For various strange reasons, I got to meet one of my heroes (briefly) this morning, helping out in a TV recording for his new series. I’m probably not allowed to say who it is until the show goes out, but anyone who knows me well will be able to guess who I’m talking about.

As a result of this appointment I had decided to actually make an effort with my appearance for a change. The problem was, as this was completely last minute I had already asked Andy round for dinner. How could I fit it all into one evening? Andy came up with an interesting solution. He would cook for me at my flat allowing me to paint toenails, pluck eyebrows and choose what I was going to wear.

Now, Andy has several nicknames. The one he likes best is Sir Millar. The one that’s being used  more and more often now and is most appropriate to his cooking style is “The Goon” after that character from Popeye.  This is because Andy does goonish things, like picking people up, dropping them, walking into things…. you get the idea.

By all acounts Andy’s previous attempts at cooking were more than a little bit goonish. He survived for several months in his first year by eating tuna and microwaved rice everyday. When he got bored of that he moved onto noodles with chicken stock. I gave him my recipe for carbonara once. It might have worked if he could tell the difference between cream and milk. Remembering the eggs would havehelped too!

But goon was determined to cook for me last night, providing I could tell him exactly what to do. I thought I’d play it safe and let him make the simplest nice thing I could think of. Linguine with mussels and other bits and pieces. The amount of cooking is minimal but the flavours are great.  

So I gave Andy detailed instructions of what to do. Then I was told to go sit down and let the goon cook. I found this very difficult indeed. In fact, I found it impossible, I had to check what was going on.

Apart from the pasta sticking a little and some very limp-wristed stirring, things seemed to be going quite well. For some reason, goon doesn’t like doing things in parallel. Fine, but it did mean the meal took roughly 2 hours to make. Eventually, with relatively little supervision, this was produced.

The linguine was tossed in chilli oil and sundried tomato oil. Goon added basil, parsley, chopped olives and sundried tomatoes, mussels, peppers, mushroom and crushed garlic. Not bad going! It tasted pretty good too! Maybe I’ll get the goon to cook more often.