After all those photos of politicians’ kitchens ... Miriam reveals she’s a secret food blogger!
THE unsavoury vogue for kitchenrelated affairs in the run up to the General Election took a fresh twist yesterday – as Nick Clegg’s wife seemed to put the heat under the opposition.
While the Camerons, Cleggs and Milibands have all been pictured showing off their kitchens during the campaign, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez decided to go one better by revealing she has also been leading a double life as a secret food blogger.
Was the timing of the confession designed to up the stakes among other party leader wives? It was difficult to say. But as a partner in a global law firm Mrs Clegg certainly knows how to pull a few tricks out of the bag when the chips are down – or in danger of going up in flames. It turns out she has been running website mumandsons.com – with help from her three sons – for the last three years.
Until now it has been entirely anonymous, with just a note explaining: ‘I am a Spanish mum. This is my attempt to prove to my children that cooking can be fun and easy without having to spend your life in the kitchen baking complicated cakes.’
More than 40,000 people had visited the site since it was set up, with little clue as to the identity of the author. But yesterday it had an extra 25,000 clicks within just a matter of hours after she chose to blow her cover during a webchat on Mumsnet.
The 46-year- old joked that she would now get in trouble with the Lib Dems, as she wrote: ‘I am careful at what I eat. I like cooking a lot and make the point of teaching my children to cook as well.
‘I actually have a cooking blog with my children that I have been running with them for the last three years (when my husband’s advisers learn this they are going to freak out!).’
She revealed that her two eldest sons – Antonio, 13 and Alberto, ten – had challenged her to start it and now the youngest, six yearold Miguel, was also helping.
The blog features 217 tempting recipes, many of them with a Spanish flavour, as well as tips on how to get children involved in cooking. Dishes include patatas a la Riojana (potatoes with chorizo), serrano ham croquetas and her grandmother’s roast partridge and stewed lamb.
There are also many useful tips and experiences gleaned from her Spanish upbringing, in dishes such as her mother’s signature paella (‘never, just never, put chorizo in’). The Cleggs proudly showed off the kitchen of their £ 1.5million home in Putney, south-west London, on ITV earlier this month when they were seen sipping white wine while, in the background, a paella was cooking on the hob.
However, one interior designer said the kitchen was ‘middle of the road’, too much a mix of city and country – and in need of refreshing.