Who's the Daddy: Time for a slice of humble pie

Yeah, I know. It should be the front page lead, not buried in the back of the paper somewhere between the letters page and sport.

You want to know what it was? Daughter #2 asked yours truly for some recipes she could make when she flies the nest and off to university later this year.

Dear reader, I nearly fainted. After months of offering to teach her how to cook a few nice quick dinners, suggesting it would be unwise to live on Pot Noodle baguettes for three years, she agreed. To be honest, the tipping point was when she actually tried a Pot Noodle for lunch one day last week and gave up after chowing down less than a third of it. Tastes like elastic bands apparently.

I wouldn’t know, in the same way as the mere smell of Southern Comfort makes me retch thanks to a boozy night on the devil’s urine in January 1993, I’d thoroughly sickened myself of Pot Noodles by 1986, after being fed the beef and tomato flavour one for lunch every school day for two years.

Anyway, after discovering a few years ago that if you can read you can cook, Who’s The Daddy? has learned to make about 30 dishes well enough that there are very few tantrums at the dinner table these days, not since the incident with daughter #1 and the deeply regrettable broccoli bake.

Nothing too flash - spag bol, chilli, lasagne, chicken korma, chicken balti, hot pot, risotto, paella, leek and potato soup, vegetable cottage pie, poached eggs (it’s all about the swirl), fajitas, roast dinners and the height of 90s sophistication, fresh pasta and sauce to name but a few.

Maybe the penny’s dropped that in daughter #2’s flatshare, dinner won’t magically appear on a plate the minute she walks through the front door like it has for her entire life so far.

Honestly, cooking’s not that hard. As daughter #2 is about to discover. Any cook worth his salt (ho ho) could just about knock up a Sunday roast if they’ve got a tin of chopped tomatoes and an onion in the house.