What food would you say is your specialty?
I don’t really think of myself as having a specialty. There are meals I enjoy cooking for myself, but they rarely excite anyone else — small experiments, quiet comforts for a crowd of one.
When I cook for others, though, the table changes. That’s where my specialties belong. There’s usually fresh bread to begin — still warm from the oven, brushed with butter and served with cashew and coriander pesto. Not everyone loves coriander; for some it tastes like soap, so I keep a dish of olive oil beside it, green and gold under the light.
The main course is often fried sesame chicken with mango salsa. It’s bright and fragrant, the kind of meal that feels like summer. I like the balance of sweet and savoury, the way the mango softens the crispness of the chicken. Dessert is almost always a strawberry and rhubarb crumble — simple, generous, and just tart enough to make the vanilla ice-cream sing.
None of these dishes are complicated. But they’ve become favourites, not because they’re perfect, but because they bring people together. They fill the air with conversation, with the small sounds of contentment that say more than compliments ever could.
Cooking, I’ve realised, isn’t about impressing. It’s about creating a space where people feel at ease, where food becomes a kind of language for care. My specialty, if I have one, is the table itself — shared, welcoming, and always open for another chair.
The Afterword 
Leave a comment