I’m a big vodka drinker. I spent a lot of time in Russia — I was at university there and wrote a book about the first 100 days of collapsed Communism when I was a serious journalist, years ago. So at our dinner parties we’ll often drink that.
I live with my husband in Ladbroke Grove. We’re just beginning to have dinners again, now that our baby sleeps through the night. Usually my five-year-old daughter will serve guests for the first hour, as long as she can eat all the crisps. I do all the cooking ... actually, my husband has been a lot better recently. He’s discovered his inner Nigel Slater, because we’ve both been trying to be a bit less fat.
I did a ten-week Prue Leith cooking course with a good friend of mine, Kirsty Young. It was the funniest, most fantastic thing I’ve ever done. It was like being back in the domestic science lesson, and I learnt lots of tricks.
If I’m doing a posh dinner, my favourite is belly roast pork. My mother lived in Italy for 20 years and they do this thing called porchetta, where they cook belly of the pork slowly with fennel, garlic, rosemary and sage. It is rolled in rock salt and fennel seeds and roasted for about eight hours.
In Italy they usually take a whole pig, stuff it and roast it over a few days until the outside is golden and they serve it in a ciabatta out of a van in the local market. I usually serve it with a big salad and lots of roasted potatoes, and a pudding that involves lots of cream.After dinner there’s normally just more drinking and talking, but I did once have a load of very drunk men go through my wardrobe, put on all my clothes and do a fashion show. The photographs are fantastic.
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My favourite part of a dinner party, though, is the debrief phone call with a girlfriend the next day.
My signature dish
Porchetta
Serves approx 6
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Ingredients
1.8kg of belly pork off the bone, rind left on, scored widthways
Bunch of sage
Bunch of rosemary
1 fennel bulb
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1 garlic bulb
3 sticks celery
Small packet fennel seeds
Method
Lay meat skin-side down and cut garlic cloves into quarters, poke hole in meat with knife and slide in slices of garlic. Cover the whole belly at 1cm intervals. Take off stems/sticks from rosemary and sage. Lay lengthways in middle. Chop celery and fennel not too finely and lay on top. Sprinkle salt and fennel seeds. Roll pork and tie with cotton string and place in a baking tray. Sprinkle skin with sea salt and fennel seeds. Roast (120-150C) for at least 3 hours. If skin is not crispy you can turn heat up for last ten minutes.
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Hospital Babylon by Imogen Edwards-Jones and Anonymous is published by Bantam Press on April 28.