1

I ate the most delicious and original dinner of 2021 at the Black Bull in Sedbergh, Cumbria: mackerel flavoured with sudachi; cod with smoked roe and seaweed; sticky toffee pudding (of course). Not that I was exactly surprised by any of it. I knew I’d died and gone to heaven when we were served hot guinea fowl croquettes with our preprandial sidecars. Miraculous.

2

Tricky, but I think the dish I loved most was the buttermilk fried chicken with caviar and brown butter at Skosh in York, where I managed to bag a table twice in 12 months. How I refrained from ordering a second helping – I may mean a third – I’ll never know.

3

The coldest dinner of the year was at Saint Jacques in St James’s, London, chosen for its terrace in those odd weeks when restaurants were still only allowed to serve outside. My fingers were as blue as the steak some red-trousered type was devouring on the next table.

4

In 2021, I cooked quite a few good things myself, weary though I frequently was at the sight – even the thought – of my kitchen. Take it from me, then, that Felicity Cloake’s recipe for fish pie is the absolute best, though I gild the lily and throw in mussels, too (keep a bag of frozen ones from Picard on standby for this emergency).

5

I was also cooked for, which is by far the lovelier thing. I still think of the pakoras my friend Arifa served up one evening in May, soon after we’d been released from captivity (again). These birds’ nests of deliciousness, grease and spice in perfect balance emerged from her kitchen in munificent and unceasing waves, which meant that I was also cunningly able to disguise my greed for them as politeness (possibly).

6

I told myself: no more new cookbooks. But then I clapped eyes on Crave by Ed Smith, which arranges recipes by mood, and it called to me, what with the pervasive longing, anxiety etc. It has taken me a while to accept that while I might aspire to moods that are “fresh and fragrant”, I’m actually a “cheesy and creamy” kind of person who self-medicates with unsalted butter.

7

In 2021, I bought no new swanky knives or any other kitchen kit. But I did take delivery of my mother’s Wedgwood Sterling stoneware in rich chocolate brown. It’s very 1970s; I love it almost as much as she has always hated it. So stylish is it, in fact, I’m prepared to tolerate the awful sound it makes whenever it comes into contact with a knife. Whether my friends will feel the same is yet to be seen.

8

My survivor of the year award goes to Maison Francois in Duke Street, London, which had barely opened when the first lockdown began. It gives me great pleasure – and yet it gives me no pleasure at all – to announce that, as I write, it’s impossible to bag a table. It will be 2022 before I can eat (more self-medication) those comte gougeres again.

9

This year was the one when I found out that tinned grapefruit is really not bad, a discovery resulting from a sudden lockdown-induced desire for a hotel breakfast buffet (not that I ordinarily eat the grapefruit at a hotel breakfast buffet, tinned or not).

10

The best edible present I received: chocolate decorated in suffragette colours and the words “courage calls to courage everywhere”, brought to me by a member of a certain WhatsApp group, all of whom were in my kitchen at the time. What fantastic women, I thought, as we ate it – and, yes, here comes the slushy bit. Nothing in this list would mean anything at all were it not for those we love (including the tinned grapefruit, with its suggestion of holidays, and strangers on unfamiliar landings). Food connects us. It’s a sacramental thing: every cook a priest, every table an altar. I’m not grateful to the pandemic for anything save for my ever-rising awareness of my great good fortune at having so many excellent (greedy, hungry, chocolate-loving) people in my life. Whatever happens next, it’s this (and a fish pie) that I’ll cling to.