Ramsay's kitchen nightmare

Last week, I heated some ultimate mash from M&S for dinner; I can't be bothered to peel potatoes, let alone mash them. I came of age at the height of feminism and always saw cooking as beneath me, and anyway, I am always far too busy and tired to shop for food and cook it and then clear up.

"Don't tell me you are too tired to cook something from scratch even just once a week," says Gordon, wiping my kitchen table while tying an apron around my middle and tucking a tea towel into my waist; he is the first man I have ever met who can multitask.

("Why do you let your cat sit on the f****ing breadboard?" he says, losing patience. My reply that it gives her a better view fell on deaf ears and merited a "F*** me".)

"You need to see cooking as something to enjoy, not a chore before you dash upstairs to watch telly." I tell him that, usually, it is my husband who does the cooking, but it is an activity I always try to discourage him from because he is so messy. I threw away the frying pan because he was always making omelettes.

But, having let one too many weekly boxes of organic vegetables fester in a corner, I have decided I need to grow up and at least learn how to cook one dish well. I had told Gordon via email that my husband is due home on Thursday after three months away, and I want to be able to cook a romantic dinner for two that will impress him and not make him want to spit it out, which is what he normally does when I heat something up.

Gordon wants to see what sort of palate I have. He makes me smell and then taste something chopped and green. "Um, lawn mowings?" He frowns so hard he resembles a Chinese Shar Pei even more closely. "No, that is parsley." Next up is something brown. "Mushrooms?" I say. "No, those are olives."

Oh dear. Gordon is planning to teach me how to make home-made tortellini and ravioli stuffed with goat's cheese, roasted pine nuts and basil and chives, with a fresh tomato sauce. He runs a finger along my knife. I tell him I don't have a sharpener, no; when my knives don't work I buy new ones.

He keeps asking me for things I don't have, like a rolling pin or a slotted spoon or nutmeg. He puts one of my lovely steel pans on to boil, removing its sticky price-label first. Another pan, he fills with iced water (thank the Lord there is ice in my freezer). "Do you know what that is for?" he asks me; he has a tendency to say things right in my face. "Umm, in case I burn my fingers?"

"NO!! It is to cool the pasta so it doesn't go all soggy." I thought pasta was meant to be soggy. We then make the tomato sauce. He never uses tinned, only tomatoes on the vine, he always uses the very best olive oil (Hoorah! I have some single-estate oil I bought for the prettiness of the bottle), one red onion, lawn mowings, and I forget what else. Salt! I have an unopened box of Maldon salt. Ooh, the chopped olives; I don't dare tell him I hate them. Then we make the pasta: flour, water, maybe an egg.

He does everything really quickly and with little thought for my floor, which is limestone and stains easily. The water boils over; my Smeg cooker looks as though it has been raped. He keeps telling me I am putting things in the way of his pasta ironing. I separate an egg, and use one of my make-up brushes to brush yolk at the edges of the little shapes he has just cut.

He shows me, over and over again, how to put the filling in the centre, and use my fingers to expel any air bubbles, and avoid tearing the pasta, which is so thin you can see through it. He tells me I am panting. I can see why some people think cooking is like sex: there is so much kneading and coaxing, positioning and tasting and lickinggoing on I get all hot.

All my girlfriends were very jealous when I told them Gordon was coming round to my house; he is so much sexier than Jamie Oliver, who I imagine is a bit of a slobberer. I can't help feeling Gordon's stomach, by mistake (I was reaching for the goat's cheese), and it is rock hard. "I'm not that fit at the moment," says the 39-year-old one-time professional footballer who regularly runs home from his eponymous restaurant in Chelsea to his home in south London, and then has sex with his wife, who presumably has had an afternoon nap. "I have, not a hernia, but a groin strain."

Every time I make a pasta parcel he examines it, and then tears it up in front of my eyes. I am close to tears. We then boil his parcels, which are like beautiful miniature works of art, for two minutes. "Are you sure that is long enough?" I ask him, regretting the words as soon as they have left my throat. He then shows me how to make a dressing (olive oil, lemon juice and water in a blender), slice some Parmesan (grating it into dust is, apparently, very wrong) and then I taste the fruits of our labours.

I have to say it is the most delicious thing I have ever had in my mouth. "Wow!" I say. He looks all pleased and twinkly-eyed.

He has to rush off. Not only does he have seven restaurants in London to look after, he has a script meeting with Channel 4 later that day, he only got back from sailing to Spain the night before, and has to get home to make Parmigiano for the kids (I look blank; "It is aubergine slices dipped in egg yolk and ... " he doesn't bother to finish).

He never sits down to eat a proper meal, he says, but merely grazes all day, like a horse, plus he has to get on with his plans to open his first restaurant in New York.

"Look," he says. "I am going to leave you this ball of pasta dough, this bowl of filling, this bottle of dressing, and a carton of the tomato sauce I made this morning. Keep it all in the fridge, assemble it exactly as I showed you when your husband returns and he won't know the difference. I am going to bike a pasta machine to your house tomorrow."

As he leaves I feel as if I have indeed cheated on my husband. I am flushed and sated. I am still finding pine nuts in weird nooks two days later. But it was worth it. I found Gordon very patient, actually. I might even buy his cookery book and stop eating with a plate balanced on my knees. I might, for the first time in my life, see food as a lovely friend, not, after all, something to fear.

The F Word is on Channel 4 tomorrow at 8pm, repeated on Saturday at 5.15pm.