Ok, so I cook a bit. It’s no big deal. Here’s what you do. You get some ingredients, stir ‘em up, marinade something wot needs marinading, fry those which require it, put a lid on and cook for 15 minutes/1 hour 25/3 hours 42 on gas mark 7/220 degrees/on a low light on the hob, then eat. What’s hard about that? What’s all the fuss about? Generally though, I just ‘wing it’. Its easy. Fry onions and mushrooms together and you’re 90% there. Anything else you add is a bonus. But here’s the secret. (Shhhhhh)

Always add soy sauce. To everything. And… maple syrup. OMG, maple syrup??? In something savoury???? Surely not!!!! But trust me. I didn’t invent this shit. Furthermore the geezer who invented ‘salted caramel’ wasn’t the first person to realise that sweet and savoury don’t just sometimes go together, but really really enhance each other. In fact I think my dad invented it in 1962 when he started having his breakfast toast with cheddar cheese and apricot jam. A man ahead of his time. Before some pretentious nob (probably French with those qualities) made marmite ice cream, or ox-tail blancmange.

If I’m cooking brussel sprouts, I slice them and marinade them in garlic, olive oil, soy sauce and maple syrup. Try it, it’s magical. Unless you hate Brussel sprouts. Then it’s revolting.

And I use maple syrup because honey is a thing of the past. Unless you’re a bee. I went to New Zealand. Had Manuka honey. If not the best in the world, certainly the most outrageously fucking expensive in the world. What do you have to pay a bee to end up with a 25-pound jar of honey? Anyway, despite Manuka making your heart stronger, your legs shapelier, your blood… better and your penis several sizes larger!!!!, (honest, its says so on the bottle!), it tases like honey.

A Canadian mate brought us a bottle of Maple Syrup. From Canadia, so it was proper, American-style, fat-bastard-appropriate, half-a-gallon type bottle. You’d think it grows on trees over there, or somefink. And because Mel is in fact Canadian by birth and they take away your passport if you don’t consume the required amount of their syrup each year, I started using it in cooking. I’m actually worried since yesterday that every time Mel comes home I’ll have to pay 25% of something to Donald Trump. But I’ll speak to the Home Office about that.

All this because yesterday we went out for tea and I made a cheesecake. My (dear, sweet, deceased) mother’s recipe. A proper, cooked, Jewish cheesecake, not that hyper sweetened, ultra-refrigerated American type shit which sets your teeth on edge, even sweet teeth like mine. I have no idea what cheesecake Jewish Americans eat, must be really difficult. But everyone at the tea (all Mel’s family, so a pretty useless bunch generally) said: What??? ANDY made the cake!!!!???? As if merely owning testicles precludes following a recipe. Well, a recipe is just like a car owner’s manual, but with less spanners.

Anyway, Spurs won, which makes a gorgeous, glorious, sunny winter day that much more wonderful, wonderous and, quite frankly, amazing. But more on that tomorrow, once the rest of the results are in.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx