I’ve been together with my husband since I was 19. I’m now 39, which means we’ve spent half our lives together. He’s been there for every stage of my cooking life: he’s eaten his way through three cookbooks, more than three years of recipe testing for this column, rivers of pasta sauce and countless dinners. And yet, if you asked him to choose his favourite meal without drawing breath, it would still be sausages, mash and peas 🙄.

So after a 100km ultra-marathon - which, I should add, is apparently just the warm-up for the 160km race he’s taking on in November. I know he’s become one of those people. After his big race, I wanted to cook him his favourite dinner. Food has always been how I show love and care, but I wanted to give his beloved bangers and mash a little more love, too. He has now declared it his new favourite dinner, which feels like quite an achievement after 20 years of cooking for the same person.