London – With three children, a high-powered legal job and a husband away helping to run the country, it would be fair to say that deputy prime minister Nick Clegg’s wife has a lot on her plate.
But on Tuesday Miriam Gonzalez Durantez revealed that, on top of her other commitments, she had been writing a secret cookery blog for the past three years.
The 46-year-old international trade lawyer made the revelation during an online chat with members of Mumsnet and joked the disclosure might get her in trouble.
During the chat she wrote: “I actually have a cooking blog with my children that I have been running with them for the last three years (when my husband’s advisers learn this they are going to freak out!). I like cooking a lot and make the point of teaching my children to cook as well.”
The website, mumandsons.com, contains recipes for dozens of dishes, mainly Spanish-themed.
One recipe is for “Tiny tortillas with shrimps” (tortillitas de camarones). She describes the dish as “a wonderful tapa from the South of Spain”, adding: “Children like making them as it is a bit like making pancakes (the olive oil is very hot though, so be careful if they approach the frying pan).”
In the wide-ranging discussion on Mumsnet, Gonzalez also said her own mother has come over from Spain to help out at home during the election campaign and that her mother-in-law usually drops by one day a week.
She said that being married to Nick Clegg and seeing British politics so close up had been a “privilege” over the past five years.
She wrote: “I do not agree at all with the victim complex that seems to be applied recently to some politicians and their families.
“If there are difficult times, we deal with them together as a family, as I suppose most families do. But I can guarantee you that most of what families of politicians go through is nothing in comparison to the issues that other families have to deal with.”
Asked which of Clegg’s achievements she was proud of, she said the “stabilisation of the economy at a truly difficult economic time”.
She also defended her husband against the accusation he had turned his back on his beliefs after the last election.
She wrote: “He was not elected prime minister. There was one promise (one) he could not get in the coalition negotiations. But he got every single policy in the front page of the Lib Dem manifesto. Every single one.
“Free tax allowance, shared parental leave, pupil premium, extended hours of childcare, the green investment bank, the bank levy, a record number of apprenticeships, putting mental health on the same level of importance as physical health… you tell me any other party that has done all that with just 56 MPs.”
MIRIAM’S SPINACH SOUP
After getting soaked watching/playing rugby, a soup is nice. You need:
2 onions (diced)
1 garlic clove (sliced thinly)
350g of spinach
a drop of lemon juice
600ml of boiling water
olive oil
salt
1 generous tbsp of crème fraîche
Heat the oil and fry the onions and garlic over a low heat until they become translucent. Then add the spinach and lemon juice. After 5 minutes add the boiling water, crème fraîche and salt. Let it boil for 5 minutes and blend it.
The Independent