A cook's life for me but some gigs are tougher than others

I might have gone on to work at The Dorchester if things had panned out. Or the Berni Inn, if they hadn't.

I cooked at my own wedding. After all, why bother with all that vows stuff when you can be rustling up slow-cooked pulled pork, bite-sized squares of crisp parmesan polenta and redcurrant jellies with a layer of vanilla panna cotta that's smoother than Pharrell's skin. Do you take this salted caramel to be your lawful wedded favour? I do.

Some gigs are tougher than others. Cooking for 60-odd guests at a wedding was no problem. Dare I say it, it was fun. Prep for 48 hours, solicit help from a bunch of friends – thanks Will, Mel, Suree, Rob and others – and Bob's your fancy canapé.

Cooking for the organisers of a food festival was remarkably straight forward, too. Even though I say it myself, I rocked it. Ha. Back of the net, foodies.

Other gigs, however, are much harder. I once tried to create something called a chocolate delice, within which lay a hidden ball of passion fruit caramel. Think of it as being like a Mars Bar, but posher.

It's texture should have been like gossamer; softer and more delicate than Caroline Trentini's undies. Except I messed up and it was harder than Roy Keane. One of our dinner guests, a former military man, bounced his spoon off the edge of the basalt-hard dessert. He picked it up, turned it upside down and swapped his spoon for a serrated knife and fork. Then he started to stab it, declaring: "I'll tackle it this way", as though taking a pick axe to granite. Cooking for a couple of restaurateur friends was even more difficult. They'd held a Michelin star for more years than they care to remember and once won an award for running Britain's best restaurant – beating Heston, Gordon and all the usual suspects.

They'd invited themselves to dinner, reasoning that I'd written about their restaurant plenty of times and now it was their turn to critique me. And they did. I got a seven out of ten. Which is like coming fourth in the race and missing out on a medal.

Nerves got the better of me. I spent forever preparing their main course, only to forget to heat their plates. And when I attempted to make good my error, everything went lukewarm. Like a bath that you've been sitting in for too long but can't be bothered to exit.

I once tried to impress a girlfriend's parents by cooking them Christmas dinner. The turkey was stuffed with lemon and herbs then roasted without its legs, upside down, so that the juices ran into the breast.

I made my own stuffing, roasted chestnuts, sautéed sprouts quickly with small pieces of smoky bacon and made the stickiest, most savoury, intensest gravy this side of Marco Pierre White.

I served it on fangled new plates, made from some sort of hybridised plastic, which looked like china. And then I put them on top of the hob, which hadn't cooled. The plates melted and I was forced to serve their dinner on cardboard. Surprisingly, I didn't later walk their daughter down the aisle. I can't imagine why not.

You won't catch me out like that this Christmas. I'm doing what sensible people do. I've booked a table for two at the Berni Inn.