Twelve menus for twelve anniversaries.
A menu for each year of a marriage — from the first, when you're still nervous, to the twelfth, when you're finally not.
Year one is nervous. Cook something you're both proud you can pull off. A whole roast fish. A pasta neither of you has ever made. Something that could go wrong and doesn't.
Year two is the first repeat. Cook exactly what you cooked last year. Do not tell them until they take the first bite.
Year three is a risk. Try something neither of you has ever tasted. Fail cheerfully.
Year four is a return to the classic. Roast chicken. Good bread. Green salad. Trust it.
Year five is a show. Book a chef. Sit down. Be cooked for. You have earned it.
Year seven is the quiet one. The whole year has been about work and children and mortgages. Make something soft — a soup, a stew, a bowl. Eat it in candlelight and go to bed early.
Year ten is the marker. Fly somewhere or cook somewhere new. Pick a menu that will become 'the ten-year meal' — the one you will cook again for year twenty, and thirty.
Year twelve is when you finally stop performing. Cook what you cook on Tuesdays. Pretend the calendar means nothing. That is when you'll know.
