The confident cook

Rich Angel prepares a lemon drizzle cake at his apartment on the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai.

Our third home-alone husband impresses Sophia Money-Coutts with his culinary skillsand knowledge of healthy eating. "Tell you what," came an e-mail from Rich Angel, the third summer bachelor and the head of international investment at the Dubai-based property firm, Asteco. "Come over for about 7pm on Thursday and I'll whip you up a lemon drizzle cake that you can then take away with you." Was that a joke, I wondered on reading said e-mail. What kind of man gets back from work on a Thursday evening and starts greasing a cake tin?

"I think you'll be very impressed Sophia, only last night I was making my lunches for the week - marinated, grilled chicken breasts that are delicious and low GI," he added in a subsequent e-mail. Eh? Was this a peculiar kind of macho bravado? No it was not. Come Thursday evening, Rich had donned an apron and was rooting around his cupboards for his Jasper Conran measuring scales. "I'll use scales for this," he said of the cake. "Otherwise it can go horribly wrong."

And it turns out the cake was but a mere warm-up exercise for Rich's Thursday night. He had a fellow summer bachelor, Sam, coming over for dinner afterwards. What was he cooking him? Beef Wellington. But of course. From scratch? Naturally. "The common misconception is that if you sear the fillet and then carry on cooking it, it'll dry out. But keep it in the oven and it just slow cooks. That's the way to do it," he instructs.

I nod solemnly, reflecting on the previous summer bachelors' tales of crackers, peanut butter and shawarma takeaways. Rich is, as they say, something else. He covers the measuring bowl with a piece of kitchen paper and tips flour on to it, the paper keeping the bowl clean. After the previous two bachelors, this is extraordinary. I feel like David Attenborough surveying a domesticated ape. He's always been interested in cooking, he explains, so his mum taught him a few things before going to university aged 19.

"I remember literally my first week I cooked for a load of people in halls. It was something ridiculous like a curry from scratch, without any of the little pots." He's married to Skye, an art teacher currently back in the UK, and who's also something of a kitchen whizz. Who's the better chef? "We're equally matched," he says carefully, before pausing for the briefest of seconds. "But then she has done a cooking course."

Rich starts grating lemon rind into a bowl. "The thing is, I like to eat properly. So last night I had salmon fillet marinated in coriander, fresh mint, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, lime juice and chilli. And then some Japanese soba noodles with it. Healthy, high protein," he says. I am reminded of his earlier mention of low-GI packed lunches. How does he know so much about nutrition? "It's Skye actually, she's really interested in it." In testament to this is a pile of health books stacked on a nearby side table. "But I tell you what, since moving out here I've become more so."

Why? "Well, when we moved out in 2008 I definitely put on the Dubai stone." He stops to slide the cake in the oven and then explains that it was during the run-up to his wedding last summer that spurred him on a fitness drive. "I was on six little meals and working out every day, so lost a lot of weight doing that. I was eating porridge or eggs in the morning, protein shakes, a lot of grilled chicken and cottage cheese. All the classic stuff but you end up feeling so good."

Needless to say, Rich's fridge looks like a Whole Foods ad. In it sits bananas, protein bars, asparagus and cottage cheese. "Flax seeds too, look!" he points out. Yes, well, no one likes a show-off Rich, but very good. His apartment, unsurprisingly, has an entire shelf dedicated to cookery books. The faces of Delia Smith, Mary Berry, Gordon Ramsay and Rick Stein peer out from the spines. "I like Gary Rhodes," says Rich. "He's a bit more complicated but the food is fantastic." His favourite restaurant in Dubai? "Bussola. It's just easy, proper Italian," he says, but adds that his favourite cuisine is probably French.

"I love escargot and foie gras. It would be interesting to go to L'Entrecôte," he says of the steak chain, now in Dubai Mall and the Khaleej Palace Hotel. "There's one on Marylebone High Street in London - it's amazing. "I'd also love to go to the Fat Duck at Bray," he then says, casually mentioning one of the few British restaurants to hold three Michelin stars. "Or Gordon Ramsay's on Royal Hospital Road, or the other one that's supposed to be amazing is the Waterside at Bray. Is that Michel Roux Jr, or the other one?"

It's the other one, Alain, but I am too dazed to notice. Rich is both an unstoppable culinary machine and a real foodie. This is all too much. He takes the cake out of the oven and pours the sugary, lemon drizzle on the top. It sits for a few minutes before he takes it out and wraps it in foil for me to take home. Unable to resist, I pick a small corner off and gobble it in the car before even leaving the carpark. It's sublime. Mary Berry herself could do no better. As I said before, this is all too much indeed.