WHEN I was writing this article I was about to celebrate my 41st wedding anniversary to the handsome, ever-tolerant and loving Eddie Spear, my husband and lifelong business partner at The Three Chimneys in Skye. This reminded me of many happy memories, not least of which are memories of my mother-in-law, known to everyone connected with the family and our restaurant as “Nan”. She was indeed everyone’s Nan – loving, friendly, caring, concerned and staunchly supportive in so many ways, but most of all to her immediate family. What's more, she was the restaurant’s greatest-ever fan.

I am not such a saint as to say I did not have the odd difference of opinion with her but we lived very nearby one another and she was a constant in our lives, helping to look after the children when they were small, while we were busy working in the restaurant, day and night. As everyone who runs a small hospitality business knows, the hardest times for childcare are in the evenings and during the school holidays. Nan and Grandad were always there for the wee ones and always there to help us. For years, she ironed the napkins for the restaurant which I washed and hung out to dry on my Skye washing line behind the kitchen. There was a permanent row of them waving in the wind alongside a permanent row of tea towels and aprons. Pegging them on the line was my escape from the heat of the kitchen.

Nan was a fabulous home cook and I was so impressed with her skills when I first met Eddie and his then nine-year-old daughter, Sarah. She was one of those amazing women who lived through the Second World War with a new baby and survived the London blitz, her husband far from home with the Royal Engineers in the 8th Army. As a result, she always lived up to her personal vow that, having done so, she would never complain about anything life threw at her. She was a very beautiful woman – tall, stylish and slim, with an amazing taste in good clothes. Self-educated beyond leaving school at aged 14, she loved classical music, read widely and had a huge interest in politics and world affairs. For many years she was "in fashion", as she always described it, working in quality women’s wear, knowing and serving her customers with great personal attention.

Nan also loved good food and fine wine. A large gin and tonic never went amiss and as she got older and frailer, she adored her dram. But one thing will always go down in family history – Nan’s utter adoration of a pot of fresh coffee after dinner, particularly with a plain chocolate of one sort or another. “Coffee and chocolate – the most perfect combination,” she would say every time without fail as she popped the said chocolate into her mouth and relaxed into her chair with a sigh of satisfaction, cup and saucer in hand.

Nan was also a woman of her time in more ways than one, having held down a full-time job in the telegraph office during the war years because of her great ability to spell correctly. She defied convention by returning to work in the 1950s and taught herself how to cook more and more adventurously, using the legendary Cordon Bleu part-work series of cookery magazines. She was a marvellous cook and truly enjoyed reading and learning about food and wine in an era when all of this was so new to many people. Eddie was born after the war, seven years after his older brother. He always speaks fondly of how proud he was of his modern mother with her great hairstyle and fashionable shoes, attending school events. Despite the hours she worked, with a day off on Sunday and a half-day on Wednesday, she cooked a full meal for the family every evening, shopping in her lunch hour at the street market in Croydon and walking home with a bagful of shopping to cook from scratch. But that’s how it was in those days.

Cookery writer Elizabeth David was another heroine of this whole era of change. She wrote some classic cookery books which make superb reading. When I lived down south, in my twenties, a small chain of her cook shops had opened across London, selling a revolutionary range of French-style cooking utensils, cast-iron enamelware and pottery – I'd never seen this before. This all happened at the same time as Terence Conran launched the Habitat chain with a kitchen department selling items such as earthenware garlic pots and chicken bricks which many of us aspired to display on our kitchen shelves at home.

I have inherited a few of Nan’s household treasures, and I cherish these dearly. Among them are her six little chocolate pots for her 1960s chocolate mousse, a simple but delicious dessert from her repertoire of stunning family-favourite dishes. By this time, Delia Smith had stolen the domestic culinary scene and Nan loved her work, clipping the daily recipes from the London Evening Standard and storing them in her recipe box for another time. This is one of those recipes, very slightly adapted and served in style for the first time for a few years in her chocolate pots. It makes a fabulous final course for any dinner menu, but best made in small quantities for family and friends. As it is World Chocolate Day on Friday, July 7, it seems an ideal choice of recipe.

Please note it uses raw egg although we are not as restricted by the rules and regulations that beset the food and drink industry these days. I ate chocolate pots throughout both my pregnancies, along with soft blue cheese, shellfish and plenty of red wine! Memories of wonderful meals at Nan and Grandad’s dining room table in their home in Croydon, before we moved to Skye, will never leave me. Her mother was Scottish, by the way, born in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh. This means that Eddie could play football for Scotland, but I think it is unlikely that he will ever do so!

DARK CHOCOLATE MOUSSE

(Makes four-six)

Ingredients

200g dark chocolate (70-80 per cent), plus a little extra for decoration

25g unsalted butter

1 tbsp brandy

3 eggs, separated

150ml double cream

Method

1. Break up the chocolate and place this with the butter in a glass Pyrex bowl, or similar. Sit the bowl over a pan of simmering hot water, ensuring that the base of the bowl does not make contact with the water. As the chocolate begins to melt, stir it from time to time with a wooden spoon until it is completely melted and glossy and lump free. Remove the bowl from the saucepan and set aside to cool for five minutes.

2. Meanwhile, separate the egg yolks into a bowl and the egg whites into another. Add the brandy to the egg yolks and whisk together. Stir this into the cooled chocolate mixture.

3. Whisk the cream until thick, but still floppy. (Set aside a little for decorating if liked.) Fold the cream into the chocolate mixture, using the same whisk.

4. With a clean whisk, beat the egg whites until they reach the soft peak stage. Take two tablespoons of whisked egg white and using the same spoon, fold it into the chocolate to loosen the mixture. Using a large metal spoon, fold the rest of the egg white into the chocolate until fully incorporated. Fold in a gentle figure-of-eight stirring movement to keep the mixture airy.

5. Spoon the chocolate mousse carefully into serving dishes of your choice, such as small glasses, or ramekins. It is very rich and one serving need only be quite small. Cover each pot and refrigerate until ready to serve. Before serving, decorate with extra grated dark chocolate or a blob of cream.