Recipe for contentment: cook and take life one meal at a time

Learn how to make food with care and attention, says Tim Adams, and the daily ritual of family cooking becomes a rewarding and meditative experience

I used to fancy myself as a special occasion cook, marinating and reducing for occasional wows, but since lockdown I've mostly taken over - with as little control freakery as I can muster - doing my full share of proper family meals, well. Does that count as a hobby? Of course not. But when you are writing and reading and wandering and watching for a living, it can feel that all of life is a form of solitary indulgence, so the distractions I crave are generally communal, and simply hands on.

That feeling has become more urgent in the last two years. Having worked from home for a couple of decades, I was used to mostly being alone with the contents of the fridge. Now, there were four of us in the house, Zooming and essay-writing and being lectured online and the days seemed to demand different kinds of punctuation marks.