Olivia Potts

Duck à l’orange is so deliciously retro, it’s almost a cliché of kitsch. It seems hard to believe that there was a time when it was genuinely regarded as elegant, or subtle-flavoured, let alone exciting; that it wasn’t always a byword for naff. But as its name suggests, duck à l’orange had chic origins. And perhaps (contrary to its name) Italian ones. The French may have made it one of their defining dishes, but it’s often suggested that it may have Italian roots: brought to the French court by Catherine de Medici when she married the Duke of Orléans, the son of the King of France, in 1533.

This time last year, I was disgustingly well organised. Awaiting the arrival of my first baby, with a late December due date, I’d ensured everything was squirrelled or squared away. I’d bought all my presents by October, wrapped them by December; I’d made my Christmas cakes and bought my Terry’s Chocolate Orange. For the first time in my life, I sent Christmas cards to everyone in my address book. I’d even made and frozen the gravy weeks in advance. It was my way of nesting – the baby could arrive when it liked. I was prepared. It can feel that every homemade edible component of Christmas demands commitment: puddings, cakes, mincemeat, it should all be made wildly in advance, and given time to mature. Well, that level of forward-planning has gone out of the window.

‘This dish is very you,’ my husband says, as I serve up 650g of melted, boozy cheese to the two of us for a weekday lunch, alongside a teetering pile of bread cubes. He is, I’m afraid, right: it really is my favourite kind of eating. There’s nothing better than a communal pot in the centre of the table, with everyone leaning over each other. Fondue is fun, as well as being pleasingly old-fashioned, its gooey and silky texture demanding dunking and swooping. And I’d probably treat anyone who didn’t leap at the chance to eat a lot of stringy cheese and bread with mild suspicion. Until now, my life has been mostly fondue-less, thanks to not owning a fondue set. The caquelon, or cauldron, has a low flame underneath it, which keeps the cheese hot while diners eat it.

I am incapable of throwing anything away in the kitchen. In my fridge, there must be at least half a dozen pots of bits and bobs, dishes of leftovers and scraps. In my freezer, a bag of parmesan rinds has filled slowly, each intended to be chucked into a pot of soup or stew to bring savoury depth, and there’s even an optimistic box of pea pods that I’m convinced I will one day turn into a stock to make an authentic risi e bisi. All await a future transformation, some kitchen wizardry that will rescue something that is a little past its best. Although I confess I sometimes find myself buying a bunch of ingredients just to use up something I’ve squirrelled away, or plain forgotten about and left a touch too long.

Meatloaf has some obstacles to overcome: it has an unprepossessing appearance, and an uninspiring, slightly off-putting name, which it shares with the famous singer. And it wasn’t a compliment when it was given to him: the singer’s father took one look at his newborn son and said he looked like ‘nine pounds of ground chuck’, before persuading the hospital staff to put the name ‘Meat’ on his crib (which is real commitment to a joke). I can’t speak for baby Meat Loaf, but when it comes to the dish, the name is at least an extremely accurate description. Meatloaf is made up of ground meat (often beef, sometimes pork, occasionally veal, or a mixture thereof), cut with bread or other carbs, and bound together with egg.

I’m a sucker for a challenge. I absolutely cannot resist a little competition. Throw down a gauntlet, and I am compelled to pick it up. That’s probably one of the reasons that I love bananas Foster so much: it owes its existence to a challenge. In the 1950s, New Orleans was a major port of entry for bananas shipped from Latin America. Owen Brennan, owner of the eponymous French-Creole restaurant Brennan’s, was no fool: his brother Joe’s produce firm, Brennan’s Processed Potato Company, was running a large surplus of bananas and he wanted to make the most of these readily available fruit. He challenged one of his chefs to come up with a banana dish that could be served at his restaurant.

Mussels were probably the first thing I ate as a child that I knew at the time was ‘an acquired taste’. They made me feel impossibly grown up, coming with a brigade of bowls, one for the mussels themselves, one for chips, one for bread, one for empty mussel shells, and a little lemon-scented bowl of water to dip my fingers in. My dinner alone must have taken up half the table. From then on, I ordered mussels every time they were on the menu, knowing they would transform me from a gawky 12-year-old girl wearing cargo pants into a veritable sophisticate. But I never once tried moules mouclade. Like Socrates, Casanova and Beyoncé, mouclade is usually known only by its first name, la mouclade – the ‘moules’ implied by the ‘mouclade’.