I love cookbooks, particularly ones I’ve owned for a long time. I love the way the book falls open at a favourite recipe, or, better still, is covered with a patina of splashes and splodges – a guide to how often the recipe has been prepared and enjoyed.

Preparation time: 30 minutes. Don’t make me laugh.

It’s great, too, how you can flip through and rediscover a meal you haven’t prepared for years, suddenly almost tasting it afresh as you alight on the page.

And yet so many questions remain.

Frustrated by these challenges, I grab my old student copy of The Commonsense Cookery Book. It has no recipe longer than half a page. There’s even a recipe for how to make toast.

It’s simpler, sure. But where are the splodges and splashes that reveal true culinary delight? Despite it all, I may have to stick with my old food-stained friends – Yotam, Rick, Marcella, Stephanie, Charmaine and Adam.

The proof, after all, is in the eating.

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