I couldn’t choose which was more exciting – the revolutionary deep-fried rocket or Tony Hadley’s cameo appearance. The 1980s crooner – whose band Spandau Ballet are making a comeback – had popped up to support his friend, chef Aneke Spacie at La Cucina Caldesi where Spacie was showing us recipes from her new book, Twisted Favourites.

Nursing a pathetic hangover, I had tottered in via the splendid Oxfam bookshop on Marylebone High Street resolutely teetotal. Three glasses of lunchtime champers later, Spacie’s new take on the now over-hammed rocket leaf was sending the assorted guests to giddying heights of admiration – so like Chinese ‘seaweed” but so much more spiky. Quirky, chin-chucking little canapés were the order of the day – how to wow friends at dinner parties with geometrical poppets and oddities on a tray – all very ’80s. So our tomato, mozzarella and basil salad used pickled cherry tomatoes whose skins were pulled up over the stalk, naughtily hitching their skirts and surrounded by cubes of balsamic jelly and dots of green basil oil. Our ‘hot twisted tuna carpaccio’ was made from a giant roll of sushi tuna, simply sliced, washed in miso and wasabi dressing with aforementioned fried rocket piled on top.

Spacie’s recipes tend to be fun deconstructions of classics. Her book, by the self-publisher Blurb, has the beauty of being printed to order – no mean feat getting published during a recession. This means distribution and production costs are totally under control. And I really warmed to the woman – she was approachable, funny and not precious about her cooking. More light-hearted, inventive female chefs, I say, more deep-fried rocket…