The first thing Jonathan Schuyler does when I walk through his door is hand me a glass of bright white Rioja. This shouldn’t be a surprise—he’s the wine-and-beverage director at 2941 restaurant in Falls Church.

It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon, and Schuyler is cooking with his wife, plus a line cook and pastry chef from the restaurant. Schuyler worked as a chef for several years before switching to wine, and his days off are a chance to play in the kitchen again.

Schuyler and his wife went to Spain last year and he misses it, so tonight he lays out charcuterie, olives, and crostini rubbed with roasted garlic and tomato. His friends chat while he chops carrots, onions, and jalapeños into precise cubes.

For every holiday, my mother has a signature dish. At Thanksgiving it’s her sinful mashed potatoes; Rosh Hashanah has to include honey-infused challah. And the Passover meal isn’t complete without matzo candy, brittle-like shards of the unleavened cracker covered in chocolate, caramel, and walnuts. Her best guess as to the origin of the recipe: A friend passed it along 20 years ago. I just think of it as my mom’s. (Recipe after the jump.)

Sophie's version of Prince William's favorite childhood dessert. Photograph by John Wilwol.

It seems absurd for a British-themed blog not to acknowledge that a significant event is happening across the pond next week. However, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m not really that excited about Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding. They seem like a lovely, grounded couple, but after eight months of dress speculation and Dukan Diet stories and absurd marketing ploys, I’m feeling more than a few pangs of tedium. English Mummy doesn’t share my feelings, however: She has taken next Friday off work in preparation, and we had an unbelievably long discussion yesterday about whether Kate is unhealthy-anorexic skinny (my view) or just bride-to-be skinny (Mummy’s). I lost after it was decided that Kate probably didn’t care what I thought anyway.

There is, however, one element of the royal wedding of which I thoroughly approve, and that’s the groom’s choice of cake. In addition to having a traditional English fruitcake at the reception, Prince William has requested a chocolate biscuit cake, which is apparently a favorite of his from childhood. Bear in mind that “biscuit” is British English for “cookie,” which I hope will make this sound a lot more appealing than a floury cake made from fried-chicken side orders. Chocolate biscuit cake is a nursery favorite, combining cookies, chocolate, syrup, butter, and raisins in a refrigerated slab of sugary goodness; the final product is dark and fudgy, with crunch from the cookies and chewiness from the fruit. You can also add brandy if desired, but because it’s uncooked, be careful whom you serve it to. (There’s nothing tackier than drunk toddlers at a formal event, and this isn’t the Olive Garden.)

Photograph by Sophie Gilbert.

If ever there was an institution as profoundly unappreciated as English food, it’s the English mummy (that’s British for “mom,” by the way). Blessed with a wardrobe of colorful separates, a razor-sharp tongue, and an endless ability both to bolster and to bash her offspring, the mummy should rightly be a global cultural icon, up there with the Queen and Cadbury’s chocolate. I spend half an hour on the phone each weekend with mine, and she tells me stories about her friend Alison (who’s apparently “thin-lipped and mean”) and debates the nuances of American foreign policy (she likes Barack Obama, although she got very cross with him for criticizing BP, and she thinks Sarah Palin is “just ghastly”).

My mummy is coming to stay next month, meaning I’m already making preparations: purchasing Earl Grey tea and marmalade, cleaning, and preparing an invisible, Teflon-esque coat of armor, which I’ll use to repel any maternal criticism. (On a recent visit she complimented me on my weight gain and told me I was getting bunions.) I’m joking, mostly. My mummy is lovely, and her visits are usually complicated by only one thing: she’s lactose-intolerant. This is a giant problem in our house, where a quarter of our grocery budget is routinely spent on cheese, and my loyalty to dairy is matched only by my loyalty to my husband, who’s much nicer and more patient with my family than I am.

>>Click here to see more photos of Critchley in action and his finished dishes.

For more than two years area chefs graciously accepted our Frugal Foodie challenge: cook a meal—steak dinner for four, a tailgate for ten—on a tight budget.

As we shopped and cooked, I peppered the chefs with questions about how often and what they cooked at home. As they sliced, diced, boiled, and sautéed, I noticed who worked fastidiously and neatly and who whirled through my small kitchen like the Tasmanian Devil, leaving grease in unreachable places. I wondered how each chef was in his or her own home and worried about the quality of my equipment or the size of my kitchen.

So we’ve decided to turn the tables and see what chefs, bartenders, and restaurant staff are like in their own homes. No budget. No parameters on the number of diners or style of meal. When unleashed from the restaurant, what do they make?

John Critchley, the new chef at Urbana in DC’s Dupont Circle, agreed to let me hover in his kitchen while he cooked on one of his Mondays off. When I arrive, a bone-in leg of lamb—rubbed with a mix of grains of paradise, rosemary, cinnamon, dried ginger, and salt—is slow-roasting on his charcoal grill. A mix of squash, onion, and peppers are neatly sliced, waiting to be added to the grill, and cheese, crackers, olives, and hummus are on the counter for noshing.

I thought it was fitting, for my second blog post about British cooking, that I ignore British food completely and instead turn to something more quintessentially American than a cowboy draped in the American flag eating a KFC Double-Down: macaroni and cheese. Fitting, that is, until I did some thorough journalistic research (i.e., looked it up on Wikipedia) and found out that mac and cheese is actually English. Well, kind of. It’s apparently been popular in England for the last hundred years or so, but its American heritage wins out because Thomas Jefferson reportedly enjoyed it at the White House in 1802. There you go, Yanks, getting everything good before we do.

I vaguely remember eating “macaroni cheese” as a child along with all the other bland, casserole-type things we were fed—tuna bake, fish pie, cottage pie—but it wasn’t until my early twenties that I began to appreciate it. When I was out in London’s Soho one night about five years ago, I stumbled into the Boheme Kitchen & Bar, where I drunkenly scarfed the better part of an entire plate of mac and cheese and discovered that it was really, really good. Admittedly, almost anything is really, really good when you’re drunk, which is pretty much the only reason that Jumbo Slice in Adams Morgan is still in business. But this particular macaroni-and-cheese combination had an interesting addition: spinach. And because it gave a nice texture to the dish, as well as the illusion of healthfulness, I’ve been adding it to my own rendition ever since.

When I was asked to start this blog, I was given a rather complex task. “We want you to prove,” said my editors, “that British food isn’t as disgusting as people think it is. And you should also talk about cooking. And be funny. Definitely be funny.”

Sounds easy, no? Here are my credentials in terms of cooking: I have none. I’ve never taken so much as a basic knife-skills class, and I ate a radish for the first time in 2008. But I’m British, so that takes care of at least a part of the equation. And I grew up in a very food-oriented house—my stepmom, a former caterer, was trained at Cordon Bleu; my mom and stepfather are organic beef farmers; and my dad was a hardcore gastronome, who once gave me a glass of Château Margaux when I was doing my French homework at age 13 (I like to think it distinctly improved my work). So I grew up cooking and eating a lot, in London, which contrary to popular opinion has some of the best restaurants in the world and where it isn’t always raining.

I also worked as a waitress for six years, which gave me three important skills: (1) I can fan out an avocado prettily on a plate, (2) I know how to unblock a toilet, and (3) I can open a bottle of wine in less than five seconds. Curiously enough, it wasn’t until I gave up being a waitress and became a journalist that I started cooking properly.