Due to a strange synchronicity, I find that I am up with the current trends in a culinary sense. Because I love one pot cooking. I always have.

Maybe it’s because I’m not much of a cook or because I’m lazy, I’m not sure. But I find nothing more satisfying than chucking a bunch of stuff into a pot, leaving it and coming back an hour later and eating it.

My wife tells me that one pot cooking is a thing now. Who Knew? Well, she did and millions of others too apparently. She tells me her Instagram feed is full of one pot cooking recipes.

I’m new to Instagram and haven’t quite cottoned on to that yet but from all accounts it sounds like I am ahead of the curve and I have been for decades. I’m good like that.

The discussion about all this ensued the other evening when I declared that I was going to make coq au vin in our French cooking pot. I like French cuisine because so much of it is comfort food.

I recently added to my minuscule repertoire gratin dauphinois, which is not one pot but it is one dish so it’s the same thing really. It’s basically a potato bake with cheese and double cream which you cook in the oven.

When we were in France just over a year ago, I had some of this in a bouchon, a traditional restaurant in Lyon, a place called Le Café Comptoir Abel which apparently was one of Anthony Bourdain’s favourite restaurants. If it was good enough for the late great Anthony Bourdain it was good enough for me.

We were in Lyon visiting our son who was studying there at the time and off we went to this restaurant and I had kidneys (who serves kidneys in Australia nowadays?) and gratin dauphinois which I basically inhaled.

When I got home I decided to make it for myself. So, I have added this to my very slim culinary repertoire and luckily my wife likes it too.

That repertoire includes mainly one pot meals … casseroles, soups and curry.

I just love chopping stuff up and whacking it all in the pot and leaving it.

I don’t camp but one thing does attract me about camping – the camp oven. That’s rudimentary one pot cooking if ever I’ve seen it and I have watched a bit of camp oven cooking on telly and I like it.

I could cook stews or even damper in one of them. I don’t know, maybe I’ll get one, start a fire in the backyard and cook out there.

That sounds like a barbecue I know but I don’t want to cook stuff on a griddle. I just want to whack it all in a pot.

Call me crazy. Call me One Pot Phil. Call me whatever you like but the fact is I’m fashionable. At last.