‘I’ve taken a turn for the Jamie Oliver’

THAI green curries? No worries.

Edamame peas? Prepared with ease. Courgetti-spaghetti? You bet-ti. Over the past few years I’ve somewhat unexpectedly become the culinary king of my household.

Previously the limits of my gastronomic experimentation extended to firing two different flavours of crispy pancake on a bap for dinner. Avec crème de salade, if I was feeling fancy.

Recently, due to boredom, and a blood-pressure reading resembling a decent cricket score, I’ve taken a turn for the Jamie Oliver and gone all healthy, and a wee bit adventurous too.

While I’ve switched from bacon butties to broad beans though, my other half has been left for gastronomic dust.

My missus is a great cook but frankly she’s never even tried to spatchcock my poussin, no matter how many Nigella cookbooks I scatter around the house.

So are women being left behind in the kitchen by newly-adventurous blokes?

Not on your nicoise salad. Yer mammy’s home cooking will ALWAYS rule the roost.

Forgive me for sounding like a Hovis advert but when I were a lad, it was a plate of stew or meat and two veg for dinner.

On a special occasion she would brew up a cauldron of home-made soup so big it could have nourished the south side of Glasgow for a month.

Alright, sometimes the lentil broth was thicker than the cement they use to keep the Forth Bridge floating away.

And often the veg was boiled until it assumed the consistency of broccoli-flavoured air.

But modern Dads can spiralise all the shallots they like – it’ll never beat a plate of ma’s sausages and chips.

One of the things I miss about my late mum’s cooking is the slightly too-watery mince she made.

I’d whinge about the raw onions she’d mash into the lumpy potatoes. These days, I’d shell out Michelin-star prices for that particular meal one more time.

Dishes like that, with their own individual quirks, run like a thread through childhood.

Somehow I doubt my nostalgia glands would be excited had mum plonked down a bowl of Jerusalem artichokes with a side of pickled kumquats when I was a grubby tyke.

So let us menfolk think we’re the new Marco-Pierre White, we’re just being show-offs. Who knows, maybe now we’re comfy in the kitchen we’ll begin to get involved in the less sexy aspects of housework and, instead of whipping out the whisk, we’ll haul out the hoover a bit more?

In years to come it won’t be dad’s duck confit the kids will remember,

it’ll be maw’s mince and tatties.