You can forget your fancy restaurants and celebrity chefs. My mum is the best cook in the world. In the unlikely event I’m sentenced to death, I’d choose one of her roast dinners on my way to the scaffold. And if I’m to be executed on Christmas Day, it would be one of her Christmas dinners.
I like to think I’ve picked up a few tips over the years. But I still have a lot to learn. Last Christmas, I nearly gave Mum a heart attack after offering to help out in the kitchen, then insisting on parboiling the potatoes for 30 minutes, à la Heston Blumenthal, rather than Mum’s usual five. My nephews claimed my roasties were a rip-roaring success: “The best we’ve ever had, Uncle Richy.” But nearly half of them turned to mush in the saucepan.
