Bad Cook

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salt

1 Put everything in a bowl and mix.

Osso Buco

The best thing about working at the Evening Standard, where I was from 2005 to 2007 (although for fuck’s sake don’t tell the Student Loans Company that – as far as they’re concerned I was missing presumed dead in western Namibia and therefore do NOT owe them any money for that tax year), was my boss.

He was so great because he’d always say ‘well done’. It didn’t really matter what you’d done; he’d always just say ‘well done’. I mean, not if you’d done something bad. If you’d done something bad he’d say ‘oh dear’. And then when you put it right, he’d say ‘well done’.

This worked on me. Although I’d had nice bosses in the past, none of them had said ‘well done’ with the frequency and fervour of Sebastian.

‘Seb I got you a sandwich,’ I’d say.

‘Oh well done,’ he’d say.

‘Seb I rang Antonia Fraser about that thing,’ I’d say.

‘Oh, well done. What did she say?’ he’d say.

[She almost always said ‘fuck off’, or something like that, by the way.]

‘Seb I forgot to put through all those payments,’ I’d say.

‘Oh dear,’ he’d say. ‘Can you do it now?’

‘Yes I’ll do it now,’ I’d say.

‘Oh, well done,’ he’d say.

You get the picture. On Friday lunchtimes, I used to get us both chicken shawarmas from Ranoush Juice, just opposite the Evening Standard’s offices in Kensington. Ranoush Juice is one of a chain of Lebanese places that will be familiar to Londoners, and not to anyone else. We’d eat the sandwiches at our desks, stinking the place out. On Fridays at the Standard there was nothing to do after about 1pm because there was no paper until Monday. So at about 3pm Seb would say ‘Okay, well done, you can go home now.’ And off I’d go. You see? I literally hadn’t done anything, and he'd say ‘well done’. Awesome. It did wonders for my productivity. I would write 100 or maybe even 200 words a week in that place. Phew!

A note: our Friday lunches only lasted until Ariel Sharon had that heart attack; it turned out that his favourite food was chicken shawarmas and Sebastian didn’t want any after that. He briefly accused me of trying to kill him with greasy sandwiches, but I think he was only joking.

Needless to say, I cried tears of genuine sadness when I left the Evening Standard to go and work at the Independent. And in the 12 months that I worked at the Indy I don't think anyone ever said ‘well done’ to me. Not once. Ever.

As you can imagine there were no tears of sadness when I got the hell out of there.

But I had been infected with the habit of saying ‘well done’ to everyone, about everything. It’s a great motivator. I do it to my husband all the time.

‘I put a wash on,’ he’ll say.

‘Oh WELL DONE,’ I’ll say.

I often find that even though my husband is a good and enthusiastic cook, I find it important to issue a strongly motivational yawp, in the manner of ‘WELL DONE THIS IS DELICIOUS WOW WOW WOW’ when we sit down to eat dinner. It really works.

When my husband is really feeling particularly uxorious, he will make Osso Buco for us, which is one of those things that has a mystifying name but is actually quite simple. It’s basically veal shin stew and it incorporates bone marrow, which makes it very glossy and sticky. Osso buco means ‘bone with a hole’, which is a pretty unromantic description – but that’s the Italians for you.

When you go to a butcher to get your meat for this, you can ask for either some veal shin (you want rose veal, obviously) or, if you like, ‘osso buco’, which is the name of the cut. I know it sounds a bit like going in and asking for some ‘spaghetti bolognese’, but it isn’t.

This recipe is a mash-up of Hugh FW’s and Claudia Roden’s in that Hugh’s does not include tomatoes and Claudia Roden’s does.

It’s a pretty rich dish so you really only need one slice of veal shin per person and traditionally it is eaten with a risotto and gremolata, a finely chopped salad of parsley, lemon zest and garlic. I like to go pretty easy on the garlic as if you’re not careful it can really keep you up at night.

Osso Buco

Serves 2

some veg oil for cooking, plus a large knob of butter

2 slices veal shin

1 large handful, or about 50g, plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 medium onions (i.e. not massive white onions), chopped

2 celery sticks, chopped

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.