She may be best known as a TV grime-fighter, but 20 years as a mum inspired Aggie MacKenzie’s latest venture – a cookery book

LONG before Aggie MacKenzie became a familiar face wielding a bucket of bleach on How Clean Is Your House, her job involved producing food-orientated magazines, so she came into contact with top cooks such as Nigel Slater, Delia Smith, and Anna del Conte.

From there, she became associate editor in charge of the Good Housekeeping Institute, the place where they put all the latest gadgets and appliances through their paces, and test recipes.

But having never studied domestic science at Kingussie High School, MacKenzie didn’t properly learn to cook until she was in her twenties. Her mum ruled the roost at home, and subscribed to the notion that too many cooks spoil the Scotch Broth. So as a young woman on her own in London, keen to eat as well as she had while growing up, Mackenzie enrolled in evening cooking classes and learned her way around a kitchen.

Cooking for her family is one of MacKenzie’s great passions. Together with her ex-husband, Matthew, she has two sons, Rory, at university in Leeds, and Ewan, 16, who’s begun a three-year chef’s diploma at college. Now, she and her sons have collected some of their favourite recipes and top tips for saving time and money in Aggie’s Family Cookbook.

“I wanted to write the book because I love cooking and know people like what I cook,” says MacKenzie. “I’m about keeping things simple, delicious, pleasurable, and low cost. And also, because the boys are so keen on food, it was such a lovely option doing this with them. Ewan really enjoys seeing his picture and his recipes in the book. “I always assume people know all this stuff about how to eat well, especially when there’s a recession on, but I’ve realised that they don’t. It’s because I’m going to be 56 next month. I forget that I have garnered a lot of information because of my age, and from working at Good Housekeeping and all the rest of it. I have come to realise that I shouldn’t assume everyone knows all this stuff. There are always new, younger people coming up.”

This book is the culmination, then, of more than 20 years as a working mum, who knows all about how to feed her children well, without a lot of fuss and without, she stresses, resorting to ready meals. “Thinking about family recipes is different than cooking for one or two. It’s about thinking in a big way about food, and planning at least a week ahead. It makes it easier: you’re not in a panic and you don’t end up putting a bowl of pasta in front of them every night, which is just boring.

“My sons are both keen cooks. What’s not to like about food? Their dad is a brilliant cook, and a much more intuitive cook than I am. When Rory went off to uni – it’s funny, because he didn’t cook that much at home, but he’d been taking it in. What he does in Leeds is he’ll go around Sainsburys late in the day and get the bargains. He said the people he shares a flat with think he’s amazing because he knows how to do roast potatoes. He does a big roast dinner on a Sunday and they all chip in.”

Children learn by example, and MacKenzie is sure that her boys became mini foodies by seeing how much pleasure and enjoyment went into family meals while they were growing up. “It gets under their skin without them realising it. I remember when we were all living together, as we were coming to the end of one meal we would always discuss what we were going to have at the next one. We’d decide together, as a family.”

In addition to the cookbook, MacKenzie writes five magazine columns. A few years ago she was a contestant in Dancing on Ice, which left her bruised and dented. Just now she’s appearing on Celebrity MasterChef, on BBC1. “You get asked, and I thought, ‘Oh god, I’m not sure.’ Because how embarrassing would it be to get chucked out first? But I thought I might as well jump in.” For all her expertise, it’s been pretty arduous, if her tweets and blogposts for the UK’s Huffington Post are anything to go by. It feels, she writes, “as if you are going into the worst exam ever, for which you’ve done zippo revision, and you have to pass this test. We’ve all had that bad dream. Well, here I am, reliving it for real.”