There are tiny golden cakes cooling on the wire rack that smell of butter and Japanese citrus. On the hob, a casserole of long-stemmed broccoli with ginger and tamarind. Yesterday morning’s breakfast was sticky rice accompanied by a sour, salty preserved plum. My parents would barely recognise anything I eat. To them, cakes were victoria sponge or battenburg; a casserole was a neck of lamb and potatoes left in the Aga till the meat fell from its bones. Salad was lettuce, tomato and cucumber, and salad cream from a bottle. Delicious all, but a world away from what is in my kitchen in 2022.I am not one for rushing out to buy the latest ingredient – no one needs that many varieties of dried chilli in their kitchen cupboard – and yet I never want my cooking to stand still. I hope I am pottering in my kitchen, curiously, hungrily, till the day I die.Flicking back through the tissue paper pages of my diaries, the changes in what I eat and cook are easy to spot. Less meat, less sugar and more...
