Olivia Potts

The Italians have a phrase: ‘brutti ma buoni’. It means ‘ugly but beautiful’, and it’s the name they give to their nubbly hazelnut meringue biscuits, which – as the name suggests – taste lovely but aren’t lookers. The phrase came to me the other day when I lifted the lid on my pan of golden syrup dumplings. Because they’re ugly little buggers. They look a little like soggy apple fritters, or even chicken nuggets – am I selling them to you yet? But focus on the buoni, not the brutti: they are absolutely delicious. Golden syrup dumplings sound as British as queueing.

Picture the scene. The year is 2004. The setting, a British field or maybe a beach. There is a small open fire burning with a single cast-iron pan perched on it. A male TV chef – dressed in a striped shirt, open at the neck, chinos, possibly red, leather shoes – is standing over it, reverently holding a fish. ‘This is a beautiful piece of fish,’ he says, ‘and we’re not going to do anything fancy here. It doesn’t need it! We’re going to keep it simple.’ There must have been a clause in the contract of any TV cookery show in the early 2000s to say that a beautiful piece of fish should be cooked simply.

I will admit to having been dismissive of red velvet cake in the past, considering it to be bland in flavour and garish in colour. It tended to come in cupcake form with towering hats of super-sweet buttercream, which made it unpleasant and difficult to eat. The cult love for red velvet, inspiring scented candles and lip balms all smelling of synthetic vanilla, always struck me as a bit naff – the preserve of teenage girls queueing outside Instagram-bait bakeries. Why would you plump for a red velvet cupcake when you could have coffee and walnut or a lemon syrup-soaked sponge or a nobbly carrot cake? Red velvet was a cake for people who didn’t really like cake.

You may be forgiven, if you are a regular reader of this column, for thinking that my primary motivation in cooking is showing off. I’m always banging on about lovely dishes you can serve to unsuspecting guests that will guarantee plaudits and amazement. But while there is more than a kernel of truth in this, I think that it’s actually simpler than that: what I crave from cooking is satisfaction. And I don’t mean satiation of hunger (although that too: I am greedy), but the sense of achievement that cooking – almost – invariably brings. True, this achievement can often be found in presenting a beautiful cake to an assembled group of people, or your new friend saying ‘You know, I think these are the best brownies I’ve ever tried’.

Isn’t it awful that the older you get, the more you know yourself? It’s supposed to be a good thing, attributed to wisdom, experience and a deeper understanding of our place in the world around us. But good lord, self-awareness can be a cruel mistress. I have realised that my greatest culinary goal is simply unachievable. You see, I long to appear effortless. This is true throughout my life, but particularly so when it comes to cooking. Every time I invite friends round for lunch or dinner, I resolve that this is the time when everything will not only be easy but, crucially, I will make it look easy. That I will simply throw something together that everyone will adore; the gathered diners will be equally impressed by the food and by the nonchalance with which I’ve assembled it.

Pub food in Britain has had a mixed reputation over the years. For a long time, the most a pub would have to offer as food would be some pork scratchings or a pickled egg. There certainly wasn’t a brigade of chefs in white coats in a shiny chrome kitchen. This is midweek-teatime cooking, it’s sling-it-in-an-oven cooking, it’s cheer-me-up-quickly cooking Pub grub started to appear in the 1970s, but it was simple, filling and predictable. It was the sort of unpretentious, low-priced food that was suitable for a worker’s lunch break. So up and down the country pub menus all hit the same beats: steak and kidney pie, ham with egg and chips, chilli con carne, fish and chips, even lasagne – and hunter’s chicken.

January kitchens are my favourite. This isn’t anything against Christmas – I love the spice, the frenzy, the ritual of festive cooking, but I also love the aftermath. There’s something calming about the kitchen once it’s all over – nothing is made through obligation, or with a deadline. I embrace the cosiness of autumn and the sparkle of Christmas, but I find the bright, cool light of January reviving and renewing. At this time of year my kitchen is a place to take stock and make stock. To steady and sustain. Proper puddings, hot and sweet and served with cream, are a non-negotiable part of late winter It’s also full of puddings, among other things. Proper puddings, hot and sweet and served with cream, are a non-negotiable part of late winter for me.

For as long as we’ve been serving food, we’ve been unable to resist a bit of culinary deception. Making one thing look like another thing – especially if it makes a sweet thing look savoury or vice versa – seems to have universal comedic value. There’s something Willy Wonka-ish about the visual wrong-footing, the surprise – we find it delightful. I’m not even going to stop you slinging some mini marshmallows in there – it is Christmas, after all There’s a long history here. At medieval and Tudor banquets, the food was entertainment as much as it was sustenance: huge pastries made to look like life-size stags and swans stood alongside carefully carved marzipan fruits, both imitating the real thing as closely as possible.