Annabel Karmel on how she turned to cooking

But she didn’t start out trying to teach children to eat healthily. It only happened after the tragic death of her three-month-old baby girl, Natasha, in 1987, of encephalitis, a viral infection causing inflammation of the brain. Even as she was trying to come to terms with the tragedy, Annabel, 50, and her husband, Simon, an oil broker, had another child, a son called Nicholas, in 1988.

While grieving for her little girl, Nicholas bought his own problems - he was a very fussy eater, and Annabel was concerned that he wasn’t getting the nutrients a growing child needs.

“He was the world’s worst eater, and it was very difficult to care for him, so close after Natasha’s death,” says Annabel. “I was running a playgroup for children then, and after talking to the other mothers, I realised that all the children were difficult eaters.”

Deciding to take matters into her own hands, Annabel started devising meals to make her son eat right. She still remembers the first thing she concocted in her kitchen to make sure Nicholas eat healthily.

“He wouldn’t eat chicken, but he loved apples, so I made tiny bowls of a mixture of minced chicken, onions, za’atar, a little bit of chicken stock, and sprinkled grated apple over it. Nicolas loved it, because the apple gave it the flavour he liked. I still make them – they are so popular!”

Thrilled that Nicholas liked her concoction, Annabel started experimenting with food. “I would bring the recipes that I cooked into my playgroup, and the other mums loved the strange things that I made,” she says.

As her recipes kept growing, so did her fan club. “I was making recipes for Nicholas and giving them to other mothers. They would say to me, ‘Wow, this is so good. You should write a book on feeding children’,” says Annabel. “So I decided to write a cookery book, aimed at first-time mothers cooking for their children.”

After two and a half years of hard work checking and rechecking recipes to ensure they were perfect, she sent off the first manuscript of The Complete Baby And Toddler Meal Planner to a publisher. However, it was rejected. She sent it to 14 other publishers but none accepted it.

It didn’t depress her, because Annabel had not expected much from the venture. “It took me 18 months to find a publisher, and it was finally published in 1991,” she says.

Since then, Annabel has never stopped writing. “That started me off on many books, like lunch boxes for fussy eaters,” she says. Today, she has 37 titles to her name. “There really isn’t a mother in England who doesn’t have one of my books – they are so common there,” says Annabel.

In 2006, Annabel was awarded an MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for her outstanding work in child nutrition.

She was then commissioned by Marks and Spencer and Boots to work on their food ranges. “Then I thought maybe I can do my own range and I took my range of ready meals to supermarkets,” she says.

Annabel is passionate about improving the way children eat, and her menus figure in leisure resorts, retail outlets and nurseries in the UK – from Butlins to BHS and Legoland to Asquith Nurseries – serving up more than a million children’s meals each year.

“I want to give children a better life,” she says. “Here in the Middle East, there’s a massive problem with diabetes and obesity, so if you can control it in the beginning by getting children to eat healthy, it’s better than treating after the disease has taken hold.”

“If children grow up without being exposed to germs they won’t develop any antibodies at all. It’s hygiene hypothesis. We have mothers wrapping up their children to protect them against the elements, not giving them fish, eggs, wheat, or cow’s milk. It’s not a good way to bring up children. My feeling is unless there’s a history of allergy in the family, give them eggs, fish and milk. But see a doctor first.”

Cooking for children has now taken over Annabel’s life completely. She has a team of people who work with her. “I develop the recipes, do my research, talk to mothers about their children, what their problems are, what they’d like to see, what they can’t find.

The mix of nationalities and cultures here is no problem at all for Annabel. “You’ll find a mix of Indian, Chinese, among many others in my books, so I can cater to all tastes,” she says. “I am sensitive to the different cultures and what they eat. I love to experiment and learn all the time.”

A conservative estimate of the number of recipes Annabel has devised so far amounts to an incredible 5,550! “Each book has about 150 to 200 recipes.”

Annabel cooks every Tuesday, all day, from 7.30am to 8pm, and develops around 10 to 12 recipes in that time.

So what do children like? “Children like different things from adults,” says Annabel. “They don’t like food that’s all messed up like stews and things like that. They prefer ‘separation’ foods like crisps.

“Kids like strong-tasting food, like olives and hummus. They like some things you wouldn’t expect.

Annabel’s three children – Nicholas, 25, Lara, 23, and Scarlett, 21 – have inherited her taste for cooking. “I taught them all to cook, and even now, on a Friday night, they all cook for us,” she says, smiling. “Even when they were young, they would choose a recipe, I would chop up the ingredients for them, but the rest of the stuff they would do by themselves.

“But they don’t want to join me; my son is in oil and gas, and my daughters are starting a fashion business.”

“I help the parents and their siblings. I organised a charity reception where we raised millions of pounds for them. I also work for Save The Children, among others.”

So, how does this superwoman manage it all? “I don’t sleep, I stay up very late,” she laughs. “I got up at 2.30am this morning, there were interviews with radio stations, then I liaised with a business associate in Australia, then one in the US – there’s always someone awake in some part of the world who needs to be spoken to, and I love it!”

But what really makes her tick is her family, and that they still can’t get enough of their mum’s cooking. “My children can’t live without certain things that I make, and are always asking me for recipes,” says Annabel.