospital, and I was just thinking how wonderful [the haddock] was and how lovely it would be to write a book which was filled with these sort of similar recipes,” says Stein. “And I think the older you get, the more you realise, that the simpler recipes are often the best ones.”

In Simple Suppers you’ll find his dad’s chicken soup that he ate as a child – summer chicken soup with tomatoes and tarragon – which he’d make with Sunday roast leftovers, gnocchi with crab and chilli (a recipe of just two paragraphs) and lemon posset made from three ingredients.“This is desperately about accepting and understanding that the way we all eat these days is simple and quick,” Stein says. All the recipes are intended to be completed in 30 minutes, to an hour maximum, and all fit on a single page.

There’s no ingredients or no preparations in the recipes that required you to refer to another page, and “generally I’ve kept them down to five to 10 ingredients and uses lots of pre-prepared things – tins, cannellini, haricot, butter beans – and I’ve always suggested buying in puff pastry.”

While he was previously keen to make everything from scratch, even Stein has embraced such ingredients at home – “Because I think over the years, shop-bought preparations have improved immeasurably.”

I am quite health-conscious. I swim virtually every day, and I walk a lot. I like getting into a pool or the sea and that’s enough for me, and I try and do 10,000 steps every day

Rick Stein

“In the old days, I’ve always said don’t buy if you can make better at home. But if you can’t, there’s not a lot of point unless you actually love making pastry. If you’ve got a couple of hours spare from time to time, fine.”

Naturally, he likes to keep fish cookery simple at home. “I eat a lot of fish. I really like sashimi, so i’ve always got some raw fish in the fridge which I eat virtually daily – tuna, salmon, lemon sole or bass.

“Other than that, I just quite often pan fry a fillet of fish, sometimes just dusted in semolina. I’m really wanting a fairly boring piece of fish to taste great, I’d flour, egg and breadcrumb the fish and fry it in butter.”

Now in his mid-Seventies, Stein takes his health seriously. “I am quite health-conscious. I swim virtually every day, and I walk a lot. I like getting into a pool or the sea and that’s enough for me, and I try and do 10,000 steps every day. If you can achieve that, you do find your body shape gets better, you do feel healthy.”

But he’s still partial to a nostalgic, late-night snack. “I really like coming home from the pub late at night having a bowl of cereal, Grape Nuts, which my parents always ate. [With] full-fat milk and sugar. I have three bowls of those watching TV.”

‘Rick Stein’s Simple Suppers’ by Rick Stein (BBC Books, £28).