SEASON’S GREETINGS

Cooking was never what I set out to do in life. I had a lucky but pretty normal upbringing: middle class in Miami, Florida, two amazing parents, siblings, a good education and not too many worries. Maybe the not-so normal part was the focus on food and cooking. My family is Cuban. Everything was centred around what meal was being made when, and even before one meal was finished, the next was simmering away. Ours was the kind of family that would spend an entire day roasting a suckling pig, only to start talking about how to use the leftovers before it had even been served.

I realised that it wasn’t the simplified, from a tin, 15-minute meal that made me fall in love with cooking. It was the all-day, overnight, sourced from the farmers’ market, made-from-scratch kind of cooking that enchanted me. I love the suspense and transformation and, ultimately, the reward when you