I received the best of all possible emails the other day. It was from my friend Dina, inviting me to dinner the next evening. It was all I could do not to grab my bag, a bottle of wine and zoom over there immediately, coming to a stop so sudden on her doorstep that I would still be vibrating like Road Runner when she opened the door.

She’s the world’s greatest cook, you see – a potent and precious combination of confidence, creativity and patience that lifts her way above the ranks of the merely kitchen-competent. She is also half-Iranian and prefers to cook the food from her childhood. I remember one particular dinner, to celebrate a birthday, when we were seated at a table piled high with dishes of feta cheese mixed with pomegranate seeds, grapes in yoghurt and brown sugar, vine leaves stuffed with I can’t remember what, let’s just call it the ambrosia of the gods, lamb and chicken stews suffused with turmeric, saffron, lime and walnuts and bowls and bowls of different rices that she had somehow transformed from the plain white stuff that lurks on the shelf into something I would plunge a dagger in my thigh and sell my child as a galley slave to taste again. It was like walking into a Persian fairytale. Other friends draw on their ethnic influences or their time living, working or gap-yearing in foreign parts to inspire them. I could eat my way round the world in a week if they would just coordinate their invitation schedules.

None of this is available to me. Put me in a kitchen and I cower in fear. Even if I’m just cooking for myself. “Why?” asks Dina, puzzled. “What’s the worst that could happen?” The answer is – I don’t know, but I would hate to find out. If forced to embark on culinary endeavours, I stick slavishly to the simplest of recipes. Delia recipes. Not Nigella, or Jamie, or Nigel or Yotam. I need someone who tells me exactly how much to add (Delia does not ‘glug’ or ‘sprinkle’ or ‘drizzle’ anything. She adds a precise measure and will reach out from the book and slap you round the face if you even think about going off-piste) and when. I have no creativity, no imagination, no common sense, no palate whatsoever and therefore no idea whether at the end something would benefit from a bit more salt, pepper, olive oil or garlic. For all I know, it would taste better with a cupful of glue and pennies thrown in there. This is why I use recipes and why people beg me to continue to do so.

I have no patience. The length of time it takes potatoes to boil drives me mad, especially as I know there’s a chip shop down the road frying the things to a mouthwatering crisp and I could pick up a bag in half the time it’s going to take my pallid lumps of starch to soften into edibility.

“I am not exotic – I am mince in oxtail soup”