Queen’s son Tom Parker Bowles says Camilla is a ‘good cook’ but never follows a recipe as he appears on Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh

Queen Camilla’s son Tom Parker Bowles has revealed his mother’s a ‘good cook’ – but never follows a recipe and doesn’t like measurements or baking.

The food critic appears on the latest episode of Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh, which airs on Sunday on ITV1 at 9.30am, to promote his new book Cooking & The Crown.

During his segment on the popular programme, Tom opens up about how food was always an important part of family life when growing up in Wiltshire with his mother and his father, Andrew Parker Bowles, Camilla’s first husband.

He says: ‘My father was, and still is, I was about to say, great gardener, a good gardener in your company. He’s a good gardener. He was very obsessed with his vegetable garden, so we… could follow the seasons through the garden.

‘And my mother was a good cook. Still is a good cook, a very basic English cook. Didn’t like baking, didn’t like measurements… no scales, And no recipes either. 

‘You know, her roast chicken, I bang on about endlessly… “well, you just do it.” So you’d have to sort of watch.’

He also reveals how the first Sainsbury’s arriving in Chippenham was like ‘something from outer space’ for him and his sister Laura Lopes, after spending their childhood having everything seasonal, locally or organically sourced.

Tom recalls: ‘You could get angel delight… and Coca Cola and white bread and everything we’re supposed to hate now, these super processed foods were, for us, the most thrilling, exciting thing. 

‘I mean, forget organic, forget seasonal, forget local. We wanted that. So it’s funny how things change now. You know what was necessity back in the old days is now seen as a sort of lifestyle choice. 

‘But yes, we had a really happy, food-filled childhood in the country,’ adds the writer, before explaining how his mother’s ‘downtime’ is now more important since becoming Queen.

‘It’s that thing of thinking where’s my mother and then I look on the television or read the newspaper. “Ah there she is”. So you know that she’s looked after and she’s happy,’ he explains, when asked if it is more difficult to see his parent now.

Tom continues: ‘I’ve got children. My sister’s got children and she’s a really good grandmother. So we go down, you know, to her house in Wiltshire, and that’s where we can relax.’

The food critic also touches on the King’s love for the countryside and agriculture and reveals how his children call Charles ‘Uppa’ and how they ‘have grown up with this man that they all love and think is wonderful.’ 

During his segment on the popular programme, Tom opens up about how food was always an important part of family life when growing up in Wiltshire with his mother (pictured) and his father, Andrew Parker Bowles , Camilla’s first husband

In 2022, in an interview with her son Tom in Mail On Sunday’s You magazine, Camilla (pictured in 2021 in London with the King) confessed her kitchen skills are limited

In 2022, in an interview with her son Tom in Mail On Sunday’s You magazine, Camilla confessed her kitchen skills are limited.

Describing her culinary style as ‘nothing too mucked about, or fussy or fiddly’, Camilla said she learnt to cook by watching her mother, Rosalind Shand, who made food the ‘heart’ of family life.

‘One of my earliest memories is podding those peas and beans with my mother, an accomplished cook,’ she said. ‘I learnt from my mother. I’ve never followed a recipe in my life.

‘On Friday nights, we were allowed to choose our dinner,’ she recalled. ‘I always went for frozen chicken pie, much to my mother’s despair.’

In the Swinging Sixties, the Queen often visited London’s best restaurants, such as Alexander’s on the King’s Road. 

‘I remember how excited I was when I first ate prawn and avocado at Alexander’s… The combination seemed impossibly exotic,’ Camilla said at the time.

The Shand family spent summers on the island of Ischia, near Naples, which the royal said ‘instilled a lifelong passion for Italian food’. 

Yet she took little credit for the refined palate of her restaurant critic son, describing herself as ‘never the most adventurous of cooks’.

Instead Camilla specialised in simple, healthy food when Tom and his sister Laura were growing up in Wiltshire. 

‘My cooking is about good ingredients. Nothing too mucked about, or fussy or fiddly. Lots of tarragon chicken, scrambled eggs and bacon, and chicken casserole. There were always roasts on Sunday.

‘The children ate a lot of cheese on toast. We had a kitchen garden… so we ate seasonally before it became en vogue. That’s just what you did in the country back then.’

She added: ‘One of my favourite foods is baked beans on toast. Always Heinz. And freshly cooked fish and chips, wrapped in paper. That smell. You cannot beat proper fish and chips.’

Alan Titchmarsh’s Love Your Weekend returns on Sunday 13th October at 09:30am on ITV1, ITVX and STV.