“Nothing should be bland,” declares Ellie Bouhadana. The chef and cook book author brings the full force of her mixed Jewish ancestry, first-generation work ethic, intuition and “undue confidence” to season every dish. “Food will taste so much better if you cook exactly what you want to eat and what excites you,” she says.

What often excites her is pasta, such as the cavatelli with squid shown here, coated in a sauce of white wine, garlic, chilli and tomato with the flavour-bomb of XO sauce. “It’s like a little chef’s secret,” she says. “There are so many ways to add deep, deep flavour that people don’t seem to know about, and XO is one of them.”