Bad Cook

1 carrot, chopped (do not be tempted to be clever and use more than one carrot here because too much carrot makes everything very sickly sweet)

1 large glass white wine, doesn’t matter what

250ml-ish light stock – pork or chicken (if you’ve got a bit less than that you can top up with hot water, do not fret)

3 tomatoes (if you want, don’t if not – I think they’re nice though), skinned and chopped. You skin them by making a cross in the bottom of the tomato with a knife and then putting them in boiling water for 2 mins and then the skins come off. The riper the tomato the easier this is.

salt and pepper

1 In a large pan or casserole dish that goes on the hob, heat together a long sloop of veg oil and the knob of butter. Dust the veal shin in the seasoned flour and brown all over then set aside.

2 To the pan add the garlic, onions, celery and carrot and cook gently until soft. I find the best way to do this without burning everything is to cook it on the lowest possible setting for at least 15 minutes. You may have a better way of doing it, in which case don’t let me stop you.

3 Put the veal pieces back in the pan – flat side down so that the marrow doesn’t all fall out, then pour in the glass of wine, turn up the heat and sizzle until it’s reduced by about half. Add your stock and chopped tomatoes, topped up with water from the kettle if you need to, and some salt and pepper, bring it all to a very gentle simmer, put a lid on it and cook for 2 hours.

4 And that’s basically it. Turn the meat once or twice during cooking and keep an eye on the liquid level – if it looks like it’s drying out, throw in some more stock or water. After 2-ish hours take the lid off, turn the heat up and bubble to reduce the sauce a bit.

Why I Hate Myself Part 1

The worst thing about me is my hypochondria. All it takes is a few aches and pains or my tonsils playing up and I am entirely convinced that I am going to die.

Of what, I’m not sure. I have to leave it for a bit before I go to the doctor again (I was in there about a fortnight ago convinced I had haemorrhagic fever) or she’ll put me on her ‘heartsink’ list and I do, genuinely, want her to like me.

Coming a close second to my hypochondria is my terror of getting fat. Some people carry a bit of extra weight and just look glossy and healthy. I look like a pudding. But still, I am unnaturally obsessed with not putting on weight. So for the last four years I have been avoiding carbohydrate and hardly ever eat pasta, potatoes, rice or bread.

And when I say never, I mean I eat them from time to time and feel guilty. And then bloated.

Anyway, what with me certain to die any moment from my mystery terminal thingy, when Giles suggested last night that he make a Tartafin, a sort of layered potato pie, covered in cheese, I said okay, sure, why the hell not. I’m dying anyway, I will yell weakly from the sofa in the living room to the kitchen where Giles is pottering about, so I might as well go out with happy potato-and-cheese memories. And so off Giles will go to make me a Tartafin. Even when feeling truly awful, I am usually still alive in the morning after a previous night’s carbohydrate blow-out, which must say something.

Tartafin

For 2

2 garlic cloves, finely sliced or Microplaned

some olive oil

3 waxy potatoes, like a Maris Piper, sliced as thinly as you can. If you are Angela Hartnett, they will be very thin; if you are me, some will be really thin, others less so. This is ok, just do your best.

salt and pepper

75g butter

some cheese – ideally a kind of hard-ish Swiss cheese. Nothing blue and, if you can help it, not too much Cheddar, which will just make everything taste like Cheddar and it’s SO greasy …

1 Cook the garlic in the olive oil over a low heat until the garlic is softened but not brown. Ideally, you’d use some kind of cast iron, Le Creuset-type pot, but we used a crappo stainless steel saucepan of a medium size and it worked fine.

2 Add the potatoes, a generous scrunch of salt and pepper and some butter and swirl around for a bit, maybe 2 minutes, until everything has been coated in seasoning and fat (but be gentle so that the potato slices don’t snap in half).

3 Then with whatever kitchen implement you fancy, re-arrange the potato slices horizontally in layers and put the lid on.

4 Cook on a very low heat for about 30 minutes; you know they are ready when you can sink a sharp knife through all the layers and pull it out with ease.

5 Layer your cheese on top of the potato – we used the hard ends of the cheeses we had lying around – a Comté, Parmesan, some truffle Brie and a bit of old Cheddar. Cook for another 5 or 6 minutes until the cheese is all melty.

After cooking, the bottom of the pan will be very brown and hard-baked. This is the best bit, if you can hack it off the bottom. To clean, leave overnight soaking in some cold water with a couple of drops of washing-up liquid. Trust me – it will defy any dishwasher. A long soak is the only answer.

Note: How to Be a Good Host

It is actually sort of crazy that I should be writing about this subject because I am naturally a very bad hostess. The worst. From the smallest dinners to huge parties I have always been uptight, nervous and *this* close to tears. But I’ve forced myself to do it so much that I’ve collected a series of tactics that makes things go easier both for me and for my guests. I now actually quite like it. So here we are, my top tips for being a good hostess. Go.

1 Calm the fuck down. The trouble with hosting is that it’s so stressful and yet, when you are the host you set the atmosphere, so you can’t just gibber in a corner; you are in charge, whether you like it or not. It’s like when you’re on an airplane and it's being a bit wobbly and everyone cranes their necks to see the expression on the stewardess’s face. If she looks calm, you feel calm. If she looks worried, you feel like puking. So you are going to have to appear relaxed, I’m afraid. I’m not saying don’t be anxious, because of course you’re going to be anxious. There are people in your house making a lot of noise expecting to eat your food!!! I'm just saying pretend you’re not anxious. Dissemble. Act. Lie. When you find yourself alone at various points during your hosting duties, take a calming breath. Force yourself to walk more slowly round the house than you feel like. Try not to march from room to room, breathlessly shoving plates of nibbles under people’s noses and screaming ‘’NOTHER DRINK?!?!?’ before running back to the kitchen hissing ‘Fucking fucking fucking HELL …’

2 Light a lot of candles. They’re not just for the evening, especially in winter (though possibly not in high summer), as long as you compensate by not having overhead lights on. If you’re into ordering stuff online, Price’s has a good website. Just put them anywhere that they’re not going to set fire to the curtains. Place in groups of three or five. Don’t know about you, but that says ‘party’ to me.

3 It’s always surprising how few people have music on when they’re ‘entertaining’ (retch). Something – anything – going along in the background adds crucial atmosphere, especially in that initial, critical 45 minutes. I am tone deaf and don’t have a clue about music, but find having something on when people are round makes a huge difference.

4 Attempt to stay sober until you sit down to the main event. You’ve got a better chance of achieving this if you don’t drink anything at all until you do sit down. After that point, get as rat-arsed as you like. In fact, see how rat-arsed you can get. A good substitute drink to have in your hand so as to appear appropriately festive and not just like a neurotic lunatic is plain tonic water with ice and lemon. Who can tell it’s not an actual gin and tonic? Probably not even you.

5 Think about heating. When it’s just you in your house/flat, it will feel cold. When there are five other people in there with you, plus the oven on and the hob blazing, it will heat up very fast, so don’t have the place greenhouse hot from the word go because people will start fainting and you’ll go magenta.

6 I know it sounds really obvious, but think about where you’re going to put coats – even if it’s just over a chair in the corner.

7 When people arrive, a surprising number always want a glass of water. You can, if you like, just fill a chipped Homer Simpson mug from the tap and hold it out, dripping – a lot of people would think that was frightfully smart – but I think it makes people feel more loved if there’s a jug of water and a clean glass available. It is also hard to overstate the importance of taking people’s coats and getting a drink in their hands as quickly as possible after they’ve arrived. I mean, without actually running out into the hall with a Dubonnet, then ripping off their jacket. I know a girl who never offers you anything when you go round to her house, ever. Nor does she tell you where you can put your coat. It’s only because she expects you to make yourself at home and just help yourself to whatever you want – but the effect is, in fact, monstrously inhospitable.

8 At any kind of party, you will go through a lot of loo roll. So have at least two spare in the bog.

9 Don’t cook anything you haven’t cooked before. And I mean it – this is really important. The recipe will tell you it’s easy. And it might be if you’re not cooking anything else, but with other stuff on the go and people turning up and things unexpectedly going wrong it’ll suddenly be like taking History A Level. InJapanese.

10 Overcater.

11 It might seem cool and relaxed to let people sit wherever they like, but actually it fills most people with fear and anxiety. Me? I love a place card – for dinners for more than six I always use them. Luckily, I don’t give a damn if people think I’m naff, but you might – and they do make most people cringe. My brother-in-law once bought 12 lottery tickets and wrote everyone’s names on the bottom and used them for place cards, which I thought was brilliant. Anyway, don’t use them if you don’t want to, but at least have an idea of where people ought to sit. They like it. It’s especially vital if you are hosting Christmas or another family event as if you know someone’s going to be unhappy sitting next to a particular person, you can separate them.

12 Let’s talk about portion control. Yes, it’s a party and yes it’s a time to go wild but, at the same time, people like being able to take as much as they want – and by that I mean as little as they want. It’s a bit overwhelming to be handed a plate literally towering with food. So either let people help themselves, cafeteria-style or if you must plate up, give people a modest amount and let them go back for seconds. Have as many side dishes on the table that you have space for. People will eat more in the long run if initially handed the food reins.

13 Now let’s talk about booze. At a large gathering, you can’t be expected to be constantly filling up everyone’s glass – plus I feel about booze the same way I feel about food – people ought to be given control over their alcohol intake. YES it’s a party and YES it’s a time to go wild, but getting more pissed than you want because your host keeps filling your glass when you’re not looking is really annoying. Especially if you have to operate heavy machinery later. The vital thing is for there to be a lot of booze available. It should not run out. Ever. What you can do, if you’re so inclined, is to say to everyone as you press their first drink on them: ‘Please do me a massive fave and help yourself to more drink …?’ OR say to one or two key helpful sorts: ‘Would you help me keep an eye on everyone’s glass?’

14 You probably don’t salt your food enough when you’re cooking, because pretty much no-one does. I include myself in this. I am always too frightened to taste my food as I go along in case it is a disaster – I just sort of close my eyes and hope for the best – my husband always jokes that the only thing I can cook is ‘Needs Salt’ because whenever I put dinner on the table I say ‘needs salt’. So it’s really important to make salt and pepper available and don’t, for God’s sake, take offence if someone seasons their food. I am, obviously, a massive snob about salt and pepper. Maldon salt in some kind of dish or bowl and black pepper in a grinder is the only thing I think is okay – but LoSalt in a big plastic thingy and ground pepper out of a jar is better than nothing.

15 Don’t keep asking your guests what they want. Because they mostly don’t care. When they arrive do not say ‘Can I get you something to drink?’ because they don’t know what you have. And they are so exhausted from a full day at the office, or a full day of childcare, they don’t know what they want anyway; if you reel off a list of choices they will freeze and not know what to say. Instead, ask: ‘will you have some of this delicious tequila punch I’m having?’ And if that’s not what they want, they will say ‘actually have you got any beer?’ The same applies to pudding. Make your decision about when is right to move things on without saying anything. Do not say ‘Would anyone like tea and coffee?’ because it’s a real mood-killer. Just slip off and do a big pot of peppermint or camomile and coffee if you can really be bothered. I never do coffee – no-one notices if you don’t do it and if someone is really desperate for a coffee they’ll ask for one. Put down the pot of tea and enough cups for everyone and dish out the pudding (if you’ve been arsed to do one), or put a lot of bars of Green & Black’s on the table and let nature take its course. Come to think of it, my friend Henry – a terrific host – doesn’t even bother with hot drinks after dinner and I never notice.

16 DO NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT YOUR OWN FOOD. This is absolutely the worst, most annoying and irritating thing you can do as you present people with their food. It is very hard not to do, which is why so many people do it, but it is very important not to because it is pathetic and self-pitying and also rude: why are you serving people something that hasn’t quite worked? If you’re such a shit cook, why have you invited people round?

When someone says ‘This looks great’ YOU SAY (repeat after me): ‘Thanks so much! It’s such a terrific recipe, I love it.’

It’s very hard to say this when in your head you’re screaming ‘FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! THIS IS A BIT COLD … OH GOD I FORGOT TO ADD THE CORIANDER … !!!!!’ but you must hold it in and start making conversation about absolutely anything other than the food.

Do not say: