During the 2015 general election campaign, an interview with Miriam González Durántez, top European lawyer and Nick Clegg’s wife, revealed that for the past four years she had been quietly blogging the recipes that she and her two eldest sons had been cooking. The blog is a treasure trove of easy but delicious meals, largely, but not exclusively, from Spain.
I start my week with pasta and chorizo – a recipe consisting of, well, pasta and chorizo – with homemade tomato sauce. I am so lazy that even the thought of buying a hand mill, as she suggests, let alone using it, makes me feel tired. I simply use my blender to puree the pepper, onion, garlic and tomatoes after cooking. It looks exactly like the tomato sauce on her website and it tastes great, though I feel a little haunted by my minimal effort.
I have also made an ocean of tomato sauce, so I busy myself finding more recipes to use it all up. Tuesday’s meal is cod with tomato sauce and peppers, which, as well as being delicious and easy, features one of my favourite things about González Durántez’s blog: the wonderfully curt instructions. “Sprinkle a bit of chopped parsley on top and let it simmer over low heat for three minutes. That is all.”
On Wednesday I make meatballs. Because González Durántez – or “Notorious MGD” as I have taken to referring to her – is a badass, her recipe for her children’s meatballs includes a glass of white wine. They’re delicious. By Thursday I have started drawing up convoluted plans to make Nick Clegg and MGD my friends so she will cook for me for real. For dinner I make chickpeas with tomato, which, as well as making inroads into my tomato sauce glut, also helpfully uses up my remaining chorizo.
I finish off the week by using the last of my tomato sauce to cook squid in its ink. Her advice for getting children to eat this is simply not to let them see the squid or the ink beforehand, because it will put them off, even if the final meal will be lovely. That is certainly true. I just wish I hadn’t had to see the squid beforehand. Sadder still, my week of simple Spanish meals is over. I feel that, just like the government, my kitchen will be the worse for not having González Durántez’s family anywhere near it.
• Styling: Stephanie Iles. Grooming: Nicky Weir
