Ameer Kotecha

We have all become rather used to socialising outside. Thanks to the pandemic, for perhaps the first time in our national history, al fresco dining has become the norm well outside of the summer months. We shivered under wraps for the last nine months only to finally be allowed to socialise indoors once more just at the moment when we’re all keen to light up the barbecue and enjoy the warmth outdoors. Nothing compares to the pleasure of a lunch or dinner en plein air in the summer months. It sharpens the appetite and provides happy opportunities for people or garden watching when the conversation bores. Sometimes you can even get away with taking off your shoes. The appeal lies above all in its novelty.

Until this week I don’t think my mother had ever in her life watched a football game. Wednesday changed that, marking the start of her new-found frenzy and puns about England’s 'Sterling effort!' (to squeals of laughter from her female friends gang). Now they’re in a state of hysterical excitement and are busy planning their match day. Football really is coming home. With nobody – including mum – minded to spend all day slaving away in the kitchen, food for Sunday’s game needs to be quick, easy and ideally unhealthy. Here are some ideas. Baked cheese A baked brie or camembert – or even better a British cheese like Baron Bigod or Tunworth – is one of the very easiest and most satisfying things you can make.

Graphologists have long busied themselves studying Prince Charles’s handwriting in the ‘black spider memos’ for clues as to the personality of our future King. And in recent months kinesicists have been wheeled out from obscurity to sit on breakfast show sofas to opine on Harry and Meghan’s body language in that interview. But perhaps royal watchers are looking in the wrong place for insight. 'Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.' So declared the celebrated gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Diana apparently liked to wander into the royal kitchens to cook her own pasta and chat with the chefs which provides a glimpse into the discomfort she felt at the perceived constraints of her position. But what of the other royals?

Wimbledon is back. Having been cancelled last year, it is now one of the pilot events chosen as part of the Government Event Research Programme, with 50 per cent capacity crowds on the main courts at the start rising to full capacity for the semi-finals and finals. What is more, organisers have said Murray Mound will also be open to spectators and the grumpy Scot himself has been given a wildcard qualification for this year’s tournament. Those attending can look forward to suffocating in their face masks as they move from court to court in the June heat. Thankfully, masks will not be required once seated in the stands and so spectators can swig at their Pimms and scoff their strawberries and cream with abandon.

HP Sauce is a glorious thing. The French may have their five, gastronomic Mother Sauces but we in this sceptered isle have HP and that’s what counts. Because nobody wants a pool of hollandaise with their Full English. It first appeared on our dining tables in the late nineteenth century and has since grown to account for three-quarters of sales in our brown sauce market. Its story begins in 1884, when a Nottingham grocer, Frederick Gibson Garton invented the sauce in his pickling factory in New Basford (later also the home of Cussons Imperial Leather soap). It was a classic culinary product of Empire, with tomatoes, tamarind, dates, molasses and soy amongst its ingredients.

The chance to enjoy a proper sit-down breakfast ­– or even, I daresay, the occasional breakfast in bed – on a weekday has been one of the (few) perks of lockdown. If I’m going to be under year-long house arrest then I’m going to have a three-minute egg on a Monday dammit. But as return to the office beckons for many of us, carving out time for brekky will become trickier. I’ve always been envious of the effortlessness and speed with which Romans take their breakfast: cappuccino and cornetto eaten standing at the bar counter. Somehow gulping down cornflakes or Weetabix standing in front of the mirror whilst shaving doesn’t have the same glamour about it. But breakfast can be speedy, enjoyable and sustaining.

An iron is not your traditional cooking appliance. But then again nothing about TikTok cookery is traditional. TikTok users have grilled chicken with an iron, boiled meatballs in a percolator, and cooked steak in a toaster. And not only do they do these things, but they earn internet fame and sometimes create new livelihoods for themselves as ‘influencers’ for doing so. Dance and comedic sketches used to be the mainstay of TikTok's content but they now compete alongside cookery videos. Lockdown, which has turned all of us into home cooks, has caused a boom in cookery tutorials on social media: from amateurs looking for dinner ideas to professional chefs suddenly without restaurants to run.

Almost anything can constitute a salad. Yes dictionaries variously describe salad as cold, consisting of raw vegetables, and featuring a dressing, and often these things are true – but not always. For there are warm salads, salads with grains or seafood, and salads where the pairing of ingredients is so precise and perfect – think pear and Roquefort – that not even a dressing is required. For me what is essential about a salad is freshness and piquancy; it must be vibrant and sprightly. If you need a rule of thumb though, to use when constructing your salads, think in terms of leaf, grain, protein, and dressing.

During a long year of lockdown, we have all been cooking at home like never before. It’s been a delight to be able to spend all evening stirring a pot of risotto with no social plans to feel guilty about missing. But these stretched-out times, be they languorous or languid, are coming to an end. The social diary is filling up, and I for one don’t plan on missing a long-awaited reunion with mates because I need to be around to check on the roasties. Sometimes we all need something quick and easy for dinner. That’s when I turn to instant noodles. For a self-avowed ‘foodie’, this is quite an admission. But for those days where speed is everything, and the alternative is therefore UberEats, there are far worse things.

A cooker is not just for cooking. That is the starting point to understanding the Aga. It is impractical, environmentally unfriendly, and expensive. Everyone – including the Aga’s most ardent devotees – knows that. And yet the Aga cooker next year will celebrate its centenary. Despite all the modern appliances that should long ago have rendered it obsolete, these enamel-coated cast-iron behemoths continue to soldier on indefatigably. They are one of the twenty first century’s great survivors. The brand has a glorious history. The Aga cooker was invented by a Nobel Prize-winning Swedish physicist.

Venison’s attributes are remarkable. It is the probably the most sustainable meat you can eat, given the unquestionable need to manage the country’s deer population to stop these elegant but pesky creatures from damaging woodland and wildlife habitats. And what of its health credentials? The deer’s free-foraging, cross-country roaming lifestyle makes it incredibly lean: higher in protein and lower in fat than any other meat, with zero cholesterol. Ethically minded chefs and environmentalists have long been making the case for us to eat more venison, and more game generally. The Countryside Alliance’s ‘Game-to-Eat’ campaign has been banging the drum for years.

No-one is born knowing how to poach an egg. Indeed, the technique is hardly intuitive: the addition of a little vinegar, whisking the water to create a swirling vortex. Just as golfing enthusiasts barred from hitting the links have resorted to putting practice in their living rooms, a lazy lockdown weekend feels like an ideal time to perfect classic cooking techniques. Here are six to try. Spinning sugar Spun sugar is a guaranteed way of achieving collective ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from assembled guests at your next dinner party. Playing around with burning hot sugar is however the sort of thing that can tip you over the edge should you attempt it unpractised whilst trying to make polite conversation with the in-laws between courses.

Next Tuesday the banal humdrum of lockdown life will be interrupted, however briefly. No longer the sad, soggy Weetabix while listening to the daily hospitalisation numbers or Special K eaten at your makeshift desk. No, even if just for a couple of hours, next Tuesday is an opportunity to block out the Outlook calendar and have some fun in the kitchen. Shrove Tuesday. Pancake Day. It’s a funny old thing. We don’t have a celebratory day dedicated to trifle or sticky toffee pudding (though we should). Of course there’s logic to our scoffing our faces with pancakes on this day preceding Lent—it was traditionally the way to use up rich foods such as eggs, butter, milk and sugar before the fasting began.

Veganuary is not normally something I’d go in for. I’m sceptical of food fads at the best of times and these are sadly not the best of times. If I’m going to be stuck in lockdown I want a steak dinner to cheer me up after a hard day’s Zooming, and maybe just a rasher or two of Ginger Pig bacon to motivate me on a dreary morning. But having eaten enough turkey (and goose, and ham) for several people on a friendless Christmas Day, I see the attraction of going cold turkey for a month. It’s also always been restaurants that have stopped me attempting Veganuary before. I mean, who wants to go to Dishoom and not get the bacon naan roll? Or go to Nando’s and opt for a big plate of coleslaw and chips?

The traditional Christmas meal takes on different guises around the globe. Our festive table groaning under turkey and all the trimmings would look quite unrecognisable to many. For Jewish people living in the US the tradition at Christmas is to eat Chinese food. And in Japan come Christmas you’ll find everyone eating KFC. Seriously—you have to be sure to order your friend chicken weeks in advance to avoid disappointment. I don’t suggest looking to Japan for Christmas culinary inspiration, but there is the odd thing we might want to borrow from abroad. Namely, dessert. Call me a heretic but I’ve never much liked Christmas pudding. Too dense and heavy; packed full of nice things but somehow underwhelming.

Diwali, which falls this year on November 14th, is a festival of family, fireworks and food. Here are the dishes to try to keep the Diwali flame alive in a Covid winter. Covid has already put paid to regular Diwali celebrations. It was inevitable: eight people around the table to tuck into a Christmas turkey is one thing; a Diwali gathering involving your typical Asian extended family— aunts, uncles, fourth cousins and all—is quite another. But, as a festival celebrating the triumph of light over darkness, we should all get in on the cheer and do our best to salvage the festivities by rustling up some celebratory food.

Oh the avo. The fruit that launched a thousand tweets. This millennial Holy Grail has done more to divide generations than anything save perhaps Brexit. It has been three years since Australian property developer Tim Gurner became a hate figure for suggesting in a TV interview that it was not economic difficulty that was keeping millennials from getting on the housing ladder but a tendency to spend $19 on smashed avos for brunch. Millennials vented their anger in the only way they know how—by twitter tirade. Perhaps it would have been more fitting to pelt Tim with over-ripe avos for his audacity. To eat avocado on toast in public is now as bold and unequivocal a statement one can make on their position in the contemporary culture wars.

If you’re trying to determine someone’s class and the accent is hard to place, you could do worse than check the brand of their pans. Le Creuset has been a staple of upper-middle class British kitchens for years – the sort of Eurocentric brand that contains just a hint of francophile exoticism whilst conjuring up the British comfort food of old: casseroles, stews and soups. And, if Instagram is anything to go by, Millennials are also cottoning onto the appeal. With the rise of #cottagecore and the boom in home cooking that came about over lockdown, Le Creuset doesn’t seem to be disappearing any time soon.

The legacy of Greek antiquity extends to the country’s cuisine. One eats there as the Ancients would have done—Greek yoghurt and honey for breakfast, simply-cooked fish and cold wine for lunch and supper—as one reclines languidly on the klinai couch, grapes dangling from the mouth, like Dionysius and Adephagia. Greek food can sometimes be disparaged as crude and one-dimensional: the runt of the Mediterranean litter, overshadowed by the glorious culinary traditions of France and Italy. But, for me, its beauty lies in its simplicity. And while it is often familiar it is simultaneously unexpected: fat olives in spectacular Greek salads, but also acerbic caper leaves. Feta crumbled atop everything, but baked too with aubergines and peppers.