Last Friday, I spent the day chained to the stove. 21 of Geoff’s family were coming for Saturday, as my nephew-in-law was playing at the neighbouring cricket club.

On Saturday morning, I sent Geoff off to Waitrose in Petersfield for some forgotten ingredients. We adore the programme Two Greedy Italians, with Antonio Carluccio. He has many Italian restaurants around Britain, including South Kensington and Cambridge, which we’ve happily eaten at many times. He was in front of Geoff in the checkout queue. Of course, I would have said something to him. Had a good look at what he was buying. Geoff just smiled. Dad looks a lot like Carluccio, which is maybe why I love watching the programme. He has the same mischievous grin and leathery face.

When Geoff and I were first married, it was a novelty to cook and prepare for a dinner party. To set the table, adorn it with flowers and change into something pretty. I loved the occasion of it all. And the formality.

Ghislaine, the Honourable, sorted me out with my first cook book shortly after I was married, and I also added Delia Smith’s bible to my repertoire. I still it use now: especially for scones.

It was hard to switch to British ingredients, as the brands were completely different to those sold by Coles and Woolworths, the Aussie supermarkets of the time. Sainburys, Tescos and Waitrose were new territories to conquer. It took time. The Kangaroo found it all bewildering and foreign! In the first week off the plane, I ventured to Army and Navy in Victoria and ordered two steaks. It cost £30. I was appalled, but I was too embarrassed to reject it. Meat was, by comparison, very expensive in the UK.

I cracked a few recipes, which I wheeled out time and time again: crab and camembert mini quiches, baked asparagus and chicken, lamb in redcurrant sauce, beef wellington, pavlova (an Aussie staple), a cooked cheesecake, a hazelnut and cherry torte …

My sister in law, Wendy, adores to cook. She loves every inch of the process – apart from the cleanup. But then who likes that part! We were often in Oz over Christmas, near Hugo’s birthday, or Easter, Geoff and Mum’s birthday. Wendy, of course, made these occasions magical and delicious. She has great artistic flair, so the food and decorations always looked gorgeous.

My father, Stan the Man, also adored cooking, and they shared that bond until he died. Her requested addition to the eulogy I delivered at his funeral, was to remark on the fresh delicacies he brought her on almost a daily basis: vine ripened tomatoes and ham off the bone. Not the pale toms or the processed ham, all with water added.

 

As Dad repeatedly advised the family, “If the ingredients aren’t up to scratch, then the food will be shocking.” Dad’s views on ingredients has proven a saving grace in my culinary efforts. Tough meat, inedible meal. Unripe fruit, inedible. Past the use by date veg, inedible. Dad taught me how to smell, assess and choose fresh produce wisely. And to detect if water has been added. If the orange skin is bright orange, but spongy, then it will be pumped with water. Better leather like and taut. If the rock melon (our word for the orange melon) is still hard at the tip, then it is still unripe.

Dad managed to cook a large dinner party for my 21st. Clear beef consomme broth, veal layered in mozzarella and tomato, followed by baked cheesecake. All with Aussie sparkling wine. Inspirational really, given that he worked by the sweat of his brow during the week. But on weekends he cooked delicious meals and looked after his delicate orchids, usually with a beer perched nearby. He would spray them with a fine mist of water. He was a paradox in that respect. A bloke’s bloke, but with feminine traits. But to look at you would never have guessed that side of him.