I was originally paid for this article to appear in Tetrad's The Drawing Board Magazine which can be found here.

You know that feeling of emptiness in the pit your stomach after a long day at work? You want to pop your aching limbs onto the sofa, order a takeaway, and turn into a vegetable. Well, a ha ha ha, I’m here to tell you that maybe cooking some vegetables would be better for you!

I’m Matt Watts and today I’m going to show you how to cook up one of my famous performances, the perfect dish for entertaining.

I like to use what I call the George’s Marvellous Medicine approach. Go to your larder / pantry / small cupboard / large cupboard / fridge / freezer / fridge-freezer / vegetable patch, and grab a little bit of everything that you like. I mean everything. It doesn’t matter if the flavours don’t traditionally go together. Some people might call that a mistake, but I call it innovation. Some people might call that needlessly pretentious, but I call them heathens. Some people might call that childish, but I place my finger and my thumb in the shape of an ‘L’ on my forehead and that really shows them who’s boss.

Chop your ingredients into bitesize chunks and throw them into a casserole dish with some oil. Put it on a medium heat. Once they’re nicely browned, you’re going to add the rice and the stock. It’s a common misconception that rice is a bland carbohydrate whose only purpose is to provide substance. You must realise the truth: it isn’t there to pad the performance; it is the performance. As you cook, the rice will expand and take on the flavours of your ingredients, creating a perfectly proportioned performance which both satisfies and excites.

If you’re feeling a bit naughty, you can add a big old whack of full-fat self-indulgence. Some performers will tell you that self-indulgence can be unpalatable and overpowering, but some of my favourite performances are smothered in the stuff! I’ve tried working without it, but it always manages to slip in there somehow. The only rule I have is that it must be an ingredient and not a performance in its own right.

Once it’s tender but not soggy, it’s time to take it off the heat. While many performers like to throw in a smidgen of insecurity to give an extra tang of realism, my secret ingredient is an over-confident certainty that I have something interesting to say. But that’s our little secret, so keep it to yourself!

I hope you’re hungry, because it’s almost ready. All that remains is to season to taste. ‘But to whose taste?’ I hear you ask. As Henry Ford said “if I had asked people what they wanted, they’d have said faster horses” what a wit that man had. I saw that quote over a picture of a sunset on Facebook the other day and it really made me stop and stroke my chin and consider things. If you’re only creating for yourself, then you obviously season to your taste. It gets a little trickier when creating for others. You’ll want to keep that unique flavour, but you mustn’t be arrogant enough to think that everyone will like it, and it’s common courtesy to at least make it vaguely palatable.

Now, my final tip for you: any performer / chef with good taste should be well aware when a joke / metaphor is becoming overstretched. If, however, he acknowledges this and carries on anyway, it can be passed off as a deliberate, thrillingly postmodern, artistic decision. It’s an insurance policy of sorts; if people dislike it, you can claim that they haven’t understood it.