Cooking with Colm O'Gorman: Korean fried chicken burger with all the trimmings

This Korean fried chicken burger with pickled cucumber and spicy mayo would be a great treat for someone you love this Valentine's Day

It is St Valentine’s Day on Sunday. A day when all the restaurants are usually booked out and a bunch of red roses will cost you an arm and a leg. It will be different this year of course. There will be no dining out, and the florists are all closed too. Everyone will have to get a little more inventive, and perhaps there is no harm in that.

I must be honest; I am not a fan of Valentine’s Day. I have always found it to be a bit too forced, a bit formulaic. Being married to someone with a deep aversion to any kind of performative displays of love and affection has not helped. Over the past twenty-one years I have learned not to expect the expected. In all that time I have never received a Valentines Day card and a bunch of flowers on the fourteenth of February. Such tokens are instead more likely to arrive unexpectedly, be it a bunch of flowers on rare occasions or more often something he spots that he knows I will enjoy. Displays of affection are spontaneous, and rarely given if expected. I have come to really value the spontaneity of that. There is a thoughtfulness involved that is very lovely, and it is always nice to be surprised.